Al-Qaeda (AQ) found itself on the losing end of a years-long investment in July of 2016 when Nusra Front (NF) leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani announced the group’s leave from AQ to become Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), thus breaking his pledge to AQ leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Julani, the man who ignited a bloody conflict with the Islamic State (IS) after abandoning Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish a new AQ affiliate in Syria, had ironically removed AQ’s formal presence in the country altogether.

But stress the word formal in “formal presence,” because AQ planted its Syrian foundation much deeper than Julani and others may have anticipated.

On the morning of Monday, October 2, 2017, Americans were struggling to understand the mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas the night before. And as the public received the first details about attacker Stephen Paddock, a 64 year old with no known history of radicalism, people were (and still are) far from certain of his motives.

It has been a horrific few days since Stephen Paddock committed the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sunday night. But when the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed the attack just hours after it had taken place, the tragedy took on a strange new dimension. How could Paddock, a 64 year old man with no criminal history or known radical beliefs, and whose crime police had not initially investigated as a terrorist attack, have acted on behalf of ISIS?

The Islamic State (IS) promotes the month of Ramadan as a time of increased spiritual rewards for terror attacks, asserting that its followers should "yearn for martyrdom" during this time. The group and its supporters thus reserve attacks, military advances, announcements, and leadership speeches for this time, making Ramadan a month of high safety and stability concerns in various regions.

In 2008, German nationals Jurgen Kantner and Sabine Merz were sailing not far from the Gulf of Aden when they were captured by Somali pirates.The two were released safely, only to be confronted once again in November 2016 during an excursion off the coast of the southern Philippine province of Tawi-Tawi, this time by the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). Members of the Philippines-based jihadi group attacked the sailing partners, killing Merz and capturing Kantner on November 7, 2016.