Without Afghanistan, does Al-Qaeda still rise?

In our timeline, Osama Bin Laden received celebrity status throughout the Islamic world by participating in the Soviet-Afghan war during the 1980s. Bin Laden used this status to lay the foundations for Al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden's first base was in Sudan, before he was forced by that government to relocate somewhere else. He chose to relocate his organization to Afghanistan, where they were protected by the Taliban until the 2001 US invasion.

The Soviet-Afghan war, which gave Bin Laden his celebrity and following, was caused by internal instability that had it's roots in the 1973 overthrow of King Zahir Shah by his cousin.

So, my question is, had Zahir Shah not been overthrown, thereby negating the Soviet invasion, would Al-Qaeda still exist as we know it or would it have never existed? If it would still exist, then what other countries could it have risen in?
 
It’s an interesting question. I think jihadism as we know it wouldn’t really exist. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was really the critical incubator and testing ground for the ideals of Jihadism against ‘the far enemy’ (ie. The West). Without Afghanistan the series of circumstances and meeting of minds that led to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda don’t occur. That’s not to say that OBL couldn’t be radicalized some other way. But for a really long time, radical Islamism and jihadism were more focused on ‘the near enemy’ or the pro-Western autocrats. They weren’t really concerned with reaching out and attacking the West, they were concerned about reforming their own societies into purer Islamic societies. Afghanistan shifted that view in a radical way and proved that a determined jihadist force could defeat the modern armies of ‘the far enemy’, which emboldened the jihadist movement, leading to the series of circumstances that we have today.

TL;DR
Yes, but not as we know it.
 
Top