Twenty-five years after the attacks that remade the world, the organization responsible for them has not vanished from the land where it once found shelter. Afghanistan, now governed again by the Taliban, was supposed to represent a closed chapter — a country whose new rulers had pledged to deny refuge to international terrorism. Yet intelligence suggests that Al Qaeda endures within Afghan borders, quieter and more dispersed than before, but present nonetheless, reminding us that the consequences of history rarely resolve on the timelines we prefer.