After years of fading from the spotlight, al Qaeda has reemerged as powerful as ever and is now poised to take over its first country in the central Sahel.

After beginning the Global War on Terror as the standard bearer of global Islamic jihad, al Qaeda took a back seat in the mid-2010s as it was outcompeted by its more radical offshoot, the Islamic State group, which at its peak boasted a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria about the size of Great Britain. Even after the fall of its physical caliphate in 2018, the Islamic State group has become the byword for international Islamic terrorism, while al Qaeda has mostly remained in the junior position.