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Following is the September installment of “ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency,” a monthly chronicle of attacks by the terrorist group ISIS in central Syria. August’s update can be read here, July’s update can be read here, the June update can be read here, May’s update can be read here, and April’s here. A full background and analysis of ISIS’s resurgence in Syria, including its methodology, can be explored here and here.

ISIS militants carried out at least 32 attacks in September, killing at least 32 pro-Assad regime fighters and 12 civilians in the Homs, Deir Ez Zor, Raqqa, Hama, and Aleppo governorates. These attacks constitute a continuation of the escalation in violence witnessed in August, when ISIS cells conducted their largest number of attacks since their insurgency began. The overall number of attacks, the number of high quality* attacks, and documented pro-government deaths in September exceeded any prior month of ISIS’ insurgency except August. Unlike in August, when Homs experienced the greatest number of attacks, September saw ISIS cells concentrate again on western Deir Ez Zor (11) and Raqqa (9), while also increasing their activity in Hama (5) and Aleppo (2), as we predicted. September was also the first time since July that high quality attacks were carried out in all five governorates.

ISIS has continued to focus on western Deir Ez Zor, with all 11 documented attacks in the province occurring either just west of the town of Mayadeen (3) or in the northwest corner of the governorate (8), stretching from Jabal Bishri to Deir Ez Zor city. Pro-regime forces were slow to conduct their much anticipated anti-ISIS operation in the latter area following the August 27 ISIS ambush that left as many as 30 pro-regime fighters of the National Defense Forces (NDF) dead. When government and local units did finally move into the desert west of Musarib, they were met with well-placed mines and additional ambushes. Meanwhile, much of the fighting in Homs occurred in the first week of the September, when regime forces pushed into Wadi Doubayat, just south of the city of Sukhnah, forcing ISIS out of an area it had long held. However, ISIS retook the area two days later. Since then, no attempt has been made by the Syrian regime to wrest back control of the area.

As in previous months, ISIS successfully assassinated several pro-regime commanders in September. The NDF, increasingly bearing the brunt of the insurgency, lost two more sector commanders. Its Eastern Sector commander was wounded during an anti-ISIS operation west of Musarib on September 19 and would die the following day, along with the two other fighters in his car when it was attacked. On September 30, ISIS fighters in the city of Ma’adan, Raqqa, managed to place an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in the car of Mohammad Shaaban, killing him. Shaaban was a veteran NDF commander responsible for defending the Deir Ez Zor airport during its four-year siege and later headed the recruitment office for western Deir Ez Zor governorate before joining the Raqqa NDF leadership a few months ago. These two men represent the 20th and 21st officers killed by ISIS in the Badia (Syrian desert) since the start of this year, and the third and fourth NDF commanders lost in just the past six weeks.

Other high-quality ISIS attacks included a September 13 ambush west of Mayadeen in which at least six pro-regime Liwa al-Quds fighters were killed and two of their vehicles were lost. On September 24, ISIS militants carried out simultaneous raids on regime checkpoints near the Zakia Junction in Aleppo and near Resafa in Raqqa. According to local sources, ISIS fighters approached the checkpoints on motorcycles, causing the soldiers to flee. ISIS then withdrew after collecting the equipment left behind. On September 16, separate ISIS cells attacked security forces in several villages in northeast Hama. This attack was followed on September 28, by a raid on a village in southeast Hama, where ISIS militants killed 12 local civilians and stole their sheep. These last two attacks mark the first major actions in eastern Hama since late July, when locals began forming self-defense militias in response to frequent ISIS raids and an absence of government security forces.

ISIS carried out two or more attacks on 11 days in September, with two days in which three attacks were conducted across the Syrian desert. September experienced three more days of multiple ISIS attacks than August, as violence picked up significantly in the second half of the month following a much quieter first half. ISIS’s continued ability to carry out such frequent same-day attacks confirms that the group employs a sophisticated logistical and strategic capability that enables cells in each province to operate independently from each other.

Anti-ISIS operations appeared to slow down this month, with the only major operation occurring in Wadi Doubayat during the first week. Local pro-regime forces have semi-regularly probed the region west of Musarib, and a multi-day operation was carried out from Khanasir, Aleppo south to east Hama, the second of its kind since July. The Syrian Army’s 17th Division continued to send new recruits to Deir Ez Zor city, although the division is reportedly refusing to deploy alongside the pro-regime NDF north of the city due to a long-standing political dispute between the division’s head, Major General Ghassan Mohammad, and the commander of the Deir Ez Zor NDF, Feras Jeham. In Raqqa, the Syrian Air Force has, according to one NDF fighter, adopted a strategy of bombing pre-selected targets whenever ground forces are hit by mines or come under fire from ISIS fighters. This attempt at deterrence has proven entirely ineffective.

Despite the assumption that ISIS would scale back its attacks following the extremely deadly month of August, Badia cells appear to have kept a near identical pace of activity throughout September. While ISIS did not carry out any attacks on the scale of August’s Musarib ambush or the killing of the Russian major general, they have effectively employed a combination of well-placed mines,IEDs, and regular ambushes to keep the pressure on regime forces. More concerning for the regime, the apparent inability to protect NDF commanders puts this crucial frontline unit at risk of severe degradation. The loss of veteran commanders combined with the already poor support the militia receives from the army leaves its fighters increasingly vulnerable to large-scale ISIS attacks.

October will likely see more commanders killed and another attempt at a large ambush, most probably in Deir Ez Zor or Raqqa where ISIS cells appear to have the most freedom of movement. Homs can be expected to heat up as well, at the very least returning to the types of attacks witnessed in August, including mines and harassment fire along the highways north of Sukhnah. East Hama and south Aleppo remain the key fronts for further geographic expansion of ISIS’s insurgency. ISIS clearly wants to make inroads in both of these important regions, though it remains unclear how successful they will be at securing and holding territory in these more urbanized areas.

Map of locatable ISIS attacks (highlighted dots) in September. To view an interactive version of this map, please click here.

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*High quality attacks are defined as attacks behind frontlines, those that result in seized positions, target regime officers, involve coordinated attacks on multiple positions, fake checkpoints, ambushes on military convoys, or attacks on checkpoints that kill at least three soldiers or lead to POWs.

Following is the August installment of “ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency,” a monthly chronicle of attacks by the terrorist group ISIS in central Syria. July’s update can be read here, the June update can be read here, May’s update can be read here, and  April’s here. A full background and analysis of ISIS’s resurgence, including its methodology, can be explored  here and here.

In August, ISIS militants carried out at least 35 attacks, killing at least 76 pro-Assad regime fighters in the Homs, Deir Ez Zor, Raqqa, Hama, and Aleppo governorates. These attacks constitute a major escalation in ISIS’s insurgency. The overall number of attacks, high quality* attacks, and reported pro-government deaths exceeded those from any month since ISIS lost control of this region in 2017. Homs saw the greatest number of documented attacks (12), with Deir Ez Zor (10) and Raqqa (9) following closely.  The more than two-fold increase in attacks compared with previous months in Raqqa is overshadowed only by the more than three-fold increase in attacks in Deir Ez Zor.

Importantly, attacks in Deir Ez Zor were not evenly spread throughout the governorate, but focused primarily in the western urban belt stretching from Deir Ez Zor city along the Euphrates to Ma’adan, and secondarily in the desert west of Mayadeen. This first geographic concentration of attacks marks a new expansion of ISIS activity, likely from cells originating in Jabal Bishri to the west and Raqqa to the north. These attacks culminated in an August 27 ambush that left as many as 30 pro-regime National Defense Fighters (NDF) dead, along with the NDF sector commander for western Deir Ez Zor. Most of the men killed, including the commander, hailed from the local Busaraya tribe. The massacre triggered a massive mobilization of tribal members from the pro-regime Liwa al-Quds, Qaterji Forces, and NDF deploying to the region to conduct their own anti-ISIS operations in lieu of what one tribal fighter told this author was an abandonment by the Syrian army. The operation began on August 30, with at least two ISIS fighters killed in the desert west of the town of Musarib, the site of the August 27 ambush. The operation continues as of the publishing of this post.

A Russian major general and two more regime commanders were also killed this month. On August 18, ISIS militants conducted a double-improvised explosive device (IED) attack in the Tayem Oil Field, just outside of Deir Ez Zor city, first killing five NDF fighters and then killing the NDF Mayadeen Sector commander alongside Russian Major General Vyacheslav Gladkikh. The commander of a local Liwa al-Quds auxiliary force was killed on August 11 in a complex attack near Tabni, Deir Ez Zor, alongside three other fighters attempting to reinforce a 4th Division unit that had been hit by an IED nearby. And in the early morning of August 12, ISIS ambushed a produce truck and its Military Security escort in Deir Ez Zor, killing the truck driver and a platoon commander.

Other high quality ISIS attacks included a raid that struck the T4 Pumping Station near Tiyas, Homs, from the north and west—a direction that indicates ISIS cells still have considerable freedom of movement close to major regime strategic points. On August 14, ISIS conducted a rare day-time anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) attack west of Mayadeen, destroying a regime tank. The next day, militants overran a Liwa al-Quds base in the same area, killing at least five regime fighters. Also on August 15, an ISIS cell clashed with a regime patrol east of Sukhnah, killing at least 12 soldiers before reportedly withdrawing to the southeast. Finally, two different late August ISIS IED attacks in Homs targeted Syrian Army buses. At least four soldiers were killed and 24 were wounded.

 August had eight days in which ISIS carried out two or more attacks, and three days in which three attacks were conducted across the Syrian desert (known as the Badia). The rate of documented attacks in August is unmatched since 2018. ISIS’s ability to carry out such frequent same-day attacks implies that the group has developed a robust logistical and strategic capability.

The Syrian regime continued to send fighters to the Badia this month, with at least two documented batches of new recruits arriving in Deir Ez Zor city to join the 17th Division and the fifth deployment this year of Damascus NDF fighters to the Euphrates area. Following the August 15 attacks near Mayadeen, the Deir Ez Zor NDF announced it was creating a string of new checkpoints and defensive positions along the Mayadeen-Deir Ez Zor highway. Conversely, Russia’s lackluster response to the killing of a major general speaks volumes about its inability and lack of interest  in responding to the ISIS threat. The Russian military claimed to have killed 327 ISIS fighters in the week following Gladkikh’s death, a laughably outlandish number. In reality, Russia’s response involved several isolated airstrikes and, according to a local tribal fighter, Russia has yet to provide any military assistance to the pro-regime forces fighting ISIS in west Deir Ez Zor.

ISIS attacks in the Badia have been on the rise throughout 2020, as the group continues to expand in strength and operational capacity. While it is unlikely that September will see the same growth or severity of  attacks as in August, this month’s trends will likely continue—that is, Raqqa, west Deir Ez Zor, and west Mayadeen will continue to be the hotspots for the near future. The tribal response triggered by the August 27 massacre will most likely push ISIS cells back onto Jabal Bishri where they will hunker down and wait out the operation. In Homs, ISIS will continue its strategy of exerting pressure around the city of Sukhnah, no doubt seeking some opportunity to raid the city’s warehouses, while sending out groups to attack regime positions further west, similar to the T4 attack. East Hama and Southeast Aleppo both experienced a decrease in ISIS attacks this month, partially due to the formation of local defense militias. ISIS will wants to renew its activity in these areas and may take the opportunity to do so while pro-regime forces are so heavily focused on western Deir Ez Zor.

Map of locatable ISIS attacks (highlighted dots) in August. To view an interactive version of this map, please click here.

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*High quality attacks are defined as attacks behind frontlines, those that result in seized positions, target regime officers, involve coordinated attacks on multiple positions, fake checkpoints, ambushes on military convoys, or attacks on checkpoints that kill at least three soldiers or lead to POWs.

Following is the July installment of “ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency,” a monthly update on the ongoing attacks by the terrorist group ISIS in central Syria. The June update can be read here, the May update can be read here, the April update here,  and a full background and analysis of ISIS’s resurgence, including methodology, can be read here.

In July, ISIS militants carried out at least 23 attacks, killing at least 29 pro-regime fighters in the Homs, Deir Ez Zor, Raqqa, Hama, and Aleppo governorates. The number of attacks and fatalities were both higher compared to June and are consistent with the trend established earlier in the year. July marked the third month in a row that ISIS carried out at least one high quality* attack in all four provinces in which it is active.

More significantly, July marked the first month of sustained ISIS activity in regime-held Aleppo province since the terrorist group was expelled in 2017. ISIS killed at least eight regime fighters in four attacks, including two high quality attacks. These attacks were conducted in two distinct regions: in the countryside around the town of Khanasir and around the Durayhim Gas Field, in the far southeast corner of Aleppo province near the Raqqa governorate. These attacks culminated in the killing of seven regime soldiers on July 28 in a village west of Khanasir, less than 15 miles from the Idlib governorate.

Among ISIS’s seven high quality attacks this month were targeted killings of the Syrian Army 4th Division’s commander of the Mayadeen Sector in Deir Ez Zor and of a Border Guard colonel in southeast Raqqa. This is the second 4th Division sector commander ISIS has assassinated in as many months. Reported attacks in Deir Ez Zor continue to be few and far between, although a July 9 ambush of a Border Guard position left at least three regime soldiers dead. Instead, ISIS activity appeared heavily concentrated around the Sukhnah area of east Homs, where ISIS militants regularly attacked regime forces with mines, IEDs, and heavy machine guns. On July 28, approximately 40 ISIS militants attempted to raid an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warehouse on the southwest edge of the city, engaging in a five-hour battle with local security forces before ultimately retreating.

July also witnessed an increase in reported anti-ISIS operations by the Syrian regime, largely due to new combing operations in southern Aleppo. In the Jabal Amr region of Homs, regime forces captured three men and killed three others it accused of being ISIS members. Other operations occurred in east Hama, Raqqa, and southwest Deir Ez Zor.

Despite a slight drop in attacks in June, ISIS activity in the Badia continues its steady increase. More concerning, ISIS cells in southern Aleppo appear to have become active this month, marking a sharp geographic expansion of the insurgency. There has also been an increase in ISIS propaganda focused on central Syria, both in terms of attack claims and pictures of attacks. All of these trends have continued in the first half of August, another indication that the Syrian regime has wholly failed to address this insurgency.

Map of locatable ISIS attacks (highlighted dots) in July. To view an interactive version of this map, please click here.

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*High quality attacks are defined as attacks behind frontlines, those that result in seized positions, target regime officers, involve coordinated attacks on multiple positions, fake checkpoints, ambushes on military convoys, or attacks on checkpoints that kill at least three soldiers or lead to POWs.

When ISIS took over Iraq’s second city of Mosul, Western intelligence agencies were concerned that the terrorist group could potentially get its hands on radioactive sources located on a college campus, which would be sufficient to build a “dirty bomb.” However, as it turned out after the liberation of Mosul from ISIS, the terrorists never touched the cobalt-60 machines.

From the early 1990s onwards, many terrorism experts were expressing the idea that there had been a transformational shift in the way that terrorism was being conducted.  After the end of the Cold War, it was perceived that terrorist organizations were no longer interested in their traditional political objectives of national liberation or Marxist-Leninist ideologies, but were instead primarily motivated by religious fanaticism or identitarian concerns. Rather than utilizing terror and destruction to achieve a political goal, the act of inflicting maximum violence had become the objective itself. “New terrorists” no longer had to illicit sympathy or appeal to a broad constituency but instead only sought to punish and destroy their perceived enemies.

The terrorism analyst Brian Jenkins later summarized this trend when he stated that while previously “terrorists wanted a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead,” they now wanted “a lot of people watching and a lot of people dead.”  At the same time there was the view that the collapse of the Soviet Union, globalization and improvements in telecommunications had made CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) material and expertise more readily available than ever before. The combination of these two factors meant that mass casualty attacks, particularly those involving unconventional weapons, were perceived as both inevitable and imminent. The transnational nature of some “new terrorist” organizations combined with their independence from the restraints imposed by state sponsorship made them apparently well suited to exploit this new environment. This change in nature was then seemingly proven by the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack by Aum Shinrikyo and the events of 9/11.

While the concept of “new terrorism” is still being debated, there appears to have been an increasing trend among contemporary terrorist groups to explore CBRN attack options. The clearest reason that certain terrorist organizations may be drawn to CBRN materials is their potential destructive capability: an improvised nuclear device, if detonated successfully in a metropolitan area, would likely cause unprecedented numbers of casualties. The asymmetric potential for a small terrorist cell operating without restraint to inflict so much destruction gives CBRN devices obvious appeal. Furthermore, the apocalyptic imagery associated with CBRN materials may appeal to death cult-like groups. For instance, Aum Shinrikyo predicted the end of the world and thus investigated a range of chemical, biological and nuclear attack options to bring that to pass.

The unnerving nature of CBRN weapons may also provide a means by which to cause “extra terror”. Evidence to this end is provided by chlorine bombings carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2007, and many chemical attacks years later by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This has been interpreted as a further attempt, in conjunction with conventional terrorism, to dissuade the local population from cooperating with the Iraqi government. The novelty and taboo surrounding CBRN weapons may additionally serve as a means by which to conduct spectacular attacks, especially when conventional mass-casualty terrorism has become almost “the norm”. Al-Qaeda and ISIS in particular seem to have been interested in acquiring a sophisticated CBRN device to demonstrate their technical capability.

While there have been a number of dire predictions that suggest mass-casualty CBRN terrorism is highly likely and probably imminent, these assessments often fail to take account of the significant barriers that would be encountered by a terrorist organization. Even before an attack can be conducted, the task of obtaining or creating a sophisticated CBRN weapon poses an immense challenge. The logistical, financial and technical hurdles involved mean that advanced CBRN capabilities will only be within reach of the most organized and possibly state-supported terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah. Aum Shinrikyo were unable to buy a significant CBRN capability on the black market, even with a practically unlimited budget. Instead, they were forced to painstakingly develop a chemical weapons capability with a team of their own scientists over a period of years.

When the difficulty of terrorists developing a major CBRN weapon is combined with the limited results in scale demonstrated by their use thus far, it becomes apparent why so relatively few groups attempt such a project. While CBRN weapons theoretically have immense destructive capability, a terrorist-made CBRN weapon would most likely be created in a clandestine environment, under time and expertise constraints and with whatever material was readily available. Testing may prove impossible—among other reasons for fear of detection—and there may be a tactical imperative for the weapon’s immediate use. It is therefore rather unsurprising that terrorists have mostly been limited to a basic CBRN capability. For example, Aum Shinrikyo’s diluted chemical agent and inefficient dispersal technique meant that their gas attack killed comparatively few, particularly when compared to the tens of millions of dollars that was spent on their unconventional weapons program.

In comparison, conventional terrorist attacks such as those in Paris and Mumbai prove that CBRN materials are not necessary to cause mass casualties. Therefore, in light of the greater operational challenges involved in using CBRN materials, it is logical in a cost-benefit sense why conventional attacks are more prevalent, even amongst groups seeking to cause high numbers of casualties. Finally, it is worth noting that even a group with seemingly maximalist or apocalyptic goals may decline to use CBRN materials. Some have argued that even the most extreme terrorist organizations could be considered rational to the extent that they would collectively seek to continue their group’s existence. The potential retaliation to a major CBRN terrorist attack may therefore be too great for it to be a valid strategy.