An Islamic State flag attached to the pickup truck used to kill and injure dozens of people in New Orleans is a grim reminder of the persistent threat posed by Islamist extremism.
Investigators are rushing to understand why Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, the US citizen and army veteran who is suspected of carrying out the atrocity in the early hours of New Year’s Day, appears to have been inspired by the terrorist group, also known as ISIS.
A key question will be establishing whether he was self-radicalised by the terrorist group’s extreme ideology – or whether there was any kind of direction or enabling from actual IS members or other radicalised individuals.
An IS flag was attached to the pick-up truck
The FBI initially said they did not believe the man, who was killed in a shootout with police after ploughing his rental truck into his victims in one of the United States’ worst acts of terrorism, had acted alone.
Latest updates on New Orleans attack
But President Joe Biden later said that the “situation is very fluid”, and with the investigation continuing, “no one should jump to conclusions”.
He also revealed that the suspect had posted videos on social media mere hours before the attack indicating that he “was inspired by ISIS”.
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President Joe Biden said Jabbar was ‘inspired by ISIS’
Whatever caused Jabbar to commit such carnage, his murderous rampage and the use of the IS flag underline the danger still posed by extremist Islamist ideology five years after the physical dismantling of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar. Pic: FBI
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President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly described how his administration “defeated ISIS” during his first term as president.
It is true that the US-led coalition against Islamic State helped Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces recapture swathes of territory that had fallen under IS control.
The US military also carried out a raid in October 2019 that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then head of Islamic State.
Pic: AP
But his extremist ideology that drove tens of thousands of fighters to pledge their allegiance to Islamic State – carrying out horrific acts of murder, torture and kidnap of anyone who did not follow their warped interpretation of Sunni Islam – has never gone away.
Many of the group’s fighters have been captured and are held in camps and detention centres in northern Syria, but their fate is looking increasingly uncertain following the collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad at the hands of another Sunni Islamist militant group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was once aligned with Islamic State.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the HTS leader turned de facto ruler of Syria, has sought to distance his group from their past links with Islamist extremism.
But HTS is still considered a terrorist entity by the UK, the US and other western powers.
Experts fear that events in Syria may inspire sympathisers and supporters of Islamic State across the world to carry out new attacks.
It is far too soon to link specific events like the toppling of the Assad regime to the bloodshed on the streets of New Orleans.
But security officials, including the head of MI5, have long been warning about a resurgent threat from Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
In a speech in October, Ken McCallum spelt out the terrorist trend that concerns him most: “The worsening threat from al-Qaeda and in particular from Islamic State”.