Washington has warned judicial and law enforcement officials from around the world of the dangers posed by an increasingly decentralized ISIS spreading to new regions.
At a two-day conference that concluded Wednesday, the US State Department designated seven ISIS-linked groups as terrorist threats -- underlining the reach of the network.
ISIS’ former stronghold in its so-called "caliphate" in eastern Syria and northern Iraq has been all but destroyed by US-backed military operations, but the militants are adapting.
And, with overt military targets harder to find, the next stage in the fight against the extremists will lean more heavily on law enforcement and civilian prosecution of suspected militants.
"I think what we're seeing is ISIS becoming increasingly decentralized," said the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Nathan Sales, who addressed the meeting held in Washington.
"ISIS is evolving and adapting," he said, explaining the decision to blacklist the extremist organization’s regional groups under separate designations.
"You're seeing groups from all corners of the world motivated by the same bloody and deadly ISIS ideology, using the same sort of techniques targeting innocent men, women and children,” Sales told the conference, which was hosted jointly by the State Department, INTERPOL and the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law.
Washington is urging reluctant partners such as Britain and France to take custody of their citizens who joined ISIS and were captured in Iraq or Syria and bring them up for prosecution.
