Al-Qaeda

Osama bin Laden, the main founder of al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda (, ; "the foundation" or "the base") is an international fundamentalist Sunni Islamist paramilitary organization comprised of independent and collaborative cells that all profess the same cause of reducing outside influence upon Islamic affairs. Countries that list this group as a terrorist organization include the United States,

United Kingdom,

Canada,

and Australia

. Although al-Qaeda is philosophically heterogeneous in the context of Sunni Islam, the most (known) prominent members of this group are believed to have Salafi beliefs.

The origins of this group (at a later time given the name 'al-Qaeda' by the United States Department of Justice) can be traced to a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when a cadre of non-Afghani, Arab Muslim fighters joined the largely United States Saudi Arabian and Pakistan-funded Afghan mujāhidīn anti-Soviet resistance movement (a guerrilla war against Soviet occupation forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government). Osama bin Laden, a member of a prominent Saudi Arabian business family, led an informal grouping which became a leading fund raiser and recruitment agency for the Afghan cause in Muslim countries; it channeled Islamic fighters to the conflict, distributed money and provided logistical skills and resources to both fighting forces and Afghan refugees.

History of al-Qaeda

Afghan jihad

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 mostly funded by donations from wealthy Muslim individuals but was also allegedly aided by the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and indirectly by the United States, which channeled most of its support and military hardware via the Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. 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.

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.

Outreach from Afghanistan

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.

Gulf War and start 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. The group was responsible for the construction of a major 1200 km (845mi) highway connecting the capital Khartoum with Port Sudan. But they also 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. There are conflicting reports on whether the Sudanese government ever indeed made such an offer, but 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.

Bosnia

The secession of Bosnia from the multicultural Yugoslavian Federation and the subsequent declaration of Bosnia-Herzegovinan independence in October 1991 opened up a new ethnic and quasi-religious conflict at the heart of Europe.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was ethnically diverse, with a nominal Muslim majority but with significant numbers of ethnic (Orthodox Christian) Serbs and (Roman Catholic) Croats distributed across its territory. It comprised a large but militarily weak component of the former Yugoslavia, whose disintegration saw some ethnic Serbs and some ethnic Croats within Bosnia, supported by their rump adjacent states Serbia and Croatia, engage in a three-way conflict against the Bosniak-dominated core.

Radical Arab veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan seized on Bosnia as a new opportunity to "defend Islam". Besieged on two fronts and seemingly abandoned by the West, the Bosnian regime was willing to accept any help it could get, military or financial, including that of a number of Islamic organisations, of which al-Qaeda was one.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 centre 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 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 (see section September 11 attacks and the United States response). 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.

Start of militant operations against civilians

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:}}

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. In 1999, Egyptian Islamic Jihad officially merged with al-Qaeda, and al-Zawahiri became bin Laden's closest confidant.

September 11 attacks and the United States response

Al-Qaeda is most well known for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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. 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.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the United States government decided to respond militarily and began to prepare its armed forces for an attack on Afghanistan whose government, the Taliban, was believed to have been harboring bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Before the United States attacked, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the United States would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks. U.S. President Bush responded by saying "We know he's guilty. Turn him over" and soon thereafter the United States bombed Taliban and suspected al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and together with the Afghan Northern Alliance deposed the Taliban government.

As a result of the United States providing air support for the Northern Alliance ground forces, both Taliban and alleged al-Qaeda training camps were destroyed and much of the operating structure of al-Qaeda, believed to exist by the U.S. Government, was disrupted. Nevertheless, a significant Taliban insurgency remains in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's top two leaders, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, evaded capture. After the U.S. attack began, the U.S. State Department also released a videotape apparently showing bin Laden speaking with a small group of associates somewhere in Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban was removed from power. Although its authenticity has been questioned by some, the tape appears to implicate bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks and was aired on many television channels all over the world, with an accompanying English translation provided by the United States Defense Department.

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. In October 2004, bin Laden appeared to claim responsibility for the attacks in a videotape released through Al Jazeera, saying he was inspired by Israeli attacks on high-rises in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon: "as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children."

By the summer 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.

Activity in Iraq

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a well known figure in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. Airstrike on June 7, 2006 in an Al-Qaeda Safehouse in Baquba, Iraq

Osama bin Laden first took interest in Iraq when the country invaded Kuwait in 1990 (giving rise to concerns the secular, socialist Baathist government of Iraq might next set its sights on Saudi Arabia, homeland of bin Laden and of Islam itself). 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. 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.

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 coalition air strikes on a safe house near Baqubah, Iraq on June 7, 2006. It is unknown the extent of Zarqawi's relation to the larger Al-Qaeda terrorist network though it appears the renaming of his insurgent cell was a move to boost legitamacy and recruitment rather than an actual sharing of goals, members, and weapons materiel.

Harmony Papers

Documents seized from al-Qaeda were recently declassified from the Harmony database and became the subject of a published study from West Point titled Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting al-Qa'ida's Organizational Vulnerabilities. Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa'ida's Organizationsl Vulnerabilities (.pdf), West Point, February 14 2006The papers give an interesting look into the history of the movement, organizational structure, tensions among leadership and the lessons learned.

One al-Qaeda writer concluded that one of the lessons learned is how the influence of secular Baathist thinking distorts the message of jihad. This writer advises the movement not to allow the jihad message to be influenced by the Iraqi Baath message. Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa'ida's Organizationsl Vulnerabilities (.pdf), West Point, February 14 2006 - (Page 79)

Al-Qaeda allegedly in Kashmir

On July 13, 2006, a man claiming to be a spokesperson for al-Qaeda called up a local news agency in Srinagar to announce the arrival of the group in Kashmir. The alleged al-Qaeda spokesman said the blasts were a "consequence of Indian oppression and suppression of minorities, particularly Muslims." There have been reports that Al-Qaeda men had infiltrated into the Valley for the past few years, particularly after the US went after it in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks. Also, it has been said that links have been found between Al-Qaeda and terror groups like LeT in India.

Organization structure and membership

The chain of command

Though the current structure of al-Qaeda is unknown, information mostly acquired from the defector Jamal al-Fadl provided American authorities with a rough picture of how the group was organized. While the veracity of the information provided by al-Fadl and the motivation for his cooperation are both disputed, American authorities base much of their current knowledge of al-Qaeda on his testimony.

Bin Laden is the emir and Senior Operations Chief of al-Qaeda (although originally this role may have been filled by Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi), advised by a shura council, which consists of senior al-Qaeda members, estimated by Western officials at about twenty to thirty people. Ayman al-Zawahiri is al-Qaeda's Deputy Operations Chief and Abu Ayyub al-Masri is possibly the Senior Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
* The Military committee is responsible for training, weapons acquisition, and planning attacks.
* The Money/Business committee runs business operations. The travel office provides air tickets and false passports. The payroll office pays al-Qaeda members, and the Management office oversees money-making businesses. In the US 911 Commission Report it is estimated that al-Qaeda requires 30,000,000 USD / year to conduct its operation.
* The Law committee reviews Islamic law and decides if particular courses of action conform to the law.
* The Islamic study/fatwah committee issues religious edicts, such as an edict in 1998 telling Muslims to kill Americans.
* In the late 1990s there was a publicly known Media committee, which ran the now-defunct newspaper Nashrat al Akhbar (Newscast) and did public relations. It is currently assumed that media operations are now outsourced to internally redundant parts of the organization.

Political Revolt or Structured Paramilitary Organization: Unknown

Some organizational specialists have said that al-Qaeda's network structure, as opposed to a hierarchical structure is its primary strength. The decentralized structure enables al-Qaeda to have a worldwide distributed base while retaining a relatively small core. While an estimated 100,000 Islamist militants are said to have received instruction in al-Qaeda camps since its inception, the group is believed to retain only a small number of militants under direct orders. Estimates seldom peg its manpower higher than 20,000 world wide.

For its most complex operations (such as the 9/11 attacks on the US) all participants, planning and funding are believed to have been directly provided by the core al-Qaeda organization. But in many attacks around the world where there appears to be an al-Qaeda connection, its precise role has been less easy to define. Rather than handling these operations from conception to delivery, al-Qaeda often appears to act as an international financial and logistical support-network, channeling income obtained from a network of fund-raising activities to provide training capital and coordination for local radical groups. In many cases it is these local groups, only loosely affiliated to core al-Qaeda, which actually undertake the attacks.

Australian tourists and interests have been targeted in a series of devastating annual attacks north of Australia in the southern islands of Indonesia, on the southern edge of southeast Asia. These attacks and plots have been attributed to Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda's affiliate in the region. The 2002 Bali bombing, and subsequently the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, the 2004 Jakarta embassy bombing and the 2005 Bali bombings provide some insight into al-Qaeda's decentralized method of operations: the attacks showed far greater coordination and effectiveness than might historically have been expected from regional militant networks. But police investigations and subsequent trials showed that while al-Qaeda was believed to have provided expertise and coordination, much of the planning and all the personnel who undertook the attacks came from local radical Islamist groups.

Al-Qaeda has been known to establish and foster new groups to further the radical Islamic interest in local conflicts. Indeed the Taliban might be deemed to fall into this category, the roots of the organization formed from radicalized students from the bin Laden funded medressas of the Afghan refugee camps at the time of the Russian occupation.

Is al-Qaeda a global network or a small organization?

Al-Qaeda has no clear structure, and this permits debate as to how many members make up the organization, whether it is millions scattered across the globe, or whether it is even zero. According to the controversial BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares, al-Qaeda is so weakly linked together that it is hard to say it exists apart from Osama bin Laden and a small clique of close associates. The lack of any significant numbers of convicted al-Qaeda members despite a large number of arrests on terrorism charges is cited by the documentary as a reason to doubt whether a widespread entity that meets the description of al-Qaeda exists at all. The extent and nature of al-Qaeda remains a topic of dispute.

The al-Qaeda name itself does not seem to have been used by bin Laden himself to apply to his organization until after the September 11 attacks. Previous attacks attributed to bin Laden and al-Qaeda were, at the time, claimed by organizations under a variety of names. Bin Laden himself has since attributed the al-Qaeda name to the MAK base in Pakistan, dating from the Afghan war days. Daniel Benjamin in "The Age of Sacred Terror" cites an incident in the early 1990s where a document titled "The Foundation", Arabic "Al-Qa'eda", was found on an associate of Ramzi Youssef . Fawaz A. Gerges writes that "Although in 1987 sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the spiritual father of the Afghan Arabs, planted the seeds of a trans-nationalist organization called 'Al Qaeda al-Sulbah' (the Solid Foundation), the bin Laden network saw the light much later, around the mid-1990s."

Other alleged al-Qaeda leaders include:
* Saif al-Adel
* Sulaiman Abu Ghaith
* Abu Hafiza
* Abu Faraj al-Libbi (arrested in Pakistan, 2005)
* Abu Mohammed al-Masri
* Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 2003)
* Thirwat Salah Shirhata
* Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (killed in June 2006)
* Ayman al-Zawahiri
* Abu Zubaydah (captured in 2002)Robin Cook Former Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons writing for the Guardian (he died a month later):

'Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.'
Friday July 8th 2005 article entitled: 'The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means

Cook's claims come partly from from Pierre Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence (convicted in Dec 2001 by a secret French military court of passing classified documents). Excerpts from an Apr.-Jun. 2004 article by Bunel link to article

'"[According to a Pakistani major] the database was divided into two parts, the information file where the participants in the meetings could pick up and send information they needed, and the decision file where the decisions made during the previous sessions were recorded and stored. In Arabic, the files were called, 'Q eidat il-Maaloomaat' and 'Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.' Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic 'Q eidat ilmu'ti'aat' which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for "base." The military air base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is called 'q eidat 'riyadh al 'askariya.' Q eida means "a base" and "Al Qaida" means "the base."

"In the mid-1980s, Al Qaida was a database located in computer and dedicated to the communications of the Islamic Conference's secretariat....

"Al Qaida remained the data base of the Islamic Conference. Not all member countries of the Islamic Conference are 'rogue states' and many Islamic groups could pick up information from the databases. It was but natural for Osama Bin Laden to be connected to this network. He is a member of an important family in the banking and business world....

"Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden's personal property . . .

"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money."

Activities

Incidents attributed to al-Qaeda

Note: al-Qaeda does not take credit for most of the following actions, resulting in ambiguity over how many attacks the group has actually conducted. Following the U.S. declaration of the War on Terrorism in 2001, the U.S. government has striven to highlight any connections between other militant groups and al-Qaeda. Some prefer to attribute to al-Qaedaism actions that might not be directly planned by al-Qaeda as a military headquarters, but which are inspired by its tenets and strategies.

Many terrorist attacks have been attributed to al-Qaeda.

The first militant attack that al-Qaeda allegedly carried out consisted of three bombings at hotels where American troops were staying in Aden, Yemen, on December 29, 1992. A Yemeni and an Austrian tourist died in one bombing.

There are disputed claims that al-Qaeda operatives assisted in the shooting down of U.S. helicopters and the killing of U.S. servicemen in Somalia in 1993. (see: Battle of Mogadishu)

Ramzi Yousef, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (though probably not an al-Qaeda member at the time), and Khalid Sheik Mohammed planned Operation Bojinka, a plot to destroy airplanes in mid-Pacific flight using explosives. An apartment fire in Manila, Philippines exposed the plan before it could be carried out. Yousef was arrested, but Mohammed evaded capture until 2003.

Al-Qaeda is often listed as a suspect in two bombings in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996: the bombing at a U.S. military facility in Riyadh in November 1995, which killed two people from India and five Americans, and the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, which killed American military personnel in Dhahran. However, these attacks are usually ascribed to Hizbullah.

Al-Qaeda is believed to have conducted the bombings in August 1998 of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 5,000 others.

In December 1999 and into 2000, al-Qaeda planned attacks against U.S. and Israeli tourists visiting Jordan for millennial celebrations; however, Jordanian authorities thwarted the planned attacks and put 28 suspects on trial. Part of this plot included the planned bombing of the Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, but this plot was foiled when bomber Ahmed Ressam was caught at the US-Canadian border with explosives in the trunk of his car. Al-Qaeda also planned to attack the USS The Sullivans on January 3, 2000, but the effort failed due to too much weight being put on the small boat meant to bomb the ship.

Despite the setback with the USS The Sullivans, al-Qaeda succeeded in bombing a U.S. warship in October 2000 with the USS Cole bombing. German police foiled a plot to destroy a cathedral in Strasbourg, France in December 2000. See: Strasbourg cathedral bombing plot

The most destructive act ascribed to al-Qaeda was the series of attacks in the United States on September 11th, 2001.

Several attacks and attempted attacks since September 11, 2001 have been attributed to al-Qaeda. The first of which was the Paris embassy attack plot, which was foiled.The second of which involved the attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid, who proclaimed himself a follower of Osama bin Laden, and who intended to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 and its passengers.

Other attacks ascribed to al-Qaeda and its affiliates:
*The Singapore embassies attack plot.
*The kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and numerous bombings in Pakistan.
*The El Ghriba synagogue bombing in Djerba, Tunisia, which killed 21.
*Foiled attacks on Western warships in the Strait of Gibraltar.
*The Limburg tanker bombing.
*A November 2002 car bombing in Mombasa, Kenya, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.
*Bombings of Western compounds in Riyadh in May 2003 and other attacks of the Saudi insurgency.
*The Istanbul bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2003.

Al-Qaeda has strong alliances with a number of other Islamic militant organizations including the Indonesian Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah. That group was responsible for the October 2002 Bali bombing, and the 2005 Bali bombings.

Although there have been no identified al-Qaeda attacks within the territory of the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks, numerous al-Qaeda attacks in the Middle East, Far East, Africa and Europe have caused extensive casualties and turmoil. In the aftermath of several March 11, 2004 attacks on commuter trains in Madrid, a London newspaper reported receiving an email from a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, claiming responsibility and a videotape claiming responsibility was also found. The coincidence in timing of the attacks with elections in Spain inspired several politically-focused speculations on the real identity of the perpetrators, with many initially suspecting ETA. However the Interpol, the Spanish Government, police and judicial institutions agree that a fanatical Islamic cell is more likely to be the perpetrator. On April 3, 2004, in Leganes, Madrid, four Arab militants blew themselves up, killing one special assault police and wounding eleven.

It is also believed that al-Qaeda was involved in the 7 July 2005 London bombings, a series of attacks against mass transit in London which killed 52 innocent people, not including the 4 suicide bombers (see Mohammad Sidique Khan).A statement from a previously unknown group, "The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe", claimed responsibility; however, the authenticity of the statement and the group's connection to al-Qaeda have not been independently verified. The suspected perpetrators have not been definitively linked to al-Qaeda, although the contents of a video tape made by one of the bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan prior to his death and subsequently sent to Al Jazeera gives strong credence to an al-Qaeda connection. However, as with the Madrid attacks, it leaves significant doubts and questions unresolved. An apparently unconnected group attempted to duplicate the attack later that month, but their bombs failed to detonate.

Al-Qaeda is suspected of being involved with the 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks in Egypt. On July 23, 2005, a series of suspected car bombs killed about 90 civilians and wounded over 150. The attack was the deadliest terrorist action in the history of Egypt.

Al-Qaeda is also suspected in the November 9, 2005 Amman, Jordan attacks in which three simultaneous bombings occurred at American owned hotels in Amman. The blast killed at least 57 people and injured 120 people. Most of the injured and killed were attending a wedding at the Radisson Hotel. The targeting of celebrating Muslim civilians cost al-Zarqawi (the man believed to have planned the attacks) greatly in Jordanian public opinion, and to a lesser extent in Arab public opinion as a whole.

Internet activities

In the wake of its evacuation from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and its successors have migrated online to escape detection in an atmosphere of increased international vigilance. As a result, the organization's use of the Internet has grown more sophisticated, encompassing financing, recruitment, networking, mobilization, publicity, as well as information dissemination, gathering, and sharing. More than other paramilitary organizations, al-Qaeda has embraced the Web for these purposes. For example, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda movement in Iraq regularly releases short videos glorifying the activity of jihadist suicide bombers. This growing range of multimedia content includes guerrilla training clips, stills of victims about to be murdered, testimonials of suicide bombers, and epic-themed videos with high production values that romanticize participation in jihad through stylized portraits of mosques and stirring musical scores. A website associated with al-Qaeda, for example, posted a video of captured American contractor Nick Berg being decapitated in Iraq. Other decapitation videos and pictures, including those of Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il, and Daniel Pearl, were first posted onto jihadist websites.

With the rise of "locally rooted, globally inspired" terrorists, counter-terrorism experts are currently studying how al-Qaeda is using the Internet �" through websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, instant messaging, and so on �" to inspire a worldwide network of support. The July 7, 2005 bombers, some of whom were well integrated into their local communities, are an example of such "globally inspired" terrorists, and they reportedly used the Internet to plan and coordinate, but the Internet's precise role in the process of radicalization is not thoroughly understood. A group called the Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe has claimed responsibility for these London attacks on a militant Islamist website �" another popular use of the Internet by terrorists seeking publicity.

The publicity opportunities offered by the Internet have been particularly exploited by al-Qaeda. In December 2004, for example, bin Laden released an audio message by posting it directly to a website, rather than sending a copy to al Jazeera as he had done in the past. Some analysts speculated that he did this to be certain it would be available unedited, out of fear that his criticism of Saudi Arabia �" which was much more vehement than usual in this speech, lasting over an hour �" might be edited out by al Jazeera editors worried about offending the touchy Saudi royal family.

In the past, Alneda.com and Jehad.net were perhaps the most significant of al-Qaeda websites. Alneda was initially taken down by an American, but the operators resisted by shifting the site to various servers and strategically changing content. The U.S. is currently attempting to extradite an information technology specialist, Babar Ahmad, from the UK, who is the creator of various English language al-Qaeda websites such as Azzam.com . Ahmad's extradition is opposed by various British Muslim organizations, such as the Muslim Association of Britain.

Finally, at a mid-2005 presentation for U.S. government terrorism analysts, Dennis Pluchinsky called the global jihadist movement "Web-directed," and former CIA deputy director John E. McLaughlin has also said it is now primarily driven today by "ideology and the Internet."

Financial activities

Financial activities of al-Qaeda have been a major preoccupation of the US government following the September 11, 2001 attacks, leading for example to the discovery of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's tax evasion, for which his wife, Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet, has been arrested in January 2006. It was also discovered by investigative reporter Denis Robert that funds from Osama bin Laden's Bahrain International Bank transited through illegal unpublished accounts of "clearing house" Clearstream, which has been qualified as a "bank of banks".

Israel

Despite Bin Laden repeatedly referring to the Palestinian cause in his manifestos and interviews, some in the region villainize the organization for allegedly ignoring the Palestinian cause. There could be an endless list of reasons why al-Qaeda are seemingly inactive in the Palestinian territories; one theory is that al-Qaeda is unwilling to co-operate with the mainly Sh'ia groups such as Hezbollah who fund Palestinian terrorism or resistance (depending on the viewpoint) against Israel. Another theory suggests that Palestinians don't wish to be stained further by the extremist ideology driving al-Qaeda followers, and prefer to conduct combat according to their own principles.

Al-Qaeda is suspected, however, to have planned and carried out two nearly simultaneous terror attacks against Israeli civilian targets in Mombasa, Kenya, on November 28, 2002. The one successful attack, a car-bomb placed in a resort hotel popular among Israeli tourists, claimed the lives of 15 people. The hotel bombing occurred 20 minutes after a failed attack on an airplane, when a terrorist fired an SA-7 MANPAD against an Israeli airliner carrying 261 passengers, which was taking off from the airport. The rocket narrowly missed its target and landed in an empty field.

Unclassified definition of al-Qaeda

Moazzam Begg, while held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, requested a definition of al-Qaeda, when he was presented with a "Summary of Evidence" against him, in preparation for his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which accused him of being a member of al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or associated forces.Moazzam Begg's dossier (.pdf) from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, hosted by Associated PressThe unclassified definition offered to Begg by the US Department of Defense was:'"Al Qaeda is a radical Sunni Muslim umbrella organization established to recruit young Muslims into the Afghani Mujahideen and is aimed to establish Islamist states throughout the world, overthrow ‘un-Islamic regimes' expel US soldiers and Western influence from the Gulf, and capture Jerusalem as a Muslim city."''

Begg also asked for, and was not provided with, a definition of al-Qaeda's "associated forces".

Notes on naming

Al-Qaeda's name can also be transliterated as al-Qaida, al-Qa'ida, el-Qaida, or al Qaeda. In Arabic it is spelled القاعدة. Its Arabic pronunciation (IPA ) can be approximated as IPA , which for American English speakers could be spelled "el-kAW-ee-deh," with the emphasized "AW" and "ee" clearly separated. However, English speakers more commonly pronounce it in a manner influenced by its spelling - IPA for American English, in British English. Listen to the US pronunciation (RealPlayer).

Al-Qaeda has other meanings, such as:
* International Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders
* Islamic Army
* Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places
* Osama bin Laden Network
* Osama bin Laden Organization
* Islamic Salvation Foundation
* The Group for the Preservation of the Holy Sites

Regarding the origin of the name, Robin Cook, the late British member of Parliament and former foreign secretary, wrote in 2005 that "Al-Qaida, literally 'the database', was originally the name of a computer file listing the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Soviets." "The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means", Guardian Unlimited, 8 July 2005. Retrieved 29 May 2006. Dr. Sa'ad Al-Fagih, a surgeon at Peshawar (where the Mujahideen recruiting happened) further explained that the computer database (al-Qaeda) was necessary to fix problems associated with a lack of documentation about the fighters who were recruited. Interview: Dr. Saad Al-Fagih, Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved 14 May 2006.Interview: Dr. Saad Al-Fagih, Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved 14 May 2006.
* Pierre Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence (convicted in Dec 2001 by a secret French military court of passing classified documents). Excerpts from an Apr.-Jun. 2004 article by Bunel link to article

'"[According to a Pakistani major] the database was divided into two parts, the information file where the participants in the meetings could pick up and send information they needed, and the decision file where the decisions made during the previous sessions were recorded and stored. In Arabic, the files were called, 'Q eidat il-Maaloomaat' and 'Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.' Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic 'Q eidat ilmu'ti'aat' which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for "base." The military air base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is called 'q eidat 'riyadh al 'askariya.' Q eida means "a base" and "Al Qaida" means "the base."Finally, Bin Laden himself stated in an interview with CNN that the name derived from the name of the training camp, "We used to call the training camp al Qaeda [meaning "the base" in English]. And the name stayed." [1]

See also

* 9/11 Commission
* Al-Qaedaism
* Al Barakaat
* Armed Islamic Group
* Ayman al-Zawahiri
* Egyptian Islamic Jihad
* Insurgency in Saudi Arabia
* Islamic extremist terrorism
* Islamic Fundamentalism
* Jamaat-e-Islami
* Ladenese epistle
* List of alleged al-Qaeda members
* List of terrorist organisations
* Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
* Muslim Brotherhood
* Osama bin Laden
* Osama bin Laden tapes
* The Power of Nightmares; BBC documentary
* Psychological operations
* Religious terrorism
* Steven Emerson
* Takfir Wal Hijira
* Taliban Movement
* Terrorist incidents

Notes & references

Further reading

*{{cite book