One of the suspects on the bridge at Bondi where two gunmen carried out a terror attack against a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia, killing at least 15 people. Photo / supplied
As the civilised world united in horror at Sunday’s terrorist atrocity on Australia’s Bondi Beach, one man far away in the Middle East may well have felt somewhat pleased with himself.
Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is the current global head of Isis – the terror group in whose name at least one of the gunmen apparently acted.
He took over as the group’s fourth “caliph”, or leader, in 2023 – although these days, that title is something of an affectation.
Unlike in Isis’ heyday 10 years ago, when it controlled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria, today it has no “caliphate” to speak of – just a few isolated hideouts.
As much as it encourages “lone wolf” attackers to strike in the heartlands of its Western enemies, in recent years, such willing foot soldiers have become thin on the ground.
Sunday’s slaughter on Bondi Beach – in which father-and-son duo, Sajid and Naveed Akram, shot dead 15 people –was a stark reminder, though, that even when at an ebb, the threat from Isis remains a real one.
Sydney’s beachgoers were not the only Western lives claimed by the terror group over the weekend – an Isis fighter also killed two US soldiers and their interpreter in Syria.
Were these just one-offs – a bloody last-blast from a dwindling cohort of diehard followers?
Or might they be part of a wider resurgence in the group’s fortunes, one which, in part, is capitalising on Muslim anger over the post-October 7 war in Gaza?
Few experts, it should be stressed, believe the group is yet capable of repeating the well-organised, large-scale horror attacks of the past, such as the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris, in which 132 people were killed.
Indeed, the days of random, indiscriminate slaughter – a hallmark of Isis’ trademark nihilism – may well be over.
Instead, its followers seem more likely to go for explicitly Jewish targets – attempting to make common cause with the more radical elements of pro-Gaza movements in the West.
“My core prediction was that October 7 and the subsequent conflict would trigger a new wave of jihadist terrorism, with Jewish and/or Israeli targets at its centre,” says Dr Peter Neumann, professor of security studies at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and the founder of the college’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.
“Unfortunately, that does seem to be borne out by events – we have already seen a marked increase in both attempted and executed attacks, and I would be surprised if this trend did not continue.”
In the two years since October 7, there have been thousands of recorded attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets across the West.
Among them are October’s Manchester synagogue attack, where Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British-Syrian, drove a car into pedestrians and stabbed a security guard. Prior to his attack, he made a 999 call, pledging allegiance to Isis.
The month before, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani living in Canada, was arrested on suspicion of planning a mass shooting at a Jewish centre in Brooklyn in support of Isis. Khan pleaded not guilty to the two terror-related charges he is facing after being extradited to the US.
There will be fears that the high death toll from the Bondi Beach attack may spark further copycat acts.
Worryingly, that comes at a time when the group appears to be regaining momentum on its old turf in Syria, where the two US troops and an American civilian interpreter working with local security forces were killed during an ambush by a lone gunman in the city of Palmyra.
US President Donald Trump has expressed fury over the incident, saying: “There will be very serious retaliation”. The US maintains hundreds of personnel in eastern Syria, as part of a coalition force aimed at preventing Isis from rising once again.
But it has seemingly not been able to prevent a mounting campaign by the group’s remaining fighters in the country, where Bashar al-Assad was unexpectedly ousted by an Islamist coalition led by Ahmed al-Sharaa in December last year.
While al-Sharaa was himself once a paid-up Isis fighter, he has since disavowed their cause. As Syria’s new president, he has courted Washington’s help in his bid to rebuild the nation.
That, however, has acted as a galvanising force for Syria’s Isis remnants, who see him as a traitor to their cause. His pragmatic, non-confrontational approach to Israel has infuriated them even further.
Isis propagandists have dubbed him “Jewlani”, accusing him of being a Mossad agent installed to do the Jewish state’s bidding.
“The new Syrian President is having to tread on difficult territory as many of the jihadists aren’t happy with his dealings – in general, there is a sense of some Islamic resurgence,” says Dr Antonio Giustozzi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
Although Isis no longer controls territory in Syria, and its numbers have dwindled from roughly 100,000 fighters to an estimated 2500 today, it is nonetheless exploiting the post-Assad chaos.
In June, for example, a suicide bomber attacked a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, killing 25.
Two months later, the group launched more than two dozen attacks targeting military checkpoints and government vehicles. Last year, Isis claimed nearly 300 attacks in Syria, up from 121 in 2023.
Among Isis’ other sworn enemies in Syria are the US-backed Kurdish forces in the country’s semi-autonomous north-east, who maintain the vast prison camps where tens of thousands of the terror group’s followers remain in custody since the caliphate’s collapse in 2019. Among them is British-born Shamima Begum, whose legal bid to return to Britain has failed.
Camp administrators have long warned the prisons have become a breeding ground for a new generation of “Isis cubs”, fully indoctrinated by their parents’ radical worldview. Indeed, there are concerns that the facilities are in fact little more than “ticking time bombs”.
Isis has repeatedly attempted to free its detained adherents, albeit with very limited success. But there are now fears Syria’s new political masters – some of whom still harbour Islamist sympathies – may yet offer amnesties to inmates best kept behind bars, effectively allowing them to walk free without a shot being fired.
Isis also maintains franchises outside the Middle East, with varying success.
Its central Asian chapter, known as Isis Khorasan Province, claimed responsibility for last year’s attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow, which killed more than 130 people.
Its central African operations operate in swathes of the Sahel region, including Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
However, such franchises have little direct contact with Isis’ Middle Eastern operation and, in some cases, face strong pressure from rival Islamist groups.
For example, Isis’ Somalia chapter, run by Abdul Qadir Mumin, a former preacher at London mosques, is confined largely to operating in remote mountain caves.
Security experts argue that it is better to have them there than running local towns or cities.
Then there are the Britons who answered the call of Isis’ original founder, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, when he first established the caliphate in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014.
It is estimated that at least 1000 Britons went to fight for Baghdadi’s cause, and while around 100 were killed, the majority eventually returned to the United Kingdom.
Although some were disillusioned by the caliphate’s brutality, others have remained under the watch of the security services, who feared they might mount attacks on home soil.
By and large, however, that has not happened. Most Isis supporters, after all, were social misfits looking for a bandwagon to jump on – once Isis was no longer a winning cause, few may have wanted to go to jail or die in its name.
Giustozzi also argues that because of the tight weapons controls in Britain, the kind of Bataclan-style armed “spectaculars” that might attract Isis wannabees is difficult.
Nonetheless, Isis is believed to be engaged in a fresh campaign to recruit British youngsters.
Last month, a teenager from London appeared in court charged with terror offences after he was arrested at Gatwick Airport and accused of preparing to travel to Syria to join Isis.
The new recruitment campaign has deployed AI tools that can translate Arabic videos and pamphlets in Arabic into English at the press of a button.
However, in the narcissistic, self-involved minds of Isis’ lone wolf attackers, often the real trigger is not events in the outside world, or even Isis’ warped spin on them, but dramas in their own lives.
“When it comes to stabbings or running people over, the perpetrators often have a slow fuse on them – it’s just a case of their life getting s*** enough to the point where they pop a circuit,” says Michael Knights, an expert on jihadism at Horizon Engage, a geopolitical risk advisory firm.
“It’s often just violence looking for an excuse and doing it in the name of jihad gives it meaning.”
Whatever the motivation, though, the result is the same in terms of victims maimed or killed.
And every time it happens, the Isis leadership can claim it as yet another block in the rebuilding of the caliphate.
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