Whatever happened to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?

[DonViejo]

It’s a mystery if remaining remnants of the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are still even plotting overseas attacks.

By WESLEY MORGAN 08/15/2018 05:09 AM EDT

The troops waging America's 17-year-old war in Afghanistan are confronting a puzzle: What has become of the enemy who drew them there?

Al Qaeda, the group whose Sept. 11 terrorist attacks provoked the U.S. invasion in 2001, has shrunk to relative obscurity among the military’s other missions in Afghanistan, supplanted by newer threats such as a local branch of the Islamic State. And it is a matter of debate how much Al Qaeda’s remaining Afghan presence still focuses on launching attacks overseas, according to current and former military officers and government officials, experts, and Afghans from areas where the group operates.

Only a small portion of the 15,000 American troops in Afghanistan are involved in the counterterrorism mission that the military calls its “core objective” there. Even fewer of those are hunting Al Qaeda, whose presence in the country has dwindled after years of drone strikes. Instead, U.S. special operations forces are focusing on the Afghan branch of ISIS, a less secretive group that in some way offers an easier target.

The changing complexion of the American mission, aimed primarily at aiding the Afghan government in its civil war against the Taliban, underscores how the conflict has morphed away from its original focus: preventing a reprise of 9/11 and punishing its perpetrators. That was also the intent of Congress' 2001 war authorization, which the Pentagon still relies on as it sends combat troops to countries across the Middle East and Africa.

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/15/al-qaeda-afghanistan-terrorism-777511

[bearsfootball516]

1. Domestic, lone-wolf type terrorist attacks are a much larger threat than Al-Qaeda at this point.

As the article mentioned, drone strikes over the past decade have really crippled them. I also read somewhere, can't remember where, that when Bin Laden was killed, the organization really fell apart without a central figure.

They're still worth keeping a close eye on and tracking obviously, but they're a shell of what they were in the early 2000's.

[fleur-de-lisa]

2. Trump is a bigger threat than either Al-Qaeda or lone-wolf terrorists.