Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/UK: The notorious militant group, Islamic State, has much diminished from its peak in 2014 but it remains a menace in the volatile part of the Middle East and abroad in Afghanistan and parts of Africa.
There have been fears that a possible ground offensive by Turkey along Syrian border could create the perfect conditions for the IS to seize power again.
Middle east expert Dr Shiraz Maher said that “blink and you’ll miss it, and suddenly ISIS will be back”.
According to Sky News, in a year where other stories have dominated the headlines, what the IS has been doing, and whether huge tracts of territory could once again fall under the flag.
According to terror expert Matthew Henman, since the previous bastions in Syria fell to Western-backed forces, the IS had been operating at a “greatly diminished” level.
He said that the level of threat, the level of operational activity has stayed reasonably consistent over that kind of period.
In various key theatres and fears, the group has maintained a steady tempo of insurgent violence.
Mr. Henman, who works for jane’s intelligence agency, said that the group and its affiliates further afield have focused on exploiting regional instabilities and still have designs on seizing territory.
Mr. Henman said that in recent years much of the militant group’s focus has turned to west Africa, where it has been met with multinational task forces seeking to stop it from gaining the proper foothold.
In Afghanistan, the militant group’s regional affiliate known as the Islamic State in the Khorasan Province has increased its attacks since the Taliban regained the government.
Earlier this month, China advised its people to leave the country following a coordinated attack by Islamic State militants on a Chinese-owned hotel in Kabul.
Efforts to free thousands of imprisoned militants IS.
But the danger of the IS activity in Syria and Iraq remains despite its diminished presence.
Some 70,000 people with suspected links to a militant group, including women and children and around 10,000 IS militants, are being held by Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.
Dr. Shiraz Maher, a lecturer at King’s College London, said that the risk of militant IS freeing thousands of imprisoned fighters is the single greatest security threat and fear to the West.
