The Islamic State terror group has killed nearly 4,100 civilians and combatants in Syria since the 2019 demise of its radical cross-border caliphate in Syria and Iraq, according to a new report.
The report by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), says Islamic State fugitives have carried out 2,500 operations in areas controlled by the Syrian government and an autonomous zone held by the US-backed Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), since the caliphate collapsed.
The report, issued on the 10th anniversary of the June 2014 proclamation of the Islamic State caliphate – which stretched from Raqqa in central Syria to Mosul In Iraq – says ongoing operations demonstrate the movement’s territorial defeat in 2019 was only “symbolic”.
SOHR documented 914 attacks since then, killing 2,744, including 215 civilians, in the Syrian government-held eastern desert, an area of 4,000sq km , where Islamic State, also known as Isis, is countered by the Syrian army and allied militias.
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In the northeastern 25 per cent of Syria held by Kurdish SDF and US forces, SOHR reported Isis cells carried out 1,680 operations, killing 1,341 fatalities, among whom 412 were civilians.
At the height of its power in 2014 Islamic State ruled an area half the size of the UK, drew tens of thousands of volunteers from across the world, carried out atrocities against soldiers and civilians, and destroyed ancient and medieval monuments and scores of religious sites. It massacred, raped and enslaved thousands of women from Iraq’s non-Muslim minority Yazidi community, which has not recovered from the outrage.
Syria is not alone in facing the Islamic State menace. Although the movement has seen four of its leaders eliminated, its sleeper cells continue to conduct lethal attacks in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan Africa and Russia. For example, in March this year, a massive attack by the group on a Moscow concert hall killed 140 and injured 300.
Islamic State “remains a threat to international security”, US taskforce commander JB Vowell told the Associated Press. “We maintain our intensity and resolve to combat and destroy any remnants of groups that share [its] ideology,” he said.
During 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi formed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, and mounted a military campaign in Syria that was gripped by civil and proxy conflicts. After crossing into Iraq and capturing Mosul, Baghdadi appeared in the city’s grand mosque. Proclaiming himself caliph and calling Muslims to flock to and fight for the entity he called the Islamic state.
Only then did the US decide to form an 80-member coalition to do battle with this violent expansionist entity, which was rejected by the global Muslim community, the Umma. In October 2019, Baghdadi took his own life during a US commando raid in northern Syria’s Idlib province dominated by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, another al-Qaeda offshoot.
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