Al Qaeda after bin Laden, still ‘a dangerous threat’

The militant group Al Qaeda has survived the death of its founder Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 and bolstered its notoriety with attacks in Africa, Europe and Yemen despite suffering a series of setbacks.

Al Qaeda has been replaced as a pre-eminent global militant power by the militant Islamic State (IS) group but remains a potent force and dangerous threat, experts say.

By the time US special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, the group he founded in the late 1980s had been badly damaged, with many of its militants and leaders killed or captured in the US “War on Terror”.

Dissention grew in the militant ranks as new Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri struggled in bin Laden’s place, until one of its branches, originally Al Qaeda in Iraq, broke away to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

After seizing large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, the group declared a caliphate’ in areas under its control, calling itself simply the IS.

IS has since eclipsed its former partner, drawing thousands of militants to its cause and claiming responsibility for attacks that have left hundreds dead in Brussels, Paris, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and on a Russian airliner over Egypt.

Its self-declared ’emir’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has won pledges of allegiance from extremist groups across the Middle East and beyond, with especially powerful IS affiliates operating in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and in Libya.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, a Paris-based expert on Islam and jihadist groups, said IS has been especially effective at using new technology to surpass its less tech-savvy rival.

“Al Qaeda propaganda has become invisible on social networks thanks to the media war machine that Daesh has managed to successfully create,” Filiu said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

“Al-Qaeda has lost everywhere to Daesh, except in the Sahel” desert region of northern Africa, he said.