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he anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death last week focused attention briefly on the continued threat posed by al Qaeda. Too much of that attention has been devoted to al Qaeda Central itself—the remnants of bin Laden’s organization that continue to reside in Pakistan under the leadership of Ayman al Zawahiri. But the greatest and most imminent threats to the U.S. and its allies come not from that group, which ten years of continuous attacks have severely degraded, but rather from its franchises elsewhere, particularly al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al Shabaab in Somalia, which only recently announced its formal merger with al Qaeda. The viability of the threats these groups pose to the U.S. deserves more careful consideration than it has received.