According to a State Department Strategic Assessment report al-Qaeda is alive and well and remains a top priority for US counter terrorism officials.
The Strategic Assessment reads as follows:
“Al-Qaeda (AQ) and its affiliates and adherents worldwide continue to present a serious threat to the United States, our allies, and our interests. While the international community has severely degraded AQ’s core leadership, the terrorist threat has evolved. Leadership losses in Pakistan, coupled with weak governance and instability in the Middle East and Northwest Africa, have accelerated the decentralization of the movement and led to the affiliates in the AQ network becoming more operationally autonomous from core AQ and increasingly focused on local and regional objectives.
The past several years have seen the emergence of a more aggressive set of AQ affiliates and like-minded groups, most notably in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Northwest Africa, and Somalia.
AQ leadership experienced difficulty in maintaining cohesion within the AQ network and in communicating guidance to its affiliated groups. AQ leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was rebuffed in his attempts to mediate a dispute among AQ affiliates operating in Syria – al-Nusrah Front and al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), now calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – which resulted in the expulsion of ISIL from the AQ network in February 2014. In addition, guidance issued by Zawahiri in 2013 for AQ affiliates to avoid collateral damage was routinely disobeyed, notably in attacks by AQ affiliates against civilian religious pilgrims in Iraq, hospital staff and convalescing patients in Yemen, and families at a shopping mall in Kenya.”
Source: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224819.htm
Al-Qaeda has the following direct affiliates:
Al-Qaeda has the following indirect affiliates:
- Abdullah Azzam Brigades
- Al-Mulathameen Brigade
- Al-Mourabitoun
- Ansar Dine
- Abu Sayyaf
- Ansar al-Islam
- East Turkestan Islamic Movement
- Caucasus Emirate
- Fatah al-Islam
- Islamic Jihad Union
- Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
- Jaish-e-Mohammed
- Jemaah Islamiyah
- Lashkar-e-Taiba
- Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa
- Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group
- Rajah Sulaiman movement
- Al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions