In a chilling development that has sent shockwaves through the Middle East, Iraq's intelligence chief has revealed that the Islamic State terror group has dramatically multiplied its ranks in Syria, raising the specter of a devastating resurgence of the extremist organization that once carved out a brutal caliphate across the region.
Hamid al-Shatri, Iraq's head of intelligence, disclosed in a rare and alarming interview that ISIS fighters in Syria have ballooned from approximately 2,000 to a staggering 10,000 militants in little more than a year, according to The Washington Post. The dramatic fivefold increase has prompted Iraq to rush thousands of troops and militia members to its border with Syria in an emergency response to the escalating threat.
The Washington Post reported that al-Shatri, speaking in Baghdad this month, has been "warily tracking the growing numbers of Islamic State militants over the border in Syria" throughout the past year. His assessment paints a far grimmer picture than recent United Nations estimates, which pointed to only 3,000 Islamic State members in Syria and Iraq combined as of August — a stark discrepancy that underscores the rapidly evolving and potentially underestimated nature of the threat.
"A Danger to Iraq and Beyond"
The Iraqi intelligence chief did not mince words about the gravity of the situation facing his country and the broader region. "This certainly does pose a danger to Iraq, because ISIS — whether it's in Syria or Iraq or anywhere in the world — is one organization, and it will certainly try and find ground once more in order to launch attacks," al-Shatri warned during the interview conducted in Baghdad earlier this month.
As Iraq's point person for Syrian security issues, al-Shatri has traveled to Damascus three times over the past year for discussions with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, highlighting the unprecedented level of concern at the highest echelons of Iraqi government about the metastasizing threat across their border.
The alarming assessment comes as chaos has engulfed northeastern Syria, where dramatic developments have unfolded in recent days. Syrian government troops pushed last week to retake territory long held by Kurdish-led forces, and during the fighting, chaos broke out at prisons in the region where thousands of ISIS members had been detained. The Washington Post reported that the turmoil "sent escaped militants fleeing into the desert," and while many were rearrested, the Iraqi government responded by quickly deploying thousands of troops and militia members to reinforce its vulnerable border with Syria.
The situation has been compounded by several deeply troubling factors that together create what analysts describe as ideal conditions for a terrorist resurgence. The fighting in Kurdish-held territory has led to chaos at detention facilities housing thousands of ISIS members, with escaped militants fleeing into ungoverned desert regions where they can regroup and reorganize.
Compounding this crisis, the last American troops departed the critical Ain al-Asad base in Iraq's western Anbar province this month, ending a deployment specifically focused on helping Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State. Since the formal handover of the base, U.S. forces are now confined to another base in Irbil in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq's north, and they are due to end their mission there at the end of the year, in line with Iraqi demands.
Al-Shatri acknowledged that the American withdrawal could have serious consequences for regional security. "It's too early to judge the impact of the U.S. withdrawal from Ain al-Asad," he said, but he conceded that "it could affect joint U.S.-Iraqi security operations, particularly in remote areas like the rugged Hamrin mountains," where some of the estimated 500 Islamic State fighters remaining in Iraq are believed to be hiding.
Perhaps most alarming is the source of the new ISIS recruits flooding into the terror organization's ranks. Al-Shatri revealed that the militants who joined the Islamic State in Syria over the past year include men once aligned with President Sharaa — who was previously the head of an al-Qaeda affiliate — but who have "grown disaffected by the political direction the president has taken." Tensions between foreign fighters once among Sharaa's ranks, who used to number in the thousands, have increased as government forces have made arrests, creating a pool of experienced, radicalized fighters ripe for ISIS recruitment.
The intelligence chief further disclosed that his figure includes defectors to the Islamic State from other militant factions such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ansar al-Sunna, though it does not count extremists still loyal to those groups. Additionally, the terror group has successfully recruited large numbers of Arab tribesmen, especially in Sunni Muslim areas that were until recently controlled by Kurdish forces — populations that may harbor grievances exploitable by ISIS propagandists.
"ISIS has definitely taken advantage of the security collapse of the Syrian regime," confirmed Orwa Ajjoub, a doctoral candidate at Malmo University in Sweden who studies the group. However, Ajjoub noted that there seems to be no major shift yet in the group's operational capacities or the scale of its attacks, with the militants mostly carrying out small hit-and-run operations that take advantage of security blind spots. But experts warn this could change rapidly as the organization consolidates its swelling ranks.
Haunting Memories Return
For Iraqis still traumatized by the years-long nightmare of ISIS occupation — when the group controlled more than a third of their country and committed countless atrocities — the new developments have reopened deep wounds. The Washington Post reported that "in Iraq, a country still traumatized by its years of fighting to dislodge Islamic State militants and their self-declared caliphate a decade ago, the new scenes have brought back painful memories."
"The concern, for sure, exists," said Saeed al-Jayashi, an Iraqi official with the National Security Advisory. He revealed that Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani had informed Iraqi officials that the number of Islamic State militants in Syria had grown to around 5,000 during a visit to Baghdad in March of last year — a figure that has apparently doubled in the months since, according to al-Shatri's latest assessment.
For Iraqis, Islamic State efforts to regroup hark back to "a long tragedy of the past," Jayashi said, his words underscoring the profound anxiety gripping the nation. However, he attempted to offer some reassurance: "But Iraq 2025 and 2026 is so different to Iraq in 2014."
Indeed, Baghdad has been transformed since the darkest days when Islamic State forces pushed down the highway to within less than 10 miles from the city center and car bombs tore through the streets. Blast walls have been removed, roads in the fortified Green Zone have opened to traffic, high-rise buildings have sprung up, and the city bustles with new restaurants, shops and malls. After two decades of conflict following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and the subsequent war with the Islamic State, many Iraqis feel that they have finally turned the corner.
"People have seen what it is like to live under them," said Lt. Gen. Abdelwahab al-Saeedi, who commanded Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces during much of the ground campaign against Islamic State. He said the group's command structure has been obliterated and that today it is a shadow of the group that was once awash with cash, controlled oil resources and was armed with drones, tanks and heavy weaponry.
The Iraqi government has scrambled to reinforce its 370-mile desert border with Syria, where Islamic State convoys once zipped freely between the Syrian city of Raqqa and Iraq's Mosul — the twin population centers of the group's self-declared caliphate. The boundary has now been fortified with concrete barriers, trenches, barbed wire and hundreds of thermal cameras, while drones patrol overhead. But security experts warn that the sheer scale of the ISIS resurgence may ultimately overwhelm these defenses if left unchecked.
Deep Mistrust Complicates Coordination
While al-Shatri, who is currently a candidate for Iraq's premiership following national elections late last year, said Iraq has forged a "good partnership" with Syrian security forces in fighting the Islamic State, other Iraqi security officials voice deeper reservations about cooperation with the new Syrian government.
"It's hard to built trust," Jayashi said bluntly, reflecting the profound suspicion many Iraqi officials harbor toward President Sharaa, a former Sunni Muslim militant who spent years in Iraq's prisons on terrorism charges before rising to lead the new Syrian government following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Jayashi described the rollback of Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria by government troops as nothing less than a "disaster" — both for Iraqi security and the message it sends to U.S. partners. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had worked closely with the U.S. military in defeating the Islamic State caliphate, but the Trump administration has made clear that, after this long partnership, the United States no longer backs the SDF in its confrontation with the Syrian government. The sense of abandonment has been so acute that Iraqi Kurdish protesters swarmed the U.S. Consulate in Irbil, accusing the United States of abandoning the Syrian Kurds.
Funding Cuts Threaten Rehabilitation Efforts
In another deeply concerning development, al-Shatri warned that critical funding for programs designed to rehabilitate former ISIS members and their families has been slashed following sweeping cuts in U.S. aid by the Trump administration.
As the security of Kurdish-controlled prisons in Syria came into question, Iraq last week agreed to accept 7,000 Islamic State fighters who had been held there and can now be tried under Iraq's anti-terrorism laws. Iraq said it has already repatriated more than 20,000 of its nationals who had been detained in Syria, including family members of Islamic State fighters who were arrested as the caliphate lost its last territory there in 2019 and who have been held for years in dire conditions.
Al-Shatri said the Iraqi program to rehabilitate them has been largely successful, but like other Iraqi officials, he raised grave concerns about the sudden loss of international support. "We fear of the return of some of these individuals to terrorist activity again," the intelligence chief cautioned, highlighting a potential pipeline of radicalized individuals who could swell ISIS ranks even further if reintegration efforts collapse.
Militia Forces Mobilize
The turmoil in Syria and concerns over the Islamic State have also complicated efforts by the Iraqi government to rein in armed groups inside Iraq, like the powerful pro-Iran militias, as the Trump administration has demanded. Those Shiite militias help make up Iraq's 200,000-strong Popular Mobilization Forces, which first emerged in 2014 to counter the advance of the Islamic State, a Sunni group. Some of the militias, such as Kataib Hezbollah, operate partly outside of state control.
Al-Shatri, who was previously the deputy head of national security and had helped organize militiamen to battle the Islamic State, said that disarming groups that are outside state control will be the "top priority" of the new prime minister. While some of the militias have expressed a willingness to disarm their independent forces, others more closely aligned with Iran have vehemently refused.
As Iraq has reinforced its border in recent days, militia fighters have also raced there, further entrenching their position in the country's security apparatus. The events across the border in Syria have muted calls for militia forces to disarm, according to Wissam al-Kaabi, a spokesman for Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, a Shiite militia close to Iran.
"The need for the readiness of the resistance and its weapons is more urgent than ever," al-Kaabi declared — a statement that underscores how the ISIS resurgence is not only threatening regional stability but also empowering armed factions that operate beyond government control.
Photo: American forces operating in Syria before the collapse of the Baath regime