US-led military action in Afghanistan released the Taliban's grip on power and deprived al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, his inner circle and hundreds of rank-and-file al-Qaeda members of a friendly host, a recruiting 'magnet' and a relatively comfortable physical base of operations. The global intelligence and law-enforcement mobilisation, meanwhile, has made communications, travel and financing more difficult for terrorists. And yet, it is also true that the counter-terrorism effort has impelled an already highly decentralised and elusive transnational terrorist network to become even more 'virtual' and protean, and therefore still harder to identify and neutralise. Al-Qaeda is a resilient organisation with a religiously turbo-charged absolutist agenda. It may take a generation to dismantle.