Al-Qaeda, القاعدة, alternatively spelled al-Qaida and sometimes al-Qa'ida, is a militant Islamist group founded sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad.
Al-Qaeda has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, most notably the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001. The U.S. government responded by launching the War on Terror. Al-Qaeda has continued to exist and grow through the decade from 2001 to 2011.
Characteristic techniques include suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of different targets. Activities ascribed to it may involve members of the movement, who have taken a pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, or the much more numerous "al-Qaeda-linked" individuals who have undergone training in one of its camps in Afghanistan, Iraq or Sudan, but not taken any pledge.
Al-Qaeda ideologues envision a complete break from the foreign influences in Muslim countries, and the creation of a new Islamic caliphate. Reported beliefs include that a Christian-Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam, which is largely embodied in the U.S.-Israel alliance, and that the killing of bystanders and civilians is religiously justified in jihad.
Al-Qaeda is also responsible for instigating sectarian violence among Muslims. Al-Qaeda is intolerant of non-Sunni branches of Islam and denounce them with excommunications called "takfir". Al-Qaeda leaders regard liberal muslims, Shias, Sufis and other sects as heretics and sometimes issue attacks on their mosques and gatherings. Examples of sectarian attacks include the Yazidi community bombings, Sadr City bombings, Ashoura Massacre and April 2007 Baghdad bombings.
Al-Qaeda is also known as the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jews.
In Arabic, al-Qaeda has four syllables (Arabic pronunciation:. However, since two of the Arabic consonants in the name (the voiceless uvular plosive and the voiced pharyngeal fricative ) are not phones found in the English language, the closest naturalized English pronunciations include /ælˈkaɪdə/, /ælˈkeɪdə/ and /ˌælkɑːˈiːdə/. Al-Qaeda's name can also be transliterated as al-Qaida, al-Qa'ida, el-Qaida, or al-Qaeda.
The name comes from the Arabic noun qā'idah, which means foundation or basis, and can also refer to a military base. The initial al- is the Arabic definite article the, hence the base.
Bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera journalist Tayseer Alouni in October 2001:
The name 'al-Qaeda' was established a long time ago by mere chance. The late Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri established the training camps for our mujahedeen against Russia's terrorism. We used to call the training camp al-Qaeda. The name stayed.
It has been argued that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence International Foundation prove that the name was not simply adopted by the mujahid movement and that a group called al-Qaeda was established in August 1988. Both of these documents contain minutes of meetings held to establish a new military group, and contain the term "al-qaeda.
Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word Al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", and originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians. In April 2002, the group assumed the name Qa'idat al-Jihad, which means "the base of Jihad". According to Diaa Rashwan, this was "apparently as a result of the merger of the overseas branch of Egypt's al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamist Jihad, or EIJ) group, led by Ayman El-Zawahiri, with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control after his return to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.
Al-Qaeda's management philosophy has been described as "centralization of decision and decentralization of execution. Following the War on Terrorism, it is thought that al-Qaeda's leadership has "become geographically isolated", leading to the "emergence of decentralized leadership" of regional groups using the al-Qaeda "brand name.
Many terrorism experts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by bin Laden and his followers. Although bin Laden still had huge ideological sway over some Muslim extremists, experts argue that al-Qaeda has fragmented over the years into a variety of disconnected regional movements that have little connection with each other. Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former CIA officer, said that Al-Qaeda would now just be a "loose label for a movement that seems to target the West".
"There is no umbrella organisation. We like to create a mythical entity called [al-Qaeda] in our minds, but that is not the reality we are dealing with.
Others, however, see Al-Qaeda as an integrated network that is strongly led from the Pakistani tribal areas and has a powerful strategic purpose. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said "It amazes me that people don't think there is a clear adversary out there, and that our adversary does not have a strategic approach.
Information mostly acquired from 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.
Before his death Osama bin Laden was the emir, or commander, and was the Senior Operations Chief of al-Qaeda (though originally this role may have been filled by Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi).
As of August 6, 2010, the chief of operations was considered to be Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah, replacing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Bin Laden was advised by a Shura Council, which consists of senior al-Qaeda members, estimated by Western officials at about 20–30 people. Ayman al-Zawahiri is al-Qaeda's Deputy Operations Chief; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, but his safehouse was hit by U.S. missiles in a targeted killing, and Abu Ayyub al-Masri may have succeeded him.
Al-Qaeda's network was built from scratch as a conspiratorial network that draws on leaders of all its regional nodes "as and when necessary to serve as an integral part of its high command.
The Military Committee is responsible for training operatives, acquiring weapons, and planning attacks.
The Money/Business Committee funds the recruitment and training of operatives through the hawala banking system. U.S-led efforts to eradicate the sources of terrorist financing were most successful in the year immediately following September 11; al-Qaeda continues to operate through unregulated banks, such as the 1,000 or so hawaladars in Pakistan, some of which can handle deals of up to $10 million. It also provides air tickets and false passports, pays al-Qaeda members, and oversees profit-driven businesses. In The 9/11 Commission Report, it was estimated that al-Qaeda required $30 million-per-year to conduct its operations.
The Law Committee reviews Islamic law, and decides whether 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 handled public relations.
In 2005, al-Qaeda formed As-Sahab, a media production house, to supply its video and audio materials.
Command structure
When asked about the possibility of Al-Qaeda's connection to the 7 July 2005 London bombings in 2005, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said: "Al-Qaeda is not an organization. Al-Qaeda is a way of working ... but this has the hallmark of that approach ... Al-Qaeda clearly has the ability to provide training ... to provide expertise ... and I think that is what has occurred here.
However, on August 13, 2005, The Independent newspaper, quoting police and MI5 investigations, reported that the 7 July bombers acted independently of an al-Qaeda terror mastermind someplace abroad.
What exactly al-Qaeda is, or was, remains in dispute. Author and journalist Adam Curtis contends that the idea of al-Qaeda as a formal organization is primarily an American invention. Curtis contends the name "al-Qaeda" was first brought to the attention of the public in the 2001 trial of bin Laden and the four men accused of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa:
The reality was that bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had become the focus of a loose association of disillusioned Islamist militants who were attracted by the new strategy. But there was no organization. These were militants who mostly planned their own operations and looked to bin Laden for funding and assistance. He was not their commander. There is also no evidence that bin Laden used the term "al-Qaeda" to refer to the name of a group until after September the 11th, when he realized that this was the term the Americans had given it.
The number of individuals in the organization who have undergone proper military training, and are capable of commanding insurgent forces, is largely unknown. In 2006, it was estimated that al-Qaeda had several thousand commanders embedded in 40 different countries. As of 2009, it was believed that no more than 200–300 members were still active commanders.
According to the award-winning 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares, al-Qaeda was so weakly linked together that it was hard to say it existed apart from 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, was cited by the documentary as a reason to doubt whether a widespread entity that met the description of al-Qaeda existed.
According to Robert Cassidy, al-Qaeda controls two separate forces deployed alongside insurgents in Iraq and Pakistan. The first, numbering in the tens of thousands, was "organized, trained, and equipped as insurgent combat forces" in the Soviet-Afghan war. It was made up primarily of foreign mujahideen from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Many went on to fight in Bosnia and Somalia for global jihad. Another group, approximately 10,000 strong, live in Western states and have received rudimentary combat training.
Other analysts have described al-Qaeda's rank and file as changing from being "predominantly Arab," in its first years of operation, to "largely Pakistani," as of 2007.It has been estimated that 62% of al-Qaeda members have university education.
On March 11, 2005, Al-Quds Al-Arabi published extracts from Saif al-Adel's document "Al Quaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020". Abdel Bari Atwan summarizes this strategy as comprising five stages:
Provoke the United States into invading a Muslim country.
Incite local resistance to occupying forces.
Convert Al-Qaeda into an ideology and set of operating principles that can be loosely franchised in other countries without requiring direct command and control, and via these franchises incite attacks against countries allied with the U.S. until they withdraw from the conflict, as happened with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, but which did not have the same effect with the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
The U.S. economy will finally collapse under the strain of too many engagements in too many places, similarly to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Arab regimes supported by the U.S. will collapse, and a Wahhabi Caliphate will be installed across the region.
While the leadership's own theological platform is essentially Salafi, the organization's umbrella is sufficiently wide to encompass various schools of thought and political leanings. Al-Qaeda counts among its members and supporters people associated with Wahhabism, Shafi'ism, Malikism, and Hanafism.
There are even some whose beliefs and practices are directly at odds with Salafism, such as Yunis Khalis, one of the leaders of the Afghan mujahedin. He is a mystic who visits tombs of saints and seeks their blessings—practices inimical to bin Laden's Wahhabi-Salafi school of thought. The only exception to this pan-Islamic policy is Shi'ism. Al-Qaeda seems implacably opposed to it, as it holds Shi'ism to be heresy. In Iraq it has openly declared war on the Badr Brigades, who have fully cooperated with the US, and now considers even Shi'i civilians to be legitimate targets for acts of violence.
The radical Islamist movement in general and al-Qaeda in particular developed during the Islamic revival and Islamist movement of the last three decades of the 20th century, along with less extreme movements.
Some have argued that "without the writings" of Islamic author and thinker Sayyid Qutb, "al-Qaeda would not have existed. Qutb preached that because of the lack of sharia law, the Muslim world was no longer Muslim, having reverted to pre-Islamic ignorance known as jahiliyyah.
To restore Islam, he said a vanguard movement of righteous Muslims was needed to establish "true Islamic states", implement sharia, and rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences, such as concepts like socialism and nationalism. Enemies of Islam in Qutb's view included "treacherous Orientalists" and "world Jewry", who plotted "conspiracies" and "wickedly" opposed Islam.
In the words of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a close college friend of bin Laden:
Islam is different from any other religion; it's a way of life. We [Khalifa and bin Laden] were trying to understand what Islam has to say about how we eat, who we marry, how we talk. We read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation.
The origins of al-Qaeda as a network inspiring terrorism around the world and training operatives can be traced to the Soviet War in Afghanistan (December 1979 – February 1989). The U.S. viewed the conflict in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Marxists and allied Soviet troops on one side and the native Afghan mujahideen radical Islamic militants on the other, as a blatant case of Soviet expansionism and aggression. The U.S. channeled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the Afghan Mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation in a CIA program called Operation Cyclone.
Toward the end of the Soviet military mission in Afghanistan, some mujahideen wanted to expand their operations to include Islamist struggles in other parts of the world, such as Israel and Kashmir. 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, formed by bin Laden with an initial meeting held on August 11, 1988.
Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988, indicate al-Qaeda was a formal group by that time: "basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make His religion victorious." A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: listening ability, good manners, obedience, and making a pledge (bayat) to follow one's superiors.
From around 1992 to 1996, al-Qaeda and bin Laden based themselves in Sudan at the invitation of Islamist theoretician Hassan al Turabi. The move followed an Islamist coup d'état in Sudan, led by Colonel Omar al-Bashir, who professed a commitment to reordering Muslim political values. During this time, bin Laden assisted the Sudanese government, bought or set up various business enterprises, and established camps where insurgents trained.
A key turning point for bin Laden, further pitting him against the Sauds, occurred in 1993 when Saudi Arabia gave support for the Oslo Accords, which set a path for peace between Israel and Palestinians.
Refuge in Afghanistan
Main articles: Background of the Taliban's rise to power and Al-Qaeda training camps
After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan was effectively ungoverned for seven years and plagued by constant infighting between former allies and various mujahideen groups.
Throughout the 1990s, a new force began to emerge. The origins of the Taliban (literally "students") lay in the children of Afghanistan, 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 Ahmed Rashid, five leaders of the Taliban were graduates of Darul Uloom Haqqania, a madrassa in the small town of Akora Khattak. The town is situated near Peshawar in Pakistan, but 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. Bin Laden's contacts were still laundering most of these donations, using "unscrupulous" Islamic banks to transfer the money to an "array" of charities which serve as front groups for al-Qaeda, or transporting cash-filled suitcases straight into Pakistan. Another four of the Taliban's leaders attended a similarly funded and influenced madrassa in Kandahar.
In 1996, al-Qaeda announced its jihad to expel foreign troops and interests from what they considered Islamic lands. Bin Laden issued a fatwa (binding religious edict), which amounted to a public declaration of war against the U.S. and its allies, and began to refocus al-Qaeda's resources on large-scale, propagandist strikes. In June 1996, the Khobar Towers bombing took place in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, attributed by some to al-Qaeda, killing 19 and wounding 372.
On February 23, 1998, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, along with three other Islamist leaders, co-signed and issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Americans and their allies where they can, when they can.Under the banner of the World Islamic Front for Combat Against the Jews and Crusaders, they declared:
The 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 Mecca] 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'.
The percentage of terrorist attacks in the West originating from the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) border declined considerably from almost 100% to 75% in 2007, and to 50% in 2010, as Al-Qaeda shifted to Somalia and Yemen. While Al-Qaeda leaders are hiding in the tribal areas along the AfPak border, the middle-tier of the movement display heightened activity in Somalia and Yemen. “We know that South Asia is no longer their primary base,” a U.S. defense agency source said. “They are looking for a hide-out in other parts of the world, and continue to expand their organization.“
In Somalia, Al-Qaeda agents closely collaborate with the Shahab group, actively recruit children for suicide-bomber training, and export young people to participate in military actions against Americans at the AfPak border. In January 2009, Al-Qaeda’s division in Saudi Arabia merged with its Yemeni wing to form Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.Centered in Yemen, the group takes advantage of the country's poor economy, demography and domestic security. In August 2009, they made the first assassination attempt against a member of the Saudi royal dynasty in decades. President Obama asked his Yemen counterpart Ali Abdullah Saleh to ensure closer cooperation with the U.S. in the struggle against the growing activity of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and promised to send additional aid. Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is unable to pay sufficient attention to Somalia and Yemen, which may cause the U.S. some serious problems in the near future.Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the 2009 bombing attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The group released photos of Abdulmutallab smiling in a white shirt and white Islamic skullcap, with the Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula banner in the background.
Death of Osama bin Laden
On May 1, 2011 in Washington, D.C. (May 2, Pakistan Standard Time), U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was killed by "a small team of Americans" acting under Obama's direct orders, in a covert operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 50 km (31 mi) north of Islamabad.According to U.S. officials a team of 20–25 US Navy SEALs under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command and working with the CIA stormed bin Laden's compound in two helicopters. Bin Laden and those with him were killed during a firefight in which U.S. forces experienced no injuries or casualties. According to one US official the attack was carried out without the knowledge or consent of the Pakistani authorities. In Pakistan some people were reported to be shocked at the unauthorized incursion by US armed forces.The site is a few miles from the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. In his broadcast announcement President Obama said that U.S. forces "took care to avoid civilian casualties." Details soon emerged that three men and a woman were killed along with Bin Laden, the woman being killed when she was “used as a shield by a male combatant”. DNA from bin Laden's body, compared with DNA samples on record from his dead sister, confirmed bin Laden's identity. The body was recovered by the US military and was in its custody until, according to one US official, his body was buried at sea according to Islamic traditions. One U.S. official stated that "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult.U.S State Department issued a "Worldwide caution" for Americans following Bin Laden's death and U.S Diplomatic facilities everywhere were placed on high alert, a senior U.S official said. Crowds gathered outside the White House and in New York City's Time Square to celebrate Bin Laden's death.
The September 11, 2001, attacks were the most devastating terrorist acts in American history, killing approximately 3,000 people. Two commercial airliners were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center towers, a third into The Pentagon, and a fourth, originally intended to target the U.S. Capitol, crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The attacks were conducted by al-Qaeda, acting in accord with the 1998 fatwa issued against the U.S. and its allies by military forces under the command of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and others.Evidence points to suicide squads led by al-Qaeda military commander Mohamed Atta as the culprits of the attacks, with bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Hambali as the key planners and part of the political and military command.
Messages issued by bin Laden after September 11, 2001, praised the attacks, and explained their motivation while denying any involvement.Bin Laden legitimized the attacks by identifying grievances felt by both mainstream and Islamist Muslims, such as the general perception that the U.S. was actively oppressing Muslims.
Bin Laden asserted that America was massacring Muslims in 'Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq' and that Muslims should retain the 'right to attack in reprisal'. He also claimed the 9/11 attacks were not targeted at women and children, but 'America's icons of military and economic power'.
Evidence has since come to light that the original targets for the attack may have been nuclear power stations on the east coast of the U.S. The targets were later altered by al-Qaeda, as it was feared that such an attack "might get out of hand"
Aviation network
Al-Qaeda is believed to be operating a clandestine aviation network including “several Boeing 727 aircraft”, turboprops and executive jets, according to a Reuters story. Based on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report, the story said that Al-Qaeda is possibly using aircraft to transport drugs and weapons from South America to various unstable countries in West Africa. A Boeing 727 can carry up to 10 tons of cargo. The drugs eventually are smuggled to Europe for distribution and sale, and the weapons are used in conflicts in Africa and possibly elsewhere. Gunmen with links to Al-Qaeda have been increasingly kidnapping some Europeans for ransom. The profits from the drug and weapon sales, and kidnappings can, in turn, fund more terrorism activities.
Experts debate whether or not the al-Qaeda attacks were blowback from the American CIA's "Operation Cyclone" program to help the Afghan mujahideen. Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, has written that al-Qaeda and Bin Laden were "a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies", and that "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."
Munir Akram, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations from 2002 to 2008, wrote in a letter published in the New York Times on January 19, 2008:
The strategy to support the Afghans against Soviet military intervention was evolved by several intelligence agencies, including the C.I.A. and Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. After the Soviet withdrawal, the Western powers walked away from the region, leaving behind 40,000 militants imported from several countries to wage the anti-Soviet jihad. Pakistan was left to face the blowback of extremism, drugs and guns
According to a number of sources there has been a "wave of revulsion" against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates by "religious scholars, former fighters and militants" alarmed by Al-Qaeda's takfir and killing of Muslims in Muslim countries, especially Iraq.
Noman Benotman, a former Afghan Arab and militant of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, went public with an open letter of criticism to Ayman al-Zawahiri in November 2007 after persuading imprisoned senior leadership of his former group to enter into peace negotiations with the Libyan regime. While Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the affiliation of the group with Al-Qaeda in November 2007, the Libyan government released 90 members of the group from prison several months later after "they were said to have renounced violence.
In 2007, around the sixth anniversary of September 11 and a couple of months before Rationalizing Jihad first appeared in the newspapers,the Saudi sheikh Salman al-Ouda delivered a personal rebuke to bin Laden. Al-Ouda, a religious scholar and one of the fathers of the Sahwa, the fundamentalist awakening movement that swept through Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, is a widely respected critic of jihadism. Al-Ouda addressed Al-Qaeda's leader on television asking him
My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed ... in the name of Al-Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?
According to Pew polls, support for Al-Qaeda has been dropping around the Muslim world in the years leading to 2008. The numbers supporting suicide bombings in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, for instance, have dropped by half or more in the last five years. In Saudi Arabia, only 10 percent now have a favorable view of Al-Qaeda, according to a December poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank.
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