Al Qaeda

Historical Overview

Al-Qa'ida's origins can be traced to certain logistical organizations established in Peshawar, Pakistan, to recruit, transport, subsidize, house, and record the names of Arab and other Muslim volunteers who had flocked to Afghanistan during the 1980s to wage armed jihad against the “infidel” Soviet invaders—the so-called Afghan Arabs. The most important of these was the Maktab al-Khidamat li al-Mujahidin (MAK; Mujahidin Services Bureau), which had been established by the Palestinian ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam, the “imam of jihad,” and Usama bin Ladin, the scion of a wealthy Saudi family of Yemeni origin, whose father, Muhammad, had built one of the largest construction firms in Saudi Arabia. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, ‘Azzam and bin Ladin decided to establish a “solid base” (al-qa'ida al-sulba), both territorial and organizational, and thereby transform the Afghan Arabs into a kind of transnational Islamist fire brigade, which could be quickly sent to defend Muslims in various regions who were being attacked, occupied, or oppressed by infidel or “apostate” regimes. That, at least, was ‘Azzam's initial conception, but over time, bin Ladin, together with veteran Egyptian jihadists from the Tanzim al-Jihad al-Islami (“Islamic Jihad Organization”), above all Ayman al-Zawahiri, developed a more grandiose vision for this newly formed jihadist “base,” which would henceforth constitute the vanguard (tali'a) of a projected global jihadist insurgent movement that would focus on attacking the “far enemy” (al-‘adu al-ba'id)—that is, the United States and its Western allies—rather than focusing on the “near enemy” (al-‘adu al-qarib), the local non-Muslim or apostate Muslim regimes that were allegedly oppressing Muslims if not waging a war to destroy Islam. This dispute over the proper role for al-Qa'ida eventually led to a growing schism between bin Ladin and ‘Azzam, followed by the November 1989 car bomb assassination of the latter.

Thenceforth, bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri became the uncontested leaders of al-Qa'ida, by then renamed Qa'idat al-Jihad (“The Base of the Jihad”). Incensed by the Saudi regime's reliance on American troops to oust Saddam Husayn's forces from Kuwait in 1990 to 1991, bin Ladin increasingly began to denounce it as an apostate regime, which in turn caused him to become persona non grata within the kingdom and ultimately to lose his Saudi citizenship. He therefore opted to move the core of his al-Qa'ida organization to Sudan, where he established various business ventures and forged tangible links with other jihadist organizations, both Sunni and Shi'i. However, the increase in al-Qa'ida–sponsored terrorist attacks caused the American government to apply enormous pressure on the Sudanese regime to expel the group from Sudan, and as a result, bin Ladin felt compelled to leave that country in 1996 and to move the core of his organization back to Afghanistan, which was by then largely under the control of the puritanical [Page 24]Taliban. He then forged a close relationship with the Taliban leader Mullah ‘Umar, founded al-Jabha al-Islamiyya al-‘Alamiyya li Jihad al-Yahud wa al-Salabiyyin (the “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders”) in 1998, established elaborate training camp complexes in Afghanistan where prospective mujahidin from all over the world could receive generalized or specialized instruction, and continued plotting and launching attacks against his “infidel” enemies abroad, such as the destructive August, 7, 1998, U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. This phase culminated in the sponsoring, planning, and execution of the “planes operation” on “Blessed Tuesday,” that is, 9/11, which resulted in the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and damage to a wing of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, along with the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.

...