During MSNBC’s coverage of the terrorist attack in New Orleans on Wednesday, Senior Vice President for Global Operations at The Soufan Group Christopher O’Leary, who was Director of Hostage Rescue and Recovery during the Biden administration and worked in counterterror positions across multiple administrations stated that “al-Qaeda and ISIS are stronger now than they’ve ever been,” and the U.S. government “has pivoted a lot of its attention and resources and authorities away from it. If we continue to try to just bury our heads in the sand and hope the bogeyman’s going to go away, these are the things that will start happening again.”
Host Christina Ruffini asked, “[W]e were talking earlier about the state of ISIS, al-Qaeda as a global jihadist movement, and when we talk about associates, whether or not that’s someone these individuals are speaking to directly or whether they’re just taking inspiration. Can you talk us through — I feel like it used to be something we heard about a lot more — are those organizations weakened or are they stronger, and how much impact can they have on somebody who might be inspired to take kind of this action?”
O’Leary responded, “I think it’ll surprise most people to learn that al-Qaeda and ISIS are stronger now than they’ve ever been, through their affiliates around the world. So, to give people a reference point, al-Qaeda was roughly less than 500 members before September 11, mostly relegated to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda and ISIS — and ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda — and their affiliates are globally dispersed with over about two dozen countries around the world and compose roughly 40,000 members. So, to think that terrorism is behind us is really naive. And, unfortunately, the U.S. government has pivoted a lot of its attention and resources and authorities away from it. If we continue to try to just bury our heads in the sand and hope the bogeyman’s going to go away, these are the things that will start happening again. So, we were told it was a generational fight, we have to commit ourselves to that, number one. And number two, there’s a great Afghan saying that you have the watches, we have the time. Well, people committed to this extremist ideology, they’re not a flash in the pan, they’re intending to come after us when we let our guard down.”
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