"In Syria, the terror group 'has generally increased or maintained a higher tempo of attacks' since an initial jump in activity last August, according to an assessment earlier this month by the Counter Extremism Project, a New York and Berlin-based non-profit.

'There are increasingly many similarities between attacks over the past months and the period of initial ISIS expansion in late 2019 and early 2020,' the CEP report added, though it cautioned the terror group appears to be increasingly focused on attacking civilians as opposed to security forces."

CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters writes: "While recent massacres of civilians in central Syria have refocused some international attention on the desert region, known as the Badia, the renewed widespread battles between militants and regime security forces that have occurred in parallel to these attacks have gone unnoticed. The most significant of these was the recent battle for the village of al-Kawm between ISIS cells and Syrian military units led by the Russian private military company Wagner Group. The fighting has, as of the time of this writing, ended in a stalemate, with ISIS militants retaining control of the mountains overlooking the village."

CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters interviewed: "The important thing here, I think, is that it's not necessarily about the truffles. It's that civilians in this area have been targeted by ISIS for many years, both during and outside of truffle hunting season. They're kind of trapped in between this battle taking place since 2018 between ISIS fighters and the Syrian regime, ever since the Syrian regime retook territorial control in central Syria. The truffle hunting brings civilians deep into the remote areas of central Syria, where the risk of them stumbling upon an ISIS camp or a convoy of ISIS fighters is really high. So when they come out looking for truffles, ISIS goes and murders them to basically stop them from potentially finding out where ISIS members are and informing the regime." 

CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters writes: "But rebuilding all that has been destroyed is another matter. The scale of the destruction and its random nature have left residents comparing the quake to a months-long regime offensive occurring in a single night. Aftershocks and the third, smaller earthquake on Feb. 20 have left residents wracked with fear and paranoia that another major quake is imminent. It is a brutal nightmare three years into a ceasefire that had begun to breathe new life into the region. Idlib is not helpless, its residents have demonstrated their resiliency for over a decade of war and siege, but they cannot rebuild from the layers of crises that have built up over 12 years on their own."

CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters writes: "In the center of Harem, Idlib, hundreds of Syrian families huddle around stoves and in tents as they look on at the row of collapsed apartments they used to call home. “This disaster hasn’t happened to Syria in a thousand years,” says Abu Ahmed, the director of the new camp. “The international community must witness what is happening to us and help.” Yet despite the scores of international aid flights that have landed in Damascus, and Thursday’s visit to Aleppo by the head of the United Nations’ World Food Program, the first U.N. aid trucks did not reach opposition-held Syria until Saturday afternoon. Just 22 trucks arrived at the Bab al-Hawa crossing, and it took until late Saturday for the first convoys from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar to arrive in north Aleppo. No other international NGOs have yet sent aid."

On this week’s edition of “The Hunt with WTOP national security correspondent J.J. Green,” Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, says this is a very troubling development because they actually had thousands of dollars to pay bribes.