What shifted during this period was that nonstate actors who resorted to terrorist tactics in their war against the West became a thorn in the Americans' side. Beyond al-Qaeda, many of the militants who had fought in Afghanistan either returned home or traveled to Bosnia, Kashmir, and elsewhere to carry on the holy war. Their training and war experience with the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI gave them the knowledge they needed to use violent tactics to advance their goals. This was a rather inconvenient outcome for the United States. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing attempt brought home the point that the forces the United States had enabled through the Afghan war could create blowback.

XREF: Connects to broader discussions of US proxy warfare blowback, notably the mujahideen-to-terrorist pipeline discussed widely in foreign policy literature.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 269