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

In June, ISIS militants carried out at least 14 attacks killing at least 26 pro-regime fighters in the Homs, Deir Ez Zor, Raqqa, and Hama governorates. An additional attack left three local regime soldiers dead, but it is unclear if this attack was carried out by smugglers or ISIS militants and has therefore been excluded from this month’s data. While both the number of reported deaths and number of attacks are lower than those documented in April and May, June saw the continued geographic expansion of ISIS attacks. This was also the second month in a row in which ISIS carried out at least one high quality* attack in all four provinces in which it is active.

ISIS militants carried out a minimum of four attacks against Syrian regime forces in Hama, twice as many as in either April or May, leaving a total of at least six dead and five wounded. The first of these represents one of ISIS’s most complex attacks to date. On June 10, ISIS militants pushed deep behind regime frontlines and seized two small villages in eastern Hama, killing at least three local regime fighters in the process. Pro-regime militias retook the villages with the support of Russian jets the following day.

In the first week of June, ISIS militants captured and executed three soldiers, including a major, just 45 miles east of Homs city, and ambushed a militia commander while he was on leave north of Sukhnah. On June 10, five ISIS fighters on motorcycles ambushed and killed three regime militiamen in the mountains northwest of Sukhnah. On June 13, militants targeted the car of a Liwa al-Quds commander in Deir Ez Zor with an IED, wounding him and killing a second man.

In the second half of June, ISIS militants conducted two sophisticated attacks on regime positions. The first, on June 18, targeted a checkpoint belonging to the Syrian Army’s 4th Division in central Raqqa, just south of the regime’s border with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. The attack left six dead, including the 4th Division’s commander of the sector, and five wounded. On June 21, ISIS attacked a regime base 10 miles west of Mayadeen in Deir Ez Zor. Few details of the attack are known, but at least two regime soldiers were killed and several were captured.

Regime forces continued their anti-ISIS operations throughout June, although to a lesser degree than in the previous two months. Liwa al-Quds fighters, having completed their 20-day operation in Raqqa and East Hama on June 4, conducted a new operation along the Syria-Iraq border that ended on June 21. The Russian-backed National Defense Forces center in Damascus also sent its third and fourth batches of fighters to Deir Ez Zor on June 10 and June 30.

Although the number of ISIS attacks have declined slightly from the previous two months, June witnessed a clear uptick in the lethality of attacks that were carried out. The number of reported attacks in Deir Ez Zor continues to decrease while ISIS cells appear to have fully entrenched themselves on the mountains overlooking eastern Hama and central Homs. ISIS will likely continue to operate at June’s more irregular pace as it focuses its efforts on securing basic goods for its fighters. As the Syrian economy collapses, trade to central Syria has dried up, depriving ISIS militants—and locals—of their key source of food and basic goods. If ISIS cells continue to struggle to acquire the supplies they need from local channels, it is likely that they will carry out more daring raids further west into the Hama and Homs governorates.

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

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*High quality attacks are defined as attacks behind regime frontlines, 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.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made the dangers of biological pathogens undeniable to the general public. However, long before this global outbreak, bioterrorism was recognized as a credible threat. Current global events have highlighted that biological warfare is not a myth but a harsh reality. Successive outbreaks caused by newly emerging diseases, transferred from animals to humans through zoonotic spillover, such as Ebola, SARS, and now COVID-19, as well as recent advances in biotechnology giving rise to dual-use biological agents have highlighted the need for greater capacity in public health preparedness, enhanced rigor of bioengineering research guidelines and potential stricter regulations.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), bioterrorism is the planned and deliberate release of a pathogenic strain of a microorganism such as a virus, bacteria, or biological toxins, that can sicken or kill people, livestock, or crops. An attack against humans could have the aim of illness, death, fear, societal disruption, and economic damage. Targeting livestock and crops has the potential to destabilize food supply chains, resulting in far reaching consequences on human health and economic output of the agricultural sector. The CDC characterizes biothreat agents according to the severity of impact they would have if released during a bioterror attack. For the purpose of understanding the different kinds of mechanisms that can be implemented as control measures, it is also useful to distinguish biological agents based on their means of transmission. Transmissible agents are those which can spread between humans (e.g. Ebola, SARS, smallpox) or between animals (e.g. foot and mouth disease). A subcategory of this classification includes zoonotic diseases, which are infectious agents that have the ability to “spill over” from animals into humans. Non-transmissible agents can cause severe infections but cannot be spread between infected and susceptible individuals.

Bioterrorism is not new. The 2001 Anthrax attacks in the U.S., in which letters laced with anthrax were mailed to U.S. government officials, are no doubt the most famous example of past bioterror attacks. Assaults of this nature, however, date back to the 1300s when Europeans threw plague-infected cadavers over city walls to infect those within. The threat to food supply is no longer an abstract concept either: in the months following the 9/11 attacks, American troops found hundreds of pages of U.S. agricultural documents in al-Qaeda camps. Furthermore, a substantial part of the terrorists’ training manual was reportedly devoted to agricultural terrorism such as the destruction of crops and livestock through pathogens.

While these outbreaks would most definitely have far reaching impacts, those that scientists fear most may come from within our own laboratories. The concern of many scientists, including Professor Julia Higgins of the Royal Society in the U.K., is that the findings of life science research could be used to engineer deadly viruses. Initially it seemed as though cutting-edge work such as targeted genetic modifications of microorganisms were out of reach of those who wanted to misuse these technologies. However, as these technologies have progressed, they have become far cheaper and more accessible. Incredibly rapid and profound changes in genetic modifications in bio-molecular engineering and enhanced bio-production technology may make it easier than ever for terrorists to overcome the barriers that prevented the acquisition of biological weapons in the past. Reflecting the seriousness of this threat, in 2005 the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAD) received funding of $73 million to study the immune response to infectious agents that could be used as potential bioterror agents.

Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the field, bioterrorism countermeasures require the skills of experts with vastly different backgrounds and knowledge bases. A multilevel defensive strategy to mitigate the threat of a bioterror attack should be undertaken. This should include legal deterrence, prevention and surveillance, medical management, and dissemination of information to the public.

While this is still an emerging field of research and policy development, there are many difficult questions that should be addressed when countering the risk of dual-use biological research. These include: “Should there be regulations on who can access an education in bioengineering or what research the scientific community can publish or even conduct?” There is no easy or clear cut  answer to many of these issues, but it is obvious that effective bioterrorism countermeasures must include expertise from a wide range of fields, including medical, security, military, and regulatory countermeasures.

The expansion of large corporate biotech companies have made genome editing tools available, even to those without any scientific knowledge or laboratory training. Moving forward, regulations on their products will need to be implemented. Companies as well as research institutions must be expected to carry part of the burden of ensuring that these technologies do not fall into the hands of future bioterrorists. Furthermore, creating awareness among the public and doctors, stock-piling drugs and vaccines, and establishing protocols for preparedness are all key elements of countermeasures but the magnitude of research that is yet to be done in this field should not be cause for panic but rather cause for serious, deliberate and long-term international cooperation.

This is by no means a comprehensive summary of the field of bioterrorism, nor was it intended to be. Rather I hope readers have gained an overview of a threat that may have seemed abstract to many. Here I have provided an outline of the main issues surrounding bioterrorism and in the following weeks I will add more entries on specific topics that I have touched on. These will include a more in-depth analysis of the countermeasures that have already been implemented and how these could be further developed, what likely agents of bioterrorism are, what modes of dissemination may be most threatening, and the emerging dangers of dual-use research.

The modern far right has set its sights on America’s young people by targeting college campuses for recruitment and intimidation.

White nationalist groups such as the American Identity Movement (AIM) and more nebulous far-right movements continue to seek to appeal to students, in hopes of increasing their pool of potential recruits while chasing legitimacy. These groups promote their views as legitimate political philosophies. Other groups, such as neo-Nazis seeking the breakdown of state institutions, view colleges and universities as full of ideological opponents and racial and ethnic enemies.

AIM and similar groups view the university campus as a prime environment in which to promote their propaganda as intellectual discourse while building social networks. AIM is a rebranded version of Identity Evropa, a white nationalist group that sought to import and modify European identitarianism (the belief in a core European, i.e., white, identity, which adherents view as threatened by foreign elements such as immigration) for an American audience. Identity Evropa promoted the “preservation” of Western (i.e., white) culture and focused its early recruitment efforts on university campuses through the creation of student groups. In 2017, Identity Evropa propaganda appeared on more than 30 college campuses. That December, the group’s new leader, Patrick Casey, publicly sought to distance Identity Evropa from the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where an anti-fascist activist was murdered in a far-right vehicular ramming. Casey called for more far-right activism on college campuses, ranging from banner drops and demonstrations to social events. Casey later led Identity Evropa’s rebranding as AIM in 2019, portraying the ideology of defending the pure European identity as a patriotic American ideal.

In February 2020, AIM members continued to spread the group’s propaganda on campuses, including Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, Ohio University Southern Campus in Ironton, Ohio, and Western Dakota Tech in Rapid City, South Dakota. In all three locations, propaganda displayed by the group sought to appeal to white students and pushed a nationalist anti-immigration message. One such poster featured the slogan “Immigration Kills” imposed over a bottle of Corona beer relabeled Corona Virus, attempting to link immigration to the spread of COVID-19. Other posters featured patriotic iconography such as a bald eagle and Uncle Sam while promoting “NATIONALISM NOT GLOBALISM” and calling to end immigration.

Propagandists and members of far-right nationalist movements, such as Nicholas Fuentes, have sought to confront conservatives to gain publicity and spread extremist messages. Fuentes has been linked to white nationalism and anti-Semitism and marched in the 2017 Unite the Right rally. In November 2019, he heckled an event featuring Donald Trump Jr. at the University of California, Los Angeles to the point of it being shut down. In comments to the Washington Post, Fuentes claimed that while he supported President Donald Trump, he opposed the conservative group that hosted the event as insufficiently conservative.

Radical neo-Nazi groups that aspire to commit acts of violence, such as the Feuerkrieg Division (FKD) and The Base (both now defunct) have taken a different approach to campuses. In November 2019, FKD fliers promoting white supremacist violence that read “It’s Okay To Genocide Subhumans” were found on the campus of the University of North Florida. Messages on FKD’s Telegram channel indicated that the group was pleased their posters had been seen and that the university administration issued a response. A November 2019 video by The Base showed members posting propaganda on the campus of Boston University in an attempt to intimidate attendees of an anarchist book fair scheduled to be held there. The book fair was, in the end, moved off campus. In both cases, neo-Nazis sought to intimidate and disrupt those viewed as ideological opponents. Unlike AIM, FKD and The Base viewed violent disruption as their primary tool to expedite a race war that would exterminate so-called inferior races.

Patriot Front, the most prolific white supremacist group in terms of public propaganda efforts, routinely targets colleges and universities. Patriot Front is a white nationalist group that favors displays of perceived strength, such as marches and demonstrations. Patriot Front’s propaganda frequently features anti-immigration themes and white supremacist slogans. The Anti-Defamation League reported that in 2019, Patriot Front was responsible for 59 percent of white supremacist propaganda incidents on college and university campuses in the U.S., amounting to around 372 events. According to Patriot Front’s online propaganda channels, from January 1 to June 15, 2020, Patriot Front spread propaganda in the form of fliers, stickers, and posters at 78 different colleges and universities across the U.S. It is seemingly unlikely that Patriot Front members attend many of the targeted institutions, but nonetheless they seek to spread their messaging and intimidate students and faculty. In November 2019, a Patriot Front -affiliated Telegram account mocked students for their concern regarding white nationalist fliers.

Colleges and universities will continue to be attractive targets for the far right, whether they seek to find members, intimidate, or provoke responses from their opponents. Hate speech that specifically targets protected groups can be limited, but groups like AIM employ specific language promoting white identity that frequently avoids overtly calling other cultures inferior. While neo-Nazi groups such as The Base and FKD blatantly promoted hate speech and violence, white nationalists such as AIM and Fuentes instead attempt to frame their bigotry within certain campus norms as opposition to values such as multiculturalism and immigration. The former is predicated on tearing down others, while the latter is based on a strategy of promoting the uniqueness of—and dangers to—one’s own racial identity in packaging meant to be more palatable to the public. This allows them to shield their campus activities as exercises in free speech and makes it difficult for public universities to clamp down on their displays of bigotry. Groups such as Patriot Front combine elements of the two, seeking to intimidate and threaten in some circumstances, while claiming legitimacy in others.

It is crucial that educators, staff, and especially students are able to recognize far-right groups on campus in an effort to make institutions of higher learning more inhospitable to organizations that seek to divide and destroy.

Following is the May installment of “ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency,” a monthly update on the ongoing attacks by the terrorist group ISIS in central Syria. The April update, which detailed ISIS’s killing of at least 34 Syrian regime loyalists, can be read here, and a full background and analysis of ISIS’s resurgence can be read here.

Following a lull in the second half of April, ISIS attacks increased in both quantity and geographic diversity during May. This boost in activity coincided with increasingly persistent and widespread anti-ISIS operations conducted by the Syrian regime and its allied militias. Both the ISIS attacks and counter-insurgency operations spread across four governorates: Hama and Raqqa in the north, and Homs and Deir Ez Zor in the south.

ISIS killed at least 27 Syrian regime-affiliated fighters in 18 confirmed attacks occurring on at least 17 days in May. While May had the greatest number of attacks as well as days with reported attacks in 2020, it ranks as only the third deadliest month (behind April and January, respectively). ISIS did not carry out major ambushes or large, complex operations, likely due to the intensity of the Syrian regime’s anti-ISIS operations. Still, the terrorist group effectively used mines and IEDs to regularly harass patrolling security forces. Furthermore, ISIS was able, as it did in April, to successfully create a fake checkpoint on the Palmyra-Deir Ez Zor highway, resulting in the death of at least four soldiers and one civilian. The creation of fake checkpoints—in which ISIS militants use stolen regime uniforms and flags to prey on passing cars—demonstrates a high degree of operational freedom of the groups various cells.

May also marked the first month of sustained ISIS activity in east Hama and Raqqa. ISIS attacks and mines killed more than seven pro-regime fighters in six separate attacks. Among those killed was a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whose vehicle was struck by an IED as it drove near Ithriya, Hama. These attacks coincided with two new anti-ISIS operations by pro-regime forces in the governorates.

On May 11, the pro-regime Liwa al-Quds militia launched an operation in Raqqa with the backing of the Syrian Air Force. This is the first known counter-insurgency operation in central Syria to be accompanied by sustained aerial support. This development likely occurred due to the opening of the Tabqa-Raqqa crossing, connecting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)-held and regime-held parts of Raqqa governorate. The crossing opened on the same day the Liwa al-Quds operation began. Liwa al-Quds continues its operation in the Raqqa and east Hama deserts as of the end of May. It recovered some buried mines and IEDs and destroyed several ISIS vehicles. However, it is unclear whether any ISIS fighters were killed.

On May 26, fighters from the National Defense Forces (NDF) in the Christian towns of Suqaylabiyah and Mahardeh began patrolling the east Hama countryside, their second such deployment in as many months. These two towns have a very close relationship with the Russian military, with the militias’ commander having met with the highest-ranking Russian officer in Syria multiple times in April and May. Pictures of NDF fighters during their most recent operations show them using brand new vehicles and outfitted with new Russian equipment. However, this operation, much like the previous one, was mostly carried out for publicity, with the fighters deployed for only five days and engaging no ISIS targets.

In addition to the above-mentioned patrols and others taking place in Homs and Deir Ez Zor, a group of 930 Damascus NDF fighters were deployed to central Syria on May 19. An earlier batch of Damascus NDF fighters were deployed to the same area on February 4.

May appears to have set the stage for an even more violent June. While regime anti-ISIS patrols will likely continue at the same pace or increase in frequency, they have produced little in terms of meaningfully degrading ISIS capabilities. Meanwhile, Syria continues to devote more resources to the ongoing insurgency by ex-rebels in Syria’s southern Dara’a province while its core offensive units remain near Idlib in the northwest, likely awaiting orders to resume the regime’s offensive on the rebel stronghold.

Map of locatable ISIS attacks (highlighted dots) and reported anti-ISIS operations (highlighted cars, color-coded by the date the operation began) in May. To view an interactive version of this map, please click here.