Islamic State — Executive Annual Threat Assessment (2025–2026)
Operational Trajectory, Geographic Centres of Gravity, and Strategic Outlook
Executive Intelligence Summary
Based on Islamic State (IS) reporting across al-Naba throughout 2025, the organisation sustained a high-volume, geographically dispersed operational tempo, claiming 1,218 attacks and 5,745 killed or wounded over the year. While reported effects are likely inflated, the consistency and dispersion of activity support the assessment that IS remains organisationally resilient, with Africa constituting the primary operational centre of gravity.
Threat level (entry into 2026): Medium–High
Trend: → (stable with episodic spikes)
Time horizon: 3–12 months
Confidence level: Medium
Key Intelligence Question (KIQ)
Is the Islamic State’s sustained operational activity indicative of preparation for renewed escalation, or does it reflect a deliberate strategy of consolidation aimed at preserving long-term resilience in permissive theatres, particularly in Africa?
Key Judgments
• Africa has emerged as the Islamic State’s primary operational centre of gravity, accounting for the majority of claimed attacks and enabling sustained low-to-moderate intensity violence.
• The organisation prioritised chronic pressure and endurance over territorial expansion or complex mass-casualty operations.
• Targeting patterns remained heavily weighted toward security forces and state-aligned armed actors, with recurrent violence against Christian civilians.
• Command-and-control structures appear decentralised but strategically coherent, reducing vulnerability to leadership decapitation.
• Islamic State claims are assessed as broadly reliable regarding attack occurrence, with systematic inflation affecting reported impact rather than event existence.
Key Assumptions
• Reporting published in al-Naba remains a consistent indicator of Islamic State operational activity despite exaggeration of casualty figures and material damage.
• Annual and weekly attack patterns are reflective of strategic intent rather than random fluctuation.
• African wilayat retain tactical autonomy while remaining aligned with central strategic guidance.
• The absence of sustained attacks against hardened infrastructure reflects force preservation choices rather than irreversible capability degradation.
2025 Operational Pattern — What the Data Indicate
Throughout 2025, the Islamic State demonstrated the ability to sustain operations across multiple theatres without decisive escalation. Activity concentrated primarily in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Mozambique, and parts of the Sahel, with secondary activity in Syria and Iraq.
Operational methods favoured ambushes, attacks against patrols and checkpoints, village raids, and selective economic warfare. This approach minimised operational risk while maximising psychological and political impact.
Strategic Assessment
In 2025, the Islamic State operated less as a movement seeking rapid territorial breakout and more as an actor pursuing endurance and systemic disruption. The organisation focused on exhausting local security forces, normalising insecurity in peripheral regions, exploiting governance vacuums, and sustaining recruitment and financing ecosystems.
This strategy is consistent with post-caliphate adaptation and should not be interpreted as organisational weakness. Rather, it reflects rational force management under sustained counterterrorism pressure.
Outlook for 2026
Entering 2026, the Islamic State is assessed as likely to maintain:
• Africa-first operational prioritisation, particularly in West Africa, Central Africa, Mozambique, and Somalia.
• A stable baseline tempo punctuated by episodic surges driven by local opportunity structures.
• Continued emphasis on war of attrition and selective economic warfare.
• Occasional extra-wilayat incidents as opportunistic demonstrations of reach rather than a systematic external operations campaign.
Key Intelligence Gaps
• Cross-border logistics and facilitation networks supporting African provinces.
• Revenue composition and relative reliance on taxation, extortion, trafficking, and resource rents.
• Degree of central tasking versus local initiative within provincial operations.
• External operations pipelines beyond core theatres.
Early Warning Indicators (2026 Escalation Signals)
• Sustained targeting of hardened military installations or critical infrastructure.
• Re-emergence of systematic attacks against Shi’a civilians or symbolic sectarian targets.
• Shift in propaganda tone from persistence and legitimacy toward mobilisation or revenge.
• Multi-week clustering of attacks within a single wilaya, indicating campaign preparation.
• Repeated attacks against economic chokepoints with consistent cadence.
Analytical Confidence Statement
This assessment is offered with medium confidence, reflecting consistent multi-source corroboration of attack occurrence, tempered by persistent uncertainty regarding reported impact and internal command dynamics.
This Executive Annual Threat Assessment provides a strategic baseline for evaluating Islamic State activity in 2026 and should be read in conjunction with near-term operational forecasts.
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© Daniele Garofalo Monitoring - All rights reserved.
Daniele Garofalo is an independent researcher and analyst specialising in jihadist terrorism, Islamist insurgencies, and armed non-state actors.
His work focuses on continuous intelligence monitoring, threat assessment, and analysis of propaganda and cognitive/information dynamics, with an emphasis on decision-oriented outputs, early warning, and strategic trend evaluation.
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Solid methodlogy here. The distinction between tactical persistence and strategic escalation is critical for intelligence consumers trying to interpret dispersed activity patterns. I've seen teams misread chronic low-intensity ops as capability constraints when it's actually optimized force preservation. The Africa-first assessment aligns with what open-source monitoring has been showing for months, but framing it as rational adaptation rather than organizational weaknes is the right call.