This week in New York, the United Nations is hosting its most significant counterterrorism gathering since 2023. The Fourth Counter-Terrorism Week, running from June 26 to July 2, centers on a high-level conference of heads of national counterterrorism agencies and the ninth review of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy — a framework that has guided international cooperation for two decades. This review marks the 20th anniversary of the strategy’s adoption and represents a crucial moment for international cooperation to prevent and counter terrorism. Washington arrived with demands. The harder question is whether it brought anything else.
The US posture at the conference reflects a broader strategic withdrawal. The federal coordinating center for counterterrorism has had no permanent director since March. Staff at the State Department’s Office of Countering Violent Extremism and Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which led US anti-violent extremism efforts, were laid off and the units shuttered on July 11, 2025. In April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the State Department’s counter-disinformation office, stating it had wasted taxpayer money and engaged in censorship, though other State Department officials called those accusations “fictitious” and argued the closure was politically motivated. The cumulative effect is a hollowed-out institutional presence at precisely the moment when global threats are accelerating.
The Threat Did Not Get the Memo
Al-Qaeda probably has between 15,000 and 28,000 members worldwide, while ISIS likely has between 12,000 and 18,000 members. Both organizations are weaker than at their respective peaks, but the geography of the threat has shifted dramatically. Africa has increasingly become a focal point for the global Sunni jihadist movement, with Al-Shabaab encroaching on Mogadishu and continuing to coordinate funding and propaganda campaigns with Al-Qaeda in Yemen, while ISIS in West Africa and the Sahel have increased the intensity of their attacks against local security forces, expanding their areas of operation and moving closer to cities with a US presence.
Salafi-jihadi violence is expanding rapidly — especially in Africa’s Sahel and into coastal West Africa — driven by weak governance and growing regional instability, with groups like Al-Shabaab, JNIM, and ISIS affiliates evolving from terrorist networks into adaptive insurgencies that control territory and populations. In April 2026, that evolution produced a particularly stark demonstration: JNIM, in coordination with the Azawad Liberation Front, launched a large-scale offensive against government institutions across several regions in Mali, culminating in the assassination of the country’s Minister of Defense.
The withdrawal of Western military forces — particularly French Operation Barkhane and US Special Operations presence — has further accelerated the shift in regional dynamics, creating security vacuums that local militaries and alternative external actors have struggled to fill effectively. The groups that moved into those vacuums have grown sophisticated enough that containing them now requires the kind of sustained international cooperation that Washington is walking away from.
What Gets Cut When Prevention Goes
The damage from US disengagement extends well beyond staffing charts. Since the start of 2025, no Syrians have left Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, as all USAID stabilization activities there, including those supporting the camp, have been frozen or cancelled. Al-Hol holds tens of thousands of ISIS-affiliated women and children — exactly the unresolved population that experts warn becomes the next generation of recruits if left to steep without reintegration support.
Prevention programs were the first to go and will be the last to attract political credit. The State Department issued a call for funding in July 2025 for a contractor to work on preventing terrorists from recruiting young people online, noting that in 2024 teenagers accounted for up to two-thirds of ISIS-linked arrests in Europe, with children as young as 11 involved in recent terrorist plots — then canceled the program the same month due to loss of funding. What remains of the US capability to respond to terrorism now rests in its military and law enforcement, which do not work on prevention — they react to terrorist events after they happen.
The domestic consequences are already visible. The US Department of Homeland Security cut critical public safety and homeland security funding in New York State by $187 million, despite the state having the highest risk of terrorism in the nation. The institutional dismantling is not limited to overseas programming. It runs from the Sahel to the subway.
Who Fills the Empty Chair
Terrorists in 2026 are continuing to refine and learn how best to deploy drones, and it could also be the year when drone expertise migrates to a Western country, where terrorists seek to incorporate unmanned aerial systems into their operational planning, either for surveillance and reconnaissance or for an attack on a densely populated gathering. ISIL’s growing exploitation of new technologies — including commercial satellite communications, AI, drones, and cryptocurrencies — reinforces the need for sustained, coordinated counterterrorism efforts.
The UN counterterrorism apparatus runs almost entirely on voluntary contributions, with a handful of Gulf states providing the bulk of funding. When Washington reduces its financial and diplomatic presence, it does not close down the operation — it hands the pen to whoever is still paying. Their threat priorities become the agenda. Their definitions of terrorism shape the response.
The EU and its 27 member states have made clear they approach this review as an effort to preserve what they describe as an effective and carefully calibrated foundation for multilateral counterterrorism — one reflecting two decades of sustained intergovernmental consensus and collective commitment. That consensus was built with American leadership at its core. The review of the strategy represents an opportunity for member states to renew commitment to multilateral efforts to prevent and counter terrorism in response to emerging threats and evolving trends. Whether the US shows up for that renewal as a participant or merely as a spectator may be the most consequential decision taken in New York this week.
Original analysis inspired by Dexter Ingram from The Cipher Brief. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
