<b><font color=white>Al-Qaeda</font></b>

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Al-Qaeda, Arabic for "the foundation" or "the base," is a Sunni Islamist organization with the stated objective of eliminating foreign influence in Muslim countries. The most prominent members of the group are adherents of Salafism, a fundamentalist sect of Sunni Islam. While Osama bin Laden is generally recognized as the group's ideological leader, the group's operations are not highly centralized, and several independent and collaborative cells exist in multiple countries. Al-Qaeda has been linked to multiple terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, but is best known for the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and The Pentagon. In response, the United States launched a war
against Afghanistan, which was providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden
and al-Qaeda members. Due to its history, the group is officially
designated as a terrorist organization in the

Al-Qaeda Flag

United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
al-Qaeda members. Due to its history, the group is officially designated
as a terrorist organization in the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, and Australia.

Origins

The origins of the group can be traced to a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when a cadre of foreign Arab mujahideen, financed by bin Laden and independent wealthy Muslim contributors, joined the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The U.S. viewed the conflict in Afghanistan as an integral Cold War struggle, and the CIA provided assistance to anti-Soviet forces through the Pakistani ISI. However, such support was limited to the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. Bin Laden's organization channeled Arab mujahideen to the conflict, distributing money and providing logistical skills and resources to guerrillas as well as Afghan refugees.

Al-Qaeda evolved from the Maktab al-Khadamat (Office of Services, MAK) — a Mujahidin organization fighting to establish an Islamic state during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden was a founding member of the MAK, along with Palestinian militant Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. The role of the MAK was to channel funds from a variety of sources (including donations from across the Middle East) into training Mujahidin from around the world in guerrilla combat, and to transport the combatants to Afghanistan. The MAK was primarily funded by donations from wealthy Muslim individuals. During the latter half of the 1980s, the MAK was a relatively minor grouping in Afghanistan with no direct combatants; rather it limited its activities to fund raising, logistics, housing, education, refugee care, recruitment and the financing of other Mujahideen. During the war, the American and Pakistani intelligence services supported the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet occupation; MAK, while supportive of the indigenous mujahideen's cause, was a separate grouping made up of foreign Arabs.

After a protracted and costly war lasting nine years, the Soviet Union finally withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Mohammed Najibullah's socialist Afghan government was rapidly overthrown by elements of the Mujahidin. With Mujahidin leaders unable to agree on a structure for governance, chaos ensued with ever-changing control of ill-defined territories falling under constantly reorganizing alliances and schisms between regional warlords.

Toward the end of the Soviet military mission to Afghanistan, some Mujahideen wanted to expand their operations to include Islamist struggles in other parts of the world. A number of overlapping and interrelated organizations were formed to further those aspirations.

One of these was the organization that would eventually be called al-Qaeda which was formed by Osama bin Laden in 1988. Bin Laden wished to extend the conflict to nonmilitary operations in other parts of the world; Azzam, in contrast, wanted to remain focused on military campaigns. After Azzam was assassinated in 1989, the MAK split, with a significant number joining bin Laden's organization.

Osama bin Laden

Usāmah bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Lādin, born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on March 10, 1957 and most commonly known as Osama bin Laden or Usama bin Laden, is a militant Islamist and the primary founder of the al-Qaeda Islamist paramilitary organization. Bin Laden is a member of the prestigious and wealthy bin Laden family (his father was the late Muhammed Awad bin Laden, a wealthy businessman involved in construction and with close ties to the Saudi royal family) and issued a 1998 edict that Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel in the United States and allied countries until they withdraw their forces from Muslim countries and Israel.

Bin laden was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim. Bin Laden is often described as lanky; the FBI describes him as tall and thin, being 6' 4" (193 cm) to 6' 5" (195 cm) tall and weighing about 160 pounds (75 kg). He has an olive complexion, is left-handed, and usually walks with a cane. He wears a plain white turban and no longer dons the traditional Saudi male headdress. In terms of personality, Bin Laden is described as a soft-spoken, mild mannered man, and despite his rhetoric, he is said to be charming, polite, and respectful.

1979 was a pivotal year for Islamic fundamentalism, with three huge events in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was connected, at least indirectly,

to the latter two of them. First, on January 16, 1979 the Iranian Revolution began with the forced exile of the Shah, Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, which then brought about the world's first modern Muslim theocracy under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. Second, a half-brother of Osama was implicated in the November 20, 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure at Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The hostage-taking, two week siege, and bloody ending shocked the Muslim world, as hundreds were killed in the ensuing battles and executions. The event was explained as a fundamentalist dissident revolt against the Saudi regime. The Iran hostage crisis had begun only weeks earlier, on November 4, 1979 when a mob of students stormed and seized the U.S. embassy. Immediately following the Mecca event, Iran blamed the U.S., and angry Islamic mobs then burned two more U.S. embassies to the ground, in Islamabad, Pakistan, and at Tripoli, Libya. And then in the third major event of the year, on December 25, 1979 the Soviet Union, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion, deployed the 40th Army into Afghanistan, in support of advisers it already had in place there. Bin Laden's wealth and connections assisted his interest in supporting the
mujahideen, Muslim guerrillas fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Beginning of U.S. Enmity

Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had put the Saudi Arabian ruling House of Saud at risk both from internal dissent and the perceived possibility of further Iraqi expansionism. In the face of seemingly massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's own forces were well armed but outnumbered. Bin Laden offered the services of his Mujahideen to King Fahd to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi army.

After some deliberation the Saudi Monarch refused bin Laden's offer and

instead opted to allow United States and allied forces to deploy on his territory. Bin Laden considered this a treacherous deed. He believed that the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. After speaking publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops he was quickly forced into exile to Sudan and his Saudi citizenship was revoked.

Shortly afterwards, the movement which came to be known as al-Qaeda was formed.

Sudan

In 1991, Sudan's National Islamic Front, an Islamist group that had recently gained power, invited al-Qaeda to move operations to their country. For several years, al-Qaeda ran several businesses (including an import/export business, farms, and a construction firm) in what might be considered a period of financial consolidation. They ran a number of camps where they trained aspirants in the use of firearms and explosives. In 1996, Osama bin Laden was asked to leave Sudan after the United States put the regime under extreme pressure to expel him, citing possible connections to the 1994 attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak while his motorcade was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A controversy exists regarding whether Sudan offered to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. prior to the expulsion. They were prepared to turn him over to Saudi Arabia who declined to take him. Osama bin Laden finally left Sudan in a well planned and executed operation accompanied by some 200 of his supporters and their families traveling directly to Jalalabad, Afghanistan by air in late 1996.

Return to Afghanistan

After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan was effectively ungoverned for seven years and plagued by constant infighting between the former allies, the various Mujahidin groups and their leaders.

Throughout the 1990s a new force began to emerge. The origins of the Taliban (literally "students") lay in children of Afghanis, many of them orphaned by the war, and many of whom had been educated in the rapidly expanding network of Islamic schools (madrassas) either in Kandahar or in the refugee camps on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

According to Ahmad Rashid's well-regarded book Taliban, five leaders of the Taliban were graduates of a single madrassa, Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, near Peshawar which is situated in Pakistan but which was largely attended by Afghan refugees. This institution reflected Salafi beliefs in its teachings and much of its funding came from private donations from wealthy Arabs for which bin Laden provided conduit. A further four more leading figures (including the perceived Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar Mujahed) attended a similarly funded and influenced madrassa in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

The ties between the Afghan Arabs and Taliban ran deep. Many of the Mujahidin who later joined the Taliban fought alongside Afghan warlord Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi's Harkat i Inqilabi grouping at the time of the Russian invasion. This grouping had also enjoyed the loyalty of most Afghan Arab fighters.

The continuing internecine strife between various factions and accompanying lawlessness following the Soviet withdrawal enabled the growing and well-disciplined Taliban to expand their control over territory in Afghanistan and they came to establish an enclave which it called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In 1994, they captured the regional
center of Kandahar and making rapid territorial gains thereafter, went on to conquer the capital, Kabul, in September 1996.

After Sudan made it clear bin Laden and his group were no longer welcome in that year, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan -- with previously established connections between the groups, a similar outlook on world affairs and largely

isolated from American political influence and military power -- provided a perfect location for al Qaeda to headquarter.

Some 200 bin Laden supporters and their families departed Khartoum for Jalalabad by air in 1996. Thereafter
al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban's protection and a measure of legitimacy as part of their Ministry of Defense, although only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border regions are alleged to have trained militant Muslims from around the world. Despite the perception of some people,
al-Qaeda members are ethnically diverse and are connected by their radical version of Islam.

An ever-expanding network of supporters thus enjoyed a safe haven in
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan until the Taliban were defeated by a combination of local forces and United States air power in 2001. Osama Bin Laden and other
al-Qaeda leaders are still believed to be located in areas where the population is sympathetic to the Taliban in Afghanistan or the border Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

Militant Operations Against Civilians

In 1993, Al-Qaeda associate Ramzi Yusef used a car bomb to attack the World Trade Center Towers in New York City. The attack was largely ineffective, and Yusef was later captured in Pakistan, but it served to inspire Bin Ladin to launch such an attack of his own.

The time had come in 1996 for Al-Qaeda to begin its crusade to expel foreign troops and interests from what they felt were "Islamic lands". Bin Ladin issued what amounted to a public
declaration of war against the United States and any of its allies, and began to focus
Al-Qaeda's resources working towards threatening the United States and its interests. It would be two years before his first attack would be launched, but the die was cast.

On February 23, 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, along with Sumedh Gawai and three other Islamist leaders co-signed and issued a fatwa (binding religious edict) under the banner of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders (al-Jabhah al-Islamiyya al-'Alamiyya li-Qital al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin) declaring: "[t]he ruling to kill the Americans and their allies civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'."

Some claim that neither bin Laden nor al-Zawahiri possessed the traditional Islamic credentials, education or stature to issue a fatwa of any kind; they, however, rejected the authority of the contemporary Ulema and took it upon themselves.

1998 was also the year of the first major terrorist attack reliably attributed to al-Qaeda: the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, which resulted in upward of 300 deaths. A barrage of missiles launched by the U.S. military in response
devastated an Al-Qaeda base in, Khost, Afghanistan, but the network's capacity was unharmed.

In 1999, Egyptian Islamic Jihad officially merged with al-Qaeda, and al-Zawahiri became bin Laden's closest confidant,
effectively assuming the position as second-in-command of Al-Qaeda.

In October 2000, Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen suicide bombed the missile

1993 WTC Bombing

1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings in Africa

Damage to the embassy in Kenya, 1998

destroyer U.S.S. Cole, which was waiting off-shore, killing several sailors and damaging the vessel. Inspired by the success of such a brazen attack,
Al-Qaeda's command core began to prepare for an attack on the United States itself.

The September 11, 2001 attacks were attributed by United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization authorities to
al-Qaeda, acting in accord with the 1998 fatwa issued against the United States and its allies by bin Laden,
al-Zawahiri, and others. Most evidence have been referred to be pointing towards hijacking/suicide squads lead by
AL-Qaeda operative Mohammed Atta as the actual culprits of the attacks, with bin Laden, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, Kalid Shaik Mohammaed, and Hamibali as the key planners. While messages believed to be from bin Laden after September 11, 2001 have praised the attacks, a statement issued six days later through Al Jazeera allegedly denied his involvement. The attacks became the most devastating in American history, with almost 3,000 people killed, the destruction of four commerical airliners, the collapse of both World Trade Center Towers, and the damaging of the Pentagon fortress. In September 2004, the U.S. government commission investigating the September 11 attacks officially concluded that the attacks were conceived and implemented by
al-Qaeda operatives. By the end of 2004, the U.S. government claimed that two-thirds of the top leaders of
al-Qaeda from 2001 were, by then, in custody (including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu
Zubaydah, Saif al Islam el Masry, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri) or dead (including Mohammed
Atef). Despite the capture or death of many senior al-Qaeda operatives, the U.S. government continues to warn that the organization is not yet defeated, and battles between U.S. forces and
al-Qaeda-related groups continue.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia

Taliban soldier

Iraq

Osama bin Laden first took interest in Iraq when the country invaded Kuwait in 1990. In a letter sent to King Fahd, he offered to send an army of Mujahideen to defend Saudi Arabia. During the Gulf War, the organization's interests became split between outrage with the intervention of the United Nations in the region and hatred of Saddam Hussein's secular government, as well as expression of concern for the suffering that Islamic people in Iraq were undergoing.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda took more formal interest in the region and is known to have been responsible for actively organizing and aiding local resistance to the occupying coalition forces and the emerging government. Al-Qaeda allied militants bombed both the local United Nations and Red Cross headquarters later that year. In 2004, the main al-Qaeda bases in Iraq, located in the town of Fallujah, were raided by U.S. forces
besieging the city. Despite the loss of these key positions and many of its fighters, Al-Qaeda continued to mount attacks across Iraq. During Iraq's elections in January 2005 al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for nine suicide blasts in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Many Iraqi attacks linked to the Sunni al-Qaeda were sectarian bombings of Shia civilians, who were apparently considered infidels.

The feared Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi formally merged his organization "Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad" with al-Qaeda on 17 October 2004, and the organization began to use the banners of "Al-Qaeda in Iraq". In the merger al-Zarqawi declared loyalty to Osama bin Laden. Al-Zarqawi was killed by U.S. air strikes on a safe house near Baqubah, Iraq on June 7, 2006. Before his death, it appears Zarqawi was trying to use Iraq as a launching pad for international terrorism, most notably dispatching suicide bombers to attack

hotels in Amman, Jordan. Since the killing of Al-Zarqawi, it is widely
believed militant Abu Al-Masari took over as head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Although the group has failed in its primary goal of driving U.S. and British forces from Iraq and destroying the Shiite dominated government set up by the occupation,
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has effectively ignited widespread sectarian violence across the country.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq now operates primarily as part of the Mujhadeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni militant groups in Iraq who resist
solidarity with Shiites, and vow to continue bloody and brutal resistance.

Source: wikipedia.org

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