A Terrorism Resurgence

The killing of 14 people on New Year’s Day in New Orleans was the latest sign of a resurgence in radical Islamist terrorism. Some of the attacks — like the one last week — seem to have been merely inspired by ISIS, the network of groups that are offshoots of Al Qaeda. In other cases, ISIS groups played an active role in the planning.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll detail the scope of the recent terrorism and explain the main reasons for ISIS’s resurgence.

A catalog of violence

The list of attacks and plots either inspired or aided by ISIS over the past five years is longer than many people may realize. It includes:

• A double suicide bombing in the Philippines that killed at least 14 people in 2020.

• Several attacks in France, including the beheading of a teacher in 2020, the fatal knifing of three people in a church in Nice in 2020 and the killing of a teacher in the small city of Arras in 2023.

• The killing of four people by a gunman in a bustling Vienna neighborhood in 2020.

• The fatal stabbing of a British member of Parliament in 2021 while he was meeting with constituents inside a church in a seaside town.

• A suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 13 U.S. troops and roughly 170 civilians in August 2021.

• The stabbing of six people at a supermarket in New Zealand in September 2021.

• Two attacks in Israel in March 2022 that killed a total of six people.

• A mass shooting in Oslo, apparently targeting L.G.B.T. Pride events, that killed two people and wounded 21 in June 2022.

• The fatal shooting of two Swedish soccer fans in Brussels in 2023.

• A bombing in eastern Iran that killed about 100 people attending a ceremony honoring Qassim Suleimani, the deceased Iranian general, just over a year ago.

• The killing of a worshiper at a Catholic church in Istanbul by two gunman last January.

• A mass shooting at a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed 145 people and injured more than 500 last March.

• The fatal shooting of six people near a Shiite mosque in Oman last summer.

• A foiled plot to bomb a Taylor Swift concert last summer in Austria that the authorities believe could have killed hundreds.

• The fatal stabbing of three people at a festival in western Germany in August.

• Attacks in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Niger, Pakistan and Syria that together have killed hundreds of people.

Why now

ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, began in Iraq two decades ago during the U.S. war there. It once controlled a large piece of territory in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S., under the Trump administration, largely defeated ISIS there.

Today, it is a loose network of chapters with a shared fundamentalist Sunni Muslim ideology. Its sympathizers have attacked Shiite Muslims, in Iran and elsewhere, as well as Christians and Jews. ISIS claims authority over all Muslims and has sometimes clashed with other extremist Sunni groups, including the Taliban.

There are at least four reasons for the recent resurgence.

First, recent coups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have left a power vacuum in the Sahel region of West Africa. “The breakdown in governance in the Sahel has led to turmoil and insecurity that’s created space for bad actors including ISIS and Al Qaeda,” our colleague Eric Schmitt said. (We recommend this story by Eric and Ruth Maclean.)

Second, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 reduced the pressure on an ISIS chapter there known as ISIS-K, and it has since expanded beyond Afghanistan. ISIS-K was behind the Iran bombing, the Moscow concert attack and the Taylor Swift plot.