GENEVA: A global organization dedicated to preventing violent extremism said on \u200bFriday the US had made a mistake in withdrawing its support while the risk of militant attacks surges in the Middle East and Africa\u2019s Sahel.<\/p>\n
The Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, which supports prevention programs across dozens of countries with communities vulnerable to extremism \u2014 appeared on Wednesday in a White House memo announcing a US pullout from 35 international agencies and 31 UN entities it said rejected US interests.<\/p>\n
Dr. Khalid \u200cKoser, head of \u200cthe Geneva-based GCERF, said the decision came \u200cas \u2060a \u200bsurprise and \u200cwithout explanation and that it reflected a deeper ideological shift under US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration away from multilateral prevention programs toward security-focused counterterrorism measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a mistake to take out that fundamental piece of prevention. But I don\u2019t think this administration believes in prevention,\u201d Koser told Reuters.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n
Koser said \u2060risks of extremist violence were higher than at any point since the 2011 Arab Spring \u200cuprisings, citing as examples Afghanistan, the Sahel and \u200dcamps in northeast Syria that hold tens \u200dof thousands of Daesh family members \u2014 and a new generation \u200dat risk of radicalization after the Gaza war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t work on prevention, then in 10 years time, you\u2019re going to have lots of terrorists and lots of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further underlining a US repudiation of multilateral cooperation bodies under Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica \u200bFirst\u201d policy, the White House also announced it was quitting the 30-nation Global Counterterrorism Forum.<\/p>\n
The US helped establish GCERF\u2019s program \u2060in northeast Syria that helps reintegrate families from former Daesh militant circles. Koser said that while GCERF\u2019s work would go on, it was losing a major player in the US, and that Washington\u2019s decision was perplexing given GCERF\u2019s agenda remained relevant to US national interests.<\/p>\n
With other international agencies scaling back following mass US foreign aid cuts last year, GCERF said it now carries much of the global prevention burden alone, and that its $50 million annual budget had not risen to fill the growing gaps.<\/p>\n
The 2025 Global Terrorism Index issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace showed the \u200cnumber of countries recording a terrorist attack increased from 58 to 66 in 2024, reversing nearly a decade of improvements. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA: A global organization dedicated to preventing violent extremism said on \u200bFriday the US had made a mistake in withdrawing its support while the risk of militant attacks surges in the Middle East and Africa\u2019s Sahel. The Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, which supports prevention programs across dozens of countries with communities vulnerable to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92098,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92083\/revisions\/92098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}