September 11, 2024

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23 Years After 9/11, What Does the Terror Threat Facing the U.S. Look Like?

AP Photo/Andres Kudacki

Twenty-three years after the devastating al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the threat facing the United States is more diverse than ever. Today, al-Qaeda is a different organization than it was more than two decades ago, with different operational and organizational capabilities. But there are some concerning similarities. Al-Qaeda is once again operating training camps in Afghanistan, as highlighted by the most recent United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report, which also notes that al-Qaeda “still uses Afghanistan as a permissive haven under the Taliban.” With no U.S. troops on the ground, the Taliban has served as the primary counterterrorism force against Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K), which remains among the most operationally active transnational terrorist groups operating today.

Al-Qaeda has been significantly weakened over the course of the U.S.-led Global War on Terrorism, and as terrorism scholar Daniel Byman has pointed out, the group is plagued by important shortcomings, including financial problems, leadership disruptions, limited command-and-control, and infighting. However, the United States and its allies have underestimated al-Qaeda before and with counterterrorism now overshadowed by a focus on great power competition, there is growing concern that al-Qaeda may be able to regenerate its networks in Afghanistan and throughout South Asia, making inroads through al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and its cooperation with Pakistani jihadist groups, such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Pakistani Taliban.

Al-Qaeda core has been attenuated, but several al-Qaeda franchise groups and regional branches remain prominent, especially its affiliates in sub-Saharan Africa, where al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in the Sahel have surged in recent years. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen also remains a persistent threat, and is likely working to find ways to capitalize on the ongoing instability in that country to recruit new members and solidify its ranks.

Still, in most regions across the globe, al-Qaeda affiliates have been eclipsed by their Islamic State rivals. IS-K is among the most dangerous terrorist groups currently in the world, fighting to keep a foothold in Afghanistan while launching several high-profile external operations, including attacks in Iran, Türkiye, and Russia. There have been numerous IS-K plots foiled as well, including a plot targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria that was intended to cause massive civilian casualties. The U.S. intelligence community passed information to their Austrian counterparts that helped foil this plot. Many of the individuals who IS-K has radicalized are extremely young, having spent time watching IS-K propaganda videos on TikTok, Telegram, and other social media platforms.

Elsewhere, Islamic State continues to thrive. IS maintains regional affiliates in the Sahel, Central Africa, Mozambique, and Somalia. Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) continue to expand their operations, which now stretch from the West African littoral to the Lake Chad Basin. Entire swaths of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have been overrun with jihadists. Multiple coups in sub-Saharan Africa brought the rise of military juntas, which in turn invited Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, now known as Africa Corps, into the country as a coup proofing mechanism. Relatedly, the Russian mercenaries have conducted scorched earth counterinsurgency campaigns where they operate, killing civilians and committing egregious human rights abuses, which only further compounds the grievances of the local population and forces them into the arms of terrorist groups. In Iraq and Syria, Islamic State is on the offensive, mounting more attacks and operations each month in what seems to be a growing sense of momentum. Meanwhile, Iran continues to work behind the scenes to pressure Iraqi leaders in Baghdad to end the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Tehran may be getting its wish, too, as Reuters recently reported on a deal that would see the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, with hundreds departing one year from now, and the remainder gone entirely by 2026.

Beyond Salafi-jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State, the U.S. also faces threats from Iranian state sponsored terrorism, including among Tehran’s proxy groups known as the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ among them Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and various militia groups across Iraq and Syria. While most of these groups pose a threat more directly in the region, Lebanese Hezbollah likely has the capability to conduct attacks on U.S. soil if conflict between Washington and Tehran escalates into all-out warfare at some point.

Far-right extremists also pose a threat to the United States, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist networks and groups such as The Base, Atomwaffen Division, the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), and others. The U.S. has moved to designate several of these groups, including RIM and NRM, while working to help dismantle the networks of support that underpin racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists worldwide.

On the home front, domestic terrorism remains a major concern, with individuals and small groups of extremists from across the ideological spectrum motivated by a range of grievances. This includes so-called ‘salad bar terrorism,’ wherein extremists pick and choose various facets of wide ranging and sometimes contradictory ideologies, after radicalizing online on social media forums or gaming sites. In the United States, this threat is exacerbated by easy access to automatic weapons.

The terror threat is anything but static. On the contrary, violent non-state actors are constantly seeking new ways to innovate, embracing emerging technologies and working to harness unmanned aerial systems (UAS), artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, and other methods of enhancing their lethality. And with terrorist groups competing with one another for supremacy, the process of outbidding could drive one group to attempt an attack with chemical or biological weapons, in an effort to escalate over its rivals. The challenge is compounded by shifting priorities in the United States. After two decades of aggressive counterterrorism operations across the globe, there is, understandably, a certain sense of counterterrorism fatigue that he set in across the U.S. government. Moreover, with the rise of China and a revanchist Russia invading Ukraine, as well as Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, there have been other priorities that have trumped the counterterrorism mission. The paucity of resources for counterterrorism is likely a trend that will continue, even if many analysts see the correction as more of an overcorrection and thus, myopic in nature.