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Oct. 25, 2017
Peter Bergen wrote for CNN about the history and implications of the war on terror's global reach:
The battle in Niger in which four members of a US Army Special Forces team were killed by an ISIS-affiliated group has garnered a great deal of public attention, partly because of the spat between President Trump and the family of one of the dead soldiers, Sgt. La David Johnson, but the incident also underlines the extent to which the war on terror has truly globalized since the 9/11 attacks.
A US National Counter Terrorism Center map from 2016 shows 18 countries with official branches of ISIS and an additional six countries where there are "aspiring branches" of the terror group.
One of those official branches of ISIS is an offshoot of the notorious Nigerian terrorist group, Boko Haram, which operates not only in Nigeria but also in neighboring Niger, the country where the four US Army soldiers -- two of them Green Berets -- were killed on October 4.