Eric Niiler
Discovery News
Al-Qaeda didn’t disappear after Osama Bin-Laden’s death in 2011, it just evolved into something new — call it Al-Qaeda 3.0.
The terrorist group has become an ideology more than a specific group of leaders, an ideology that continues to cause mayhem in hot spots like Syria, Libya and growing numbers of African nations.
Experts who study terrorism say Al-Qaeda has had several distinct generations: pre-9/11 when it was a under-the-radar (at least to the U.S. public) group organized in Afghanistan by bin Laden. The second phase when it resurfaced after 9/11 in Pakistan and then other parts of the Muslim world like Yemen. But now, experts say there’s a third phase that has emerged after bin Laden’s death and the “Arab Spring” of revolutions that toppled dictators across the Arab world.