[12] On 13 October 2005, Hazel Blears MP testified before the House of Commons that the IJU should be identified as a banned organization because it posed a threat to British interests overseas.

The men, who had connecting flights to Uganda, were thought to have continuing itineraries on to Pakistan, where sources claimed they would participate in some sort of terrorist training or indoctrination.

Following the discovered bombing plot of the IJU-affiliated "Sauerland terror cell" in Germany, the group shifted its operations again to Afghanistan, where in early 2008 a German-born Turkish IJU member drove a VBIED into a NATO compound, killing at least four people.

[15] A video released online by the IJU's media arm, Badr al-Tawhid, in 2011, showed its members fighting alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan's northern and eastern provinces, and providing training to local Uzbek, Tajik and Pashtuns.

[7] In August 2015, the IJU released a statement and photos showing scores of its fighters in Northern Afghanistan pledging allegiance to the newly appointed Taliban leader Akhtar Mansoor.

In July 2019, according to a report from the United Nations Security Council, the Islamic Jihad Union has operated in Syria, under the control of the Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.