Executive Intelligence Briefing: Global Jihadist & Insurgent Threat Assessment
Rolling Forecast (30–90 Days): January–March 2026
Cover & Classification Note
Document Type: Executive Intelligence Briefing
Scope: Global Jihadist & Insurgent Threat Assessment
Time Horizon: Rolling Forecast (30–90 Days)
Reference Period: End 2025 – Early 2026
This document is an independent analytical product intended for professional use by analysts, policy planners, security practitioners, and decision-makers. It is based exclusively on open-source intelligence, structured monitoring of primary jihadist material, and analytical methodologies consistent with applied intelligence standards.
This briefing does not represent the position of any government or international organisation.
Intended Audience & Use
This Executive Intelligence Briefing is intended for use by intelligence analysts, policy planners, military and security decision-makers, international organisations, and applied academic researchers concerned with jihadist and insurgent threat dynamics.
The document is designed to support strategic awareness, forward-looking risk assessment, and prioritisation of monitoring over a rolling 30–90-day horizon. It is not intended to provide tactical-level tasking, real-time operational guidance, or event-specific prediction. The briefing should be used as a decision-support and situational-awareness tool, informing planning, posture adjustment, and analytical focus rather than immediate response.
Executive Overview – Strategic Context
The primary strategic takeaway entering January–March 2026 is not escalation, but persistence.
Across Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, jihadist and insurgent actors demonstrate sustained operational resilience, adaptive tempo management, and a clear preference for continuity over transformational escalation. The threat environment remains structurally permissive rather than dynamically explosive.
The absence of a “strategic jump” should not be misinterpreted as risk reduction. On the contrary, the current configuration favours actors capable of long-term attrition, cognitive pressure, and selective disruption. Groups such as JNIM, AQAP, al-Shabaab, the Islamic State’s African and Levantine provinces, and TTP continue to impose cumulative security costs without triggering thresholds that would provoke decisive counter-intervention.
For political and military decision-makers, this implies a protracted risk horizon rather than a crisis-driven one. The primary challenge is not preventing a single catastrophic event, but rather managing the sustained erosion of security, legitimacy, and freedom of movement in fragile environments. Incremental destabilisation, rather than shock, remains the preferred operational logic of these actors.
From an intelligence perspective, the threat is increasingly characterised by below-threshold operations, decentralised execution, and cognitive effects that outpace kinetic impact. The information domain amplifies this dynamic by normalizing insecurity, legitimizing violence, and expanding perceived threat surfaces well beyond actual operational capabilities.
The strategic risk, therefore, lies less in what these groups can suddenly do and more in what they can continuously sustain:
pressure on state security apparatuses,
degradation of local governance,
erosion of public confidence,
and gradual expansion of operational and cognitive space.
In this context, success for hostile actors is measured not by territorial control or spectacular attacks, but by endurance. For states and institutions, the central question is not whether the threat can be eliminated in the short term, but whether it can be contained, managed, and strategically constrained over time without enabling further adaptation.
This Executive Intelligence Briefing provides a forward-looking assessment of the threat environment, integrating regional analysis, cognitive and information domain signals, and a probabilistic forecast over a 30–90-day horizon.
Key Judgments
The global jihadist and insurgent threat entering early 2026 is characterised by operational continuity and structural resilience, rather than strategic escalation.
No assessed actor currently demonstrates credible indicators of a coordinated, cross-theatre escalation or a return to sustained territorial control.
The dominant operational logic across theatres remains attritional, decentralised, and below-threshold, designed to impose cumulative costs while avoiding decisive counter-intervention.
Africa continues to represent the primary locus of jihadist insurgent activity due to permissive structural conditions. At the same time, the Middle East and South/Central Asia remain critical for symbolic relevance, recruitment, and selective projection.
The cognitive and information domain increasingly functions as a force multiplier, shaping perception, legitimising violence, and sustaining mobilisation even in the absence of kinetic escalation.
Global Threat Posture
The current global threat posture is best assessed as persistent, fragmented, and adaptive. Jihadist and insurgent actors operate across multiple theatres with limited strategic convergence, relying on decentralised networks, localised opportunity structures, and narrative coherence rather than centralised command-and-control.
The threat is not uniform across regions, but governance vacuums, contested authority, and protracted conflict environments structurally reinforce it. While the probability of sudden, high-impact strategic escalation remains low, the likelihood of sustained, low-to-medium intensity violence remains high, particularly in environments where security forces, local governance, and intelligence assets are under continuous pressure.
Confidence, Assessment & Intelligence Gaps
This assessment is produced with moderate-to-high confidence regarding observed trends, operational patterns, and short-term trajectories.
Key limitations include:
reliance on claimed activity and observable indicators, which may under- or over-represent actual operational volume;
uneven visibility across theatres due to reporting disruption, communication delays, or deliberate claim suppression;
limited insight into internal decision-making processes and intent beyond inferential analysis.
These gaps do not undermine the overall assessment of continuity and resilience, but they necessitate continuous monitoring, particularly for indicators of qualitative change rather than quantitative fluctuation.
Methodological Note
This briefing is based on:
systematic monitoring of primary jihadist propaganda (statements, videos, magazines, claims);
structured OSINT analysis, including media reporting, academic literature, and institutional publications;
comparative temporal analysis to distinguish short-term variation from structural trends;
explicit separation between observation, assessment, and judgment.
Forecasting judgments are probabilistic, not predictive, and are designed to inform preparedness and decision-making rather than to anticipate specific events.
Scope Exclusions
This briefing operates within clearly defined analytical boundaries.
It does not include classified, law-enforcement–sensitive, or restricted government information, and is based exclusively on open-source intelligence and structured analytical assessment.
It does not assess domestic extremism in Western states except where relevant to transnational jihadist cognitive and influence dynamics.
It does not attempt to predict specific attacks, timelines, or targets, focusing instead on probabilistic trends, threat configurations, and early warning indicators.
It does not provide policy prescriptions or normative recommendations, limiting its scope to assessment, implications, and monitoring priorities.
📌 Inside this Executive Intelligence Briefing
This briefing includes:
Regional Strategic Snapshots
Africa: IS Africa, JNIM, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram
Middle East & Asia: IS Syria/Iraq, AQAP, ISKP, ISPP, TTP, Ittehad-ul-Mujahidin Pakistan
Cognitive & Information Domain – Key Signals
Propaganda trends, narrative targeting, mobilisation signals, and cognitive warfare dynamics.Transnational Networks & Secondary Threat Environment
Monitoring the spread of external threats.
Forward Threat Forecast (30–90 Days)
Baseline and alternative scenarios, early warning indicators, and escalation triggers.Implications & Monitoring Priorities
Decision-relevant implications for intelligence, policy, military planning, and security practitioners.Monitoring Checklist & Executive “So What?”
A structured checklist for the next 30–90 days and a final executive-level synthesis.
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