9/11 25th Anniversary: Al-Qaeda Still Active in Afghanistan, Legacy of U.S. Two-Decade War Re-examined

On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a report by The New York Times points out that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations remain active in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, creating a gap with Taliban claims that Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for terrorist groups, and reviving external concerns that the region may once again become a breeding ground for terrorism.

According to The New York Times, although the Taliban publicly pledged to sever ties with Al-Qaeda after regaining power, the implementation of this commitment lacks independent verification. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda's current size, operational scope, and organizational structure in Afghanistan have not been disclosed in detail, and assessments of the group's actual capabilities differ among various parties. The gulf between the Taliban's political commitments and the realities shown at the intelligence level has become the central yardstick for measuring Afghanistan's current security situation.

This state of affairs has once again placed the legacy of the United States' twenty-year military intervention in Afghanistan under the spotlight. After U.S. forces withdrew in 2021 and the Taliban returned to Kabul, the sanctuary networks that had originally been dismantled did not disappear along with them; a war waged under the banner of "eliminating terrorist safe havens" now faces, twenty-five years later, the fact that the very targets it sought to destroy continue to exist in that same location. There is significant disagreement among various assessments regarding the extent to which this protracted military intervention actually weakened Al-Qaeda's capabilities.

The military and financial resources Washington invested in the name of counterterrorism, the war costs borne by the local population, and the hasty conclusion at the time of the final withdrawal together form a legacy that remains unsettled. When a military intervention fails to alter the local power ecology and the soil of radicalization despite being launched under the banner of eliminating threats, the reality twenty-five years later is itself the most direct response to that strategy.