From Local to Global: The Expansion of Transnational Jihadist Conflicts In 2018, civil wars between local governments and official branches of the so-called Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda (AQ) were ongoing in several countries of the Arab world, namely Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Moreover, both Afghanistan and Pakistan have been experiencing armed conflicts with AQ and IS involvement over the past years. This is a remarkable difference if compared with the situation ten years prior, in 2008, when IS did not yet exist, and AQ’s Algerian and Iraqi branches were the only ones, outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, waging armed conflicts against local governments (Pettersson, Högbladh, and Öberg 2019). Despite the expansion of this type of conflict, research on the factors associated with its appearance is still scarce. Thus, we still do not know why these conflicts appear in some locations, but not in others. This study addresses this lacuna through a quantitative methodological approach, investigating a range of possible explanatory factors. Special attention is paid to processes of spatial contagion across state borders as well as the role played by local Islamist insurgent groups, which have sometimes paved the way for AQ and IS gaining ground, but in other cases did not join the transnational struggle.