al Qaeda

al Qaeda (Arabic for “the base,” aka Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places; Islamic Salvation Foundation; Osama bin Laden Network; World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders) is a loosely knit terrorist network that facilitates the activities of like-minded militant Islamic groups in some 55 countries around the globe. al Qaeda is now known to have been behind both attacks on the World Trade Center (1993 and 2001) and the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies, among many other incidents.

Organizationally, al Qaeda is governed by a small core of leaders the majlis al shura, or consultative council, which makes the final decisions on major policy decisions, including the approval of terrorist operations and the issuing of Islamic decrees, or fatwas. al Qaeda also has a military committee, a business committee, a media committee, and a religious committee. Most al Qaeda operatives never have contact with the top leadership and are dispatched for duty at the last moment, without prior knowledge of the organization's plans. For this reason, intelligence analysts have experienced great difficulty breaking into the network.

The network was established in 1989 by the Saudi militant Osama bin Laden and the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood figure Abdullah Azzam. al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan from 1989 to 1991, in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, and again in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The group was forced into exile after the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom into Afghanistan on October 7, 2002.

al Qaeda seeks to overthrow the current world order and replace it with a fundamentalist Islamic order, characterized by a unified Muslim world under the leadership of a Muslim caliph. Accordingly, it has set several goals. First, it seeks to topple what it considers to be the morally bankrupt and heretical regimes of the Middle East. al Qaeda chastises these regimes for not properly implementing Islamic law, or Shariah. The organization's top target is Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's two holiest sites. bin Laden has lambasted the Saudi regime for allowing U.S. soldiers to be stationed on its soil. Second, al Qaeda sees the United States as the foremost enemy of Islam because of what it perceives to be an oppressive foreign policy. As the world's lone superpower, the United States also represents the largest impediment to an Islamic order. al Qaeda, therefore, seeks to destroy it. Finally, al Qaeda calls for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, and replacing it with a Muslim state of Palestine. al Qaeda, however, has never directly attacked a Jewish or Israeli target.