25 years after 9/11, al Qaeda remains a threat – even as Washington looks away

Twenty-five years after 9/11, al Qaeda is a very different force from the one that struck at the heart of America. But it is far from spent. The global jihadist network has suffered major blows over the past two decades and a half, notably losing its leader Osama bin Laden in a US raid in Pakistan in 2011 and his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri in a strike on Kabul just over a decade later. WatchLive: New York marks 25 years since 9/11 attacks It was last able to mount an attack on US soil in December 2019, when three people were killed and eight injured at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, in an attack claimed by AQAP, the al Qaeda branch based in the Arabian Peninsula. While its ability to strike on Western soil appears diminished, the jihadist network remains a deeply destabilising force in several parts of the world, including the Sahel, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “It is not the same organisation that existed on 9/11. But that does not mean it has disappeared completely,” Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told a roundtable discussion at George Washington University earlier this month. A less centralised orga...