The War on Terror was an international military campaign launched by the United States and its allies against al-Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist fundamentalist groups in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks of 11 September 2001. President George W. Bush first used the term "War on Terror" on 16 September 2001, and the campaign began with the Afghanistan War, which saw the US destroy al-Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan and overthrow their Taliban protectors. The campaign expanded with the US-led invasion of Iraq and the start of the Iraq War in 2003, and al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates began a global struggle against Western and secular Muslim democracies in the name of jihad. In Iraq and Afghanistan, US and allied ground troops were deployed to assist the pro-US governments in crushing al-Qaeda-backed insurgencies, while, in countries such as Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria, the US employed the use of drone strikes and special forces to eliminate enemy leaders and other targets. al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a US raid in Pakistan in 2011, and the US withdrew from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2014, expecting that their Islamist rivals were on the verge of defeat. However, the escalation of the Syrian Civil War and the unexpected emergence of the Islamic State caliphate forced the US and its allies to return to the region at the head of an international coalition against IS in "Operation Inherent Resolve". The War on Terror thus dragged on for another decade as IS created a caliphate the size of the island of Britain and carried out terrorist attacks in countries from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Bangladesh in the east to Britain, France, Spain, and the United States in the west. From 2014 to 2019, the US-led coalition succeeded in militarily defeating IS in Iraq and Syria in tandem with the Kurdish YPG and the Iraqi Army, and IS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in October 2019. Although the Islamist cause was slightly weaker than it had been at its peak in the mid-2000s, the War on Terror still dragged on, and its critics argued that a "war on terror" was without an identifiable enemy and could not be won militarily. By 2023, up to 937,000 people were directly killed during the War on Terror, in addition to 3.6 million indirect deaths.
Background[]
Rise of Islamism[]
In the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the once-powerful ideology of Arab nationalism had begun to decline. Arab nationalism had emerged as the sole unifying factor in multiethnic and multi-religious Arab countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt (in Iraq, a Sunni minority ruled over a Shia majority; in Syria, an Alawite minority over a Sunni majority; in Egypt, a Sunni majority over a Coptic minority; and in Lebanon, a Catholic minority over a majority of Muslims and Druze). Around the same time, Islamism had begun to rise in popularity due to the inflammatory works of Sayyid Qutb and the vast oil industry wealth of Saudi Arabia, a Wahhabist kingdom which spent billions of dollars on building fundamentalist madrassas across the Muslim world. Wahhabist imams preached that the Arab defeats in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War were caused by deviation from Islam, and they preached in favor of an Islamic awakening. One of these "awakenings" turned violent in Iran in 1978 when the followers of the exiled Shi'ite imam Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in the Iranian Revolution. The Islamic Revolution was not limited to Shi'ism, however; Saudi Wahhabists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and pressured the Saudi government to adopt an ultra-conservative version of sharia law, and the Muslim Brotherhood unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow the Syrian government in 1980.
Jihad in Afghanistan[]
A major turning point in the history of the Middle East was the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to protect their allied communist regime from the Afghan Mujahideen rebels, Saudi Arabia encouraged several young men to join the Mujahideen and fight in a jihad (religious war) against the atheist Marxists. The Palestinian imam Abdullah Azzam issued a fatwa calling on faithful Muslims to come to the defense of Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion, declaring a "defensive jihad"; this fatwa was even supported by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz bin Baz.
Tens of thousands of Arab volunteers flocked to Afghanistan to join the Mujahideen, and Saudi Arabia used its vast oil revenue to finance the struggle, as did Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's religiously conservative dictatorship in Pakistan. One of the foreign recruits who answered Azzam's call to arms was Osama bin Laden, a young and wealthy Saudi who used his own finances to assist the Mujahideen in their struggle.
In August 1988, Bin Laden became the de facto leader of the Arab foreign fighters based in Peshawar, Pakistan, and, after Azzam's assassination in Peshawar in November 1989, Bin Laden became the undisputed leader of the "Afghan Arabs".
Creation of al-Qaeda[]
In 1989, the Soviet Army completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, and many of the foreign Mujahideen fighters returned home with their experience, ideology, and weapons, often proceeding to follow Azzam's exhortation to export the jihad to their home countries. Influenced by Salafism - a variant of Islamism based on armed struggle and extreme religious vigor - Osama Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda, which incorporated the Arab foreign fighters who remained in Afghanistan even after the Soviet withdrawal. Many al-Qaeda fighters settled in Afghanistan and took Afghan wives, and they gained combat experience while fighting alongside the Taliban in the Afghan Civil War; after the Taliban seizure of power in 1996, al-Qaeda was allowed to set up training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban's protection.
Early al-Qaeda operations[]
While the United States had financed and equipped the Mujahideen during the war with their Cold War rivals, the Soviets, Osama Bin Laden came to despise America due to its role in the Gulf War in 1990-1991. The Saudi and Kuwaiti governments had rejected Bin Laden's offer of military assistance against Ba'athist Iraq, and they instead turned to the United States, allowing US troops to be stationed near the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden was incensed by this, and, in August 1996, Bin Laden declared jihad against the United States, having been angered by their support for Israel against Palestine and their military presence in the Middle East. In February 1998, al-Qaeda released a video declaring war on the West and Israel, and, in May 1998, Bin Laden released a video declaring war on the United States and the West. On 7 August 1998, al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans. In retaliation, President Bill Clinton ordered Operation Infinite Reach, a series of airstrikes on al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. The airstrikes failed to kill any leaders of al-Qaeda, which continued to grow in strength as Islamic extremists from across the Muslim world arrived at their training camps in Afghanistan and became al-Qaeda fighters. On 12 October 2000, the USS Cole bombing killed 17 US Navy sailors off the coast of Yemen. By this point, al-Qaeda had begun to plot a massive attack against the West to make themselves known to the world.
9/11[]
On the morning of 11 September 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four American jet airliners all bound for California. Two of the planes were crashed into the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City in an astonishing suicide attack; another was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, while a fourth plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers attempted to seize back control of the plane from the hijackers. A total of 2,977 victims and the 19 hijackers perished in the attacks, which shocked the world and united America through sorrow and a resolve to bring the perpetrators to justice. On 13 September 2001, for the first time ever, NATO invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, under which the other NATO countries would come to a NATO ally's aid if attacked. On 16 September 2001, President George W. Bush declared a "War on Terror", and, on 18 September, Bush signed a congressional bill to authorize the use of force against the terrorists.
War on Terror[]
Afghanistan[]
Invasion of Afghanistan[]
US troops during the Afghanistan War
On 20 September 2001, President Bush delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, demanding that they turn over Osama bin Laden and the other al-Qaeda leaders for trial. The Taliban demanded that the US government present them with evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement in the attacks, upon which the al-Qaeda leaders would be tried in an Islamic court; the US refused to provide evidence and instead launched an invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October with aid from Britain, Canada, Australia, and local anti-Taliban Northern Alliance fighters. A limited number of US special forces operatives assisted Northern Alliance forces with capturing the major cities from the Taliban and guided US and British airstrikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban positions. The capital of Kabul fell in November 2001, but, during the December 2001 Battle of Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden and the top al-Qaeda leadership slipped through the Tora Bora mountains and into tribal Pakistan.
Taliban insurgency[]
In March 2002, the US forces launched Operation Anaconda to clear the Shah-i-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains of the remaining al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, and the Taliban suffered heavy losses and evacuated the region. The Taliban regrouped in western Pakistan (where they were supported by local Pashtun tribesmen) and began an insurgency against the Coalition forces in late 2002, and a major Taliban insurgency broke out across the country, funded by opium harvests and al-Qaeda support. In February 2010, Operation Moshtarak failed to destroy the Taliban once and for all, and the Coalition forces soon decided to enter into peace talks with the Taliban with the goal of peacefully bringing an end to the brutal war in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama made plans for all US combat troops to leave the country by 2014, but the Taliban's resurgency led to the United States and its NATO allies launching the "Resolute Support Mission" to continue combat operations in Afghanistan until 2024. As the Islamic State grew in power in Iraq and Syria, factions of the Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and formed Wilayah Khorasan, a "province" of the self-proclaimed caliphate. During the late 2010s, the Taliban came to control half of the country, and, in late 2019, the US attempted further peace talks with the Taliban leadership.
Iraq[]
Invasion of Iraq[]
US soldiers toppling a Saddam Hussein statue during the invasion of Iraq
With the War in Terror in progress, President Bush also looked to settle an old score with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whom his father George H.W. Bush had defeated in the Gulf War in 1991. During the 1990s, the United States repeatedly bombed Iraq to enforce no-fly zones over Shia and Kurdish areas and to punish it for refusing to cooperate in weapons inspections. In 2002, the US government stated that it had reason to believe that Ba'athist Iraq was both supporting al-Qaeda and hiding weapons of mass destruction, and, although the United Nations inspector Hans Blix claimed that Iraq was complying with the UN arms sanctions, the US Congress voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq. In March 2003, the US, Britain, Spain, Denmark, Australia, and Poland launched an invasion of Iraq, starting it with an air campaign and using "shock and awe" tactics (heavy aerial bombardment accompanied by rapid ground advances) to rapidly destroy the Iraqi Army. The port of Umm Qasr fell on 21 March 2003, while Baghdad fell in April and Saddam's government quickly dissolved. By 1 May, combat operations in Iraq had ended, as the Coalition forces and their Kurdish Peshmerga allies in the north had secured all of the country's major cities. The post-Saddam government disbanded the Iraqi Army, the one unifying force in the country, and many ex-Ba'athist soldiers collaborated with Sunni extremists in retrieving weapons from the military's former arms caches, leading to the start of an insurgency against the US, Coalition, and Iraqi government forces.
Iraqi insurgency[]
Wanted posters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Ramadi
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist and the head of the small JTJ organization, became the head of the newly-created "al-Qaeda in Iraq" in 2004 and became known for his brutality, ordering suicide attacks on civilian targets and beheading Western captives. In addition, Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, collectively known as the "Special Groups", began an insurgency against the Coalition forces in southern Iraq. In December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces, and he was executed by hanging in 2006. However, this had little impact on the insurgency, which grew stronger in 2004; the US launched offensives against the cities of Najaf and Fallujah, but they failed to pacify the country. In January 2007, President Bush ordered a "troop surge" into Iraq, reducing the violence by 80%; with the power of the insurgents temporarily decreased, President Bush authorized the gradual withdrawal of Coalition troops from Iraq. In 2009, the last non-US forces departed from Iraq, and, in 2010, after killing the al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, US combat operations in Iraq drew to a close. On 18 December 2011, the last US troops exited from Iraq.
Rise of the Caliphate[]
From 2011 to 2013, the extremist cleric Abu Dua led the Islamic State of Iraq in an insurgency against the Iraqi government, carrying out several deadly suicide bombings and building up an army in northern Iraq. At the same time, the Syrian Civil War broke out in neighboring Syria. The civil war spilled over into Iraq, and, in 2013, Abu Dua expanded the ISI's operations into Syria and founded the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", which absorbed 80% of the al-Nusra Front's foreign fighters and several other Islamist militants. In the summer of 2014, ISIL launched a major offensive in northern Iraq, overwhelming the cities of Mosul, Tikrit, and Fallujah and taking control of Anbar Governorate, Nineveh Governorate, and other regions of northern and western Iraq. In July 2014, Abu Dua, now known as "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi", proclaimed himself "Caliph" of the "Islamic State" and called upon Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to the restored caliphate; several jihadist groups as far away as the Philippines, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo became IS "provinces". President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against ISIL after it began a genocide against the Yazidis of northern Iraq, and ISIL infuriated and shocked the world by beheading Western captives and publishing "beheading videos" on the internet. The US and its allies then began "Operation Inherent Resolve", a massive air campaign targeting the ISIL leadership and military in both Iraq and Syria. With aid from US airstrikes and ground forces, the Iraqi Army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units gradually counterattacked against ISIL in Iraq and retook Tikrit in 2015 and Mosul in 2017. In December 2017, with the liberation of ISIL's Iraqi capital of Mosul by Iraqi forces, the Iraqi Civil War was declared to be over, but ISIL's remaining 17,000 fighters in Iraq continued an insurgency against the Iraqi government, as did the 80,000-strong Ba'athist JRTN movement.
Pakistan[]
In 2004, the Afghanistan War spilled over into Pakistan after President Pervez Musharraf sent 80,000 Pakistan Army troops to clear the Waziristan region of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who had crossed the border and taken refuge among the local Pashtun villagers, who were beyond the control of the Pakistani Army. The American CIA also began a campaign of drone strikes against al-Qaeda leaders in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, neutralizing several of the group's leadership while it was in hiding. The War in North-West Pakistan later intensified as Pashtun Islamists founded the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan as the Pakistani version of the Afghan Taliban, although the two groups were mostly unrelated. The TTP overtook several villages in the mountainous tribal belt of northwest Pakistan, but the Pakistan Army launched several military operations in the 2010s to destroy the TTP, which was also reduced to an insurgency.
North Africa[]
In 2002, the end of the Algerian Civil War led to the disarming of the Islamic Salvation Front's armed wing and the destruction of the Armed Islamic Group, but the small Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat became a threat to the United States when its leader Nabil Sahraoui pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda that same year. Sahraoui was killed shortly after, but his successor Abdelmalek Droukdel continued to lead an insurgency in the Maghreb, fighting against the Algerian, Nigerien, Malian, and other West African governments with the goal of establishing an Islamic state in the Maghreb region. The insurgency was sporadic until 2012, when the Malian Civil War allowed for Islamist fighters to overwhelm the nascent Tuareg state of Azawad in northern Mali and commit various atrocities, including the destruction of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu and Gao. While the US provided support to the Malian government, it was France which spearheaded the Western and West African intervention in Mali, launching Operation Serval and sending ground troops to help the Malian Army fight back against the Islamist militants of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine, al-Mourabitoun, and MOJWA, who later coalesced into the JNIM during the late 2010s. The start of the Second Libyan Civil War in 2012 also energized the Islamist cause, as al-Qaeda affiliates in Libya seized control of Benghazi and Derna and enforced sharia law in the territories under their control; they also carried out the 2012 Benghazi attack against the US embassy in Benghazi. With the rise of the Islamic State in 2014-2015, many of these jihadist groups pledged allegiance to the new caliphate as "Wilayat Tarabulus". The beheading of several Egyptian Coptic Christians in 2015 led to an Egyptian air campaign against ISIL, and, in the later years of the 2010s, the Libyan forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar drove the ISIL militants from their strongholds and recaptured their cities, nearly destroying ISIL in Libya. Egypt also fought against ISIL in the Sinai Peninsula, where the former al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Beit al-Maqdis pledged allegiance to ISIL as Wilayat Sinai and engaged in an insurgency against the Egyptian Army.
Horn of Africa[]
The Somali Civil War had broken out in 1992 in the aftermath of the downfall of Siad Barre's communist government, with rival warlords vying for power. al-Qaeda had inserted itself into the struggle during the UN intervention in the country, preaching that the struggle against the UN peacekeepers was a jihad fought for Islam. Several Somali warlords adopted Salafism in order to motivate their soldiers to fight against the UN forces, and, in 2006, a union of local sharia courts known as the Islamic Courts Union launched a massive offensive which captured the Somali capital of Mogadishu, among several other cities. Bin Laden urged Somalis to build an Islamic state in the country and warned western countries that al-Qaeda would fight against them if they intervened there. In late 2006, Ethiopian and Somali Transitional Federal Government forces launched a counterattack against the ICU and retook Mogadishu on 26 December. On 30 December 2006, deputy al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called upon Muslims worldwide to fight Ethiopia and the TFG in Somalia, and Somali Islamist fighters formed a new terrorist group, al-Shabaab, with the goal of creating an Islamic state on behalf of al-Qaeda. The US and Ethiopian-backed Somali government struggled against this new threat, which also made use of suicide bombings against civilian and government targets, and which grew strong in southern Somalia in cities such as Kismayo and Baidoa. The US conducted airstrikes on al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda targets in Somalia over the years, killing top terrorist leaders such as Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, and Moktar Ali Zubeyr. In 2015, al-Shabaab defectors created another chapter of the Islamic State, which began to play a minor role in the ongoing civil war.
Southeast Asia[]
In Southeast Asia, Moro Islamists in the Philippines had been engaged in a decades-long war with the government with the goal of achieving regional autonomy for the majority-Muslim "Bangsamoro" region of Mindanao, and al-Qaeda established the "Abu Sayyaf" affiliate group in Mindanao during the conflict. In Indonesia, the Jemaah Islamiyah group waged war against the secular government with the goal of creating an Islamic state, carrying out terrorist attacks against Western targets; one of the most notable attacks was the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 and wounded 209. Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf both carried out a spate of terrorist attacks in Indonesia and the Philippines over the next several years, and US special forces trained the Philippine Army to crush the Moro insurgency. In the early 2010s, both the MNLA and the MILF made peace agreements with the government in exchange for increased autonomy, but anti-compromise Islamists from MILF formed the Maute group, led by Omar Maute. Omar Maute pledged allegiance to ISIL upon its rise to power, and, on 23 May 2017, the group attacked the city of Marawi in Mindanao, leading to the 5-month battle of Marawi. The battle led to the group's near-destruction and the annihilation of its leadership, but it continued recruiting throughout 2017 and 2018 in an attempt to resurrect its short-lived "Islamic state". The US continued to provide assistance to the Philippine government as it battled the ISIL insurgency in the country, which was fuelled by both the Maute group and Abu Sayyaf's pledges of allegiance.
Arabian Peninsula[]
The US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated extreme Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia to take up arms against foreign interests, forming "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". They carried out the 2004 Khobar massacre", killing 22 and injuring 25; that same year, the mastermind Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin and the terrorist squad leader Fawaz al-Nashimi were tracked down and killed. The insurgency soon spread to Yemen, where a weak central government and a powerful tribal system allowed for al-Qaeda to engage in militant training and operations in vast swathes of lawless areas of the country. On 31 March 2011, AQAP proclaimed the creation of an emirate after overrunning much of Abyan Governorate, and the start of the Yemeni Civil War in 2015 enabled AQAP to expand its territory. The Islamic State also grew in power after absorbing several AQAP chapters, and ISIL, AQAP, the Yemeni government, and the Southern Movement engaged in several clashes over control of the southern port city of Aden. As Yemen fell into anarchy and state failure, ISIL and AQAP capitalized by increasing their strengths and carrying out suicide attacks against Yemeni government forces.
West Africa[]
In Nigeria, Islamist ideologue Mohammed Yusuf proclaimed that Western education was a "sin", and he founded a movement called "Boko Haram" with the goal of eradicating Western influence on the country and to implement sharia law nationwide. In 2009, Boko Haram - once a peaceful commune - turned violent and began an insurgency in northern Nigeria, winning the support of impoverished Muslim tomato farmers. Boko Haram gained notoriety in 2015 after abducting several schoolgirls from Chibok and turning them into sex slaves and suicide bombers, and Boko Haram carried out several suicide attacks against civilians; in 2015 alone, it killed 20,000 people and displaced 2,300,000. That same year, a faction of the group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which now expanded into West Africa and continued to carry out its trademark atrocities. A Nigeria-led coalition of West African states nearly destroyed Boko Haram in 2015, and the group was soon split between Abubakar Shekau's loyalist "Boko Haram" group and Abu Musab al-Barnawi's ISIL-affiliated ISWAP group. In 2021, Shekau killed himself in a suicide bombing during surrender talks with ISWAP, which then became the most powerful jihadist group in Nigeria.
American withdrawal[]
Map of the War on Terror in Africa, July 2021
Starting in 2020, President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of United States soldiers from Afghanistan amid peace talks with the Taliban, and the withdrawal was hastened under President Joe Biden, who intended for all American troops to leave the country by August 2021. The death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a US raid in October 2019, the demise of ISIL's territorial caliphate, and the sharp decline in terrorist activities during the COVID-19 pandemic lent credence to the idea that jihadism was dying down, but the summer of 2021 saw the Taliban launch a major offensive in Afghanistan which overran over half of the country's districts. On 22 July 2021, Paul Cruickshank, Tim Lister, and Nic Robertson authored a CNN article which warned against a resurgence of jihadism coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as the United Nations warned of a further deterioration of the Afghanistan conflict after the US withdrawal's completion on 31 August 2021, the US withdrawal and the drawdown of AMISOM forces in Somalia leading to Somali special forces struggling to contain al-Shabaab, France's gradual withdrawal from Mali enabling JNIM to consolidate its influence and increasingly claim popular areas, and the COVID-19 lockdown leading to an increased risk of online radicalization (in spite of limiting terrorist groups' travel, meeting, fundraising, and identifying viable targets). A UN Security Council report also warned that Africa would become the region most affected by terrorism, as al-Qaeda and ISIL-aligned groups inflicted higher casualties there than anywhere else. The UN warned that, in Somalia, al-Shabaab would fill the vacuum as strategic support to the Somali government declined, and Kenyan al-Shabaab operative Cholo Abdi Abdullah confessed that al-Shabaab had him engage in pilot training in the Philippines with the objective of having him hijack an airliner and crash it into a building in the United States. At the same time, much of West Africa and the Sahel was embroiled in jihadist violence, as ISWAP was gaining strength in the Lake Chad region and threatened the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri. By 2020, the Boko Haram insurgency had caused 350,000 deaths, with 314,000 of them coming from displacement and poverty. At the same time, ISIL had killed hundreds of civilians in terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. In addition, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was said to be advancing towards the Atlantic coast via Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Ghana, and Togo. In Mozambique, ISIL took over the north of the country and disrupted the country's natural gas potential, while also looting up to $2 million from local banks to fund further raids in the area.
Meanwhile, ISIL continued to build its strength in Iraq and Syria, as it had cash reserves of between $25 and $50 million. In the face of constant counter-terrorism pressure, ISIL reasserted itself in Iraq in 2021, killing 30 Shi'ites in a 19 July 2021 suicide bombing in Baghdad. In Syria, al-Qaeda-affiliated groups such as Tahrir al-Sham continued to dominate Idlib Governorate, where they had a strength of 10,000 fighters. The UN report warned that jihadist fighters might relocate from Syria to Afghanistan should the environment in Afghanistan become more hospitable, and many UN member-states were concerned that a Taliban seizure of power in Afghanistan would lead to Afghanistan once again becoming a platform for international terror. The UN report stated that al-Qaeda was present in 15 Afghan provinces and was under Taliban protection in Kandahar, Helmand, and Nimruz Provinces. At the same time, ISIL had between 500 and 1,500 ISKP fighters in Afghanistan, strengthening its positions in and around Kabul.
The UN report also stated that the leaderships of ISIL and al-Qaeda were caught in a period of transition and uncertainty, as ISIL's new caliph Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi remained reluctant to communicate directly with supporters, and al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was in hiding and reportedly unwell. The UN report speculated that Saif al-Adel, the Iran-based second-in-command of al-Qaeda, would likely make Africa his base of operations rather than Afghanistan, as he had a history of living and operating in Africa. In spite of the leadership crises for al-Qaeda and ISIL, the UN report warned that a new generation of jihadists was entrenching itself in under-governed areas as the Western powers became preoccupied with other issues, and that the energizing effect that the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had on the jihadist movement in 1989 would be felt again as a new influx of jihadist recruits followed the US withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan during the early 2020s.
On 30 August 2021, the fall of Kabul, the Taliban restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan effectively put an end to the main phase of the War on Terror. However, the American-led international coalition continued to battle terrorism through intelligence and special forces operations, including the assassinations of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on 31 July 2022 and ISIL leader Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi on 15 October of that same year. The Somali Civil War became the main theater of the War on Terror as international forces withdrew from the Malian Civil War and the Syrian Civil War continued to be a frozen conflict.