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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.”
Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.
The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.
Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees.
The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
While an alternative to the sudden layoffs removing tech workers from peers like Meta and Oracle, the savings are likely tied to a similar industry upheaval that is requiring huge spending on the costs of artificial intelligence. Meta has already warned investors that its 2026 expenses will grow significantly — to the range of $162 billion to $169 billion — driven by infrastructure costs and employee compensation, particularly for the artificial intelligence experts it’s been hiring at eye-popping pay levels.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives welcomed Meta’s cuts in a note to investors Thursday.
He said he sees it as part of a strategy of using AI tools to “automate tasks that once required large teams, allowing the company to streamline operations and reduce costs while maintaining productivity driving an increased need for a leaner operating structure.”
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has spent billions of dollars operating an ever-expanding global network of data centers powering cloud computing services, AI systems and its own suite of productivity tools, including the AI assistant Copilot.
CNBC reported earlier Thursday on a memo from Microsoft’s chief people officer, Amy Coleman, announcing the voluntary retirement plan.
“Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support,” Coleman wrote, according to CNBC.
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Tensions escalated in the Strait of Hormuz April 22 after Iran’s IRGC seized two vessels in what analysts describe as “tit-for-tat” retaliation against the U.S. And one ship is linked to a billionaire shipping family tied to Presidents Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron.
Video aired on Iranian state TV purportedly shows IRGC soldiers seizing the container ships in the Strait, Reuters said Thursday.
One vessel, the MSC Francesca, is owned by MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, which was founded by Italian billionaire Gianluigi Aponte and is now controlled by his two children, Fox News Digital has learned.
“Some 20 Iranians armed to the teeth stormed the ship. Sailors are under Iranian control, their movements on the ship are limited but the Iranians are treating them well,” a relative of one of the MSC Francesca seafarers told Reuters.
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Soldiers take part in the seizure of the container ships MSC Francesca and Epaminondas in the Strait of Hormuz, according to footage broadcast on Iranian state TV and released April 22, 2026. (IRIB/Handout/Reuters)
“The ship is anchored 9 nautical miles from the Iranian coast. Negotiations between MSC and Iran are ongoing, our sailors are fine,” Montenegro’s minister of maritime affairs, Filip Radulovic, told state broadcaster RTCG.
Maritime intelligence firm Windward AI pointed to IRGC “tit-for-tat” tactics given the recent MSC vessel seizure.
This followed a U.S. naval blockade imposed on April 13, with Tehran warning of retaliation after U.S. forces also seized an Iranian vessel.
“The IRGC attacked three ships. It also captured and took in two of them — the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas — while the Euphoria managed to get away,” Windward AI co-founder Ami Daniel told Fox News Digital.
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Soldiers take part in the operation seizing the container ships MSC Francesca and Epaminondas in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian state TV April 22, 2026. (IRIB/Handout/Reuters)
“This is a ‘tit-for-tat’ exercise by the IRGC, which, along with the Houthis, has long claimed MSC is connected to Israel.
“Aponte, owner and chairman, has a Jewish wife, and MSC calls in Israel; however, so do all major liners.”
Diego Aponte, Gianluigi’s son, had been making “inroads with Trump’s circle,” Bloomberg reported April 13.
He also helped arrange a November 2025 White House meeting with Swiss business leaders that led to a preliminary deal to reduce the 39% tariffs imposed on Switzerland over the summer.
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The MSC executive chairman has been photographed with French President Emmanuel Macron. (Reuters/Stephane Mahe)
Over the last year, MSC’s relationship with the White House also positioned father Gianluigi Aponte as a key player in a $19 billion deal with Li Ka-shing, as MSC and BlackRock moved to acquire two Panama Canal ports under pressure from Trump to place them in “friendly” hands, according to the outlet.
With a net worth of at least $37 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, it is Gianluigi Aponte and his wife, Rafaela Aponte-Diamant, who appear to mingle with world leaders.
The MSC executive chairman and Rafaela have been photographed with French President Emmanuel Macron.
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The Panama-flagged MSC Francesca vessel docked in Long Beach, Calif., April 16, 2025. (Efrain Morales/Reuters)
Rafaela is also reportedly related to Alexis Kohler (his mother is said to be her cousin), who served as Macron’s secretary-general from May 2017 to April 14, 2025, and was described as “Macron’s second brain.”
The Aponte family’s vessel, carrying about 40 crew members, was taken toward Iran’s port of Bandar Abbas by the Iranian navy, sources told Reuters Thursday.
Four crew members, including the captain, are from Montenegro, officials said, while Croatia’s foreign ministry confirmed two Croatian nationals are also aboard.
MSC declined to comment, Reuters confirmed.
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The IRGC Navy claimed both vessels captured “were operating without the necessary permits.”
According to Lloyd’s List, the 2008-built MSC Francesca “normally operates in service between the U.S. West Coast, Asia and the Middle East Gulf.”
Published On 23 Apr 2026
Three professors at Atlanta’s Emory University in the United States have filed a lawsuit over their arrests during a 2024 campus protest over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Their lawsuit on Thursday argued that the university broke its own free-speech policies when it called in police and state troopers to aggressively disband the protest, making 28 arrests.
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“The judicial system would find that Emory failed to protect its students, to protect its staff, to protect the educational mission of the university,” said philosophy professor Noelle McAfee, one of the plaintiffs.
“So this isn’t just about people’s individual rights. It’s our educational mission to train people in free and critical inquiry, to be able to learn how to engage with others, to be fearless.”
Laura Diamond, a spokesperson for Emory, responded that the university believes “this lawsuit is without merit”.
“Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm,” Diamond said in a statement. “We regret this issue is being litigated, but we have confidence in the legal process.”
The suit is just one example of how the nationwide wave of protests from 2023 and 2024 continues to reverberate on elite campuses.
There have been multiple instances where students and faculty have filed lawsuits against universities, arguing they were discriminated against because of the protests.
But the Emory suit is unusual. McAfee and her fellow plaintiffs — English and Indigenous studies professor Emilio Del Valle-Escalante and economics professor Caroline Fohlin — all remain tenured faculty members. None were convicted of any charges.
The civil lawsuit in DeKalb County State Court demands that the private university repay money the three spent defending themselves against misdemeanour charges that were later dismissed, along with punitive damages.
McAfee said she’s suing her employer “to try to get them to be accountable and to change”.
All three say they were observers on April 25, 2024, when some students and others set up tents on the university’s main quad to protest the war. They say Emory broke its own policies by calling in Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers without seeking alternatives.
McAfee was charged with disorderly conduct after she said she yelled “Stop!” at an officer roughly arresting a protester. Del Valle-Escalante said he was trying to help an older woman when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Fohlin said that, when she protested against officers pinning a protester to the ground, she herself was thrown face-first to the ground and arrested, suffering a concussion and a spine injury. Fohlin was charged with misdemeanour battery of an officer.
Emory claimed that those arrested that day were outsiders who trespassed on school property. But 20 of the 28 people arrested were affiliated with the university.
The professors said that, after their arrests, they were targeted by threats and harassment, part of a pushback by conservatives who said universities were failing to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism and allowing lawlessness.
Nationwide, however, advocates say there is a “Palestine exception” in which universities are willing to curb pro-Palestine speech and protest. Palestine Legal, a legal aid group supporting such speech, said Tuesday that it received 300 percent more legal requests in 2025 than its annual average before 2023, mostly from college students and faculty.
McAfee served as president of the Emory University Senate after her arrest. The body makes policy recommendations and has helped draft the university’s open expression policy.
She said she asked then-President Gregory Fenves in fall 2024 why Emory police weren’t dropping the charges against her and others. McAfee said Fenves told her that he wanted “to see justice”.
The open expression policy was revised after 2024 to clearly prohibit tents, camping, the occupation of university buildings and demonstrations between midnight and 7am.
Whatever the policy, McAfee said students are afraid to protest at Emory, saying the university has turned its back on what Atlanta civil rights icon John Lewis called “good trouble”.
“Students know right now that any trouble is not going to be good trouble at Emory, that they could get arrested,” she said. “So students are afraid.”
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