Islamic State Plotted Comeback Long Before Syria Prison Attack

Islamic State has been slowly preparing for a comeback in the Syrian and Iraqi territory that it lost nearly three years ago.

Black Islamic State flags have cropped up in northeastern Syria in recent months, witnesses say. Men claiming to represent the jihadists have extorted shopkeepers and truck drivers. Over the past year, the extremists have killed dozens of people in shootings and suicide bombings that attracted little attention outside the region.

Then last week, some 200 militants, including suicide bombers, attacked a prison holding thousands of Islamic State members in Syria. Undercover militants hiding in the civilian population around the facility prepared to shelter escaped prisoners. Jihadists inside the prison launched a revolt, seizing control of the compound.

The prison break was Islamic State’s clearest statement that it remains a lethal threat in Iraq and Syria and poses a serious challenge for the 900 U.S. soldiers deployed in the area. The attack sparked a week of gunbattles with American and Syrian troops. More than 100 people died, mainly jihadist fighters. About 45,000 people were forced to flee their homes.

The attack demonstrated again that Islamic State can adapt and survive after being driven from power over an area in Syria and Iraq the size of Britain. After a lull in Islamic State activity late last year, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency predicted the group would pick up violent attacks again after a period of “recuperation and recovery.”

 “The insurgency never went away,” said Gregory Waters, a research analyst who tracks Islamic State attacks with the Counter Extremism Project, a think tank. “They’ve been growing stronger.”

There is little chance that the group could regain its former strength, according to local and Western security officials, who argue that regional security forces have improved their capabilities since 2014, when Iraq’s military crumbled in the face of an Islamic State onslaught. Islamic State now poses little threat to the U.S. homeland, although lone attackers could act in the group’s name, American officials say.

However, the group’s persistence presents a challenge for Washington, with over 3,000 U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq with the main mission of assisting in the fight against Islamic State. The Biden administration has moved to reduce the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East and lean more heavily on the Syrian Democratic Forces to contain Islamic State and oversee prisons and camps holding its members.

Islamic State has returned to its roots as an insurgency, carrying out hit-and-run attacks, thriving on smuggling and extortion and slowly rebuilding its following by recruiting among marginalized Sunni Muslim Arab communities. The group’s command and control hierarchy has remained intact, allowing it to direct attacks throughout Syria, U.S. officials say.

Islamic State has improved its ability to coordinate among sleeper cells throughout Syria and Iraq and communicate with detainees inside prisons by smuggling in communications gear, a U.S. official said.

Islamic State has exploited the fact that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lacks the resources to establish security in the country’s vast desert interior. The group moved fighters from central Syria into the northeast and to Iraq late last year, according to the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, and carried out attacks that caused mass casualties, including two suicide bombings in Baghdad.

Prison breaks have been a priority for Islamic State since the demise of the caliphate. Just before he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2019, former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi launched a strategy called “Breaking the Fortress” designed to free jihadist prisoners and swell the group’s ranks. This has led to similar jailbreaks of ISIS detainees in Congo and Afghanistan.

Attacking the prison in Hasakah specifically had been a priority for the group for at least a year, the State Department said last week. In November, the SDF said it thwarted an Islamic State plot to attack the prison. Those warnings point to a failure to secure the SDF-run prison, western officials say.

“It’s a coup for Islamic State. It shows they are still there,” said a European security official. “It’s a blow for the SDF. It shows how precarious their holding arrangements are.”

The SDF didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Islamic State used the attack to provide a psychological boost to its followers around the world, with supporters posting handwritten messages and pictures of cakes and sweets celebrating the attack.

“It’s definitely something that’s going to raise morale among their fighters on the ground,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior analyst on Syria at International CrIslamic State Group.

Islamic State has been quietly spreading its influence in SDF-controlled areas, residents and western officials say. In the Hasakah area, Islamic State has demanded shop owners and farmers pay taxes—which it calls “zakat,” a form of religious charity, says a European security official. Leaders from the group have extorted payments from truck drivers going from the oil fields of southeastern Syria, said a Syrian activist from Deir Ezzor. Those who have paid are given a password they give to Islamic State fighters when stopped, while those without the code are attacked, he said.

A drought and an economic collapse made matters worse last year, when a job shortage and soaring food prices helped to fuel Islamic State recruitment, analysts say. The failure of the SDF-backed administration to restore security and create jobs has added to residents’ grievances.

Extortion has added to Islamic State’s considerable financial resources. In 2020, the fighters in Syria received millions of dollars from stashed funds in the region, mostly in Iraq, according to the United Nations’ Islamic State panel. It cited the seizure in April 2021 in Mosul of a sum equivalent to $1.7 million in buried U.S. dollars and Iraqi dinar bank notes, as well as gold and silver.

The group has also bolstered its ranks by freeing people from camps holding 10,000 people from around the world who were detained when the extremists lost their last piece of territory in 2019. Hundreds of women and their children have escaped from al-Hol, the main camp holding families in northeast Syria, and other camps holding the families of Islamic State members, Western security officials said.