All things must come to an end. This was my thought process and opinion on how I see these two terrorist groups ending. To answer the question, I’m going out on a limb and say; I think both of these groups will be virtually non-existent as we know them today by 2040. By 2040 "West" and allied-governments in these regions will defeat both AQ and ISIS, but they will have some sort of small operation, so thus not completely out of the picture. I do think, there will be another terrorist organization at that point, which may split off from one of these groups, my guess would be ISIS. Al Qaeda has lost most of its notoriety, mainly in part of ISIS stealing the spot light from them. ISIS is a much more aggressive group, however, it has not been …show more content…
ISIS today has built a global terrorist network. They have drawn recruits from 120 countries, and have killed 1,200 people in countries outside of Iraq and Syria over the past several years (Rosenberg, 2017). Today, Al Qaeda is currently on the back burner, after over a decade of war with the world’s superpowers are eventually going to wear you down and eventually lose the war. ISIS is also slowly weakening Al Qaeda, based on three things: Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) has lost several hundred fighters in battles against ISIS and numerous fighters have defected to ISIS from JN. The Al Qaeda-affiliated groups have switched teams and now pledged allegiance to ISIS, as is the case for the Sinai-based insurgency known as Wilayat Sina’ as well as Nigeria’s Boko Haram (Hiestein, 2016). ISIS as of today is also losing this war on the ground, if you were to look at the territory it once commanded in the Iraq and Syria. ISIS faces almost total expulsion from Iraq and a formidable showdown with forces backed by the U.S. and Russia in its two remaining hubs of control in Syria (O’Connor, 2017). London-based security analyst Firas Abi Ali told BBC's World Service that he predicted an ISIS defeat by "late 2017." (O’Connor,