Front Burner - Why is ISIS seeing a resurgence?

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

The arrest of a father and son north of Toronto accused of being in the late stages of planning an attack for the benefit of the Islamic State. A canceled stop in Vienna on Taylor Swift’s Eras tour after the threat of an attack with the main suspect allegedly inspired by ISIS. A deadly attack in March on a Moscow theatre leaving over 100 dead, allegedly committed by members of an ISIS affiliate. While the Sunni Muslim militant organization hasn’t been in the headlines regularly since 2018, and was actually declared defeated by former U.S President Donald Trump in 2019, it appears to be having a resurgence. Clara Broekaert, research fellow at The Soufan Center, takes us through what ISIS has been up to in recent years and why they are a growing threat again.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. I know investigations are ongoing and the minister will share all that we learned in the appropriate moment. But we're taking this extremely seriously. this extremely seriously. So that was the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week responding to a question about how and when a 62-year-old man, Ahmed El-Didi, was let into Canada after allegedly taking part in an assault in a video released by ISIS in 2015 before he entered the country.

A parliamentary committee has now been struck to look into what happened there. El-Didi and his 26-year-old son, Mostafa El-Didi, were arrested in a hotel room north of Toronto last month. Police allege they were in the advanced stages of a violent attack. They're facing nine different terrorism charges, including conspiracy to commit murder on behalf of the terror group, the Islamic State. The news comes on the heels of a series of ISIS-related threats and attacks this year. I'm just going to list off a few here. Last week, Taylor Swift canceled three shows in Vienna. Austrian authorities said the main suspect in the alleged plot there, a 19-year-old, was inspired by ISIS. In March, an attack by an ISIS affiliate on a Moscow theater killed at least 145 people. In January, bombings near Qasem Soleimani's burial site in Iran killed nearly 100.

According to the Wall Street Journal, during the first six months of the year, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Syria and Iraq. It wasn't that long ago that people had declared the Sunni Muslim militant organization defeated. So why, after a period of relative calm, are we seeing this resurgence? Clara Brokart, a research fellow at the Soufan Center, is here with me today to discuss this. Hi, Clara. Thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. So I want to discuss with you today the extent and significance of this resurgence of ISIS or the Islamic State. But before we get there, ISIS at its height around 2014

controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq. It controlled it brutally, carrying out unthinkable human rights abuses, persecuting Christians, Shia Muslims, and other groups, executing journalists and aid workers. They sold women from the Yazidi religious minority as slaves. From Syria and Iraq to attacks that either masterminded or inspired in France, Belgium, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, Britain, the United States and elsewhere, it left a trail of death and destruction in its wake. They had recruited fighters from all over the world, but then U.S. President Donald Trump declared the group, quote, defeated. It should be formally announced sometime probably next week that we will have

100 percent of the caliphate. When we took over, when I took over, ISIS was all over. I defeated ISIS, you know. And could you just remind us what happened to the quasi-state or caliphate that ISIS controlled? Yeah, absolutely. So in the beginning of 2017, ISIS starts to experience large territorial losses. So ISIS suffered significant military defeats due to coordinated efforts by local and international forces, including the Iraqi military, Syrian forces, Kurdish forces, and the US-led coalition. And this joint effort was really an all-out offensive. There were ground operations and airstrikes, and they really were targeting the financial

and military infrastructure of this proto-state that were buttressing ISIS at the time. And these defeats led to the loss of key territories, including Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, both in 2017. The war against the group left both cities in ruins, killed thousands of civilians and drove millions from their homes. And then fast forward to March 2019, the Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by the U.S.-led coalition, were able to capture the group's last stronghold in Baghouz in eastern Syria. And this event effectively

signaled the end of ISIS as a territorial entity. And then how would you describe what has happened to ISIS in the intervening years since that loss of territory. So imagine now the terror group effectively has no territorial or proto-state profile anymore. So you just have a bunch of ISIS fighters that have been killed in all of these battles leading up to the fall of the caliphate. Estimates go from anywhere between 25,000 fighters to 70,000 fighters. But then we have all those that are still alive. So of those many fighters were captured, detained in prisons and camps, especially in northeast Syria. We saw capital punishment for ISIS fighters in these regions. And then another portion of those still alive were repatriated foreign fighters and their families.

However, as you know, the process of repatriation has been really slow and complicated due to legal and security concerns in the home countries of these foreign fighters. The most important factor when we assess the ISIS threat today, we see the mass dispersal and continued activities of those ISIS fighters that have not been captured or killed. So many ISIS fighters remain in the Middle East in conflict zones, but they also went to different regions. And can you give me a brief overview of how they are operating now, where they currently have a presence? You mentioned different regions. Yes. So ISIS has established a really significant presence in the Khorasan region, which includes parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This area really has seen a resurgence of ISIS-K activity. We've also seen ISIS fader dispersed to Africa.

But, you know, there are multiple epicenters right now that are the center of Islamic State activity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, we see the Islamic State Sahel province and the Islamic State West Africa province, which hold huge territory swaths from coastal West Africa all the way to Chad Lake Basin. Kurt, when we talk about ISIS, you know, so much of it centered around its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, right, who was killed in a U.S. strike in 2019. Last night, the United States brought the world's number one terrorist leader to justice.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. And so how has that changed the structure of the organization? Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, since al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019, we haven't really seen another charismatic, if you want to call it that, caliph leading the ISIS, leading Islamic states. And then that combined with the fact that they don't hold any significant swaths of territory anymore in what they call the caliphate in the Levant means thaton means that it really has changed the the structure of how the organization operates um it has become um you know a very global organization a global jihadist network with provinces you have as i said like islamic state west africa province etc

but what's really interesting here is that although there is communication between these different provinces and there is a centralized body that governs kind of the different ISIS provinces overall, we're missing that quote unquote charismatic voice speaking to the followers. And that has to do with the fact that, I mean, there are caliphs that have followed al-Baghdadi that have been appointed kind of, but they're fighting for their lives. They're hiding. They're being chased, obviously. And they cannot be that. They don't have the territory to become propaganda voices. When you had the caliphate,

you could really, you know, make propaganda videos seem very victorious. Now that there is no territory, it's really hard to make that kind of same quality propaganda videos to radicalize individuals. And what about the money to kind of fund that sort of stuff, right? Like if you're not holding

these large swaths of territory, how do you fund yourself? Where is the money coming from now? As you know, ISIS was funding itself, not just through levying taxes and extorting the populations it controlled, also through, you know, looting antiquities through oil revenues. What we're seeing is that despite losing territorial control, Islam State retained significant financial reserves and that it's been using those funds to expand its global network. A really great scholar on this topic, Jessica Davis, recently released a paper and found

that the financial strategies have shifted and they have shifted to maintain resilience. So although there is some central funding from Islamic State, it's really the subgroup and the provinces that have to bring in the big bucks. So ISIS provinces in Africa and Asia, you know, the tax, the extort, and they even have, bizarrely, legitimate business operations to generate revenue. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I was reading a piece in the Wall Street Journal that quoted a commander in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, and she said that this year had been the worst year for ISIS attacks in Syria since ISIS was defeated. So it's fair for me to say that there's still a presence in Syria and Iraq as well, right? Absolutely, yes. What are the goals of ISIS today? Have they changed at all? I would say that though the structure and operational methods of ISIS have changed significantly, their overall goals of governance, of recruitment, and of pursuing their ideology

has actually remained really consistent. And just remind me, and for people listening, what is that ideology ultimately? This is an ideology that's based on a very particular view of Islam that can be pursued through violent means, and it is also based on a very particular view of of islam that can be pursued through violent means and it is also based on a very particular sectarian view of what islam is as we know uh the main uh victims of terrorism are other muslims but they tend to belong to other sectarian sectarian groups They tend to be Shia. So this is kind of their overarching ideology. But it's also fighting the infidels, quote unquote. So everyone who doesn't fit into their worldview.

And that's why we're seeing so much attacks in Europe as well. The Bataclan in Paris in 2015. The Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017. And the concert in Moscow four months ago ago where more than 140 people were killed. In Vienna, police say the plan was a suicide attack outside the venue where 30,000 were expected to gather while 65,000 more were inside. And here as well, as I mentioned in the intro, there was a foiled plot of father and son who were arrested north of Toronto for planning some kind of violence. We don't know what the intended target was. The father and son duo arrested last month amid a series of coordinated raids on a Scarborough Street and a Richmond Hill hotel. And accused of plotting a potentially deadly terrorist attack in Toronto last month with a machete and an axe in service of the listed terrorist group ISIS. I'm curious, when you hear news of an attack like or a potential attack like

that, what goes through your head? Well, I don't want to sound, you know, cynical, but I'm not surprised when I hear another foil plot has been discovered. I think what we're seeing right now is a trend across the Western world of a lot of recent plots being foiled by radicalized individuals. The case in Toronto is a little bit different, but overall, we are seeing a trend of very young people radicalizing,

minors, teenagers. We see a lot of rapid-onset radicalization, with which I mean people who are not known at all to security services, radicalizing and starting to plan a violent attack. We're talking about young people, the three, I believe, suspects who have been arrested in the case of the alleged plot to cause violence at the Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, right? They're quite young. And so what do we know right now about what happened there? So as you say, they're very young. These were three teenagers that were arrested for plotting an attack on the concert venue in Vienna. And the main suspect, just 19

years old, confessed that his exact intentions were causing mass harm as many people as he could. He wanted to kill and he wanted to do it through a suicide attack. The 17-year-old suspect that has been arrested had already found employment at the stadium and had access to the venue where Taylor was going to perform. And the 19-year-old teenager involved in the plot had chemicals machetes knives propaganda materials technical equipment and even a police siren light that he was going to attach to his car and going to use to pretend to meet police to enter the premises of the concert concert and

attack taylor swift fans so we're talking about a plot that was foiled in the very last stages of the planning and i would say that this kind of stands out to me. Because this summer, we've seen, you know, a lot of soft targets being targeted by radicalized individuals, whether it be concerts, whether it be sporting events, but they're relatively early on detected. Here, we're talking about really, you know, disaster could have struck. We're talking about a last-minute intervention. Yeah. Law enforcement here said a similar thing about the case north of Toronto, basically,

that, like, it might have even been hours before they tried to put whatever plan they had into action. When we're talking about strategies online, can you just elaborate on that for me a little bit more? Like what is ISIS doing online to recruit and radicalize people across the world? Yeah, so ISIS uses really an arsenal of online tools to recruit and to operate. It's not new. One of the first phenomenons we have of ISIS using these online tools is no virtual entrepreneurs. It sounds a bit bizarre. It sounds a bit like a euphemism, but around 2014, you have virtual entrepreneurs emerging. And this is ISIS

leveraging social media and encrypted messaging apps to reach out to potential recruits in the West. So initially, virtual entrepreneurs focus on facilitating travel for foreign fighters to the conflict zones. But obviously, as the proto-state, as the territorial entity of ISIS collapses, virtual entrepreneurs become something else. So what we are seeing now is they're instrumental in inspiring and guiding lone wolf attacks. So they provide ideological motivation, operational guidance, and they often act as, you know, connecting hubs between isolated individuals who want to commit an attack and the actual ISIS network. And just where are they operating online? You know, what kind of things are they posting? Yeah, so aside from these very hands-on virtual entrepreneurs, I think the bigger threat we're

seeing right now is actually, you know, the propaganda and social media content produced by Islamists. So ISIS was very early on known for its, you know, slickly edited propaganda videos in which it showcased its brutality to the world. Together they march. They are the soldiers of Allah. Their honor is in jihad. And we're seeing that again. We're seeing a sophisticated media strategy emerge, especially from ISIS-K,

the ISIS franchise from Khorasan province. And it uses, you know, multilingual propaganda aimed at inciting violence and recruiting supporters. It includes collaborations with external propaganda producers. It's really acting like a media foundation. And on social media, what we're noticing is, you know, Islamist influencers leverage relatively new platforms such as TikTok. We saw this with the Taylor Swift plot, but we've seen this with

numerous other foil plots in Europe, where individuals saw on their timeline a lot of, you know, extremist content. I also want to say that this is very accessible, although platforms have said that they're cracking down on this kind of content, which I believe it still is a huge problem. There's a really great study that came out not too long ago by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that discusses the accessibility of terrorist content to minors on social media platforms. And so they found that using just like a few very easy terms related to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, you could find a treasure trove of videos and posts, you know, that encourage violence and that were absolutely violating the platform's terms of service. So yeah, it's a widespread problem. I understand that they're using generative AI too, right?

How? So exactly. With AI, we have even a problem of a bigger magnitude on our hands. So the accessibility of AI means you can start optimizing your recruitment efforts. They can be supercharged by creating more content artificially, assessing what content performs well online. But concretely, what we've already seen is, for example, ISIS uses generative AI applications,

applications for content creation and broadcasting the claims of attacks. In 2024, it launched an AI-generated program called Noob's Harvest to disseminate propaganda videos. It's quite something to behold. We know that other conflicts in the world, other major events, can often feed radicalization as well. We saw that happen with 9-11 and the subsequent war in Iraq. if any, in how people are ending up, you know, consuming this extremist content that leads to these sort of attacks or plots. Yeah, I mean, in Europe, when we look at kind of data about radicalization, we see the enormous impact that, you know, October 7th has had. So it's both the horrendous attack of Hamas on Israel on October 7th,

but it's also the Israeli response in Gaza that has led to thousands of deaths of civilians that has contributed to the rise of radicalized people in Europe. I think there is a problem of perceived injustices like conflicts like the one in gaza show or highlight injustices or cases of discrimination and oppression and um it also obviously depends on the media framing you're consuming but that if it's framed as some kind of struggle against oppression, this can really resonate with individuals in the West feeling marginalized or disenfranchised. And then I'd also say that there's this problem of identity and alienations.

Individuals who feel disconnected from their cultural or religious roots may be a bit more susceptible to adopting extremist ideologies as a way to reclaim their identity. And this, I think, is again really relevant for the European context, where Muslim minorities often live in poor socioeconomic environments. So conflicts like this really exacerbate that feeling of alienation and also lead to more radicalization. In recent years, there's been a lot of focus on other kinds of extremism, right? Particularly homegrown, far-right, white extremism, like the sorts of riots that we are seeing

in the UK right now, the shooting in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, or even Hindu nationalist violence in India, right? And just, I wonder if you could put into context for me where the threat of ISIS-related radicalization lands right now, when compared to all of these other threats. Maybe put another way, how big is that threat compared to other threats? So while we no longer have a territorial caliphate in the Levant, Islamic State remains the deadliest terrorist group globally and it has been the deadliest deadliest group globally for nine consecutive years according to the

global terrorism index at the same time i want to reference fbi director christopher bray who last fall identified international terrorism domestic terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism as the main threat categories to the U.S. homeland. And, you know, he said that they're all simultaneously elevated, something he has never seen before in his career. So I think that although Islamist terrorism remains like a really significant trend by volume, we cannot underestimate what's happening with domestic extremism and violent incidents. And I think

a lot of intelligence agencies are really waking up to this. I think also with the U.K. rights right now, we see that. And we also see that with just increased attention to how tech platforms are being used by radical right actors. Okay. Clara, thank you so much for this. We really, really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much. All right, that is all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.