Nearly three years after their self-declared caliphate was dismantled and their forces defeated in a battle by the Euphrates river, Islamic State fighters are waging a guerrilla campaign from remote regions of Iraq and Syria.
The March 2019 battle of Baghouz, by the Syria-Iraq border, ended Islamic State control which once extended across swathes of both countries, including the cities of Raqqa and Mosul.
Last year Iraq captured Sami Jasim, another Iraqi national who was a deputy to Baghdadi and a close aide to Quraishi, in northern Syria with Turkish help. "This is an organisation that has retained a significant amount of manpower," said Charles Lister of the Washington-based Middle East Institute. "In terms of kinetically operating cells, I imagine we are talking in the very low thousands in both countries together. But it's virtually impossible to measure.
Meanwhile it has continued targeted assassinations, ambushes, suicide bombings and lesser noticed - but daily - attacks with improvised explosive devices. In Iraq, the hinterlands between central government control and the Kurdish regional government in the north offer opportunities for the group to evade capture.
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