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By Sean Rayment
The al-Qaeda terrorist group is now 50 times larger than at the time of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, a United Nations monitoring group has claimed.
The figures, drawn from data and intelligence gathered by spy agencies such as MI6, show that there are now 25,000 potential fighters dotted across the globe.
At the time of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September 2001, there were an estimated 500 terrorists.
Details of the surge in al-Qaeda membership were revealed at a briefing at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) before the publication of the UN Security Council monitoring team’s annual report on the global terrorist threat.
Colin Smith, the team’s co-ordinator, said the threat from terrorism had become multipolar and that groups such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State “have not given up”.
Rather than having an obvious centre from which they conduct their operations, jihadists are now spread across several regions including the Middle East and Africa.
Smith said: “They have not laid down their weapons. They are still planning attacks against us, they are still plotting. The threat is still there. We neglect that threat, or we overlook it, frankly, at our peril.”
The figure of 25,000 is said to be conservative and excludes members of Islamic State.
Many of the fighters who have signed up to al-Qaeda or its affiliates have done so without proper understanding of the cause and without “buying into” the global agenda, Smith said.
He added that al-Qaeda has been able to exploit local grievances and lure impoverished individuals into its ranks using financial incentives.
By contrast, in 2001 al-Qaeda was estimated to be composed of around 500 fanatical members who were willing to conduct suicide attacks in support of the group’s fundamentalist ideology.
The three main themes identified in the annual report are the shift in propaganda, the multipolar nature of the groups and the way they are adapting and evolving.
The team found terrorist groups were increasingly targeting youngsters, believing them to be easier to indoctrinate, with reports of children as young as 11 being recruited.
Terrorist groups have become more technologically savvy, posting methodical videos explaining how to build armed drones and create liquid explosives. “More information is being exploited by terrorists and recruiters to bolster their capabilities and increase the threat,” added Smith.
There is also a rising trend of terrorist groups being paid hefty ransoms to free captured individuals, enabling them to buy substantial weapons stocks.
The impact of prisoners from Islamic State and family members escaping from detention camps in north-east Syria is still being assessed, said Smith, adding that in two camps there were 8,500 foreigners.
“We don’t know how many escaped. It doesn’t take many of them to escape, be released or go back home to cause a significant problem or threat in our home countries,” he said.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a militant Islamist group based in Yemen, was unable to pay fighters’ salaries in 2024, but this is no longer a problem. The group is looking at maritime operations as well as external operations, the research found.
Although spy agencies still dedicate substantial resources to managing the terror threat, the Ukraine conflict, war in Gaza and Chinese threat have dominated recent discussions concerning the security landscape.
Dr Joana de Deus Pereira, a senior research fellow at Rusi Europe specialising in counterterrorism, warned against overlooking conflicts involving terrorists that could “become as lethal as ones we are observing”.
She said traditional terrorist groups were resilient and their use of artificial intelligence was affecting the scale and speed at which terrorists were operating.
The monitoring team is the only part of the United Nations that has a mandate from the Security Council to engage with intelligence agencies around the world.
Although the permanent members struggle to agree on many issues, there is consensus when it comes to tackling global terror.
