Escalating / Global
US-China Strategic Competition
Washington and Beijing race to lock in supply chains, legal coercion tools, and Pacific access as the structural competition hardens.
The Global Jihadist Network is what remained after the caliphate fell.
Al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks in 2001 pulled the United States into a two-decade campaign against Sunni jihadist movements, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq incubated the group that became ISIS, which declared a territorial caliphate across Iraq and Syria in 2014. A US-led coalition crushed that caliphate by 2019. The movement did not die. It scattered into franchises: Islamic State branches in the Sahel, West Africa, Afghanistan, and Central Africa, alongside Al-Qaeda affiliates across the same terrain.
The network now grows fastest in the places its enemies are least willing to fight.
ISGS struck Niamey's airport for the second time in 2026 on June 18, the clearest signal yet that the Sahel insurgency has developed durable human intelligence networks inside Niger's capital rather than remaining a rural threat.
The network is in a dual-track phase: absorbing a genuine command decapitation in Nigeria while expanding geographically into new theaters.
It matters because the war continues to tie down the main belligerents, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance globally.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
The two Niamey airport strikes in 2026 are a structural signal: repeated targeting of the same high-value facility hosting Russian and Italian forces alongside Niger's military aircraft confirms ISGS has developed.
The simultaneous elimination of al-Minuki and Ba Shuwa creates a genuine succession depth problem for ISWAP, with remaining candidates lacking cross-theatre experience and IS central relationships.
Historically sponsored via Gulf private donors; currently largely self-financing through taxation, smuggling, and kidnapping in conflict zones
Escalating / Global
Washington and Beijing race to lock in supply chains, legal coercion tools, and Pacific access as the structural competition hardens.
War / Global
Adversary offensive reach deepens across AI, cognitive, and biological data domains as Western defensive gaps compound.
ISGS/ISSP (Islamic State Sahel Province) has transitioned from a localized insurgency to IS's primary transnational external-operations hub across the Sahel.
ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) conducts sustained multi-front insurgent operations across the Lake Chad basin and is absorbing a genuine leadership.
JNIM (Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin) operates as al-Qaeda's primary Sahel franchise and is a principal driver of the region's majority share of global.
ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province) functions as the network's South-Central Asia franchise and a demonstrated external-operations node with reach.
ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) operates as IS's Central Africa node through eastern DRC and Ituri province.