Analysis of the Daesh situation in Syria and Iraq
The insurgent activity of the Daesh terrorist organisation has been constant during 2022 and the beginning of 2023 in Syria and Iraq. Assassinations, kidnappings, assaults and extortion camouflaged as zakat1 have been the norm in the areas where the organisation is particularly entrenched in both countries, especially in rural and desert areas. Meanwhile, the counter-insurgency has been effective in wiping out numerous active cells in the two countries, especially in the Kirkuk and Diyala area in Iraq and in Deir Ezzor in Syria, although the terrorist organisation is still active enough to carry out actions of all kinds on an almost daily basis, so it cannot be considered a mere low-intensity guerrilla group, especially in Syria.
Daesh, despite its defeat in 2019, has not ceased to be a terrorist threat that EU governments have to deal with. Some media talk about the resurgence of the organisation, which is wrong, because what never disappeared cannot resurface. Daesh to a greater or lesser extent has been a tragic reality from its expansion in Iraq and Syria in 2014 to the present day.
The monitoring of the terrorist and insurgent activity of the terrorist organisation is useful to assess the current situation of the organisation, the territorial reference being Syria and Iraq, as they are the places where its territorial expansion began and where its main leaders have taken refuge, from where they give the orders to carry out ambushes and attacks and, moreover, they also serve as a mirror for their main territorial franchises in the Sahel and Maghreb, all territories from where their militants have sworn allegiance to the new leader of the Jihadist organisation Abu al Hussein al Qurashi, following the death of the former leader in mid-October in the Syrian province of Deraa, in a clash with members of the 8th Brigade of former opponents of the Syrian regime supported by local factions2.
The cases analysed for this article are a summary of the bloodiest actions carried out during the year 2022 on the dates indicated. Regarding Syria: 3 January in Badiya desert, 20 January in Hasakah, 25 and 30 January and 9 February in Deir Ezzor, 6 March in Palmyra, 3 April in Homs, 5 April in Deir Ezzor, 11 April in Homs, 17 and 18 April in Deir Ezzor, 21 April in Al-Hol, 22 April in Raqqa, 23, 28 and 30 April in Deir Ezzor, 9 May in Al-Badiya, 18 May and 4 June in Deir Ezzor, 20 and 23 June in Raqqa, 3 August, 11 September, 3 October, 3 and 17 November, 12 and 15 December in Deir Ezzor, 15 December in Hama.
For Iraq: 21 January in Diyala, 23 January and 21 March in Kirkuk, 9 April in Anbar, 19 April in Diyala, 26 April in Baghdad, 23 May in Kirkuk and Diyala, 5 August in Diyala, 19 November and 18 December in Kirkuk.
All of the above cases can be consulted in more detail on the Sec2Crime website in the article "SEC2CRIME REPORT: JIHADIST ACTIVITY IN SYRIA AND IRAQ (DAESH) 2022"3, as well as the assessment of the current level of insurgency.
Syria has seen an upsurge in Daesh terrorist activity. The terrorist organisation's attacks and ambushes have been ongoing, but in the Deir Ezzor area they have been particularly intense during 2022 and early 2023, resulting in hundreds of casualties among Syrian and allied military, SDF members and civilians in this province alone.
One of the most spectacular actions was the assault on Syria's Al Sina prison in Kurdish-controlled Hasakah province. This attack was a turning point in terms of the terrorist organisation's operational capacity, given that Daesh's objective was the liberation of thousands of jihadists at the risk of suffering hundreds of casualties, which it did.
Daesh has entrenched itself in areas of the triangle formed by the provinces of Raqqa, Homs and Hasakah but it is in the central core of that triangle in the province of Deir Ezzor that Daesh is mainly established in its rural and desert areas. Outside these areas its presence is smaller, although in the province of Deraa in October this year there were serious clashes in several neighbourhoods of the capital between Daesh and local militias which were assisted by former opponents of the Syrian regime, now formed into defence brigades which managed to expel the terrorist organisation from the area, killing its leader as mentioned above.
The Syrian regime directly controls about two thirds of its territory, but there are areas that are elusive to its authority, such as the northeast of Deir Ezzor, Hasakah and Raqqa, which are under the influence of the Kurdish autonomous authority and its military wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF.
On the other hand, a large part of Idlib province has become the stronghold of Hayat Thair al Sham, formerly the Al Nusra Front, which has military, political and religious control over the area, as well as part of the city of Afrin, which is controlled by Turkish troops.
Above all, it should be borne in mind that although Daesh has had little operational capacity in provinces such as Latakia and Tartous, it does have the capacity to carry out attacks in most of the country and, as a senior SDF commander warns, the threat posed by the terrorist organisation must continue to be monitored4. The Syrian Democratic Forces have been the militias that served as the spearhead to put an end to the Daesh caliphate in important territories such as Raqqa, Hasakah or part of Deir Ezzor, being an important counter-insurgent factor that would have the support of a large part of the Kurdish civilian population.
As for Iraq, the situation is not much more promising than in Syria, but the establishment of a state security apparatus capable of ensuring a minimum of stability in state structures has given greater strength to the counterinsurgency. Moreover, it has been able to draw on the strength of the Peshmerga military apparatus, which is dependent on the Kurdish autonomous authority and has contributed its men and women to fighting the remnants of Daesh.
The SDF also has information on the terrorist organisation's movements in all the localities under its control. The Kurdish people living in the area were once informed by those who fled from the surrounding area during the times of the so-called caliphate of what Daesh was doing. With the exception of Kirkuk, Daesh barely penetrated Iraqi Kurdistan, which has now put Kurdish civilians on alert to ensure that this remains the case and that their militias have continued access to information that controls the threat.
Diyala and its Hamrin mountain range have been a frequent hiding place for jihadists and the site of vicious attacks, but the pressure of the Iraqi army and Peshmerga against the terrorists' hideouts has put them in a lot of trouble, although the operational capacity of Daesh continues in these areas, especially taking advantage of the security gap that part of the territory of Kirkuk has as it is disputed between the Iraqi regime and the Kurdish autonomous authority, which abandoned Kirkuk in October 2017 in the face of the Iraqi army's push.
During 2022 and early 2023, the terrorist organisation has caused the death of hundreds of people in Syria and Iraq, most of them belonging to the army, Kurdish militias and civilians.
Daesh does not have the war and insurgent capability of 2013, but it retains the strength to attack Syrian and Iraqi troops and various militias stationed in most of its provinces, especially in Syria's Deir Ezzor province and Iraq's Diyala and Kirkuk provinces.
Daesh is a highly resilient clandestine organisation, capable of deploying a permanent insurgency in Iraq and especially in Syria, with constant terrorist pressure in certain areas of the two countries (Kirkuk and Deir Ezzor, both oil-producing areas).
On the other hand, the terrorist organisation has a new leader after the death of the previous one in an assault carried out by local militias on a house in a neighbourhood of Deraa, which could mean a more intense insurgent action than that carried out so far. An example of this is the attack carried out at the end of December 2022 in Deir Ezzor against a bus carrying oil company workers, killing twelve of them5.
Likewise, the counterinsurgency has not stopped its activity and the operations of the Syrian army and Russian allies, the SDF, the US, the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi army, etc., are continuous.
However, there is no shortage of voices warning of the continuing danger posed by Daesh unless pressure on the terrorist organisation is stepped up. SDF senior commander Mazloum Abdi, who leads the front line against Daesh in Syrian Kurdistan, warned at the end of 2021 of the danger of Daesh rearming its leadership in the area6, especially in Deir Ezzor. Likewise, the Israeli diplomat Zvi Mazel, in an article dated 18 March, following the assault on the Hasakah prison, stated that Daesh "is not rising from the ashes, it never disappeared"7, as I argued in an article written at the beginning of March and published at the end of March8.
At the beginning of January 2023, Daesh published an infographic in the Amaq agency on the actions and ambushes carried out globally during 2022, in which Iraq and Syria were ranked second and third respectively behind Nigeria9. This information from the terrorist organisation itself must be studied with many reservations, but it is clear that the organisation continues to give global importance to Syria and Iraq, without losing sight, although this article focuses on two territories, of the dangerous territorial extension of Daesh in the Sahel.
Also during the month of January, Daesh committed more than 20 actions in northern and eastern Syria alone, killing 16 people10, to which should be added the nine murdered soldiers of an Iranian militia, kidnapped by Daesh on 17 January and found beheaded four days later in the desert of al-Masrab in Deir Ezzor11.
If we add to this month the deaths caused by the terrorist organisation in February, when nearly 80 people were killed12, many of them civilians picking truffles in desert areas or members of the counter-insurgency surprised in ambushes, it would mean that in this part of Syria we are not in any case facing a low level of insurgency.
Luis Montero Molina is a political scientist, analyst at Sec2Crime and the observatory OCATRY.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1 - Zakat is one of the five essential holy pillars of Islam. It is the financial assistance that a Muslim gives to those in need.
2 - AYMAN Abu Nuqtah.Syria tv/. 5 de diciembre del 2022.La historia completa de la muerte del líder del Daesh. (Original en árabe)
https://www.syria.tv/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%85%D9%82%D8%AA%D9%84-%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AF-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%B4-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%B9%D8%A7-%D9%88%D8%AB%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%82-%D8%AA%D9%83%D8%B4%D9%81-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%85
3 - MONTERO Luis. Sec2Crime. Enero del 2023. Daesh. Actividad Terrorista en Siria e Irak. Año 2022.
https://www.sec2crime.com/2023/03/16/memoria-s2c-actividad-yihadista-en-siria-e-irak-2022-daesh/
4 - NRT Digital Media (24/03/2022) SDF warns of lingering ISIS threaton 3rd year of group’sdefeat in Baghouz (Original en inglés) https://nrttv.com/en/detail6/2921
5 - ARABNEWS. (30 de diciembre del 2022). Mueren 12 trabajadores petroleros en ataque terrorista de Daesh en el este de Siria. (Original en inglés) https://www-arabnews-com.translate.goog/node/2224141/middle-east?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=es&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=sc
6 - CHULOV Martin, Fuente: Periódico The Guardian. Publicado por Rojava azadí Madrid. 14 de Octubre del 2021. ‘Una tregua, no una pérdida’: El Estado Islámico se está reconstruyendo en Siria, dicen las fuerzas kurdas.
https://rojavaazadimadrid.org/una-tregua-no-una-perdida-el-estado-islamico-se-esta-reconstruyendo-en-siria-dicen-las-fuerzas-kurdas/
7 - MAZEL ZVI. Gisreportsonline. (18 de marzo del 2022). Los riesgos de un regreso de ISIS. (Original en inglés) https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/isis-return/
8 - MONTERO MOLINA Luis. Revista Atalayar (22 de marzo del 2022). El Daesh o la insurgencia permanente. https://atalayar.com/blog/el-daesh-o-la-insurgencia-permanente-en-siria-e-irak-segunda-parte
9 - OTHMAN Ahmad. North Press Agency. (05 de enero del 2023). Siria Ocupa El Tercer Lugar En Número De Operaciones De ISIS En 2022. (Original en Inglés) https://npasyria.com/en/90239/
10 - OTHMAN Ahmad. North Press Agency. (21 de enero del 2023). Ataques De ISIS En 2023, Hasta Ahora. (Original en inglés) https://npasyria.com/en/91148/
11 - ABDURRAHMAN Omar. North Press Agency. (23 de enero del 2023). 9 Iranian-Backed Militants Killed In Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor. https://npasyria.com/en/91264/
12 - OBSERVATORIO SIRIO DE DERECHOS HUMANOS (OSDH). (24 de febrero del 2023). IS-IS attacks in February 2023 | 12 attacks in Syrian desert and hor*rific mass*acre left 80 fata*lities, including 24 combatants. https://www.syriahr.com/en/289664/