Trends in Terrorism: What’s on the Horizon in 2023?

Bottom Line

• The most defining feature of international terrorism in 2023 will be its diversity, reflected by the broad array of ideologies and grievances motivating plots and attacks.
• The challenge of dealing with “everyday extremists” remains, as lone actors influenced by accelerationism and other forms of violent extremism radicalize online and seek to conduct real-world acts of politically and ideologically motivated violence.
• The threat landscape may now appear far more inchoate, which makes it difficult to combat, but it may also be less potent as a result. For terrorism and counterterrorism analysts, 2023 will be among the most unpredictable years in recent memory.

The most defining feature of international terrorism in 2023 will be its diversity, reflected by the broad array of ideologies and grievances motivating plots and attacks. The Islamic State, the most significant terrorist threat since the global counterterrorism campaign to dismantle al-Qaeda in the immediate years following 9/11, has been attenuated in Iraq and Syria, losing two of its emirs in 2022. Outside of the Levant, Islamic State branches and affiliates remain potent, especially in the Sahel region of Africa and in South Asia, where the Islamic State Khorasan Province is waging a stubborn insurgency against the Taliban. The Islamic State Khorasan Province has launched high-profile attacks against both Russian and Chinese interests in Afghanistan. Still, Western counterterrorism successes may not be sustainable without a robust commitment to continue working with partners on the ground to ensure that these groups do not reconstitute. Without continued US and allied pressure, it is likely that Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and their respective branches and franchise groups could successfully rebuild their networks in the Middle East and beyond. And while the United States and its coalition partners have done an impressive job at destroying the physical caliphate in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa is now the center of gravity for jihadist terrorism. In West Africa, the al-Qaeda-linked Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin and the Islamic State West Africa Province are competing for resources and recruits and, in the process, leaving a deadly trail of destruction in their wake. According to the Global Terrorism Index, the Sahel has become “increasingly more violent over the past 15 years, with deaths rising by over one thousand percent between 2007 and 2021.” Given porous borders, political instability (to include several coups), and a host of socio-economic grievances, the region is expected to remain a tinderbox for the foreseeable future. As countries like France and the United States further reduce their counterterrorism footprint abroad, shifting focus to great power competition with Russia and China, it could provide openings for jihadist groups in Africa to expand their influence and control over territory. On the other side of the continent, al-Shabaab is still a pernicious threat and could be looking to expand operations beyond Somalia and the immediate region, setting sights on more global ambitions. Two al-Shabaab militants have been arrested in the Philippines over the past several years, both charged with attempting to plan “9/11-style” attacks using airplanes. If an African jihadist group sees an opportunity to gain momentum, and with it money and recruits, it could make attacking Western targets a higher priority. As terrorism experts Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware recently suggested, in a post-Zawahiri era, al-Qaeda is likely to refocus on targeting embassies and consulates, tourist destinations, and commercial aviation. One of the recent trends to garner attention is the concept of ‘post-organizational violent extremism and terrorism’ (POVET), a concept Bruce Hoffman and I referenced in a July 2020 piece on domestic terrorism in the United States, where we highlighted “the growing irrelevance or organizational structure.” This trend has continued. In May 2022, a racially motivated terrorist attack by Payton Gendron at a grocery store in a predominantly African-American section of Buffalo, NY left ten dead. Gendron had been influenced, at least in part, by the Great Replacement theory.