As authorities began surveying the carnage and searching for clues after Sunday’s mass killing in Australia, they found a marker that has surfaced repeatedly in recent years at scenes of horrific violence.

The black flag of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is no longer associated with the sprawling territorial “caliphate” the group once controlled in the Syrian desert. It no longer serves as a banner beckoning Islamist militant recruits from across the globe or as the symbol of an organization with tight operational control over its terrorist plots and media profile.

But the discovery of Islamic State flags at the scene of the shooting attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, according to Australian officials and video footage from the scene, served as a reminder that the group continues to inspire violence on a global scale with more frequency and tenacity than other terrorist organizations, according to security officials and terrorism experts.

The Islamic State has gone “from being a governing authority that shocked the world” to an organization that has “reverted to its DNA as a terrorist group that controls no territory but still counts thousands of members,” said Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow for counterterrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations.

{snip}

The organization also provided a reminder of its presence in Syria in an attack Saturday that killed two U.S. Army soldiers and an American civilian interpreter. U.S. officials said the killing in Palmyra was carried out by a member of Syria’s security forces under investigation for alleged allegiance to the Islamic State organization.

{snip}

The Sydney shooting came just under a year after an attacker allegedly inspired by the Islamic State killed 14 people and injured dozens by ramming his truck into a New Year’s Eve crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran who had posted videos on social media declaring his allegiance to the Islamic State, according to U.S. officials, and, like the Sydney attackers, he left an ISIS flag in his vehicle.

Last year, the Islamic State claimed credit for an attack on a Moscow concert venue in which at least 143 people were killed. Also in 2024, the CIA helped disrupt a similar plot by alerting authorities in Austria to an alleged Islamic State operation aimed at killing hundreds of people at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. Other attacks and arrests linked to the Islamic State have targeted locations as disparate as Stockton, California, and Sri Lanka.

{snip}

In seeking to reestablish its relevance, the Islamic State has exploited outrage among Muslims over Israel’s campaigns against militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas after the latter killed or captured hundreds of Israelis in an Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border invasion, according to European and Arab security officials.

{snip}

The timing of the Akram probe coincides with an Australian investigation of a Sydney resident, Isaac El Matari, who was convicted of planning attacks in Australia “on behalf of the Islamic State,” according to Australian court records.

{snip}

At El Matari’s sentencing in 2021, an Australian judge downplayed the threat he posed in dismissive terms that echoed some assessments of the Islamic State after it lost its territory — which will probably now be revisited. “He had no followers. He had not persuaded anyone to his cause in Australia,” the judge said. “There was no direct or indirect threat to anyone. Although imbued with extremist ideals, the likelihood of any terrorist act coming to fruition in Australia was very low indeed.”

The post Black Flag of ISIS Surfaces Again as Group Continues to Be Tied to Attacks appeared first on American Renaissance.