Al-Qaeda is stronger than it was before the terrorist attack in New York

Al-Qaeda has recruited an estimated 40,000 fighters since September 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 “war on terror” that has cost US USD 5.9 trillion, killed an estimated 480,000 to 507,000 people and assassinated bin Laden, Al-Qaeda has grown and spread since 9/11, expanding from rural Afghanistan into North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, the Gulf States, the Middle East and Central Asia.

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 fewer than a hundred members in September 2001 become a transnational terror organization, even as the world’s biggest military has targeted it for elimination?

According to my dissertation, research on the resiliency of Al-Qaeda and the work of other scholars, the US “war on terror” was the catalyst for Al-Qaeda’s growth.

Source: Deccan Chronicle