A militant with an Isis patch walks out of a government building in Hama, Syria, on December 15, 2024. Photo / Salwan Georges, The Washington Post
As authorities began surveying the carnage and searching for clues after Sunday’s mass killing in Australia, they looked for a marker that has surfaced repeatedly in recent years at scenes of horrific violence.
The black flag of Isis is no longer associated with the sprawling territorial “caliphate” the group once controlled in the Syrian desert.
It no longer serves as a banner beckoning Islamist militant recruits from across the globe or the symbol of an organisation with tight operational control over its terrorist plots and media profile.
Isis flags were discovered at the scene of the shooting attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, according to senior officials speaking to the Australian Broadcast Corporation and video footage from the scene.
It served as a reminder that the group continues to inspire violence on a global scale with more frequency and tenacity than other terrorist organisations, according to security officials and terrorism experts.
Isis has gone “from being a governing authority that shocked the world” to an organisation that has “reverted to its DNA as a terrorist group that controls no territory but still counts thousands of members”, said Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow for counter-terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Since United States-led forces declared the defeat of the Isis caliphate in 2019, the group “has slipped from our minds and our gaze”, Hoffman said, but has not retreated from “its purpose and objective”.
The shooting that killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others at Bondi Beach in Sydney was the latest in a series of attacks in recent years where authorities found black flags or other symbols of allegiance to Isis.
That’s even as they uncovered few signs of direct engagement from the organisation’s core in recruiting, radicalising or tasking suspected followers.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there was “no evidence of collusion”, suggesting that authorities had yet to uncover operational links to Isis leaders.
The organisation provided a reminder of its presence in Syria in an attack at the weekend that killed two US Army soldiers and an American civilian interpreter.
US officials said the killing in Palmyra was carried out by a member of Syria’s security forces under investigation for alleged allegiance to Isis.
That shooting occurred at a meeting involving US forces from the Iowa National Guard working with Syrian forces who are being absorbed into the country’s Interior Ministry, according to a person familiar with the US role in the country.
The Isis threat stems mainly from affiliated fighters hiding in the civilian population.
But there are about 26,000 people - mostly women and children - in refugee camps who could be vulnerable to future influence and recruiting, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide additional context on how the US is addressing the Isis threat.
In many ways the shooting in Syria was an outlier, a rare operation in Isis’ geographic base amid a broader pattern of attacks involving allegedly self-radicalised individuals, according to officials and experts.
The Sydney shooting came just under a year after an attacker allegedly inspired by Isis killed 14 people and injured dozens by ramming his truck into a New Year’s Eve crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the US.
The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was a 42-year-old US Army veteran who had posted videos on social media declaring his allegiance to Isis, according to US officials. Like the Sydney attackers, he left an Isis flag in his vehicle.
Last year, Isis claimed credit for an attack on a Moscow concert venue in which at least 143 people were killed.
Also in 2024, the CIA helped disrupt a similar plot by alerting authorities in Austria to an alleged Isis operation aimed at killing hundreds of people at a Taylor Swift concern in Vienna.
Other attacks and arrests linked to Isis have targeted locations as disparate as Stockton, California, and Sri Lanka.
The sequence has raised concerns of a resurgence by a group that had staged spectacular attacks in Paris, southern France and San Bernardino, California, a decade ago but was seen as a spent force after being stripped of its territorial caliphate.
In seeking to re-establish its relevance, Isis has exploited outrage among Muslims over Israel’s campaigns against militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas after the latter killed or captured hundreds of Israelis in an October 7, 2023, cross-border invasion, according to European and Arab security officials.
“We have definitely seen an uptick in the online presence of Isis” over the course of the war in Gaza, said a senior Arab security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
“They are exploiting the emotional outrage of Muslims and use reports of [Muslim] women and children being killed or allegedly starved as tools of recruitment.”
Isis no longer has the online presence or media reach it commanded a decade ago when it staged executions of Western journalists and taunted world leaders.
But officials said that the organisation continues to foment violence with opportunistic online screeds that urge attacks on Western targets using any means available.
When wildfires broke out in Southern California last year, Hoffman said, Isis channels quickly began urging copycat cases of arson.
The father-son suspects in the Sydney attack - Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24 - were not known to have travelled to Syria or elsewhere.
The family’s reported South Asian lineage has raised suspicion among terrorism experts of an affiliation to Isis-K, or Isis-Khorasan, an offshoot based in Pakistan.
The elder Akram was killed in a shootout with police, according to authorities, while the son was wounded and remains hospitalised.
Albanese acknowledged that the younger Akram had come under scrutiny of Australian security officials in 2019, an apparent reference to an investigation triggered by his suspected association with other Isis followers, according to Australian media reports.
An investigation of Akram concluded that “there was no indication of any ongoing threat of him engaging in violence”, Albanese said.
The timing of the Akram probe coincides with an Australian investigation of a Sydney resident, Isaac El Matari, who was convicted of planning attacks in Australia “on behalf of the Islamic State [Isis]”, according to Australian court records.
An Australian citizen, El Matari had travelled in 2017 to Lebanon, where he served a brief jail term for attempting to join Isis, according to court records.
El Matari returned to Australia, where he appears to have been under surveillance before he was charged with prodding others to help him carry out Isis-inspired attacks and took preliminary steps, including the purchase of a tactical vest at a gun store, according to court records.
At El Matari’s sentencing in 2021, an Australian judge downplayed the threat he posed in dismissive terms that echoed some assessments of Isis after it lost its territory, which will probably now be revisited.
“He had no followers. He had not persuaded anyone to his cause in Australia,” the judge said. “There was no direct or indirect threat to anyone.
“Although imbued with extremist ideals, the likelihood of any terrorist act coming to fruition in Australia was very low indeed.”
- Tara Copp contributed to this report.
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