The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted operations of the Islamic State and Hezbollah, but intelligence experts say extremist organizations are building out their ranks and preparing for a comeback.
Terrorists overseas have struggled since travel bans blocking people from entering and leaving the United States were erected earlier this year because they prevent people from joining efforts abroad and foreign extremists from getting into the country.
“The pandemic itself, the increased constraints in maneuverability of people around the world, certainly has an effect on creating barriers,” said Michael S. Smith II, a terrorism analyst who lectures on global security and intelligence at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The nationwide lockdowns also deter people who would normally target mass gatherings in public places, due to state and city lockdown orders that forbid many gatherings.
“If you’re trying to get operatives into the U.S. to launch an attack, even if you get the resources, and this person isn’t sick, how do you get them into the United States?” said Evan Kohlmann, a former intelligence consultant to the departments of Justice and Defense who is the chief innovation officer for the risk intelligence tracker, Flashpoint.
Social media companies such as Twitter are taking steps to better police their sites for suspicious activity. The Trump administration’s fatal strikes against top Islamic State leaders have also hurt the organization’s reputation, making it look vulnerable and thus deterring potential recruits, Smith said, noting the FBI, in particular, has led the government’s efforts to identify sympathizers proactively before they carry out an attack.
Groups such as ISIS and ISIL, as well as Hezbollah and al Qaeda, have been hurt by illnesses and deaths due to the virus among its members in the Middle East and Africa, according to Kohlmann. Rural communities that provide food, medical care, and other necessities to terrorist organizations in return for protection are overwhelmed with coronavirus cases themselves, hurting extremist groups’ ability to acquire normal resources.
But while operations are encumbered, the groups are surviving and even expanding.
Because governments in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen are distracted with an increase in coronavirus cases, terror groups there are better able to stay beneath the radar. Extremists are also coming to the aid of hurting communities, such as Hezbollah providing social services to communities.
“It becomes very difficult to stop the unchecked growth of these organizations,” said Kohlmann. “Suddenly, you have terrorist groups taking up state functions … if you look at Iraq, it’s a genius strategy.”
A newly released University of Albany report warns that these conditions have led terror groups to focus on filling out their ranks, even using coronavirus-related messaging to reach more people with propaganda.
“In terms of foreign terrorist recruitment, the Islamic State has remained particularly active in the cyber domain and continues to proliferate propaganda that is tailored to engage with English-speaking audiences,” said Smith. “It remains very likely the Islamic State sympathizers here in the United States will demonstrate receptiveness to those calls for the groups’ supporters to perpetrate attacks here.”
Dr. Gary Ackerman, professor at the New York-based University at Albany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity, said the key at this stage is for governments’ counterterrorism agencies to continue intelligence gathering and tracking extremists. But that is no easy feat when so many officials will be working from home likely for months to come, with less access to classified materials.
“The front-line people are still doing their jobs, but a lot of people on the support side of things, they can’t do nearly as much at home because of classified access,” said Ackerman, who is also a contractor for several Department of Homeland Security agency projects. “It’s not like people are sitting around doing nothing, but what I’m saying is, overall across the world, the counterterrorism capabilities are likely to decrease somewhat due to a lack of resources, lack of attention, and they are unable to do what they do.”
“I think that, in the long term, COVID is going to have a negative effect,” worsening terrorism from overseas, he said. “The U.S. is one of the most robust countries in the world, and we’re struggling.”
