Executive Summary
Although the United States (US) and Western partners successfully dismantled IS’s territorial proto-state in 2019, contemporary counterterrorism (CT) frameworks remain disproportionately focused on kinetic disruption and territorial denial (Ingram, Whiteside and Winter, 2020). To ensure organisational security, IS adapted into a decentralised insurgent network. Subsequently, the organisation focused on strengthening transnational financial, ideological and operational coordination through semi-autonomous Wilayahs (provinces) and its governing body, the General Directorate of Provinces (GDP) (Zelin, 2024).
Given its evolution, IS can no longer be understood solely as a territorially bound Middle Eastern insurgency. Instead, it is a globally integrated militant ecosystem capable of generating instability across Africa, Central Asia and beyond. This evolution is reflected in the expansion of IS Khorasan Province (ISKP), IS Somalia (ISS), and the IS West Africa Province (ISWAP) (Zelin, 2024; Krause, 2025). While kinetic operations generate tactical successes, including leadership removals and damage to militant infrastructure, they remain insufficient in degrading the transnational financial, ideological and operational systems sustaining IS. Western policymakers should therefore prioritise multinational intelligence coordination, disruption of transnational financial systems, governance resilience in fragile states and countermeasures against IS digital ecosystems.
Introduction
IS resurgence reflects a strategic mismatch between evolving organisational realities and existing CT frameworks. By relying on indirect CT partnerships and local intermediaries via the ‘by, with and through’ doctrine, US and European policymakers may have inadvertently created permissive conditions that IS exploited. Examples of these conditions are weak governance, fragmented local security structures and corruption which facilitated IS’s transition into a more durable transnational militant organisation (Mullins, 2023). Consequentially, Western governments failed to recognise the opportunity this afforded to IS to exploit local grievances, strengthen transnational networks and sustain a decentralised organisational model that promotes strategic durability (Jones et al., 2017).
Now, American and European policymakers are presented with a renewed security challenge. Whilst Western CT playbooks remain reliant on kinetic and territorial disruption, there has been a failure to adequately adapt to IS’s decentralised franchising model. Although effective in degrading immediate operational capacity, these types of operations remain insufficient in reducing the wider financial, ideological and transnational networks underpinning IS’s long-term survivability (Zelin, 2024). This brief examines Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and Islamic State Somalia (ISS) as primary case studies to assess how decentralised Wilayah structures facilitate operational continuity and explore the resulting implications for regional powers.
Analysis
The threat of semi-autonomous Wilayah
Part of the contemporary policy challenge stems from the assumption that territorial collapse in Iraq and Syria in 2019 represented strategic defeat for Islamic State. Political analysts argued that IS differentiated its claim to political legitimacy from al-Qaeda through its capacity to establish territorial governance (Gerges, 2022). Such beliefs led US and European policymakers to overemphasise kinetic CT operations, with the collapse of Baghouz becoming interpreted by many as a decisive endpoint to the organisation’s relevance (Chulov, 2019). Overreliance, however, exposed a critical limitation within existing CT strategies: territorial recapture did not dismantle the broader ideological, financial and organisational ecosystem sustaining IS operations (Jones et al., 2017).
Nevertheless, Western policy remains committed to further kinetic operations against the Wilayahs, such as ISS in 2025 and 2026 (Ahmed and Barter, 2026). Despite these operations, several IS affiliates in Africa have significantly expanded their manpower, with IS in the Sahel province reaching 3,000 fighters, and ISKP was labelled the greatest extra-regional terrorist threat by the United Nations in 2025 (Shtuni, 2025). These trends expose the limitations of predominantly kinetic CT approaches. With IS affiliates continuing to expand, territorial denial and leadership decapitation alone are insufficient to degrade organisational resilience.
IS’s decentralisation through the GDP further explains why contemporary CT frameworks struggle to degrade organisational resilience. After creating a semi-autonomous transnational governance structure, a key implication of the GDP structure is that semi-autonomous groups will also act in accordance with their own vested interests (Zelin, 2024). Thus meaning, groups will not overextend themselves for the sake of their peers. However, for provinces who are under less sustained pressure, they can provide support directed by the GDP to the most essential Wilayahs (Zelin, 2024). For example, ISKP provides a variety of support ranging from manpower, arms trading and information sharing to groups within the Middle East and Africa to ensure their survival, likewise ISS shares its fiscal gains to groups with poorer economic situations, such as ISKP themselves, to maintain operations (Brooke-Holland and Loft, 2025). A CT strategy centred primarily on kinetic disruption struggles to address IS’s capacity to redistribute resources and compensate for localised organisational losses across Wilayah networks. Such systems allow financially stronger affiliates to support weaker branches, thereby increasing resilience against geographically isolated CT operations. Furthermore, it emphasises that solutions surrounding IS must be holistic in nature, and not focused on territorial denial.
ISKP – Europe’s Emerging External Threat
ISKP demonstrates how traditional Western CT approaches are outdated for the current threat. Emerging as an ideological competitor to the Taliban, the group has exploited the inability of Western intervention due to the anti-western sentiment of the ruling party, weak governance structures, and regional instability to build an influential base for IS.
One problem the group presents is their expanded multilingual propaganda initiatives and digital recruitment infrastructures aimed at international audiences (Winter, 2025). Leveraging the Taliban government’s isolationist posture and reluctance toward external CT cooperation, ISKP has developed internet propaganda hubs, alongside training bases (Brooke-Holland and Loft, 2025). Despite this, Winter (2025) also highlights that monitoring internet propaganda creates significant challenges due to the scale of ‘internet policing’ that would have to occur. Accordingly, multinational efforts to tackle ISKP’s propaganda would best be placed in resilience, rather than trying to stop the flow of information.
A further problem ISKP presents is the group’s ability to conduct large-scale attacks. The 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, which killed approximately 149 individuals and injured hundreds more, demonstrated ISKP’s capacity to generate mass-casualty effects beyond its immediate theatre of operations (Krause, 2025). As such, rather than focusing upon large-scale kinetic intervention in Afghanistan, efforts from American and European policymakers should prioritise intelligence coordination, preventative CT measures and disruption of transnational support systems linking ISKP to broader IS structures.
ISS – An Economic Cornerstone
Following its split from al-Shabaab in 2015, ISS has established itself as a credible adversary to the Somalian government and to regional powers. Simultaneously, the group has developed the al-Karrar office into a network-wide financial infrastructure that facilitates resource transfers between Wilayahs under pressure (Doctor and Ligon, 2024; International Crisis Group, 2024). Financial transfers rely heavily upon the Hawala system and informal transfer mechanisms that remain difficult to disrupt through conventional military means (Rousselle, 2025). Consequently, kinetic CT operations do little to disrupt these financial transfer systems. Greater long-term effect is more likely to come from multinational monitoring of informal financial networks, intelligence cooperation and enhanced oversight of key smuggling routes such as the Red Sea.
In exchange for financial support, ISS receives foreign fighters and operational expertise from wider IS networks, enabling tactical adaptation and organisational strengthening (Seldin, 2024). The growing role of foreign fighters also complicates traditional CT responses. Kinetic operations have limited long-term effect where personnel can be replenished through transnational recruitment networks, while conventional ‘hearts and minds’ approaches are less effective when militant participation is increasingly detached from local grievances. As such, CT approaches towards IS require updating. In these circumstances, multilateral cooperation between African and Western nations need to occur to ensure up border protection, and to also limit smuggling lanes.
Together, ISKP and ISS demonstrate how decentralised Wilayah structures enable operational resilience through differentiated but interconnected functions: external attack planning, propaganda dissemination and financial redistribution. These dynamics expose the limits of kinetic CT approaches centred on territorial denial and leadership targeting, reinforcing the need for broader systemic disruption.
Policy Recommendations
Expand Multinational Intelligence Integration
- European, African and Central Asian governments require enhanced intelligence mechanisms focused on foreign fighters, financial transfers and digital recruitment activity. Improved intelligence sharing can reduce informational fragmentation and improve the identification of transnational support networks.
Target Informal Financial Systems
- Policymakers should strengthen multinational financial investigations targeting Hawala systems and informal transfer networks used by IS affiliates. Furthermore, targeting financial systems will require more oversight in key transport areas such as the Red Sea. Sanctions coordination, intelligence-led financial investigations and cooperation with regional partners, which may increase pressure on resource redistribution systems such as al-Karrar.
Strengthen Governance Capacity in Fragile States
- Long-term prevention efforts should prioritise governance resilience in regions vulnerable to militant exploitation. Within reason, adaptive capacity should be aided by supportive countries such as America, the United Kingdom and France. This can be achieved by administrative capacity building, anti-corruption initiatives and support for local security and educational institutions, which may reduce opportunities for Wilayah expansion.
Disrupt Digital Recruitment Ecosystems
- Multinational coordination with technology companies like Meta and regional partners may disrupt multilingual propaganda ecosystems and online recruitment networks.
- Long-term success on systematically degrading the interconnected structures that sustain IS as a globally integrated insurgent ecosystem.
References
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