WASHINGTON - A US Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck that he rammed into New Year's revelers in New Orleans shows how the extremist group still retains the ability to inspire violence despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition.

At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State "caliphate" imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.

Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself "caliph" of all Muslims.

The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.

Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The UN estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.

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