Left crippled by a U.S.-led 20-year war, Al Qaeda is starting to resurge in Afghanistan — and expanding its footprint across the Middle East and Africa.
Following the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center on Sep. 11, 2001, the U.S. launched a war against Al Qaeda in the Middle East, largely devastating the terrorist group’s forces over the course of 20 years. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Al Qaeda has begun resurging and is attempting to extend its presence in surrounding nations, according to national security experts and a review of public records.
“Their resurgence in Afghanistan is deeply concerning,” former Pentagon official Simone Leeden told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Al Qaeda is much more dangerous today than many realize. Their reestablishment in Afghanistan provides a critical hub for training, recruiting and planning operations, which increases their ability to project power across the region and beyond.”
U.S. forces ground down Al Qaeda’s capabilities in the first decade of the war, forcing them out of Afghanistan. and toppling the regime of the Taliban, which was the de facto government of the country. After the U.S. withdrew its presence from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban almost immediately took back control.
President Joe Biden claimed that after the withdrawal — which was largely seen as a botched operation and one of the administration’s most prominent failures — Al Qaeda had not been allowed to return to Afghanistan because the Taliban wouldn’t allow them to do so. However, there is credible evidence that Al Qaeda is reestablishing its foothold in Afghanistan at the behest of the Taliban; though the relationship between the two is complicated, the Taliban has essentially provided a refuge for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
“In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s situation is far better than it was prior to Sep. 11. Today, Afghanistan is a safe haven for Al Qaeda and the country is fully controlled by the Taliban,” Bill Roggio, national security expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said this week. “Al Qaeda leaders serve in the Taliban’s government, and the Taliban is issuing passports and national identification cards to members of Al Qaeda.”
Al Qaeda is operating training and recruitment camps in at least 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, and “[continues] to engage with warlords, propagandists, recruiters and financiers,” according to the United Nations and FDD. The terrorist group has tapped the region’s gold mines, making millions of dollars a week to fund itself, per an investigation by a U.K.-based threat analysis firm obtained by Foreign Policy in March.
Al Qaeda has also created offshoots or established affiliate groups in the broader Middle Eastern and African regions in a bid to expand its influence, including Somalia, Syria and Yemen, according to CRS, the 2024 Global Terrorism Index (GTI) and the Director of National Intelligence.
Al Qaeda’s last claimed attack was a shooting at a Naval Air Station in Florida in 2019, which ended in the murder of three people, but its derivatives and affiliates have committed a number of large-scale attacks throughout the Middle East throughout 2023, collectively killing hundreds of people in countries including Niger, Pakistan and Burkina Faso, according to the GTI.
The U.S. is repositioning some of its forces along the West African coast and working in concert with coalition forces to stop Al Qaeda from pressing further into the region, according to The Wall Street Journal. This objective is made more difficult because the U.S. no longer has a military presence in Niger, a strategic point of the terrorism flashpoint Sahel region.
“Al Qaeda has active insurgencies with tens of thousands of fighters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and throughout Africa,” Roggio said this week.
“We’ve seen Al Qaeda exploit weak states and ungoverned spaces,” Leeden said. “This expansion indicates a coordinated effort to broaden their influence and capabilities. Al Qaeda has never been a one-dimensional threat; they’ve always operated with strategic patience, embedding themselves into local conflicts and gradually building their strength over time.”
For the time being, however, Al Qaeda’s military capabilities are still too diminished for the group to pull off a mass terrorist attack, according to CRS. An unclassified DNI 2024 threat assessment stated that while Al Qaeda is currently at “operational nadir,” noting that regional affiliates will continue to expand
Nevertheless, experts have told the DCNF that maintaining a careful watch on Al Qaeda and over the Middle East is essential, especially in the present day given that the region is embroiled in chaos stemming from a war between Israel and Hamas.
“These groups are threats. We have to keep an eye on them… but the idea that we’re going to miss some sort of explosion in activity — I’m not buying that without more indicators,” Michael DiMino, a Defense Priorities fellow and former CIA official, previously told the DCNF.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
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