Demonstrators chant pro-Islamic State group slogans as they carry the group’s flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, Iraq, on June 16, 2014.
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The FBI says the man responsible for the ramming attack in New Orleans that killed at least 14 people, worked alone and executed his plan after being inspired by the terrorist group ISIS.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Houston, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police following the attack. As he drove from Houston to New Orleans, the FBI says he published videos online proclaiming his support for ISIS.
In them, he said he joined ISIS before the summer of 2024, according to FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia.
This latest attack underscores the continued resonance of ISIS ideology “to people susceptible or amenable to radicalization and recruitment,” even more than a decade after the group was at its height, said Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Defeating the terrorist group and seizing territory from them and even killing tens of thousands of its fighters, we’re learning tragically now, is still very different from effectively countering an ideology and its continued attraction to individuals,” Hoffman added.
A brief history of ISIS
ISIS, a Salafi-jihadist group, rose to global prominence in 2014 when its fighters took over vast swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. The organization used its growing global position to call upon followers from around the world to migrate to Syria or Iraq to establish a caliphate, Hoffman said. Upwards of 40,000 foreign fighters from at least 120 countries answered that call and came to the caliphate, he said.
“But at the same time, ISIS very explicitly said, even if you can’t come to the Levant to fight alongside us, you can use whatever is within your reach in your home countries to carry out attacks in support of our overall aims,” Hoffman said. “And this almost immediately precipitated a series of inspired ISIS attacks.”
By 2019, ISIS was weakened following a global coordinated effort to defeat the terrorist group and it subsequently lost most of its physical territory in Iraq and Syria.
Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the group’s loss of physical territory has not completely diminished its power. “It continues to carry out attacks. It continues to operate its affiliates. It continues to recruit. It continues to publish propaganda,” Margolin said. “The group is still in existence, just not necessarily how we thought about it when it was controlling physical territory in Syria and Iraq.”
The Popular Mobilization Forces display weapons seized from ISIS in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, in 2023.
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The allure
ISIS embraced “new” forms of media when it began to emerge, Margolin said. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube all offered new avenues to spread its message to men, women and children around the world.
“When Islamic State first came onto the scene, they were kind of seen as the new kids on the block of jihadist groups,” Margolin said. They used short, flashy videos (at times depicting graphic violence), and homemade magazines published in multiple languages — all of which contributed to their ability to spread their agenda to a very wide audience, she said.
ISIS embraced “new” forms of media when it began to emerge. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube all offered new avenues to spread its message and influence around the world.
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ISIS has now been largely pushed out of most mainstream social media sites and onto the dark web and encrypted platforms, but there are still ways to access the material, said Daniel Byman, the director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and other experts.
It’s still unclear what Jabbar’s motivation was for joining ISIS. He was a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who served as a human resources and IT specialist from March 2007 until January 2015, serving an 11-month stint in Afghanistan starting in February 2009. He later served in the Army Reserves as an IT specialist until July 2020. At the end of his service, he was a staff sergeant.
Anyone could be drawn into extremism, Margolin said.
“There’s no one profile of an American who joins the Islamic State,” she said. “It’s really important to remember that this is a homegrown threat. This is a threat that has emerged from grievances that people feel here in the United States.” Those grievances could include a traumatic event, a divorce, financial troubles, or political motivations.
What does the future hold?
Margolin estimates that about 5,000 to 10,000 insurgents are still affiliated with ISIS — a far cry from its height of tens of thousands. Even with those reduced numbers, the group has its eyes set on rebuilding. The current power vacuum in Syria offers a prime opportunity for ISIS to try to regain its old territory, she noted.
In the past year, U.S. government officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, have warned about the possible resurgence of ISIS. They say it’s a real threat that could manifest in major, orchestrated attacks on the U.S. and other nations. But the world should expect to continue to see these individuals inspired by ISIS launching attacks around the globe, Margolin and Hoffman said.
“That’s why I think we have to [be] on our guard going forward and be concerned about replication of the events in New Orleans,” Hoffman said.