Exact details are yet to be figured out, but UN under-Secretary General of counter-terror Vladimir Voronkov says that the Covid-19 lockdowns imposed worldwide forced ISIS to adapt its strategies, and limited their ability to try to carry out attacks in many countries.
Voronkov says lockdowns have reduced the risk of terror attacks in a lot of countries, but that ISIS has instead focused on Iraq and Syria, where they already had a presence. International travel is getting harder for them during the pandemic.
It’s not just a question of where, however. With more people confined to home and working online, they say ISIS is more focused on cybercrime as a source of funding. Again, the UN says the overall impact on their finances isn’t clear.
ISIS operations seem limited anyhow, and it’s not clear that when the Covid-19 restrictions end the group is any more liable to act. Officials are keen to emphasize ISIS’s ambitions, to keep it a focus for funding and acting against, but the group is largely still defeated.
Somebody is trying to keep ISIS alive by any means — even COVID. What group? Where exactly located,funded, armed, supplied! This is rubbish. Ever since Mohammed Bin Nayaf was ousted in June 2017, KSA got out of the business. Wahhabi establishment folded their outreach to Islamist groups including ISIS — after MBS cut their funding. Resulting in Mosul falling later in the year, and Raqqa the following.
Now, they are somewhere in the desert? Sure, some isolated groups on abandoned farms will do acts of terrorism for as long as somebody PAYS salaries, supplies weapons, food, hygiene products and transport.
All that is needed is this name recognition — the brand ISIS, so it can be kept in news, as Al-Qaeda brand has lost its potency as terror brand.
So, who is paying now these stray soldiers for hire? No such groups are coordinated, or have anything in common. One would think that it is a job of intelligence to pinpoint their location. But no. We gave UN speculate in COVID implications for “ISIS” groups that may be self-isolating on abandoned farms. And whether they have masks when making trips to village grocery stores.
It is certainly NOT Iran as asserted by the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world.
Maybe ISIS ran out of face masks and there swords aren’t long enough to do beheadings AND practice social distancing.