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 organisation than in bin Laden’s days, al Qaeda “has adopted a strategy of devolving authority to its franchises and affiliates, and there’s at least two dozen of them throughout the world”, Hoffman added. WatchTen years after Paris attacks, West Africa has become world's terrorism hotspot Among its regional branches, those based in Africa are currently the most active, particularly in the semi-arid Sahel region stretching across Western and north-central Africa, according to FRANCE 24’s Wassim Nasr, an expert on jihadist networks. Nasr said the recent withdrawal of French and other international troops from the Sahel had “paved the way for a lasting and interconnected presence of jihadist groups throughout the region”. He pointed to the JNIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims), “al Qaeda’s most active affiliate in the region, which extends across Mali and Burkina Faso, as well as Niger, Togo, Benin and Nigeria”. Regional outfits, global reach In the eastern Horn of Africa, the al Qaeda-aligned al Shabaab is another active and potent force. It now controls vast swathes of territory in Somalia, having undone years of painstaking efforts to stabilise the war-torn country. Across the Gulf of Aden, in the Arabian Peninsula, years of conflict have weakened AQAP militarily, though it has managed to replenish its financial resources and resume its propaganda campaigns in both Arabic and English, aimed at Western audiences. Al Qaeda also remains active in Afghanistan, five years after the withdrawal of US forces and 25 years after bin Laden directed the 9/11 attacks from his Afghan lair. Despite the Taliban’s denials, “al Qaeda continues to enjoy a permissive operative environment” in the country, wrote South Asia specialist Pearl Pandya in a study published by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a US-based research centre on armed conflicts.