Experts: Threat has grown since 9/11

WASHINGTON» Extremism poses a greater global threat today than it did 17 years ago, despite costly U.S. military action overseas, according to members of the U.S. government commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

Deaths from terrorist attacks each year have increased substantially since 2001 and violent extremism has spread, according to the report Tuesday from the task force on extremism in fragile states led by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton.

Kean and Hamilton led the 9/11 Commission that was created in 2002 to make an official report of events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by alQaeda, and make policy recommendations.

Members of the more recently constituted task force include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and former U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley.

Their assessment, released on the attacks’ anniversary, comes as the war in Afghanistan, which was initiated to defeat alQaeda and its Taliban hosts, shows no sign of ending. American troops are also deployed in Iraq and Syria and are seeking what the Trump administration calls the “enduring” defeat of the Islamic State militant group, which has emerged as the most lethal, global terror threat in recent years. Further U.S. forces are scattered at trouble spots in Africa.

The report says the ensuing chaos and instability has undermined U.S. influence and allowed extremists to launch “their most daring onslaughts” and make “their greatest gains.”

AlQaeda leader urges Muslims to fight U.S. across the world.

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The leader of alQaeda has called on Muslims to wage war against the United States throughout the world.

In a 30minute speech released Tuesday, Ayman alZawahry went to great lengths to portray the United States as a religious enemy of Muslims, using Washington’s transfer of its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as evidence of that enmity.

The Washingtonbased SITE group, which monitors media material by militants across the world, released an English transcript of the speech.

“America (is) the No. 1 enemy of Muslims ... despite of its professed secularism,” alZawahry said in the video.