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I'm Behnam Said and for
the last 15 years I've been working

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on the topics of extremism and Islamism

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in Germany
and outside of Germany and Europe

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and I've also written a book
on the 30-year history of al-Qaeda.

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Where and when was al-Qaeda founded?

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To the best of our knowledge,
it was founded in Pakistan in August 1988.

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It's a network that's over 30 years old.

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Is al-Qaeda today
any different to what it was 30 years ago?

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Definitely. Al-Qaeda has been
through four phases.

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It keeps transforming.

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It's shown that it can adapt
to current conditions,

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and that's why we are able to look back
at the 30-year history of the network.

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Could you tell us about both
the local and global sides of al-Qaeda?

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Al-Qaeda originated from
the already existing jihadist movement

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and it was actually the first organisation
to have promoted the idea

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of focusing on more than just overthrowing
local regimes in the Muslim world

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and replacing them
with Islamic states.

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They said they should focus on the US and
its allies which supported those regimes

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and attack them in order to stop them
from supporting those regimes,

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so they can then establish
the Islamic states they had envisioned.

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What ideology does al-Qaeda stand for?

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What form of Islamism
does al-Qaeda advocate?

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Al-Qaeda advocates that change,
according to Islamists,

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won't happen by being involved
or integrated in the political processes,

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but exclusively by force of arms.

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To this effect,
they try to formulate a strategy

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which can be set up
either locally or globally.

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What influence does al-Qaeda have
on other terrorist groups today?

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Al-Qaeda always tries to incorporate
local terrorist Islamist groups

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and integrate them into their network.

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They also try to give
a global dimension to local conflicts.

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You can clearly see that in Syria,

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where al-Qaeda loyalists
have formed their own group

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which, in turn, is very different
to another Islamist militia,

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the Syrian Liberation Committee,
which is often connected to al-Qaeda,

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but which, in fact,
is in competition with al-Qaeda.

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That's where the break between
global and local ideology becomes clear,

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as the HTS Liberation Committee
has a local focus in Syria,

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and have made it clear they don't want to
commit any attacks in the USA or Europe.

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Their goal is to "liberate" Syria

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from Bashar al-Assad
and to establish an Islamic state,

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while the al-Qaeda loyalists
always say that the establishment

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of a true Islamic state will never
come about if they only focus locally.

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One should rather view jihad
as being a global notion

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and you should attack
the supporting regimes,

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the international regimes,
in order to bring about local change.

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Would you say that al-Qaeda is fragmented

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or, rather, that the model has spread
much like a franchise does?

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The franchise idea
is exactly how I'd sum it up.

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A lot of al-Qaeda branches
have been established

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which are no longer called "al-Qaeda".

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They give themselves different names

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which relate to bin Laden's strategies
from 2010 and 2011.

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But they all communicate with each other
and share their knowledge.

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They exchange people.

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They allow people to go from one conflict
to the next in order to gain expertise.

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They exchange money and they present a uniform public
appearance through their media propaganda.

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Is al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda's structure
stronger today than it was 30 years ago?

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I'd definitely say yes,

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although the name "al-Qaeda"
is disappearing more into the background.

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Bin Laden would never had dreamed
that such a powerful network,

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which is associated with him
and his ideology, would ever exist.

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Even after his death,
bin Laden is still a big role model.

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And if you look at
the sheer number of supporters

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and active fighters
in the various al-Qaeda branches,

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then you can say that al-Qaeda went from
being the project of a dozen people,

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to being a project of a hundred
and then thousands of people.

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Over ten thousand.

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Thank you.
-Thank you.