immediate term, this group is doing something that al qaeda for the most part wasn t doing in the run up to 9/11 which was fighting they are in the midsts of a war basically fig fighting different enemies. they are fighting the iraq ary security forces, the assad regime and other radicals. they have essentially split from al qaeda and have had violent fights with with their sunni radical rifles rivals in al qae. this is a distraction bin laden didn t have in, say, the summer of 2001. the bad news is that this group is acquiring a huge amount of territory a lot of money. they are attracting foreign fighters from all over the world including those with western passports which is worrisome. also in the past decade, the battlefields in afghanistan and iraq have been a training ground for this new generation are of are radical fighters who are learning things like combat