ISLAMABAD: Al-Qaeda’s decline after 9/11 was not simply the result of effective counterterrorism, but stemmed largely from the group’s organisational weaknesses and failures of its leadership, according to new research launched in Islamabad on Thursday.

The finding comes from the book ‘Al-Qaida after 9/11: The War on Terror and the Decade of Demise’ by Dr Anne Likuski, Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. The launch was hosted by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).

Dr Likuski, who specialises in Al-Qaeda’s history, leadership and jihadism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the book is the first to analyse the group’s inner workings through its mid-level leadership in Pakistan.

It relies on the “Abbottabad documents” — Al-Qaeda’s internal communications from 2002-2011 recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound and released by the CIA in November 2017.

Speaking at the event, Dr Likuski said her motivation was the absence of a detailed history of Al-Qaeda after 2001.

“Al-Qaeda changed fundamentally — from being a group dedicated to fighting to a group dedicated to governance,” she said. The shift reflected that Al-Qaeda was always an “ambiguous” organisation without “a static and clearly defined ideology and goals”.

The research assesses Al-Qaeda’s performance in three areas: the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and international terrorism.

Key findings: the group’s contribution to the Afghan war was “modest”, it failed to influence events in Iraq, and its ability to organise international attacks “faded”. A focus group discussion followed with scholars, policymakers and security experts.

Professor Arshi Saleem Hashmi, National Defence University, said Al-Qaeda was a “continuously evolving phenomenon”. Imtiaz Gul, Executive Director CRSS, questioned whether militant groups in Afghanistan were organic or functioned as proxies.

Dr Ishtiaq Ahmad, Professor Emeritus at Quaid-i-Azam University, called it a complex subject and asked whether there was rationale behind past claims that the Taliban was a global jihadi organisation. Thomas Smikop Dahl, Deputy Head of Mission, Norwegian Embassy, said primary sources like Abbottabad documents were vital for policy to understand how individuals turn to extremism.

Presiding over the session, former NACTA coordinator Ihsan Ghani said the research showed “Al-Qaeda collapsed under its own weight because leadership was cut off from ground realities, did not trust anyone, and there was mistrust within”. Muhammad Amir Rana, President PIPS, termed it a “well-resourced and important document” to understand Al-Qaeda’s dynamics and links to the present security landscape.

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2026