CEP Report: Central Syria’s ISIS Insurgency In 2023
(New York, N.Y.) — The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) released a report today detailing ISIS activity in central Syria in 2023 showing that ISIS attacks, high quality attacks, and civilian and military casualties rose dramatically last year—and were often more aggressive than in recent years.
The 215 ISIS attacks chronicled by CEP often utilized attack styles the group had not used since 2020, such as fake checkpoints, highway ambushes, and capturing regime positions. More than 285 soldiers and 231 civilians were killed by ISIS in the Homs, Hama, Raqqa, Aleppo, and Deir Ez Zor governorates of central Syria. Another 212 people were wounded.
To read CEP’s report, The Central Syria ISIS Insurgency in 2023, please click here.
“After suffering significant losses in 2021 and 2022, ISIS took on a renewed aggressive posture in 2023—not only through carrying out more attacks on military and civilian targets in Syria, but also by reintroducing tactics that have not been commonplace for several years,” CEP analyst Gregory Waters said. “We are now seeing that the once-dominant position of the Assad regime has waned significantly, and the resurgence of ISIS in central Syria is being bolstered by a new batch of young recruits principally trained in cells located throughout the Badia region. These trends should be monitored closely by Western policymakers, particularly as ISIS attempts to regain lost military equipment through more battlefield captures in 2024.”
