World
ISIS remains global threat a decade after declaring caliphate, US military official says
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- A decade after declaring its caliphate, ISIS no longer controls any land, has lost many leaders, and is mostly out of the news.
- The group continues to recruit members and conduct deadly attacks globally, including recent operations in Iran and Russia.
- ISIS sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq continue to attack government forces and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters.
A decade after the Islamic State militant group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria, the extremists no longer control any land, have lost many prominent leaders and are mostly out of the world news headlines.
Still, the group continues to recruit members and claim responsibility for deadly attacks around the world, including lethal operations in Iran and Russia earlier this year that left scores dead. Its sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq still carry out attacks against government forces in both countries as well as U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, at a time when Iraq’s government is negotiating with Washington over a possible withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The group that once attracted tens of thousands of fighters and supporters from around the world to come to Syria and Iraq, and at its peak ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom was notorious for its brutality. It beheaded civilians, slaughtered 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers in a short period, and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.
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“Daesh remains a threat to international security,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. J.B. Vowell, the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, said in comments sent to The Associated Press. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
Iraqi Army soldiers celebrate as they hold a flag of the Islamic State group they captured during a military operation to regain control of a village outside Mosul, Iraq, on Nov. 29, 2016. Ten years after the Islamic State group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria, the extremists now control no land, have lost many prominent founding leaders and are mostly away from the world news headlines. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)
“We maintain our intensity and resolve to combat and destroy any remnants of groups that share Daesh ideology,” Vowell said.
In recent years, the group’s branches have gained strength around the world, mainly in Africa and Afghanistan, but its leadership is believed to be in Syria. The four leaders of the group who have been killed since 2019 were all hunted down in Syria.
In 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq group, which was formed as an offshoot of al-Qaida, distanced himself from the al-Qaida global network and clashed with its branch in Syria, then known as the Nusra Front. The group renamed itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and launched a military campaign during which it captured large parts of Syria and Iraq.
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In early June 2014, the group captured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, as the Iraqi army collapsed. Later that month, it opened the border between areas it controlled in Syria and Iraq.
On June 29, 2014, al-Baghdadi appeared as a black-robed figure to deliver a sermon from the pulpit of Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri in which he declared a caliphate and urged Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to it and obey him as its leader. Since then, the group has identified itself as the Islamic State.
“Al-Baghdadi’s sermon — an extension of the extremist ideology of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — continue to inspire ISIS members globally,” said retired U.S. Army officer Myles B. Caggins III, senior nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute and former spokesman for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He was referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. strike in 2006.
From the self-declared caliphate, the group planned deadly attacks around the world and carried out brutal killings, including the beheading of Western journalists, setting a Jordanian pilot on fire while locked inside a cage days after his fighter jet was shot down, and drowning opponents in pools after locking them in giant metal cages.
A coalition of more than 80 countries, led by the United States, was formed to fight IS and a decade , the alliance continues to carry out raids against the militants’ hideouts in Syria and Iraq.
Iraqi Army soldiers secure streets in a village recently liberated from Islamic State militants outside Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)
The war against IS officially ended in March 2019, when U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz, which was the last sliver of land the extremists controlled.
Before the loss of Baghouz, IS was defeated in Iraq in July 2017, when Iraqi forces captured the northern city of Mosul. Three months later, IS suffered a major blow when SDF captured the Syrian northern city of Raqqa, which was the group’s de-facto capital.
The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Still, at least in Iraq, government and military officials have asserted that the group is too weak to stage a comeback.
“It is not possible for (IS) to claim a caliphate once again. They don’t have the command or control capabilities to do so,” Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Tahseen al-Khafaji told the AP at the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command in Baghdad, where Iraqi officers and officials from the U.S.-led coalition supervise operations against the extremists.
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The command, which was formed to lead operations against the group starting weeks after the caliphate was declared, remains active.
Al-Khafaji said that IS is now made up of sleeper cells in caves and the desert in remote areas, as Iraqi security forces keep them on the run. During the first five months of the year, he said, Iraqi forces conducted 35 airstrikes against IS and killed 51 of its members.
Also at the headquarters, Sabah al-Noman of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service said that having lost its hold on Iraq, the militant group is focused mostly on Africa, especially the Sahel region, to try to get a foothold there.
Smoke rises as Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces fight against Islamic State militants to regain control of al-Bakr neighborhood in Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)
“It is not possible for them to take control of a village, let alone an Iraqi city,” he said. He added that the U.S.-led coalition continues to carry out reconnaissance and surveillance in order to provide Iraqi forces with intelligence, and the security forces “deal with this information directly.”
Although IS appears to be under control in Iraq, it has killed dozens of government forces and SDF fighters over the past several months in Syria.
“Daesh terrorist cells continue in their terrorist operations,” SDF spokesman Siamand Ali said. “They are present on the ground and are working at levels higher than those of previous years.”
In northeast Syria, SDF fighters guard around 10,000 captured IS fighters in around two dozen detention facilities — including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them.
The SDF also oversees about 33,000 family members of suspected IS fighters, mostly women and children in the heavily-guarded al-Hol camp, which is seen as a breeding center for future extremists.
Their worst attack since the group’s defeat occurred in January 2022, when the extremists attacked the Gweiran Prison, or al-Sinaa — a Kurdish-run facility in Syria’s northeast holding thousands of IS militants. The attack led to 10 days of fighting between SDF fighters and IS militants that left nearly 500 dead on both sides, before the SDF brought the situation under control.
Caggins said that the U.S.-led coalition’s “military advice and assistance” to Iraq Security Forces, Kurdish Iraqi fighters and the SDF “is essential to maintain dominance against ISIS remnants as well as securing more than 10,000 ISIS detainees at makeshift jails and camps in Syria.”
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Democrat Xavier Becerra advanced to the general election for California governor Friday after pitching himself as an experienced choice to lead the nation’s most populous state and succeed Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Becerra leaned on his more than 35 years in public office — including as state attorney general and U.S. health secretary — to argue that he was the most qualified candidate in a crowded field.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a statement. “We are never backing down. November, here we come.”
It was not yet clear who Becerra will face in the general election. His top rivals came down to Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator backed by President Donald Trump, and Democrat Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist who poured $215 million of his own money into his campaign.
Born and raised in Sacramento by Mexican immigrant parents, Becerra has a wife and three daughters. He has said his family’s immigrant background mirrored his “underdog” gubernatorial campaign, in which he initially failed to garner substantial support before surging in the final months.
After one of the top Democratic contenders, Rep. Eric Swalwell, was accused of sexual assault and dropped out of the race, Becerra benefited from an opening to coalesce Democratic support. He quickly racked up key endorsements from labor groups and Latino legislative leaders.
Becerra has vowed to maintain the state’s mantle as a chief antagonist to President Donald Trump. As attorney general he filed more than 120 legal actions against the first Trump administration on everything from immigration to climate policy.
The president has also been in a spat with the state over its drawn-out vote count. Trump made baseless claims mass fraud Thursday, and on Friday federal prosecutors said they opened investigations into allegations of election fraud. Hilton called for California to limit mail ballots to those who request them, rather sending them to all registered voters.
During the campaign Becerra’s rivals scrutinized his leadership as health secretary during the COVID-19 pandemic and unaccompanied migrant children crisis in 2021, when Becerra’s Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for shelters where they were housed. Some of them were criticized as having inadequate living conditions, and there were also concerns about authorities failing to thoroughly vet sponsors with whom some children were placed.
If elected, Becerra said, he would declare states of emergency to address high energy costs and housing shortages and to freeze home insurance rates.
Though California is one of the nation’s most diverse states, almost all its governors have been white men. Becerra would be the first Latino to hold the office since the late 1800s.
Newsom was barred by term limits from seeking a third stint in office.
World
US, Shield of the Americas condemn ‘ongoing efforts’ to overthrow Bolivia’s elected president amid unrest
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The United States, along with the other countries that make up the Shield of the Americas, condemned the “ongoing efforts” in Bolivia to “overthrow the legitimately and overwhelmingly elected” government of President Rodrigo Paz on Friday.
“The member countries of Shield of the Americas denounce ongoing efforts to overthrow the legitimately and overwhelmingly elected government of President Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia,” the statement read. “We stand with Paz’s democratic government as it fights back against attempts to drag Bolivia backwards through cynical efforts to prevent the delivery of food, medicine and other vital supplies to the Bolivian people through fake road blockades.”
The statement added that “Mob rule cannot replace the decision that a majority of Bolivians made at the ballot box to turn the page on two decades of corrupt governments.”
It also said that anyone who is funding protests with “dirty money” from drug trafficking and transnational crime “should be held accountable. Those who have legitimate grievances should take advantage of the government’s willingness to dialogue, and denounce those who would abuse their causes to regain power.”
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Demonstrators march in La Paz, Bolivia, on May 20, 2026, rallying against road blockades and pressure tactics used by protesters demanding the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz amid the country’s economic and fuel crisis. (Claudia Morales/Reuters)
The State Department made the joint statement along with Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The statement comes as Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, has been rocked by weeks of social unrest as mass protests have blocked streets in major cities amid economic inflation and rising fuel prices.
Bolivian Defense Minister Marcelo Salinas resigned Tuesday.
Upon taking office, Paz supported a land reform bill to boost agribusiness that Indigenous farmers said put them at risk of eviction. He further scrapped fuel subsidies, sending prices surging by nearly 90%. Motorists complained that the gasoline was contaminated and ruined their cars.
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The Trump administration has said drug traffickers are responsible for inciting the mass unrest.
Meanwhile, former President Evo Morales of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, the country’s first Indigenous president who ruled for an unprecedented 14 years, is calling for early elections. “Paz only has two paths left: a suicidal decision like militarization or … an election in the next 90 days,” he wrote on X.
Police officers fired tear gas at community members who seized the Humberto Suarez oil facility during protests calling for President Rodrigo Paz’s resignation in Santa Rosa del Sara, Bolivia, on June 3, 2026. The protests have caused fuel and food shortages. (Ipa Ibanez/Reuters)
For almost two years now, Morales has been hiding out in Bolivia’s central coca-growing Chapare region, evading an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges relating to allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old girl. He rejects the allegations as politically motivated.
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Bolivia’s President Rodrigo Paz delivers a speech in La Paz on June 3, 2026, after naming Ernesto Justiniano as defense minister following the resignation of Marcelo Salinas amid protests. (Claudia Morales/Reuters)
On Thursday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a post on X, that the War Department and the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C), a recently established multinational military and political alliance, reject all attempts to overthrow the government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira six months into his term.
Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales greets a member of the country’s anti-drugs forces in Santa Cruz province near the Paraguay border on March 28, 2009. T (Stringer/Reuters)
“The United States is watching. Bolivia must not allow itself to fall prey to the old status quo of narco-terrorist dominance in the region,” Hegseth wrote. “We will continue to support our A3C partners like Bolivia to ensure that narco-terrorists are deterred from profiting on death and destruction in our hemisphere.”
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
Published on
A court in Mali has handed a 20-year jail term to an official at the French embassy accused of being a spy and “undermining state security,” judicial sources told the AFP news agency on Friday.
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The sentence is a new blow to relations between the west African nation, ruled by a military junta since a 2021 coup, and former colonial ruler France.
Detained since his arrest in August 2025, the Frenchman was also hit on Thursday with a €5,400 fine and a 20-year ban on entering Mali, three separate court sources confirmed.
At the time of his arrest, Malian authorities accused the official, identified as Yann V., of working for the French intelligence services and railed against “foreign states” trying to destabilise the insurgency-plagued country.
He was detained on 13 August in the company of several Malian officers, who were allegedly plotting a coup to overthrow the military junta.
France again insisted that the charges against the official, who was working at the French embassy in the capital Bamako, were without merit.
“Our agent is the subject of legal proceedings involving baseless accusations,” the French foreign ministry said on Friday.
“Our official was carrying out a security cooperation mission and under no circumstances has France participated, directly or indirectly, in the destabilisation of Mali.”
Mali has been gripped by a security crisis since 2012, fuelled notably by violence from groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group, as well as local criminal gangs.
Under junta chief Assimi Goita, the country has turned its back on the West, especially France, in favour of closer ties with Russia.
Mali, alongside its neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso, is ruled by military leaders who took power by force in recent years, pledging to provide more security to citizens.
But the security situation in the Sahel region has worsened since the juntas took power, analysts say, with a record number of attacks and a record number of civilians killed both by Islamic militants and government forces.
Additional sources • AP, AFP
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