An Islamic State flag taped to the van used to kill and wound dozens of people in New Orleans is a grim reminder of the persistent threat posed by Islamist extremism.
Investigators are racing to understand why Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran suspected of carrying out the atrocity in the early hours of New Year’s Day, appears to have been inspired by the terrorist group, also known like ISIS. .
A key question will be whether he was self-radicalized by the extreme ideology of the terrorist group, or whether there was some kind of direction or enablement by actual members of IS or other radicalized individuals.
The FBI initially said it did not believe the man, who died in a shootout with police after running over his victims with his rental truck in one of the worst acts of terrorism in the United States, had acted alone.
Latest updates on the New Orleans attack
But President Joe Biden later said that “the situation is very fluid” and, while the investigation continues, “no one should jump to conclusions.”
He also revealed that the suspect had posted videos on social media a few hours before the attack indicating that he had “been inspired by ISIS.”
Whatever caused Jabbar to commit such a massacre, his murderous rampage and use of the IS flag underscore the danger that extremist Islamist ideology still poses five years after the physical dismantling of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
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President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly described how his administration “defeated ISIS” during his first term as president.
It is true that the US-led coalition against the Islamic State helped Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces recapture swaths of territory that had fallen under IS control.
The US military also carried out a raid in October 2019 that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then-head of the Islamic State.
Photo: AP
But their extremist ideology that drove tens of thousands of fighters to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State (carrying out horrific acts of murder, torture and kidnapping of anyone who did not follow their twisted interpretation of Sunni Islam) has never gone away.
Many of the group’s fighters have been captured and are being held in camps and detention centers in northern Syria, but their fate appears increasingly uncertain following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime at the hands of another Sunni Islamist militant group. called Hayat Tahrir. al-Sham (HTS), which was once aligned with the Islamic State.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the HTS leader turned de facto ruler of Syria, has sought to distance his group from its past ties to Islamist extremism.
But HTS is still considered a terrorist entity by the United Kingdom, the United States and other Western powers.
Experts fear that events in Syria could inspire Islamic State sympathizers and supporters around the world to carry out new attacks.
It is too early to link specific events such as the overthrow of the Assad regime to the bloodshed on the streets of New Orleans.
But security officials, including the head of MI5, have long warned of a resurgence of the threat from Islamic State and al Qaeda.
In a speech in October, Ken McCallum explained the terrorist trend that worries him most: “The growing threat of Al Qaeda and, specifically, the Islamic State.”
