How does ISIS carry out its attacks in Syria despite the announcement of its elimination?... Two experts reveal its new strategy

Northern Syria -

More than 3 years after announcing the elimination of the Islamic State in Syria and the killing of its leader, Abdullah Qardash, last February with an American raid on northern Syria, the organization is still establishing a presence in the Syrian field and carrying out large-scale military attacks targeting primarily Syrian regime forces and militias loyal to them.

Although the organization does not have real control over the land, and does not possess areas of cities or villages in Syria, its attacks reflect that its members have the ability to maneuver and move in the Syrian geography, even if it is limited to the Badia and adjacent areas in the governorates of Raqqa, Homs and Deir ez-Zor.

And last Sunday, 5 members of the Syrian regime forces were killed and wounded in the countryside of Raqqa, after members of the Islamic State attacked a bus carrying them. The organization claimed the attack hours after the Syrian regime announced it.

Less than 24 hours later, the organization also attacked a military position of the Syrian regime forces in the Jabal al-Bishri area in Badiyat al-Sham, killing 3 militants and wounding others, so that it carried out two attacks in the same area within only 48 hours, according to private sources for Al-Jazeera Net.

virtual map

A hypothetical map of the spread of ISIS elements in Syria can be drawn based on the activities of its members and military objectives, according to Anas Shawakh, a researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies, saying that it mainly takes the Badia as hiding and spread areas and bases of operations from which it launches its attacks against the regime forces and Iranian militias.

Shawakh indicated - in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net - that the most prominent points of spread of elements of the organization are concentrated in the areas of Badiyat al-Ruwaished, al-Rawda and al-Hol in al-Hasakah, Jabal al-Bishri in al-Raqqa, al-Shula in Deir ez-Zor and the Badia of Palmyra in the countryside of Homs.

Shawakh considered that it is difficult to say that ISIS appears and disappears in Syria, but the matter is related to the increase and decrease of its military activity in specific cases according to the military and security conditions, in each separate region in which its members are deployed.

According to the researcher, the combing operations carried out by the international coalition aircraft from time to time at ISIS’s spread points in Syria, affect its activity and decrease its operations, and the same happens when it is targeted by Russian forces.

An operation by US forces in northern Syria targeting ISIS fighters (Getty Images)

Zone war

With the recent tracking of the military path of the Islamic State in Syria, its elements did not engage in military operations to seize points or impose control over geographical areas, as the organization's strategy has become based on lightning security operations.

Syrian writer and political analyst, Firas Allawi, believes that ISIS is now waging against the Syrian regime and its forces the so-called “war of the region” or the war of geography, by adopting a strategy of raiding with limited numbers to attack convoys and military points on the Badia borders.

Allawi describes the organization - during his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - as an expert in the desert, pointing out that since 2015 it has prepared caves and secret caches for its weapons, at a time when it uses light and medium weapons in its recent operations, and relies on light means of transportation such as motorcycles and SUVs.

On the size of the military force, Allawi stressed that the organization possesses military cells in numbers that cannot be underestimated, pointing out that warplanes are useless to target the organization within wide open areas in the desert.

According to the political analyst, ISIS is the pretext for all the forces interfering in Syrian affairs. "The international coalition says in its statements that it came to fight the organization, and the Russians say that they are there to fight the organization, even the Syrian regime says that it is fighting the organization."

"Terrorist training"

With every attack carried out by the Islamic State against the Syrian regime forces, the regime's media deals with the event according to narratives that are not based on evidence or concrete data.

Commenting on the organization's recent attack on the regime soldiers' bus in Raqqa, the government agency "SANA" accused the US forces at the Al-Tanf base of transporting ISIS "terrorists" from Iraq to the vicinity of the base, to retrain and arm them, "in preparation for their deployment in the Syrian desert, and carrying out terrorist attacks against the Syrian state and its citizens.