Al-Qaeda terrorist group remains a global menace ten years after Bin Laden’s death

A decade after Former leader of al-Qaeda and the mastermind of 9/11 attack, Osama Bin Laden was hunted down and killed in Pakistan by US special forces, The Islamist militant organization continues to pose a major threat to US national security.

The threat continues to rise as al-Qaeda operatives vow to “wage war on all front” against United States as soon as the Biden administration withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, reports CNN.

In an exclusive interview with CNN – conducted through intermediaries – two al-Qaeda operatives told CNN: “War against the US will be continuing on all other fronts unless they are expelled from the rest of the Islamic world.”

Sunday was the 10th anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was killed by US special-operations forces, Seal Team 6, inside his high-walled compound in the Pakistani military college city of Abbottabad.

“Al-Qaeda as well as [ISIS] are still determined to conduct attacks on the US homeland and their presence in any of the global conflict zones will always be of a concern,” Dr Hans Jakob-Schindler, the Senior Director of Counter Extremism Project (CEP) told CNS News while speaking on Afghanistan.

“And Afghanistan continues to be, of course, a very active conflict zone which is permissible for terrorist organizations,” he added.

The Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit non-governmental organization that combats extremist groups conducted a study last year examining the increased financing of terrorism through al-Qaeda- and IS-affiliated social media platforms.

The study found that around a dozen of the most notorious financiers apparently continued to maintain social media profiles where they could possibly continue their activities via social media.

CEP also found that the community standards of major global platforms, including crowdfunding platforms, did not explicitly exclude terrorist financing.

The organization emphasized on internal content monitoring in Social Media platforms to counter the risk of terrorism financing.

Osama Bin Laden’s body was buried in the Arabian Sea from the deck of a US aircraft carrier hours after his death, to avoid the creation of any pilgrimage site on land, however, he remains an example and symbol for many radical Islamists retaining the capacity to mobilize extremists even a decade after his death.

Source: Dhaka Tribune