Playing on the chord of catastrophe: ISIS exploits earthquake to redeploy

At a time when Syria is suffering from the devastating earthquake of February 6, ISIS executed 12 civilians, including a woman, while the fate of 63 others is still unknown. The terrorist organization is taking advantage of the preoccupation of the security services with the earthquake disaster in an attempt to prove its presence again through kidnapping, intimidating and killing.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that the victims were kidnapped in the Syrian desert of Palmyra while collecting mushrooms.

ISIS seeks to exploit any opportunity that could enable it to regain the lands it lost since 2017.

Exploiting the security flaw

It seems that ISIS is using a plan to exploit the earthquake crisis. On February 7, an incident occurred that caused a number of prisoners to escape from a prison in western Syria, in an area called Rajo on the border with Turkey, after riots broke out inside the prison.

According to SOHR estimates, there are about 2,000 inmates in the prison, most of whom belong to ISIS, and it is possible that the rest could escape in the coming days.

Following that incident, the Washington Post reported that ISIS is planning to carry out several terrorist operations in the coming days using these fugitives.

The newspaper pointed out that ISIS will not pass the opportunity posed by the security imbalance in some areas of Syria following the earthquake without taking advantage of it and trying to recover part of the lands it previously controlled.

Syrian political activist Haitham al-Anani said in a statement to the Reference that ISIS and extremist groups in general wait for times of crisis to flourish. The organization invests in any catastrophe to serve its interests, especially as it was originally created due to the security and political crises in Syria in 2011.

Anani stressed that before the earthquake disaster, ISIS took advantage of the Corona pandemic to carry out many attacks, and now it is exploiting the current crisis to try to regain its lands, in addition to its attempt to launch attacks on the Al-Hol camp to smuggle ISIS women and use them in its terrorist operations against Syria.

Targeting critical areas

For his part, Syrian political activist Rayan Maarouf said that Syria’s oil regions and other critical areas will not be immune from attacks by ISIS in the coming period, but rather these areas will be among the most important priorities of the organization, which is expected to intensify its operations.

Maarouf confirmed in an exclusive statement to the Reference that the Syrian Badia regions are at risk of such attacks, especially since ISIS wants to obtain oil to restore its empire, as it did in 2014.