This column by Rami G. Khouri in The Daily Star of Lebanon is very much worth reading:

“Several months ago when I wrote about the looming danger of the growing strength of Salafist-takfiri groups in Iraq and Syria, I focused on the threats that thousands of their fighters, bombers and terrorists posed to those countries and also to other lands where they would travel in due course.”

(…)

“The frightening thing about the growth of these groups is what they tell us about the condition of societies in the Levant and other Arab countries. Beyond the immediate and real security threat these groups pose to everyone in the region, we should also see them as a frightening symptom of erratic modern Arab statehood. These groups did not just suddenly appear over the past three years as war raged in Syria; rather, they have been incubating for much longer because of the slow deterioration of conditions in Middle Eastern countries over the past quarter century or so.
The gradual fraying of state authority in the region has created zones of nongovernability or even chaos, which provide the ideal environment for such groups, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Syria or northern Sinai. As the state retreats from parts of society, the gap is filled either by strong nonstate actors such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Sadrists in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen, or by Salafist-takfiris who exploit the chaos and impose their own brand of security and order.”

(Read the complete article here.)

The zones of non-governability are becoming bigger and bigger and when it comes to nation building drones are not very much of help.
Bun then again, the West gave up on nation building in this part of the world. We are all exploiters of the chaos, but there are more decent and less decent exploiters naturally.