Jihadi

The Islamist organizations that participated in the Soviet–Afghan War of 1979 to 1989 reinforced the rise of jihadism, which has since propagated during various armed conflicts. Jihadism rose in prominence after the 1990s; by one estimate, 5 percent of civil wars involved jihadist groups in 1990, but this grew to more than 40 percent by 2014. Conflicts involving jihadist groups tend to be particularly intractable. With the rise of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in 2014—which a large contingent of Jihadist groups have opposed—large numbers of foreign Muslim volunteers came from abroad to join the militant cause in Syria and Iraq.