>>281163053The US and her allies spent most of the late 20th and early 21st centuries funding and supporting fundamentalist/extremist religious groups in the Middle East, Asia, and South America. They did this to destabilise developing nations who were getting too buddy-buddy with the Soviets or China, and usually it caused a complete crash in economic growth and freedoms.
Famously Al Qaeda was the darling of the US security state until they turned around and declared war on the former masters who put them in power.