Prison-breaks have become near quotidian occurrences in the chaotic ambiance of the Arab Spring; and this past week didn’t disappoint. In Libya, 92 of 220 criminal and political—AKA Islamist–detainees overpowered their paltry 4 guards and ran off from their Zliten holding facility, 42 km east of Tripoli. Meanwhile, 4,500 km to the South-East in Yemen, 29 prisoners—21 of them “dangerous” AQ personnel—were on the loose after escaping their cells in a coordinated assault on Sana’a Central Prison.

To be sure, much has been written of the dangers some of these jailbreaks pose; the replenishment of terrorist manpower and leadership being chief among them. Yet, amidst a dreary snowbound Sunday the dork in me was transfixed by something more prosaic: How many have indeed wafted through the porous confines of ‘Arab-Spring’ penitentiaries? Has anyone even bothered to count? After a cursory Google search came up empty, my painstaking pursuit for the answer—one that entailed scouring legions of old news reports and articles (dated between January 2011 til today) for hours on end—was off to the races.

Admittedly, I was more inquisitive than I had anticipated. Rather than limit the spotlight to the locales of the Arab Spring, I broadened my search to include other hotspots of Islamic terrorism as well; to wit Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigera. And further upping the ante, I investigated how many prisoners were pardoned and released under frameworks of political amnesty.

Before I present and discuss the results some qualifications are in order. Achieving absolute quantities off the backs of open-source information—particularly news articles– is not an exact science to say the least. For instance, one source might report a total escapee tally of 60 whereas another puts it at 45. I tried to provide the most updated counts but, where nebulosity prevailed, I calculated the averages among them. I did the same when accounting for those fugitives who were since recaptured and for those who remain elusive. Furthermore, though I was assiduous in leaving no stone unturned, I can’t exclude the possibility that I either missed a case or that the case itself wasn’t publicized. As such, the final product is a rough estimate; an emphasis on rough. Nonetheless, a ballpark total serves the purpose of this article.

36 jailbreaks, 40,060 escapees, across 3+ years. That’s approximately how many political/criminal detainees cleaved through or were rescued from their cells in 9 countries: Afghanistan (600)[1], Egypt (24,000)2, Iraq (597)3, Libya (1,861)4, Nigeria (568)5, Pakistan (637)6, Syria (300)7, Tunisia (11,930)8 & Yemen (107)9. Of that number, 29,494 were subsequently recaptured (21,000 and 8,067 in Egypt and Tunisia Respectively) and 11,106 remain on the loose. As for those unshackled by the grace of their beleaguered overlords: 13,209 were pardoned across Egypt (6,143), Libya, (1,810), Syria (450), and Tunisia (4,806).

Again, the numbers could be greater. But the enumeration above is, at least, a bare minimum. With that said, the results carry implications that have and continue to bolster the threat of Salafi-Jihadism. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

The daunting question before us is how many of the outstanding fugitives and politically acquitted are, in fact, radical Islamists or—even worse—bona fide terrorists. And once again, producing even a guestimate is a tricky affair. This is because A) Terrorists/Islamists are often incarcerated with common criminals. B) The pervasiveness of repressive and draconian anti-terror laws that gratuitously bestow the terrorist/extremist label on dissenters. C) The potential in-prison radicalization of the common criminal who thereby leaves a Jihadist.

It must be added that some cases, like the 2013 premeditated jailbreak of hundreds Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) members at Abu Ghraib, are more clear-cut than say, the 24,000 strong exodus in Egypt. And similarly, jailbreaks that were externally orchestrated by known terrorist groups are also more decipherable. This is because it’s hard to believe that a group would expend their limited resources and manpower in a brazen gambit for low expected payoffs. For a feat like a prison break to be worth the sacrifice, the potential reward would have to be the recoupment of substantial or valuable manpower; whether in terms of sheer numbers or esoteric skills. Assaulting a facility housing a measly few comrades among a wider population of criminals may be a valiant display of loyalty—but any gain would be a trifle outweighed by the risk.

With the above in mind, I found that 20/36 jailbreaks received a decisive helping hand—usually a car bomb, an assault team, or both—from the outside. 18 of that 20 were the work of Islamic militia (in Libya & Egypt) or terrorist groups (i.e. ISIS, AQAP, TTP, Afghan Taliban, Boko Haram, Al-Nusra front) who—factoring in the 242 recaptured and leaving Egypt momentarily aside—successfully rescued a net 2,538 of their militant comrades. Needless to say, this total would be even greater had Egypt entered the calculatory fray. But as previously mentioned, doing so is problematic; the hard data simply doesn’t exist. Alas, we’re thrust into some pretty murky detective work.

Shortly before the outbreak of revolutionary turmoil, the best estimates of those imprisoned under Egypt’s infamous Emergency Laws—a decades old legal pretext for muffling political dissent– ranged from 5,000-10,000 detainees. Of that count, anywhere from 2,000-3,000 were Islamists; Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members or Political/Jihadi-Salafists (i.e. al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Islamic Jihad). Between February-October 2011, Egypt’s ruling junta released approximately 800 of this demographic, meaning the number of Islamists who could have escaped approximated 1,200-2,200. As documented above, 21,000 of 24,000 escapees were ultimately retrieved by mid-2013; an impressive achievement considering the exacting police/intelligence work such a dragnet would have entailed.

Yet what about the remaining 3,000? Are they simply too clever for Egypt’s powerful Mukhabarat to trace? The likely answer is that they had help.

Several of the prisons notorious for their political/militant Salafist inmates—among them El Marg and Abu Zabal—reportedly came under heavy attack by Bedouin and Palestinian accented combatants. Here, it must be noted the degree of visceral rancor Egypt’s Sinai dwelling Bedouin population harbors towards their titular Cairo sovereigns. The latter’s years of infrastructural and pecuniary dereliction vis-à-vis their satellite subjects has forced Sinai’s Bedouins to rely on a largely contraband-based economy. Naturally, Gaza’s contiguous, hemmed-in and commodity hungry populace presented itself as the perfect, if only, business partner. However, as goods and weapons pumped through Gaza’s underground smuggling thoroughfare, the radical Salafi credo preponderant among many of their Palestinian ‘clients’ (i.e. AQ inspired militias) flowed the other direction. Taken together, feelings of persecution, the commercial interactions with Salafi Jihadists, and the influence of their own zealously religious Palestinian demographic, all culminated into the jihadization of scores of Bedouin youth.

Thus, when the Bedoin/Palestinian convoys of machine-gun mounted pickup trucks and “earth moving vehicles” arrived to greet them on ‘liberation day’, their rescued ideological kin—among them Palestinian and Egyptian terrorist leaders—jumped into their arms and drove off together to their new abodes; the mountainous, desert boondocks of the Sinai Peninsula.

Many of these fugitives soon joined the ranks of Sinai’s web of Jihadi groups. How many precisely? There’s no way to know for sure. One source puts Sinai’s total militant force at 12,000 militants. But in stark contrast, Egypt claims they’re facing an insurgency of 1,600. If we can trust the Egyptians (a big if)– then the number who broke out and joined the insurgent ranks is relatively low. Yet other sources estimate that Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, the premiere Jihadi group among more than a dozen others, is comprised of 2,000 fighters itself. The group is also believed to be “led or backed by militants who broke out of prison in 2011 during the anti-Mubarak revolt.”

I’m inclined to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. That 1,200-2,200 Islamists continue to elude Egypt’s ‘omniscient’ Mukhabarat ipso facto means they have a pretty good hiding spot and aren’t just lounging around a Cairo café. That hiding spot, for many, is probably the Sinai desert. A conservative bet would be that a minimum of 500 of these fugitives have donned Kalashnikovs and are currently participating in hostilities/acts of terrorism. This would then bring our Jihadist exodus to an aggregate of 3,038—though I can’t help but think the number is greater.

Now we enter the business of accounting for all the ‘politically pardoned’ Islamists. The lion’s share of this cohort emanates from Egypt (820 10, not including an unknown # who received medical pardons), Libya (1,810)11, and Syria (450)12. Though Tunisia pardoned close to 5,000 inmates, none were serving sentences for terrorism charges and thereby can’t be included in the forthcoming survey.

In Egypt, many (about 668) of the discharged had links or were card-carrying members of Islamic Jihad, Jama’a al-Islamiya and other sundry groups complicit in acts of terror throughout the 90’s (i.e. 1997 Luxor attack)–with the remaining 150 belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. In Libya, at least half (960) of those pardoned were fighters from the AQ-linked LIFG while the rest (850) were deemed “radical Islamic activists.”

And in Syria, in a bid to sow chaos within the rebel ranks while contriving a charade of a ‘War on Terror, the Assad regime freed a batch of 436 radical Islamists. Notably, most would go on to form their own Jihadi fighting brigades; chief among them the AQ-affiliated al-Nusra front.

Excluding the cohort of relatively ‘moderate’ MBs, we arrive at a total of 2,914 acquitted erstwhile or current Jihadists and radical Islamists (i.e. those proselytizing Jihad.) Of course, it’s impossible to ascertain how many have since abjured the Jihadi cause and found other vocations (motivational speakers maybe?). Yet obversely, it’s equally unfeasible to divine how many formerly ‘plain’ Islamists—the MB detainees for instance–became even more radical in prison and thus traded rhetorical evangelism for RPGs and suicide vests on the way out. In fact, given the wretched state of Arab prisons, the latter scenario is arguably likelier. As one US intelligence agent put it, “You get guys who become more extreme in prison then come out as a much bigger problem than they went in.”

Summing it up, from the end of January 2011 to today, the world likely saw 3,038 Islamic menaces burst out from their cells to rejoin their terrorist fraternities. While trailing behind them were at least a plurality of the 2,914 hardened Jihadi veterans and extremists who received clemency and walked free.

The implications of this prisoner exodus are severe and will continue to rankle the world for the foreseeable future. In all the locales cited, the influx of battle-hardened and skilled manpower has invigorated respective terrorist movements and heightened the threat they pose both to their immediate environs and also the wider world. Yet the impact of these new additions go beyond the extra hands and brains they provide. Psychologically speaking, they’re also a fillip for morale and recruitment.

As a combat soldier in the Israeli army, our commanders preached the imperative of repatriating our captured peers. “How can we expect you,” they’d ask, “to make the ultimate sacrifice without the comfort of knowing that if you get stuck, we’ll be in there to get you out?” I believe the same principle applies to Jihadists. To rot in the purgatory of a cell is not the ‘paradise’ they sign up for. The knowledge that they’d be ‘on their own’ should their mission go awry discourages the very altruism needed for its successful completion. On the other hand, were they to head into battle with the equanimity of knowing ‘it’d be only a matter of time’ before their brothers would come to their rescue, they’d be all the more raring to put themselves out there for the cause.

Frankly, what isn’t manifest in the tally is arguably the prisoner exodus’ most noxious influence: the growing predominance of the indoctrinatory pulpit. The case of Tunisia is an illustrative example.

Though not included in the computation above, the release of almost 5,000 political detainees—many of them Salafist clergy—by Tunisia’s Islamist-friendly government has turned a once religiously mellow country into one of the regions major Jihadi exporters. The infusion of unfettered firebrand preachers is effectively transforming mosques into Jihadi recruiting centers. As of December, as many as 2,000 Tunisian youth were fighting along side the AQ-affiliated groups lSIS and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. While thousands more were interdicted prior to crossing the Turkish-Syrian border. The problem is real and abuts a pattern that is becoming all too familiar: The bewitchment of young men at the local mosque, an invitation to a training camp in neighboring Libya, and a voyage to a safe house along the Syrian border in preparation for battle.

Some scholars have sugarcoated the Arab Spring as a humiliating setback for the Global Jihadi Movement (GJM). Yet, as this study has shown, they may now be eating their words. Though just one externality of many, the deluge of freed Jihadi prisoners occasioned by regional upheaval is an ominous threat that has yet to materialize in full. As it does, it may go down as one of the GJM’s greatest fortunes.