What is the Islamic State, and what attacks has it inspired by offshoots and lone wolves?

WASHINGTON — Police say they have recovered the stark black banner of the Islamic State extremist group from the truck of an American man from Texas beaten among the New Year’s party goers in New Orleans’ French Quarter on Wednesday, killing 15 people.

The investigation is expected to look in part at what support or inspiration driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle Eastern group, or from one of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.

Removed from the self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq more than five years ago by a US military-led coalition, the Islamic State has focused more on seizing territory in the Middle East than on organizing massive al-Qaeda-style attacks on the West.

But on its home turf, Islamic State has welcomed any opportunity to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. And it has had success, though it has waned in recent years, in inspiring people around the world drawn to its ideology to carry out horrific attacks on innocent civilians.

Here’s a look at the Islamic State, its current status, and some of the armed groups and lone wolves that have killed under the Islamic State banner.

The Islamic State is also known as both IS and ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

It started as a breakaway group from Al-Qaeda.

Under leader Abu Bakr al-BaghdadiBy 2014, IS had seized vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria. Within the area under its control, it killed and brutalized members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.

In 2019, a US-led military intervention had driven Islamic State from every last inch of its territory. Al-Baghdadi killed himself that same year, and two children near him, detonating an explosive vest as American forces closed in on him.

Currently, the central Islamic State group is a dispersed and greatly weakened organization working to regain combat power and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstructing itself there.

And that ISIS flag? Usually it is a stark black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central creed of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the group’s coercive violence as a perversion of their religion.

Some experts argue that Islamic State is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks in which the group itself may have no real role.

Islamic State’s ruthless credo and military successes have helped boost affiliate groups in Africa, Asia and Europe. It is a highly decentralized alliance.

Many breakaways have carried out deadly attacks, including one in March 2024 blamed on an Afghanistan-based Islamic State affiliate that killed some 130 people in a Moscow theater.

If the attack in New Orleans is confirmed to have been inspired by Islamic State, it would be the largest attack on US soil in years.

The threat from radicalized followers of the group in the US appeared to diminish after a wave of violent plots about a decade ago.

Those attacks included a 2014 attack by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Floridaby a gunman who killed 59 people, pledged his allegiance during a 911 call to the then-leader of IS and railed against the “dirty ways of the West.”

Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — traveling to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate. In addition to al-Baghdadi, Defense Department attacks have taken out other officials and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they materialize.

But over the past year, FBI officials have warned of a significantly increased threat of international terrorism following Hamas’s rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The intelligence group SITE reported that IS supporters were celebrating in online chat groups on Saturday.

“If he’s a brother, he’s a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” one of them quoted.