Twenty-five years ago, 19 hijackers boarded four passenger aircraft in the United States and carried out an attack that changed the world. Nearly 3,000 people were killed on September 11, 2001. America went to war, invaded Afghanistan, invaded Iraq hunted al-Qaeda across continents and eventually killed Osama bin Laden. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent building an international counterterrorism architecture designed to ensure that nothing like 9/11 could happen again.
A quarter of a century later, the organisation behind the attacks has been battered, fragmented and has become a shadow of its former self but it never disappeared.
The al-Qaeda of 2026 looks very different from the organisation bin Laden commanded from Afghanistan. Its old central leadership has been devastated. Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. His successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by an American drone strike in Kabul in 2022. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of 9/11, remains imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay awaiting trial.
Egyptian militant Saif al-Adel is widely regarded as al-Qaeda's de facto leader, but the organisation no longer depends on a single charismatic figure. And I think that is precisely why it has survived.
Rather than attempting to recreate the centralised organisation destroyed after 2001, al-Qaeda has evolved into a loose international ecosystem of affiliates, allied organisations and local insurgencies. Some use the al-Qaeda name openly. Others maintain ideological, operational or personal relationships with its leadership while concentrating primarily on local wars. The result is an organisation that is less visible globally but considerably harder to destroy.
Africa is now at the centre of that story. In the Sahel, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, has expanded across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger while pushing towards coastal West Africa. The group has attacked military positions, mining operations and major transport routes, kidnapped foreigners for ransom and demonstrated that it can exert economic pressure on governments. In 2025, it imposed a fuel blockade around Bamako, attacking tankers travelling towards the Malian capital.
Thousands of kilometres east, al-Shabaab remains one of al-Qaeda's most formidable affiliates. The Somali organisation controls or contests territory, raises money through taxation and extortion and continues attacking government and security targets despite years of Somali, African and American military operations against it.
In Yemen al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, once considered the branch most capable of striking Western countries, has survived years of drone strikes, leadership losses and the country's civil war. United Nations monitors say AQAP has become increasingly assertive again. The organisation has rebuilt finances and continued propaganda aimed beyond Yemen's borders.
Afghanistan remains the most symbolically uncomfortable case. The United States invaded the country in 2001 because the Taliban had provided sanctuary to bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Twenty years later, American forces withdrew and the Taliban returned to Kabul. The Taliban insists that it does not allow al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan. UN monitored groups have a different assessment, reporting that al-Qaeda maintains a presence and continues to enjoy what they describe as the patronage of the de facto authorities. The discovery of Zawahiri living in Kabul before his death in 2022 had already raised serious questions about how completely the Taliban had separated itself from its old ally.
Al-Qaeda also retains longstanding ties with Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, which is waging an increasingly violent insurgency against Islamabad. A recent UN assessment said the TTP receives ideological guidance, training and support from al-Qaeda. Pakistan says much of the TTP's leadership operates from neighbouring Afghanistan, an allegation Kabul denies.
Syria offers another example of how al-Qaeda-linked movements can evolve rather than simply disappear. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the former leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, publicly broke with the organisation in 2016 and rebranded his movement as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. But rebranding did not erase the movement’s record or change the reality of its conduct. Jolani now using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa remains even today closely associated with atrocities committed against Druze and other Syrian minorities. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, he emerged as Syria’s de facto ruler, and Western governments chose to legitimise him despite that record. His transformation from al-Qaeda affiliate to political leader does not erase his movement’s origins or its abuses; it exposes the convenience and failure of a Western policy willing to treat a rebranded militant as a legitimate statesman.
Al-Qaeda today does not have the same ability to organise another 9/11. The counterterrorism system built after 2001 has made it harder for the group to move money, fighters and senior leaders. Intelligence agencies track communications, drones can target commanders in remote areas and governments now share information more quickly.
Al-Qaeda also lost its position as the undisputed centre of global jihadism. Islamic State's spectacular rise after 2014 challenged al-Qaeda for recruits, territory and ideological leadership. The two movements remain bitter rivals, and their affiliates sometimes fight each other.
But al-Qaeda seems to have learned from its enemies.
Al-Qaeda has survived by becoming less centralised. It has morphed into smaller groups operating within local wars that are much harder to find and defeat.
It does not need to control Afghanistan or carry out another attack like September 11 to remain dangerous. Its affiliates can take advantage of weak governments, civil wars, ethnic tensions and lawless areas while staying connected to a global movement.
For people born after 2001, 9/11 is already history. Osama bin Laden is known mainly from documentaries and textbooks. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have ended for the United States, Its attention is now more on China, Russia, Iran and competition between major powers.
Al-Qaeda appears willing to wait.
Twenty-five years ago, it shocked the world. Today, it survives in a quieter form: spread across several countries, embedded in local conflicts and less reliant on centralised leaders.
