Caroline Rose and Colin P. Clarke
Nine months after the longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled by a rebel offensive, Syria faces a litany of new challenges. The country, which is now being led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is contending with recurring violent sectarian clashes, successive Israeli strikes into Syrian territory, and internal disputes within the new government. Adding to the tumult is a resurgence of one of Syria’s most enduring challenges: the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Since the Assad regime was toppled in 2024, ISIS has waged a terror campaign throughout Syria, targeting the new Syrian government, as well as Christian, Shiite, and Kurdish minorities. At its apogee, in 2014, ISIS held roughly a third of the country. Although the group no longer controls any territory in Syria, and its numbers have dwindled from roughly 100,000 fighters to 2,500 fighters today, the group is taking advantage of Syria’s post-Assad chaos to rebuild and reconstitute, presenting fresh obstacles to the country’s long-sought stability.
The group’s targeting capabilities are proving more frequent, precise, and sophisticated than ever, targeting sites well beyond ISIS’s traditional spheres of operation. In June, for example, a suicide bomber linked to ISIS attacked a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, killing 25 and injuring 63. Two months later, the group launched more than two dozen attacks across northeastern Syria, relying on a combination of guerrilla tactics, including small arms fire, ambushes, assassinations, and improvised explosive devices targeting military checkpoints and government vehicles. Last year, ISIS took responsibility for 294 attacks in Syria, up from 121 in 2023; estimates by the United Nations and human rights groups are even higher.
Such attacks pose a blatant challenge to the new administration’s attempts to stabilize the country. Syria’s already fragile security situation is characterized by frequent clashes between Sunni, Alawite, and Druze communities. As the frequency of terrorist attacks increases, the new Syrian government risks squandering its political legitimacy by failing to protect the country’s minorities. The Syrian population, meanwhile, faces a real possibility of a large-scale terrorist resurgence.
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