On April 16, three Syrian pro-regime fighters were killed and two more injured as they were ambushed on a road by a guerrilla force near the city of Daraa in southern Syria.
In the following days, seven more pro-regime troops, including a high-ranking intelligence officer, were slain in ambushes or by improvised road bombs, in the same region. On April 9, another fierce strike was crushed upon the Syrian Army’s 5th Corps deployed deep in the desert expanses close to the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Altogether, 32 Syrian troops were killed after two days of fierce fighting, and two oil refineries damaged.
These assaults in areas believed to be under the firm control of the Syrian regime were committed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — the most notorious Jihadi group largely defeated by an international military effort in 2017.
But something similar also happens on the other side of the border, in Iraq, the western provinces of which have seen the terror group baldest assaults and suicide bombings since the fall of its bloodthirsty rule.
After years of surviving in sleeping cells, the remnants of the Islamic State now got rearranged under their new leader Amir Muhammad al-Mawla, and unfold a new wave of terror attacks, in a bid to rise again and stage a comeback of its violent caliphate that used to spread across much of Syria and Iraq.
As officials and international experts say, one of the main reasons behind that is the rapid spread of COVID-19, which largely paralyzed the economic and security effort in western Iraq and also exasperated the power vacuum in Syria’s south and east.
Syrian regime army soldiers advance in Tall Touqan village, in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, on Feb. 5, 2020.
Meanwhile, the disease continues spreading in the region, clearing the way for even heavier societal collapse and pestilence in war-ravaged Syria — and even forcing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad into admitting the seriousness of the situation.
A displaced Syrian family breaks its fast during Ramadan celebrations in the town of Ariha in the Idlib province on May 4, 2020. (AFP)
Escalation in Iraq
In Iraq, the baldness of IS attacks has grown exponentially in the last weeks.
A suicide bomber reportedly aligned with the Jihadi group injured at least three security servicepersons in Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk. Just several days after that, on May 2, the Islamic State conducted an armed attack in the city of Samarra just 125 kilometers north of Baghdad, killing at least 10 Iraqi troops.
The Iraq officials claimed this to be the terror group’s most coordinated and bloodletting attack in many months.
“It’s a real threat,” as Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, told the Associated Press referring to the surge of the IS activity.
“They are mobilizing and killing us in the north and they will start hitting Baghdad soon.”
Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition steadily reduces its presence in Iraq, dropping as of late March the number of personnel deployed to the country to 7,500 specialists providing training to Iraqi forces.
Upon that, according to multiple reports, the recent surge of coronavirus spread inflicted a heavy blow upon Iraq’s already-failing security enforcement across the country. Due to strict quarantine measures, the number of Iraqi military personnel deployed for duties has been reduced by at least 50%.
Such an effect came into being amid relatively moderate pace of COVID-19 spread in the country: As of May 7, Baghdad reported 2,480 confirmed cases and 102 cases.
Moreover, the security situation deteriorates rapidly due to territorial disputes between the central government and the Kurdish self- rule region, which effectively paralyzes law enforcement in much of the country’s northern and western areas bordering Syria.
And meanwhile, in Iraq alone, the Islamic State recently managed to mobilize at 2,500–3,000 fighters, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Other estimates by U.S. counter-terror and State Department officials believe that IS may still have between 14,000 and 18,000 fighters in command in the vast expanses of Syria and Iraq.
In the chaos of pandemic and ensuing economic issues, it moves towards gaining momentum and trying to reassert its former power.
Across the desert
In Syria, which faces its 10th year of devastating civil war that has claimed at least 380,000 lives, the Islamic State resorts to even bolder moves.
The Syrian regime reported only 45 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 3 deaths amid no more that 100 coronavirus tests conduced daily among the general population, mostly in Damascus only.
Nonetheless, since mid-March, the Damascus regime upholds strict lockdown and a curfew across all provinces under its control.
The Islamic State militants immediately launched in late March a new campaign of violent assaults in the south, particularly in the Daraa province. On April 7, they claimed responsibility for the assassination of Silwan al-Jundi, a high-ranking Baath Party official, on the 73rd anniversary of Syria’s ruling party’s foundation.
The success encouraged more ambushes upon the regime forces vaguely present in Daraa. According to the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War, such action signals the terror group’s desire to reassert presence in southern Syria.
But the Islamic State is becoming increasingly active in the deserts of the country’s east bordering Iraq — obviously, looking forward to exploiting security gaps and regain control of the region’s oil fields.
Apart from Daraa and the eastern desert, reports indicate new Islamic State attacks also in Homs in the center and all the ways to Deir ez-Zor on the Euphrates River.
According to the Iraqi intelligence, the militants enjoy considerable freedom of movement in the desert — in April, the group managed to redeploy some 500 fighters, including a number of prison breakers, from Syria to Iraq in order to reinforce its guerrilla war in western Iraq.
And as security situation and law enforcement deteriorate in the Syria- Iraq region, the Islamic State quickly switches from terror bombing and assassination to more organized, sophisticated assaults on the police and the military, as Iraqi officials said.
Demonstrators gathering during a protest against a reported attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, in the village of Maaret al-Naasan in Syria’s Idlib province on May 1, 2020. (AFP)
Pestilence threat
Meanwhile, as international health organizations keep raising alarms, the Syrian regime continues reporting low numbers of COVID-19 cases registered.
For the country’s health system ruined by war, the slightest coronavirus surge means total collapse. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), less than two- thirds of the country’s hospitals are still working.
The rare medical institutions continue suffering an extreme lack of skilled personnel as nearly 70% of healthcare workers have already left the devastated country.
The province of Idlib, the last rebel-held enclave in the country’s northwest remains the most probable epicenter of a massive coronavirus spread. Over 3 million civilians live there sieged by Russian-supported Syrian army, with most of the population surviving in severely overcrowded displacement camps and settlements with very poor hygiene and medical infrastructure.
The WHO and other watchdogs keep pointing out to the embattled enclave as an ideal breeding pool for the virus that could lead to a full societal collapse in Syria — and the subsequent new rise of terror groups, including the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, access to international health care initiatives to Idlib remains extremely complicated.
“When the virus hits Idlib, the province will be ill-prepared to cope,” said Refugees International, a global charity, in its April 28 report.
“Countries surrounding Syria, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, have taken drastic measures including lockdowns and curfews to try to contain the virus.
“But very few of these places face the challenges Idlib does. The province lacks a strong and legitimate authority to impose such measures after years of violence that have decimated its infrastructure.”
According to the organization, the few functioning hospitals of Idlib currently no more than 100 lung ventilators, nearly all of which were already in use.
General poverty, lack of food and clean water, in addition to extremely poor supply of basic medical instruments and equipment, make an outbreak almost inevitable, according to doctors in the province.
“In one year, we lost around 76 health facilities in northwest Syria,” as the Idlib Health Directorate, said in a statement released on April 28.
“Donors have cut their funds and medical staff have been killed, arrest- ed or displaced. The health sector in Idlib cannot cope with the inevitable outbreak and we fear 100,000 people could die unless we get supplies immediately.”
Meanwhile, by early May, even President Bashar al-Assad started publicly admitting the real threat of a coronavirus outbreak in Syria.
The allegedly low level of the disease spread did not mean Syria got away with the “circle of danger,” as Assad claimed on May 4 in his address to the government.
“These figures could suddenly spike in a few days or few weeks and we would see in front of us real catastrophe that exceeds our health and logistical abilities,” he said.
