UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says in a new report that the threat to international peace and security from extremist group Daesh is rising, pointing to an “alarming” expansion of its affiliates in Africa and its focus on a comeback in its former self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.
The report to the UN Security Council, which was circulated Tuesday, said Daesh and other terrorist groups have taken advantage of “the disruption, grievances and development setbacks” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, both on the ground and online.
While lockdowns in non-conflict areas suppressed terrorist activity, in conflict areas where pandemic restrictions have less impact the threat from Daesh “has already increased,” Guterres said.
“As pandemic-related restrictions gradually ease, there is an elevated near-term threat of Daesh-inspired attacks outside conflict zones by lone actors or small groups that have been radicalized, incited and possibly directly remotely online,” he said.
The UN chief said this exemplifies a wider and evolving risk from the accelerated use of digital technologies during the pandemic, and the potential for “new and emerging technologies to be used for terrorist purposes.”
In assessing Daesh’s threat, Guterres said its leader, Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman Al-Mawla, “remains reluctant to communicate directly with supporters,” and “the group’s command and control over its global affiliates has loosened, even though it continues to provide guidance and some financial support.”
He said the autonomy of regional affiliates has strengthened especially in West Africa and the Sahel, East and Central Africa, Afghanistan and South Asia. This evolution will be an important factor in Daesh’s future global impact, he quoted unidentified UN member states as saying.
Member states also assess that the extremist group “will continue to prioritize regrouping and seeking resurgence” in Iraq and Syria as its core area of operations, he said.
The 16-page report, prepared by Security Council counter-terrorism committee and by experts monitoring sanctions on Daesh, said the group remains active in wide swaths of Syria, where it is seeking to rebuild its combat capabilities and expand its insurgency.
Guterres said Daesh wages hit-and-run operations against checkpoints from hideouts on both sides of the Euphrates River in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor and continues operations against government forces and in the Syrian desert.
In Iraq, Daesh remains under constant counter-terrorism pressure but continues to carry out hit-and-run operations “seeking to undermine critical infrastructure projects, inflame sectarian divisions and communal grievances and generate media coverage,” he said.
As for the extremist group’s finances, the UN chief said estimates of financial reserves available to Daesh in Iraq and Syria range between $25 million and $50 million, with one unidentified UN member state saying most funds are in Iraq.
The secretary-general said the most striking development in the first half of 2021 has been the expansion of Daesh in Africa, where terrorist groups have inflicted the largest number of casualties.
He said some of the most effective Daesh affiliates are spreading their influence and activities from Mali into Burkina Faso and Niger, from Nigeria into Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and from Mozambique into Tanzania.
“It highlights that the interplay between terrorism, fragility and conflict has grown stronger, and underscores the need for an urgent, global response to support African countries and regional organizations,” Guterres said.
In Afghanistan, he said, the Daesh affiliate has expanded its presence in several provinces and in and around the capital Kabul, “despite leadership, human and financial losses during 2020.” In Kabul, most of its attacks have targeted minorities, civil society actors, government employees and security forces, he said.
In Daesh’s efforts to regroup and rebuild in Afghanistan, Guterres said the group has prioritized the recruitment and training of new supporters and hopes to attract Taliban members and other militants who reject the US-Taliban agreement as well as fighters from Iraq.
Estimates of Daesh strength in Afghanistan range widely, from 500 to 1,500 fighters, with one unidentified UN member state saying its strength may rise to 10,000 in the medium term, he said.
Guterres said UN member states have already warned “that Daesh could regain the ability to orchestrate international attacks if either its core or one of its regional affiliates became strong enough.”
“This scenario has only become more plausible,” the UN chief warned.
UN chief: Threat to global peace from Daesh rising
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UN chief: Threat to global peace from Daesh rising
- The report said Daesh and other terrorist groups have taken advantage of the disruption caused by COVID-19
- It added that the group remains active in wide swaths of Syria where it is seeking to rebuild its combat capabilities
Israel's settler movement takes victory lap as a sparse outpost becomes a settlement within a month
- Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank
YATZIV SETTLEMENT, West Bank: Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley.
Orthodox Jewish women in colorful head coverings, with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard.
The scene Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site, overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, into a settlement. Over the years, they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding tight to the hope the land would one day become theirs.
That moment is now, they say.
Smotrich goes on settlement spree
After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement’s name means “stable” in Hebrew.
“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”
With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.
Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.
While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state.
With Netanyahu and Trump, settlers feel emboldened
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.
The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, the local settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.
“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
“Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen.”
Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on Dec. 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.
“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”
Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that Israel’s government was in talks with the US to build a Palestinian children’s hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the US Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.
The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the US Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began weekly demonstrations at the site calling on Israel to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or ... security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. “They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”
The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings and exhibits
Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.
“Once it is military installation, it is easier than to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.
Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”
Palestinians say the land is theirs
The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27 percent in 2025, according to Israel’s military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to pop up around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families,” he said.
A bypass road, complete with a new yellow gate, climbs up to Yatziv. The peace park stands empty.
