ISIS resurgence 2022

It’s a wake-up call for regional players, for national players, that ISIS is not over, that the fight is not over.

Middle East and North Africa director Kawa Hassan, Stimson Center (a Washington research institute) on recent moves by ISIS.

• U.S. soldiers (100-200, according to estimates) are engaged in fighting with Kurdish partners against ISIS in Syria, according to The Wall Street Journal.
• Fighting has taken place at a prison holding ISIS fighters along with young men (some boys reportedly as young as 12) who apparently have ISIS connections. ISIS is reported to have taken over the prison in an attempt to free these detainees.
• The New York Times reports that “fighting between a Kurdish-led militia backed by the United States and the militants spread from the embattled Sinaa prison in northeastern Syria to surrounding neighborhoods, swelling into the biggest confrontation between the American military and its Syrian allies and ISIS in three years.”

Why It Matters: ISIS attacks appear to have happened in tandem in Iraq and Syria, intensifying in recent weeks and showing the resilience of the terrorist group.

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