Al Qaeda

Designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State, al Qaeda is a militant Islamic organization whose strategic objective is the establishment of a unified state by violence throughout the Muslim world governed according to Islamic law. Forged by Osama bin Laden and other foreign fighters who resisted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, al Qaeda is responsible for multiple terrorist attacks around the world dating back to 1992. Culminating on September 11, 2001, 19 al Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners to crash them into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, the United States initiated an international counterterrorism campaign with the intent to eliminate al Qaeda ...