What forms do Australian connections to Islamic State take, now that the movement has lost its territory in Syria and Iraq? The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’s ongoing inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia has given long-overdue attention to the extreme-right, but also highlighted that Islamic State remains a serious security concern.
To help understand the nature of Australian connections to Islamic State following the loss of its self-proclaimed “Caliphate”, this post examines the recent sentencing of Radwan Dakkak, one of the small number of Australians accused of supporting the movement during the post-“Caliphate” era.
The post first briefly outlines Islamic State’s evolution after its territorial collapse in early 2019, and then discusses what Dakkak’s sentencing reveals about how these global events influence activities inside Australia.
The post-“Caliphate” context
Islamic State’s claim to have recreated the historic Caliphate rested, in part, on the sheer extent of its territorial conquests across Syria and Iraq by mid-2014. This era finally ended in March 2019 when Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US-led Global Coalition Against Daesh, captured the movement’s last strip of territory in the Syrian village of Baghouz. The movement’s fortunes worsened in October 2019 when the United States Joint Special Operations Command killed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Idlib.
However, Islamic State’s collapse in Syria and Iraq did not always lead to setbacks elsewhere in the world, as shown by the horrific Easter 2019 bombings in Sri Lanka less than a month after the fall of Baghouz, and a wave of inspired attacks in Europe throughout 2020.
Moreover, Islamic State’s public announcements increasingly downplayed the importance of territory in Syria and Iraq, and emphasised the strength of new affiliates or provinces elsewhere in the world, including Egypt, Libya, Yemen,Afghanistan, South Asia, and (more ambiguously) Southeast Asia.
Many more provinces were declared throughout Africa, most recently the Central Africa Province (ISCAP) which encompasses the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. These African provinces appear to operate with substantial autonomy from Islamic State’s leadership, which could help explain why they do not seem to have been harmed by the events in Syria and Iraq.
This makes Islamic State’s current situation somewhat similar to al-Qaeda’s situation in the early 2010s. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership had faced serious losses in Pakistan (including the death of Osama bin Laden), but its transnational affiliates remained highly active. Analysts regularly debated how much control the Pakistan-based leadership exerted over its affiliates abroad and what this meant for the movement’s overall strength.
Similar uncertainty surrounds the relationship between Islamic State’s Syrian-based leadership and its affiliates abroad. Uncertainty about the strength of Islamic State's leadership is exacerbated by rumours that the current leader had once been an informant and reports of intense ideological divisions within the movement.
However, there is little uncertainty about the fact that the movement persists, despite the loss of its ability to govern territory in the Middle East which had once been central to its appeal. Islamic State continues to wage an underground insurgency in both Syria and Iraq, and maintains a wide geographic reach. The growth of Islamic State’s provinces means that the movement may currently function more genuinely like a truly transnational insurgency than it did during the “Caliphate” era.
The case of Radwan Dakkak
These changes in the global context have altered the forms that Australian connections to Islamic State take. Most clearly, in recent years there has been little public evidence of Australians travelling to Syria or plotting attacks while receiving instructions from Syria-based operatives. Instead, the July 2019 arrest of a group of Islamic State supporters in Sydney provides an example of what current connections look like.
On Tuesday 2 July 2019, the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team arrested multiple men. One of them, Isaac el Matari, was charged with preparing a terrorist attack and preparing a foreign incursion, to which he later pleaded guilty. Isaac el Matari had previously been jailed in Lebanon in 2017, after being accused of trying to join Islamic State, then deported back to Australia in 2018. According to the criminal charges that he later pleaded guilty to (but has not yet been sentenced for), prior to his arrest in July 2019 he sought to travel to Afghanistan to join Islamic State’s Khorasan province and also plotted a terrorist attack in Australia.
Another of the men, Radwan Dakkak, later pleaded guilty to associating with members of Islamic State and was sentenced on 18 December 2020 to 18 months imprisonment.
The charge of “association” is an unusual offence that demonstrates the breadth of Australia’s proscription powers. The judge who sentenced Radwan Dakkak described it as the “least serious” of all the terrorism offences. According the judge’s statements, the law requires that the individual must have knowingly associated with the members of a terrorist organisation, must have supported the organisation by doing so, and must have intended that the support assist the organisation to expand or continue to exist.[1] Importantly, Radwan Dakkak was not accused of playing any role in Isaac el Matari’s alleged plans to carry out violence inside Australia.
Instead, Dakkak’s conviction was based on three separate activities: communicating with an Islamic State contact in Syria to assist Isaac el Matari’s attempted foreign incursion, communicating with an Islamic State figure in Kenya to support their online outreach, and assisting with the production and distribution of an unofficial publication in support of Islamic State.[2]
Each of these three activities demonstrate different forms that Australian connections to Islamic State can take in the post-“Caliphate” era.
Assisting an attempted incursion to Islamic State affiliate territory
Radwan Dakkak’s conviction was partly based on his support for Isaac el Matari’s intended foreign incursion. Between February and April 2019, el Matari planned to travel to Afghanistan to join Islamic State’s affiliate IS-Khorasan.
IS-Khorasan was one of Islamic State’s early transnational provinces, announced in 2015 but likely established earlier. Its origins remain debated but it appears to have been formed by Central Asian jihadists who trained in Syria with Islamic State and then recruited factions of rival Afghan insurgent groups.
For several years IS-Khorasan repeatedly attacked both the Taliban movement and the Afghan government, along with Afghan civil society. In contrast to some Islamic State provinces which have shown some autonomy from the Syria-based leadership, IS-Khorasan appears to closely “imitate the central hub in its attacks on the Shi’a Hazara minority and urban assassination campaigns—most recently targeting female media workers”. Similarly, IS-Khorasan has been implicated in transnational terrorist plots in countries such as Indonesia and Germany.
IS-Khorasan has also recruited foreign fighters, particularly after Islamic State began to call on its supporters to longer travel to Syria and Iraq from around 2016 onwards. Multiple Islamic State videos in 2018 promoted Afghanistan as a preferable destination.
Radwan Dakkak’s activities show this shift playing out in the Australian context. According to Dakkak’s conviction, early discussions between him and Isaac el Matari were about the feasibility of el Matari travelling to Syria or Iraq. By early 2019, Dakkak sought instead to assist el Matari to join IS-Khorasan by asking an Islamic State member in Syria if they could facilitate his entry into Afghanistan.
Dakkak’s communication with an Islamic State contact in Syria, even as the movement’s territory dwindled in early 2019, shows that Syria remained relevant to Australian Islamic State supporters. But the country was no longer a promising prospect for aspiring fighters to travel to, so Afghanistan served as an alternative.
Assisting Islamic State’s outreach in Africa
Dakkak was also convicted for his communications with a Kenya-based man, Shiekh Hassan Hussein, between 14 March and 2 July 2019. Sheikh Hassan Hussein, also known as Hassan Mahat Omar, was a spiritual leader once affiliated with the Somali jihadist movement al-Shabaab. Sheikh Hassan Hussein has since reportedly switched his allegiance to Islamic State, reflecting the movement’s growing strength in Africa.
Islamic State already had a long-standing presence in Africa as early as 2014, having announced provinces in Libya, Egypt and Algeria, which expanded to Nigeria in 2015 when a major faction of Boko Haram became Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP). This expansion across Africa continued in subsequent years. Islamic State declared a new province in Somalia in December 2017 (IS-Somalia) and by 2019 insurgent groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique had aligned with Islamic State, forming its Central Africa Province (ISCAP).
Given this development, it is not surprising to see some Australian connections to Islamic State figures in Africa. According to Radwan Dakkak’s conviction, he repeatedly communicated with Sheikh Hassan Hussein for several months until his arrest.
However, the court material also states that their conversation topics were doctrinal and spiritual rather than operational. Dakkak’s conviction was based on him having assisted Hussein by translating and publishing his writings, helping Islamic State to reach a wider audience.
Therefore Dakkak’s activities do not in themselves demonstrate substantial Australian connections to Islamic State’s African affiliates, such as the recruitment of foreign fighters or involvement in terrorist plots.
There may of course be other Australian cases with stronger links to Islamic State provinces in Africa, particularly as these affiliates have grown stronger since 2019. But there is little public evidence of this, and these affiliates have rarely sought foreign fighters from Western countries nor (with the exception of the Libyan province) been widely implicated in global terrorist attacks.
Assisting an unofficial media effort
The final activity Radwan Dakkak was convicted for was his involvement with the pro-Islamic State media outlet Ahlut-Tawhid Publications (ATP). This occurred during the same time period as his communications with Hussein, March to July 2019.
ATP has been described as an “unofficial” media outlet for Islamic State. The exact relationship between ATP and Islamic State remains unclear, but Islamic State has reportedly used the ATP magazine From Dabiq to Rome to claim responsibility for attacks.
Some new information on ATP’s relationship with Islamic State came to light on 24 March 2021 when the FBI arresteda Tennassee man, Benjamin Alan Carpenter. The FBI accused him of running ATP, which it described as “an international organization responsible for the transcription and publication of pro-ISIS media in English”. The FBI accused Carpenter of having been in regular communication with an accused Maldives-based Islamic State recruiter, Mohamed Ameen, but there is otherwise little information on ATP’s specific connections to Islamic State.
According to Dakkak’s conviction, he assisted ATP by helping to translate, promote and distribute its material, including Dabiq to Rome. He also helped ATP to produce and distribute videos.
Dakkak’s involvement with ATP reflects a wider shift in the online pro-Islamic State ecosystem. As Islamic State’s official media output declined (due to territorial and personnel losses, tech company crackdowns and information warfare offensives such as Operation Glowing Symphony), the relative importance of unofficial outlets has increased.
Future implications
The case of Radwan Dakkak provides one example of Australian connections to Islamic State in the post-“Caliphate” era. It is not necessarily a representative example; it could prove as anomalous as Haisem Zahab’s attempt to design guided missile technology for Islamic State or the Khayat brothers’ plot to bomb an international airliner and create a chemical weapon. Moreover, Dakkak is not the only Islamic State supporter to be arrested in the years after the movement’s territorial collapse in Syria and Iraq. There have been multiple alleged terrorist plots, though their specific connections to Islamic State (if any) beyond inspiration are currently unclear.
Nonetheless, Dakkak’s sentencing highlights several dimensions of how Islamic State support activities in Australia may manifest in the post-“Caliphate” era.
For example, Islamic State support activities no longer need to centre on Syria. Instead, Afghanistan remains a potential destination for Australians seeking to join Islamic State, just as it had for supporters of other jihadist movements in the 1990s and early 2000s. IS-Khorasan suffered substantial losses throughout 2020 but may be positioned to take advantage of the US withdrawal.
The case also shows that Syria nonetheless remains relevant, given Dakkak’s request to a Syrian contact to help Isaac el Matari’s travel to Afghanistan.
Dakkak’s sentencing also demonstrates a minor Australian connection to Islamic State’s expansion into Africa, but not an operational connection in the sense of recruiting foreign fighters or organising attacks. Instead, along with Dakkak’s involvement with ATP, it highlights the importance of unofficial media efforts in support of Islamic State.
More importantly, Dakkak’s activities demonstrate that Australian connections to Islamic State endured at very moment that the territorial “Caliphate” collapsed, and merely required some adjustment (such as el Matari’s travel plans changing from Syria to Afghanistan).
These sorts of connections are likely to continue to as long as certain global conditions continue, particularly the ongoing conflicts in Somalia and Afghanistan. Islamic State did not create these wars, nor is it a dominant force in them, but the movement nonetheless continues to carve out a space for itself within these conflicts. This has had ramifications across the world, and Australia has not proved to be an exception.
[1] So far, Radwan Dakkak is the only person to have been convicted of this offence.
[2] Dakkak has since been released from prison, placed on a Control Order, and charged with new offences. This post focuses only on the public record of the activities he was arrested for in July 2019 and sentenced for in December 2020, not on any alleged subsequent activities.