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“It’s a massive falloff,” said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London.

“And it’s basically because ISIL is a failing entity now. (Its) appeal rested on its strength and its winning. Now that it’s losing, it’s no longer attractive.”

The sustained decline marks an important milestone in global efforts to defeat ISIL — from a multinational military campaign to, in at least one nation, rules requiring parental permission slips before young men can leave the country.

It’s like after the Afghanistan war in the 1980s. They’ll be asking themselves: ‘What’s next?’

But Neumann and others said the decline in ISIL’s recruiting figures — which has come almost as quickly as they rose after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate in June 2014 — is hardly an unmitigated success for Western nations.

Instead, it may be the beginning of a dangerous new phase, in which would-be fighters carry out attacks at home rather than travel abroad and battle-hardened veterans seek new lands for conflict.

“It’s like after the Afghanistan war in the 1980s,” said Neumann, citing the period after Soviet troops withdrew and foreign fighters formed a diaspora of radicalized veterans that gave rise to al-Qaida. “They’ll be asking themselves: ‘What’s next?’ ”

That helps explain why officials have been cautious in trumpeting the declining foreign-fighter numbers.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said this week there had been “a fourfold decrease” in the number of French citizens who had traveled to ISIL’s domain in the first six months of 2016, compared to 69 in the same period last year.