The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the uprising in neighbouring Syria in 2011 presented unique opportunities for Sunni jihadi militants. The invasion and occupation of Iraq created a security vacuum that the jihadis were quick to fill. Eight years later, the protest movement in Syria, which started as a call for dignity and political representation, likewise created the insecure conditions that the jihadis were able to exploit. Al-Qaida affiliates quickly arose in both countries, giving the impression that al-Qaida benefitted considerably from these security vacuums. This perception, however, is for the most part unfounded.

To be sure, al-Qaida did succeed in establishing an official presence in each of these countries, thus enhancing al-Qaida's brand and raising its international profile. The main jihadi force in Iraq, Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi's Jama‘at al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad, rebranded as al-Qaida in Mesopotamia in 2004. Nine years later, in 2013, the leading jihadi group in Syria, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani's Jabhat al-Nusra, declared its loyalty to al-Qaida. However, in each of these cases the role actually played by al-Qaida in the local affiliate was lim-ited in both extent and duration. The leaders of these affiliates were not dispatched by the senior al-Qaida leadership based in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region, or what is commonly known as al-Qaida central. These groups were not established at the behest of al-Qaida but rather declared their affiliation later on. Once the affiliation was declared, the leaders of the affiliates largely pursued their own agendas, never showing much deference to al-Qaida's leaders. Furthermore, neither affiliate remained long in the al-Qaida fold. In 2006, al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Mesopotamia transformed itself into the Islamic State of Iraq, which enjoyed a more tenuous link to al-Qaida that was finally severed with announcement of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in 2013. Similarly, in 2016–17, al-Jawlani's Jabhat al-Nusra gradually evolved into the group known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the formation of which marked a decisive breaking of ties with al-Qaida. In each of these cases al-Qaida opposed the independent drift of the affiliate, yet the affiliate proceeded on its course anyway.