Promo: Revisit Dateline's story from the days following Osama Bin Laden's death.
Al-Qaeda has recruited an estimated since Sept. 11, 2001, when the Osama bin Laden-led extremist group attacked the United States, according to the not-for-profit Council on Foreign Relations.
Despite a United States-led global “” that has , killed an estimated and assassinated bin Laden, al-Qaeda has since 9/11, expanding from rural Afghanistan into .
In those places, al-Qaeda has developed new political influence – in some areas even supplanting the local government.
So how does a religious extremist group with in September 2001 become a transnational terror organisation, even as the world’s biggest military has targeted it for elimination?
According to and the , the US “war on terror” was the catalyst for al-Qaeda’s growth.
Bin Laden and the ‘war on terror’
For decades, it was a . Bin Laden sought to raise an Islamic coalition of forces to – an Islamic state governed with strict Islamic law – across the Muslim world. But as late as 1996 he had willing to die for the cause.
For years, bin Laden with such extremist groups as Egypt’s Ibn al-Khattab and the Libyan Islamic Fighting group, hoping to create a global Islamist movement.
These organisations rejected bin Laden’s overtures. These disparate groups lacked a common enemy that could unite them in al-Qaeda’s fight for an .
So bin Laden . He decided to make the United States – a country most Islamic extremist groups see as the enemy of Islam – his main target.
In 1998 al-Qaeda waged successful . In 2000, it bombed , a military ship refueling in a Yemen harbor, killing 17 sailors.
Bin Laden hoped the U.S. would respond with a into Muslim majority territory, triggering a holy war that would put al-Qaeda at the forefront of the fight against these unholy invaders.
After al-Qaeda operatives flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, , bin Laden got his wish. The United States on Oct. 7, 2001. Eighteen months later, it invaded Iraq.
How al-Qaeda grew
Islamic groups and individual extremists after 9/11. Al-Qaeda became the nucleus of a global violent Islamist movement, with affiliates across the Middle East and Africa swearing their allegiance.
At the same time, the war in Afghanistan was decimating al-Qaeda’s core operations.
Leaders were killed by drone strikes or driven into . The Bush administration claimed per cent of al-Qaeda leadership. Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders sought refuge in places like the and Yemen – remote areas .
To evade US detection, al-Qaeda had to between its newly decentralised fronts. That meant the group’s global leadership had to have autonomy to operate relatively independently.
Bin Laden expected al-Qaeda affiliates to and, of course, pursue the objective of establishing an Islamic caliphate.
But newly minted regional al-Qaeda leaders – people like in Somalia and – enjoyed enough autonomy to pursue their own agendas in these unstable places.
Al-Qaeda Iraq, al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as their groups came to be known, . They began building credibility, establishing alliances and recruiting fighters.
Bin Laden’s death in 2011 was a symbolic defeat for al-Qaida, but operationally it barely made a dent. Source: AP Photo/Nick Ut
By 2015, when bin Laden was killed, al-Qaeda was a network of . Today its territory .
Manipulation of a sectarian divide
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, headquartered in Yemen, is a case study in how the group now wields its power more locally.
Yemen has been in since 2015, when a declared war against the country’s Sunni Muslim government.
Although this conflict appears sectarian in nature, the Yemen scholar Marieke Brandt argues it is largely about political power – namely, the minority, who come from northern Yemen.
Nonetheless, al-Qaeda – a Sunni terror group – saw political opportunity in Yemen’s civil war.
The group has . Using its , al-Qaeda has endeared itself to the local Sunni people and Yemen’s powerful Sunni tribal leaders. It has also ingratiated itself to Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed government and .
The strategy has been remarkably effective for al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had at its founding in 2009. It now has about , most of them Sunnis recruited from territory the Houthis have attempted to take over.
It has planted and across Yemen that have , held and, in 2015, orchestrated the .
The U.S. government considers al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to be the of al-Qaeda.
An Afghan waits while a group of US soldiers from the secure an area during the inspection of a local bazaar November 14, 2002 in the town of Yayeh Kehl. Source: Getty Images North America
Adapt the tactic, keep the mission
In adapting its methods to Yemeni culture, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has made some missteps.
In 2011, the group attempted to impose extremely strict over two areas it controlled in south Yemen. Al-Qaeda instituted rigid punishments of the sort common in Afghanistan, such as cutting off the hands of a thief and banning the chewed stimulant plant called khat.
The next time al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula asserted its political power over parts of Yemen left ungoverned in the chaos of civil war, in 2015, it did not rule directly over these territories. Rather, it allowed a local council to govern according their own norms and customs. And it market open.
Al-Qaeda also paid for long-neglected public services like schools, water and electricity – effectively becoming the state.
According to the , a humanitarian organisation, this softer stance . That, in turn, ensured al-Qaeda could keep using Yemen as a regional headquarters.
A similar has occurred in al-Qaeda affiliates in .
Al-Qaeda is no longer a hierarchical organisation taking orders from its famous, charismatic leader, as it was on 9/11.
But it is stronger and more resilient than it was under bin Laden. And the “war on terror” has helped, not hurt it.
Christian Taylor is affiliated with Warzone Initiatives, a nonprofit organisation working to address conflicts involving non-state armed groups.
