ROME: As the United States works on its military withdrawal from Afghanistan, members of the global coalition fighting the militant Islamic State group met on Monday to chart future steps against the group.

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 stabilise 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 organisations 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”. “Together, we must stay as committed to our stabilisation goals as we did to our military campaign that resulted in victory on the battlefield,” he said.

Blinken 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 Defence Forces.

This situation is simply untenable, Blinken said. It just can’t persist indefinitely.

He also announced sanctions against Ousmane Illiassou Djibo, a native of Niger, who is a key leader of IS affiliate in the greater Sahara. Djibo was designated a global terrorist, meaning that any of his US assets are frozen and Americans are barred from any transactions with him.

In addition to the meeting on IS, foreign ministers of countries concerned about the broader conflict in Syria met in Rome ahead of a critical UN vote on whether to maintain a humanitarian aid corridor from Turkey. Russia has resisted reauthorising the channel amid stalled peace talks between the Syrian government and rebel groups.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2021