Coordinated efforts by Anglo-American military and intelligence agencies have resulted in the killing or capturing of nearly every senior commander of the Islamic State’s online force. The close-knit group of Islamic State hackers and online propagandists, which are informally known as “the Legion”, is responsible for hacking and online recruitment incidents that led to several lone-wolf attacks in the West. In one incident in March of 2015, the Legion claimed responsibility for the unauthorized release of personal details of over 1,300 American government employees, with orders to Islamic State volunteers to kill them. In other instances, Legion operatives reached out to impressionable young men and women in Western Europe and the United States and convinced them to move to Syria or conduct attacks at home.
According to The New York Times, which published an article
last week about the current state of the Legion, in the early days of
its emergence the group was viewed as a law enforcement problem.
However, there were several successful and unsuccessful attacks by
lone-wolf actors in the United States during the summer of 2015.
According to The Times, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
became overwhelmed and “was struggling to keep pace with the threat”
posed by the Islamic State on the domestic front. It therefore pressed
the US Department of Defense to help tackle the problem at its source.
The DoD then teamed up with the British government, which was monitoring
the Legion due to many of its members being British-born subjects. The
two governments embarked on a “secretive campaign”, which has led to the
capture of nearly 100 individuals associated with the Legion in less
than two years. Another 12 members of the group, who had senior
positions, have been killed in targeted drone strikes since the summer
of 2015, says The Times.
The joint Anglo-American operation is
allegedly responsible for the recent drop in terrorist activity
instigated by the Islamic State in the West. It appears, says the paper,
that the Islamic State is failing to replace the captured or killed
members of the Legion with equally skilled operatives, which may point
to the desperate state of the organization. But the Islamic State
continues to operate a relatively sophisticated media arm, according to
US government officials, and its media reach should not be
underestimated, even as it is losing ground in Syria and Iraq.
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