Terrorism is entering an unprecedented phase, and the international community is not prepared for it.
The threat is no longer driven solely by non-state actors operating on the margins.
It is increasingly shaped by deliberate state behavior that treats extremist organizations as instruments for short-term political gain.
What is emerging is a new wave of terrorism with a new architecture.
This assessment reflects sustained engagement with counterterrorism over time rather than information that can be publicly disclosed.
What can be stated clearly is that the enabling environment for terrorism has widened, hardened, and become politically protected.
As long as this environment persists, terrorism will continue to expand in reach, durability, and impact.
Organizations such as al-Qaeda, Daesh, and al-Shabaab — along with multiple factions of Muslim Brotherhood–aligned militias operating under different labels, such as Hamas and others — are no longer sustained solely through clandestine networks or ideological appeal.
They are sustained through state conduct.
This includes financing, weapons provision, logistical facilitation, safe passage, ideological space, and political shielding.
These actions are often rationalized as tactical necessities designed to secure quick political wins.
In reality, they represent a strategic abdication of responsibility.
The assumption that such groups can later be contained or neutralized once those objectives are achieved is deeply flawed.
HOW IS STATE SPONSORSHIP REDEFINING TERRORISM?
When states sponsor or protect extremist groups, terrorism becomes structurally embedded rather than episodic.
Extremism ceases to be an external threat and becomes a politically tolerated presence.
Groups operating under state protection gain time, resources, and freedom of maneuver.
They invest in ideological consolidation, generating cycles of sustained violence.
Extremism embeds itself within social structures, charitable networks, religious discourse, media ecosystems, and informal governance arrangements.
Communities are shaped long before violence follows. By the time attacks occur, the ideological groundwork has already been laid.
Political sponsorship accelerates this process.
What may appear as a controlled use of extremist proxies for immediate advantage evolves into sustained insecurity that extends far beyond the original context.
Extremism does not remain obedient to political intent.
It adapts, expands, and eventually dictates its own logic.
Beyond sponsorship, a more complex dynamic is emerging.
In certain contexts, extremist organizations are no longer treated merely as disposable proxies but as instruments for managing political balances.
Their presence is used to pressure rivals, fragment societies, or delay the consolidation of stable state authority.
In this sense, extremism becomes a mechanism of control rather than a byproduct of instability.
This calculation, however, is inherently short-sighted.
Groups cultivated for leverage do not remain contained.
Over time, they reshape political space, undermine governance, and generate insecurity that ultimately escapes the control of those who enabled them.
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