Thirty Years After its Foundation – Where is al-Qaida Going?

Al-Qaida today is commonly labelled a ‘global insurgency’ or ‘global franchise.’ However, these labels are notsufficient if we want to understand what kind of threat al-Qaida poses to the West. Al-Qaida is better describedas a revolutionary vanguard, engaged in a perpetual struggle to further its Salafi-jihadi ideology. Its strategy isflexible and opportunistic, and the organization uses a range of tools associated with both state and non-stateactors. In the future al-Qaida is likely to treat international terrorist planning, and support to local insurgenciesin the Muslim world, as two separate activities. International terrorism is currently not a prioritised strategy ofal-Qaida, but it is likely to be so in the future, given that it manages to re-build its external operations capability.