"Dr Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director at the Counter Extremism Project, said: “To fully assess the emerging terrorism challenges emanating from the fall of the Assad regime and the rise of HTS, it is important to understand that from a global Islamist terrorist perspective, these events did not happen in a vacuum. “Islamist terrorist sympathizers think that their forces were able to drive American and international forces out of Afghanistan in 2021; expel the French, the United Nations, and American and European forces out of West Africa since 2022; and now defeat Russia and Iran in Syria.”"