The Jihadist Threat Persists

President Trump and President-elect Biden do not agree on much. But they concur that America needs to extricate itself from “endless wars” against jihadists.¹ There is just one problem: Jihadist terrorists will not go away simply because Americans want them to. ISIS and al-Qaeda will continue to fight on, seeking victory and threatening Americans.² The only question is whether the United States will meet the jihadist terrorist threat proactively overseas or belatedly in America’s homeland.

The political desire to “end” the post-9/11 wars is compounded by a renewed sense of urgency with respect to the great power rivals of China and Russia. Defense and intelligence officials are rightly concerned about the growing military capabilities of these two revisionist powers. However, this should not cloud Washington policymakers’ view of terrorist threats. Indeed, one often hears that America must pivot away from the fight against jihadism so the U.S. military and intelligence establishment has the resources necessary to counter Chinese and Russian aggression.³ However, this argument ignores a simple fact: America has already pivoted away from large-scale post-9/11 wars.

Comparing the number of American service members deployed in jihadist war zones over time is instructive.⁴ In 2008, there were approximately 190,000 American troops deployed across Afghanistan and Iraq.⁵ By June 2020, there were fewer than 15,000 American troops across those two countries and Syria.⁶ Approximately 8,600 of them were stationed in Afghanistan, and the Trump administration is reducing the number to 2,500.⁷ In addition, approximately 6,000 to 7,000 U.S. troops were located across Africa, where they were assisting others in the fight against al-Qaeda and ISIS.⁸ In sum, there were only about 22,000 American troops in jihadist war zones by mid-2020.⁹ That was less than 12 percent of the troops deployed in 2008 in Afghanistan and Iraq.¹⁰

Islamic State recruits at the “Dawoud al Somali” training camp in Somalia’s northern Puntland region, September 21, 2019. (Photo via FDD’s Long War Journal)

The question today is not whether the United States should end massive combat efforts with tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those efforts have already ended. The question today is whether the United States will continue its modest, economy-of-force missions in support of allies and partners in these locations. If the United States does so, it can – at a relatively low and sustainable cost – secure American interests, prevent jihadist advances, and deprive terrorist groups of the space they need to launch attacks on Americans. If Washington withdraws from these locations, there could be dangerous repercussions.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other jihadist groups remain committed to their goal of building an Islamic caliphate. They are attempting to overthrow existing governments throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. They hope to replace those governments with emirates that rule according to Sharia, or Islamic law.

From al-Qaeda’s perspective, the first and most important emirate is the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has portrayed the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the cornerstone of a new caliphate, telling his followers around the globe that they should emulate it as a model for Islamic governance.¹¹

Refusing to take him at his word, the United States seeks an exit from Afghanistan. The international terrorist threats in both Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan will not disappear after America leaves. So, while the war in Afghanistan is not going well, the small U.S. presence has actually made a difference. Even more heartening is the fact that Afghan forces have carried the lion’s share of the burden there since 2012.¹² Thus, with a reduced presence in the country, U.S. forces have helped their Afghan partners prevent the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies from seizing provincial capitals.¹³ This has deprived terrorist groups of the ability to launch another major attack on the United States from Afghanistan. Additionally, the United States has retained a counterterrorism outpost that counters threats across the region – including in Pakistan. Should the United States complete its withdrawal, these gains would dissipate.

A defeat in Afghanistan would also likely inspire al-Qaeda branches elsewhere. In Somalia, al-Shabaab is fighting to topple the internationally recognized federal government and replace it with an al-Qaeda emirate. In West Africa, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its subsidiary, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM, or the “Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims”), seek to form their own emirate in Mali. Both AQIM and JNIM operate elsewhere throughout North and West Africa as well. In Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has twice seized large chunks of the country and still seeks to build its own Sharia regime. Al-Qaeda groups are also fighting in Syria, where the prospects for a jihadist emirate currently look dim, but the threat persists.

In most of these areas, the United States has partnered with local forces or Western allies. In Somalia, for instance, the United States and regional nations have backed the federal government in Mogadishu, preventing jihadists from overrunning the country.¹⁴ America’s support has helped prevent al-Qaeda and ISIS from establishing emirates in parts of Africa. In Syria, a minimal footprint of approximately 2,000 U.S. Special Operations Forces, buttressed by tens of thousands of members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), helped defeat the ISIS caliphate (a smaller ISIS presence remains).¹⁵ Without such support, Americans should expect jihadist regimes would rise or return.

Some Americans might dismiss such warnings and ask: Why is jihad overseas a security concern for Americans? The answer is simple: The jihadists have demonstrated time and again since the 1990s that as they gain ground “over there,” the threat to Americans rises “over here.”¹⁶

The Obama administration withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 based on the appealing but misguided belief that America could declare victory and go home, leaving the troubling Middle East behind. But jihadists stormed through much of Iraq and Syria in the months that followed, seizing territory the size of Tennessee and terrorizing civilians across both countries. Some voices dismissed ISIS’ territorial advances in 2013 and 2014 as a purely local concern.¹⁷ But that assessment quickly proved erroneous, as the so-called caliphate mushroomed into a global menace, plotting terrorist attacks around the world.¹⁸ Today, should the United States give up its small presence in Iraq and Syria, an ISIS resurgence would be unsurprising.

On a tactical level, wholesale withdrawals that remove American troops entirely would make it more difficult for Washington to target key terrorist leaders. Even as Trump has lamented “endless wars,” the U.S. military and intelligence establishment have utilized the relatively modest remaining military presence in key locations to hunt down dozens of dangerous terrorists around the globe. If they were not running from U.S. and partner forces, these terrorists would have had more opportunities to plot and launch attacks on America or our allies.

Intelligence derived from America’s modest military footprint has also made Americans safer. That includes an October 2019 raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.¹⁹ It also includes a strike announced one month prior that killed Hamza bin Laden, Osama’s son and ideological heir in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.²⁰ From September 2019 through June 2020, the United States took out other senior terrorists in Afghanistan, Mali, Syria, and Yemen.²¹ These strikes likely saved countless American lives.

The disconnect between the political rhetoric concerning “endless wars” and the reality of the terrorist threat could not be more pronounced. It is easy to decry war and call to bring American service members home. But it is not so easy for advocates of American retrenchment to explain how the United States would locate and strike the world’s most dangerous terrorists without a military presence near the jihadists’ strongholds. Supporters of wholesale American military withdrawals often fail to acknowledge the importance of forward U.S. military bases as platforms for intelligence collection and counterterrorism operations.

The days of massive U.S.-led “nation-building” projects or ill-conceived interventions in the wider Middle East and Central and South Asia are long over. But a complete American military retreat would represent an unnecessary and devastating self-inflicted wound that would only invite more terrorist attacks on Americans – and perhaps even prompt another wave of wars most Americans would like to avoid.