Islamic State Affiliates Pooling Resources, Growing Capabilities: U.S.

And despite a series of high-profile leadership losses, including the deaths or captures of at least 13 senior officials since early 2022, time seems to have worked in the terror group’s favor.

The regional office model, answering to the group’s core leadership, “has really enabled a lot of these groups to rapidly gain capability,” said Anand Arun, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency senior officer and analyst.

“They’re pooling resources. They’re sharing TTP [tactics, techniques and procedures]. They’re sharing guidance,” Arun told a forum hosted by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism on Wednesday. “We’re seeing ISIS’s local and regional attack capabilities in Africa increase.”

Enhanced Internet Ties
Others are also seeing IS affiliates, like IS West Africa Province, maximize these connections by using enhanced internet connections for what one expert described as “real-time communication.”

“We also saw conference calls, sometimes conference calls between ISIS central and African groups but also amongst African groups,” said Bulama Bukarti, a researcher and vice president at the Bridgeway Foundation, a charity that aims to prevent mass atrocities.

“They also share intelligence information, best practices,” he said, speaking at the same forum as Arun. “So, for example, if one affiliate looted a particular weapon they don’t know how to operate, they just would take a photo of it, put it in the group [chat], and then someone would send them instructions, would send them a YouTube link with instructions on how to operate it.”

Bukarti also warned that IS’s adoption of advanced technologies has extended to other areas, with IS West Africa Province conducting trials on how to arm commercial drones to be used in attacks.

U.S. officials share the concern.

“I’m very much concerned about that and kind of the trajectory,” said the DIA’s Arun, calling the possibilities “exponential.”

“I think there’s a lot of ways that they can harness what’s coming with AI [artificial intelligence] and drones and other things,” he said.

Already, the United States has been leading efforts to crack down on these networks.

Last November, the Treasury Department sanctioned a smuggling network in Somalia that may have been linked to IS’s Al-Karrar regional office.

And in January, U.S. special operations forces killed Bilal al-Sudani, a key IS financial facilitator, during a raid on a mountainous cave complex in a remote part of northern Somalia.

But some of the information turned up during that operation has given U.S. officials cause to worry about IS’s growing technological prowess.

“If Bilal al-Sudani can access the internet from a cave in the Puntland of Somalia, I think they can figure it out,” Arun said.

Jeff Seldin is VOA national security reporter.  This article  is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).