What to Know About the Islamic State

 

What to Know About the Islamic State

 

The terror group has lost its territorial stronghold, but it still orchestrates and inspires violence through affiliates across Africa and beyond.

 

By Eve Sampson

Published Jan. 1, 2025

Updated Dec. 25, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/world/middleeast/isis-islamic-state.html

 

The United States launched airstrikes against Islamic State camps in northwestern Nigeria this week, underscoring how the militant group has transformed its movement into a global franchise beyond the Middle East.

 

The attack came after President Trump ordered the Defense Department in November to prepare to intervene militarily in the West African nation, citing a need to protect Christians from Islamic militants.

 

Though the group no longer controls significant territory in the Middle East, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, remains active through regional affiliates and has continued to carry out attacks and insurgent campaigns, including in parts of Asia and Africa. It has also inspired believers in its extreme ideology to carry out atrocities of their own.

 

History

The Islamic State is a Sunni Muslim insurgent group that traces its origins to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which nearly pushed Iraq into civil war before it was defeated by local militias and American troops.

 

Fighters from the group rebranded as the Islamic State by 2013. Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they exploited the instability from Syria’s civil war to seize territory. In 2014, the group seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and declared itself a caliphate — a state governed by Islamic principles.

 

In October 2019, President Trump announced the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saying in a speech that he was “the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere in the world.” Mr. Trump went on to say, “We obliterated his caliphate, 100 percent, in March of this year.”

 

U.S.-allied Kurdish rebels seized the last remnants of Islamic State territory.

 

Today, experts say the group is the weakest it has ever been in Iraq, but shows signs of resurgence in Syria. ISIS has continued to propagate its radical ideology through clandestine cells and regional affiliates across the globe.

 

Recent Attacks

Even though they no longer hold major swaths of territory, the Islamic State and its affiliates have carried out a spate of deadly attacks over the past couple of years.

 

On Jan. 1, 2025, a 42-year-old Texas man rammed a pickup into New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 15 people. He had an Islamic State flag in his truck, the F.B.I. said.

 

In January 2024, the group’s Afghan affiliate, known as ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, carried out twin bombings in Iran at a memorial procession for Qassim Suleimani, a top Iranian general who was killed in a U.S. drone strike four years earlier. More than 80 people were killed and scores were injured.

 

A few months later, American officials blamed ISIS-K for a deadly concert hall attack near Moscow that killed at least 137 people.

 

In July 2024, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a shooting in Oman that killed six people and injured around 30 more near a mosque.

 

The Iran and Oman attacks specifically targeted Shiite Muslims, whom the Sunni-linked Islamic State considers to be apostates.

 

Directed, Enabled and Inspired

Counterterrorism officials have divided Islamic State attacks into three broad categories:

 

Directed: At least five successful attacks in the 2010s are known to have been directed outright by the Islamic State, carried out by operatives who trained with the group in Iraq and Syria.

 

These cases were among the deadliest, including the coordinated attacks in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people, and the airport and subway bombings in Brussels in March 2016, which claimed 32 lives. Yet these remain the minority.

 

Enabled: Counterterrorism experts have also identified violence conceived and guided by Islamic State operatives whose only connection to the attacker is through the internet.

 

In Paris in 2015, Amedy Coulibaly was in contact with Islamic State operatives in Syria before storming a kosher supermarket, taking hostages and killing four of them. And in Texas in 2015, two men initially thought to be “lone wolves” opened fire at a community center. The F.B.I. later said the attackers were in communication with the Islamic State via encrypted texts.

 

Inspired: Finally, there are the so-called lone wolf attackers, who are radicalized through online propaganda and carry out attacks on their own.

 

In 2016 in Nice, France, more than 80 people were killed and hundreds injured when a man drove a 19-ton truck through a packed crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks. The Islamic State claimed responsibility, though investigators said the driver had been self-radicalized, with no evidence linking him directly to the terrorist group.

 

 

In London in 2017, a 52-year-old Briton plowed a rented Hyundai sport utility vehicle through pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge, killing two and injuring at least 40. A day later, the Islamic State described him as a disciple and a hero for the assault carried out in the shadow of Big Ben, but no evidence emerged of a direct link.

 

In Australia in 2025, a father and son gunned down 15 people celebrating a Jewish holiday at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, the authorities said. They were accused of supporting the Islamic State. The Australian police said they found two homemade Islamic State flags in a car that the gunmen drove to the scene.

 

The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq

The 2024 ouster of the Assad regime in Syria has given way to fears that the group could regain a foothold in the region. In July, the Pentagon warned that Islamic State attacks in Iraq and Syria were on track to reach double last year’s count.

 

The demise of the Assad regime has also led to conflict between U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and Turkish-backed rebels, prompting concerns that ISIS may exploit the instability.

 

More than 9,000 Islamic State fighters are housed in over 20 facilities throughout Syria, according to the U.S. military, which has 2,000 American troops in the country and 2,500 in Iraq.

 

While Syria is in flux, the United States has continued to target the group’s fighters and camps with airstrikes.

 

Regional Reach

ISIS-K, the terrorist group’s Afghan affiliate, has been responsible for some of the recent large-scale terror attacks. It is also fighting Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which ISIS-K deems insufficiently strict.

 

A U.S. official said in March 2024 that the Taliban had made some progress against ISIS-K but struggled to prevent attacks and dismantle urban cells.

 

U.S. officials have also been monitoring the group’s growth in the politically unstable African Sahel region. In March 2024, the Islamic State claimed an attack on Niger’s army that reportedly killed 30 soldiers.

 

An estimated 60 percent of Islamic State propaganda comes from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly affiliate groups in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, a U.S. official said in March.

 

Eve Sampson is a reporter covering international news and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.