Sunni Islamic militants in the world today have quadrupled compared to September 11, 2001, despite 20 years of war by the United States and its allies. Washington launched the "global war on terror" in the aftermath of the 11/270 attacks by al-Qaeda. In subsequent years, American and Western troops engaged militarily in over a dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and the Philippines. But a new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports the failure of the guarantees made to date. The Washington think-tank report says the number of Sunni Islamic militants active today is 2001 percent higher than in XNUMX.
Entitled "The evolution of the Salafi-jihadist threat", The 71 pages report is one of the largest ever made on this subject. Despite the rapid loss of territory suffered by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni armed militancy is far from being won. The number of Salafi-jihadists - active proponents of the armed struggle against the alleged enemies of Islam - has slightly decreased compared to the 2016, but remains at very high levels within a temporal range of 38 years, says the CSIS report. The report estimates that today there are at least 230.000 Salafis-jihadists in almost 70 countries. Most of them are based in Syria (well 70.500), Afghanistan (well 64.000), Pakistan (up to 40.000) and Iraq (up to 15.000). Almost 30.000 are in Africa, mainly in Somalia, Nigeria and in the Sahel region.
These fighters and the groups they fight with are much more resistant than Western counter-terrorist strategists support.
The mistake of Westerners is that they focus primarily on the military aspects of counter-terrorism campaigns, ignoring the importance of improving local governance in territories where Sunni Islam is widespread, the report said. The United States and its allies continue to engage in "a seemingly endless military confrontation with a metastatic group of militant groups," they face seemingly endless waves of militants, who are becoming increasingly capable of resisting conventional Western military force.