IS affiliates could launch new wave of terror on the west

Islamic State (IS) remains defeated in its core strongholds of the Middle East but has made significant progress in Africa and parts of south Asia, winning territory and resources that could serve as a launchpad for a new campaign of extremist violence, analysts and officials believe.

- Jason Burke

European governments have moved to their highest levels of alert for years after the attack on a concert hall in Moscow last month by militants from IS that killed at least 140 people.

Within 48 hours, France increased its surveillance and risk warning to the highest level and Italy too ordered enhanced measures. In Germany, officials described an "acute risk".

The attack in Moscow on 22 March, the most lethal Islamist extremist operation in Europe since 2004's Madrid train bombings, was claimed by IS. Officials believe the group has been planning new operations against European targets for several years.

Between 2015 and 2019, when IS ran a so-called caliphate across a swathe of land it controlled across eastern Syria and western Iraq, the group's central leadership had little need of its newly established affiliates to launch operations in Europe as it had all resources to hand with foreign recruits, money and training camps.

This led to a series of lethal attacks in France and Belgium.

However, years of counter-terrorism operations by local security forces, the US and others, have degraded IS in its former strongholds and the group is fragmented and weak.

Western security officials with close knowledge of IS in Iraq and Syria said the group had abandoned its project of rebuilding the so-called caliphate but that successful strikes at international targets were seen as "good for morale and the IS brand, and compensate for failure closer to home".

Recent US-led counter-terrorist operations have killed a number of IS leaders in Syria who were thought to have been planning attacks in Europe.