[WashingtonInstitute] Brief Analysis
As a landmark tool for tracking the group’s activity hits another sobering milestone, U.S. officials cannot let regional crises completely overshadow important shifts in jihadist threats around the world.
In March 2023, The Washington Institute launched the Islamic State Select Worldwide Activity Map in order to track the organization more holistically than attack data alone allowed, incorporating propaganda activity, claims of responsibility, financial sanctions, and legal cases. Three years and 5,000 database entries later, the picture provided by this interactive map has changed in ways that both confirm and complicate the trends identified at its one-year mark. The core IS “provinces” in Iraq and Syria are not just degraded—they have largely fallen off the operational map. In their place, an almost entirely African set of “provinces” now carries the IS torch of global jihadist insurgency and terrorism. And even as the group’s attacks grow deadlier per incident, the U.S. government’s tools for confronting IS financial and recruitment networks sit largely unused.
GROWING LETHALITY, SHIFT TO AFRICA
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Washington Institute: 2026-06-12 Tracking the Islamic State: Activity Trends, African Shifts, and U.S. Dormancy
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Washington Institute: 2026-06-12 Tracking the Islamic State: Activity Trends, African Shifts, and U.S. Dormancy
Washington Institute: 2026-04-28 Golani forces eliminate terrorists, uncover Hezbollah weapons
Washington Institute: 2026-04-01 Trump administration planning international summit on countering antifa violence