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January 6, 2025 
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Good morning. We're covering an increase in radical Islamist terrorism — as well as Jan. 6, Haiti and the Golden Globes.
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| New Orleans last week. Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times |
The ISIS threat
The killing of 14 people on New Year's Day in New Orleans was the latest sign of a resurgence in radical Islamist terrorism. Some of the attacks — like the one last week — seem to have been merely inspired by ISIS, the network of groups that are offshoots of Al Qaeda. In other cases, ISIS groups played an active role in the planning.
In today's newsletter, we'll detail the scope of the recent terrorism and explain the main reasons for ISIS's resurgence.
A catalog of violence
The list of attacks and plots either inspired or aided by ISIS over the past five years is longer than many people may realize. It includes:
- A double suicide bombing in the Philippines that killed at least 14 people in 2020.
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- Several attacks in France, including the beheading of a teacher in 2020, the fatal knifing of three people in a church in Nice in 2020 and the killing of a teacher in the small city of Arras in 2023.
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- The killing of four people by a gunman in a bustling Vienna neighborhood in 2020.
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- The fatal stabbing of a British member of Parliament in 2021 while he was meeting with constituents inside a church in a seaside town.
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| Leigh-on-Sea, England in 2021. Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
- A suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 13 U.S. troops and roughly 170 civilians in August 2021.
- The stabbing of six people at a supermarket in New Zealand in September 2021.
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- Two attacks in Israel in March 2022 that killed a total of six people.
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- A mass shooting in Oslo, apparently targeting L.G.B.T. Pride events, that killed two people and wounded 21 in June 2022.
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- The fatal shooting of two Swedish soccer fans in Brussels in 2023.
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- A bombing in eastern Iran that killed about 100 people attending a ceremony honoring Qassim Suleimani, the deceased Iranian general, just over a year ago.
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| Kerman, Iran, in 2024. Sare Tajalli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
- The killing of a worshiper at a Catholic church in Istanbul by two gunman last January.
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- A mass shooting at a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed 145 people and injured more than 500 last March.
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| Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, in 2024. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
- The fatal shooting of six people near a Shiite mosque in Oman last summer.
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- A foiled plot to bomb a Taylor Swift concert last summer in Austria that the authorities believe could have killed hundreds.
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- The fatal stabbing of three people at a festival in western Germany in August.
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- Attacks in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Niger, Pakistan and Syria that together have killed hundreds of people.
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Why now
ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, began in Iraq two decades ago during the U.S. war there. It once controlled a large piece of territory in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S., under the Trump administration, largely defeated ISIS there.
Today, it is a loose network of chapters with a shared fundamentalist Sunni Muslim ideology. Its sympathizers have attacked Shiite Muslims, in Iran and elsewhere, as well as Christians and Jews. ISIS claims authority over all Muslims and has sometimes clashed with other extremist Sunni groups, including the Taliban.
There are at least four reasons for the recent resurgence.
First, recent coups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have left a power vacuum in the Sahel region of West Africa. "The breakdown in governance in the Sahel has led to turmoil and insecurity that's created space for bad actors including ISIS and Al Qaeda," our colleague Eric Schmitt said. (We recommend this story by Eric and Ruth Maclean.)
Second, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 reduced the pressure on an ISIS chapter there known as ISIS-K, and it has since expanded beyond Afghanistan. ISIS-K was behind the Iran bombing, the Moscow concert attack and the Taylor Swift plot.
"The one silver lining in all three of these plots is that U.S. intelligence detected them in advance," Eric said. (The U.S. warned Iran and Russia about the two plots there, to no avail.) "This shows that even though U.S. forces can no longer apply pressure on the group in Afghanistan, U.S. spy agencies have made tapping into their electronics a high priority."
Third, ISIS has begun to reassert itself in the parts of Iraq and Syria that it once controlled. And the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad seems likely to give the group more ability to operate, as Charles Lister, a terrorism expert at the Middle East Institute, explained in a recent Times Opinion essay.
Fourth, Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war seem to have encouraged more attacks. Hamas fighters streamed some of their killings that day partly to inspire copycat terrorism. "We've seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole 'nother level after Oct. 7," Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director, told Congress last spring.
Michael Crowley, a diplomatic reporter at The Times, notes that Israel's destruction of Gaza and recent U.S. airstrikes in Yemen have also caused anger in much of the Muslim world. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the New Orleans attacker, seemed upset both by problems in his personal life and by the carnage in the Middle East, his half brother told The Times. "He didn't like it — he said it was genocide on both sides, inhumane," the half brother said.
The bottom line: ISIS remains weaker than it once was, but it still presents a threat — one that's "more diverse, more complex and more decentralized" than in the past, as Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently put it.
For more
Jan. 6
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| Casey Cusick and Jenna Ryan both served time in prison for their involvement in Jan. 6. September Dawn Bottoms; Desiree Rios for The New York Times |
- Hundreds of rioters accused of nonviolent crimes during the Jan. 6 attack have wrapped up their cases. Some regret their actions; others do not.
- "A day of love": Donald Trump and his allies have spent four years trying to reinvent the Capitol attack by weaving a tale of martyrdom.
- A joint session of Congress will meet today to certify Trump's election. Kamala Harris, who has been largely out of public view since her loss, will preside.
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More on Politics
Middle East
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| Weighing emeralds in Kabul. Elise Blanchard for The New York Times |
More International News
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| In Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Jean Feguens Regala/Associated Press |
Other Big Stories
Opinions
A pardon from Trump for the Jan. 6 rioters is a desecration of justice, writes Aquilino Gonell, a Capitol Police sergeant during the Capitol attack.
Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump and Jimmy Carter.
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| Pastor Katrina Foster in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Timothy O'Connell for The New York Times |
The church fixer: This Brooklyn pastor is trying to help struggling churches keep their doors open.
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Golf: Hideki Matsuyama won The Sentry, finishing a record 35-under par.
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| "Wicked" winners. Amy Sussman/Getty Images |
The Golden Globes — the first awards show of the season — took place last night. "The Brutalist," about an architect who flees postwar Europe for the U.S., won some of the night's big awards, including best actor for Adrien Brody. The other big winner was Netflix's "Emilia Pérez," which took home four awards. Elsewhere, "Wicked" snagged the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement accolade. See the full list of winners.
More on the Globes
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| Demi Moore Rich Polk/Penske Media, via Getty Images |
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| David Malosh for The New York Times |
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Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch |
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