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x1 gaming With al-Assad Gone, the Risk of an ISIS Resurgence Grows

Updated:2024-12-28 08:53 Views:64

After more than 53 years of a brutal dictatorship and nearly 14 years of debilitating conflict, the Assad government fell in just under two weeks. The sudden collapse of the regime — which killed, tortured and repressed countless Syrians — has brought a remarkable sense of unity and euphoria across longstanding divides in the country.

There is also a palpable sense of trepidation growing in northeastern Syria, where the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, once controlled swaths of land. While the group has lost almost all of what it once called its caliphate, its threat has not dissipated. On the contrary, the Islamic State has conducted nearly 700 attacks in Syria since January, by my calculations, putting it on track to triple its rate of last year. The sophistication and deadliness of ISIS attacks have also surged this year, as has their geographic spread.

In addition to ISIS’ monthslong campaign of attacks on Syria’s oil industry, the group’s infamous extortion network is also back, giving it renewed funding and indicating a level of local intelligence that is cause for alarm.

The United States has spent nearly a decade combating the Islamic State in Syria and next door in Iraq, with 900 American troops stationed in Syria focused on the task. At this precarious moment in Syria’s history, urgent steps are required to ensure that progress is not lost.

Countering the Islamic State is not straightforward, and it requires a complex set of interconnected responses, not just military action. After all, ISIS has always been a symptom of the chaos wrought by Syria’s civil war — not a cause. It relies on instability, human suffering and local grievances to fuel its narrative, drive its recruitment and justify its actions. To prevent ISIS from filling vacuums left by President Bashar al-Assad’s fall, the United States and its allies must use every tool available to fight its resurgence.

Calls for school crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying among adolescents and studies indicating that smartphones, which offer round-the-clock distraction and social media access, have hindered academic instruction and the mental health of children.

Assad regime forces, who had been trying to fend off the Islamic State’s desire to expand, have abandoned their positions in central Syria. Syrian opposition fighters have already sought to fill some of that space, but their numbers are minimal, and their capacity to coordinate a complex desert campaign against the Islamic State is limited, at best. The first U.S. response to this sudden vacuum came last Sunday, when American aircraft struck more than 75 ISIS targets throughout central Syria. The U.S. military will need to remain vigilant in the coming weeks, primed to strike ISIS where it seeks to amass resources, regroup or launch attacks.

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