It's like Al Qaeda is some sort of invisible enemy that chills out with anyone "America" doesn't like.
You obviously weren't around for the 2002-2006 hysteria, when Al-Qaeda was, at one time or another linked with:
Saddam Hussein
President Putin and the FSB
Venezuela
Colombian and Mexican Cartels of various kinds
North Korea
The Iran-Contra scandal
The Nazi Party
The Communist Party
The antiglobalization movement
Noam Chomsky
The sinking of the Maine
The Hindenburg disaster
And I only made up two of those.
Also a few years back there was a brief flap about "terror babies". These are like anchor babies, only worse, because they're terrorists.
Of course, if you watch
The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis, you'll see a very good reason why Al-Qaeda is a shadowy organization which apparently is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Namely, because Al-Qaeda is more a figment of Western imagination than it is of actual fact. What does Al-Qaeda mean? The base. As in
database. A database of names of people who trained at camps in Afghanistan funded by Bin Laden and his affiliates. Only that and nothing more.