ISLAMIC STATE STILL A WORLD THREAT, U.S. WARNS

As the US works on its military withdrawal from Afghanistan, members of the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group met earlier in the week, to chart future steps against the extremist group, Matthew Lee reported for the Associated Press (AP).

The meeting came just a day after the US launched airstrikes against Iran-backed militias near the Iraq-Syria border. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio co-chaired the gathering of senior officials from the seven-year-old, 83-member bloc.

Participants were taking stock of current efforts to ensure the complete defeat of IS, whose remnants still pose a threat in Iraq and Syria and have shown signs of surging in parts of Africa.

Amid significant other international priorities, including taming the coronavirus pandemic and stepping up the fight against climate change, the coalition is hoping to stabilize areas liberated from IS, repatriate and hold foreign fighters accountable for their actions and combat extremist messaging.

Blinken and Di Maio urged representatives of the 77 other countries and five organizations that make up the coalition not to drop their guard. “We must step up the action taken by the coalition, increasing the areas in which we can operate,” said Di Maio. Outside of Iraq and Syria, he said there was an “alarming” surge in IS activity, particularly in the Sahel, Mozambique, and the Horn of Africa.

He called for the coalition to create a special mechanism to deal with the threat in Africa. Blinken noted that despite their defeat, IS elements in Iraq and Syria “still aspire to conduct large-scale attacks.”

He also announced a new US contribution of $436 million to assist displaced people in Syria and surrounding countries and called for a new effort to repatriate — and rehabilitate or prosecute — some 10,000 IS fighters who remain imprisoned by the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF).

“This situation is simply untenable,” Blinken said. “It just can’t persist indefinitely.” However, no countries present made any new commitment to repatriating their citizens and it was unclear if the number of detainees could be reduced in any significant way in the near term.

WEEKLY FEATURE : PAL READY TO SOAR WITH PANDEMIC