ISIS's Regional Campaign: March 2016

ISIS continued to pursue ongoing campaigns both regionally and further abroad throughout March. The group carried out a spectacular, sophisticated terror attack in Brussels on March 22. The attack, which was unprecedented in Belgium, is part of ISIS’s  ongoing campaign to attack and polarize the West, sowing disorder to make way for future expansion to a global Caliphate. The group also continued to demonstrate its intent to remain and expand in North Africa by establishing lines of communication between the group’s Libyan stronghold and ISIS-linked groups in Tunisia and Algeria. ISIS also showed expanded operational capability in the Sinai, with a pair of increasingly sophisticated explosive attacks, and in the Caucasus with an accelerated set of explosive attacks. ISIS has shown resiliency by persisting in these campaigns in the near and far abroad despite losses inside of Iraq and Syria, such as the loss of Palmyra to pro-regime forces on March 27.