Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda (/ ælˈkaɪdə, ˌælkɑːˈiːdə/ ;
Arabic : ﺍﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪﺓ al-qāʿidah ,
IPA: [ælqɑːʕɪdɐ] , translation: "The Base", "The Foundation" or "The Fundament " and alternatively spelled
al-Qaida , al-Qæda and sometimes al-Qa'ida ) is a militant Sunni Islamist
multi-national organization founded in 1988 [31] by Osama bin Laden,
Abdullah Azzam , [32] and several other Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. [6]
Al-Qaeda operates as a network made up of Islamic extremist , Salafist jihadists . It has been designated as a
terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council , the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the
European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, India, and various other countries (see below ). Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the September 11 attacks , and the 2002 Bali bombings . The U.S. government responded to the September 11 attacks by launching the "War on Terror ". With the loss of key leaders, culminating in the death of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's operations have devolved from actions that were controlled from the top down, to actions by associated groups and lone-wolf operators. Characteristic techniques employed by al-Qaeda include suicide attacks and the simultaneous bombing of different targets. [33] Activities ascribed to it may involve members of the movement who have made a pledge of loyalty to bin Laden, or the much more numerous "al-Qaeda-linked" individuals who have undergone training in one of its camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or Sudan. [34] Al-Qaeda ideologues envision a complete break from all foreign influences in Muslim countries , and the creation of a new
caliphate ruling over the entire
Muslim world.[4][35][36]
Among the beliefs ascribed to al-Qaeda members is the conviction that a Christian–Jewish alliance is
conspiring to destroy Islam .[37] As
Salafist jihadists, they believe that the killing of non-combatants is
religiously sanctioned , but they ignore any aspect of religious scripture which might be interpreted as forbidding the murder of non-combatants and internecine fighting. [1][38] Al-Qaeda also opposes what it regards as man-made laws, and it wants to replace them with a strict form of sharia law. [39]
Al-Qaeda has carried out many attacks on targets it considers
kafir . [40] Al-Qaeda is also responsible for instigating sectarian violence among Muslims .[41] Al-Qaeda's leaders regard liberal Muslims , Shias , Sufis and other sects as heretical and its members and sympathizers have attacked their
mosques and gatherings.[42] Examples of sectarian attacks include the Yazidi community bombings, the
Sadr City bombings, the Ashoura massacre and the April 2007 Baghdad bombings .[43]
Since the death of bin Laden in 2011, the group has been led by the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri .
Organization
Al-Qaeda's philosophy has been described as "centralization of decision and decentralization of execution." [44] It is thought that al-Qaeda's leadership, after the War on Terror , has "become geographically isolated," leading to the "emergence of decentralized leadership" of regionalized al-Qaeda groups. [45][46]
Many terrorism experts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by al-Qaeda's leadership. Although bin Laden still held considerable ideological sway over some Muslim extremists before his death, experts argue that al-Qaeda has fragmented over the years into a variety of regional movements that have little connection with one another. Marc Sageman , a psychiatrist and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, said that al-Qaeda is now just 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." [47]
This view mirrors the account given by Osama bin Laden in his October 2001 interview with Tayseer Allouni :
Bruce Hoffman , however, sees al-Qaeda as a cohesive network that is strongly led from the Pakistani tribal areas. [47]
Al-Qaeda militant in
Sahel, 2012
Al-Qaeda has the following direct affiliates:
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)
Al Qaeda in Yemen
Al-Qaeda in Somalia
Al Qaeda in the Lands Beyond the Sahel
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Al-Qaeda in Syria
Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent
Al-Qaeda in Lebanon
Al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago
Al-Qaeda in Kurdistan[49]
Al-Qaeda in West Africa [50]
Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Herzegovina[51]
Al-Qaeda in Gaza
Al Qaeda in Spain
Al-Qaeda in Sinai Peninsula
Al-Qaeda in Mali
Al-Qaeda in Caucasus and Russia
Al-Qaeda's indirect affiliates includes the following, some of which have left the organization and joined the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant :
Ansar Dine [citation needed ]
Abu Sayyaf (pledged allegiance to ISIL [52] )
Ansar al-Islam (Majority merged with ISIL on August 29, 2014)
Caucasus Emirate (factions)
Fatah al-Islam [citation needed]
Islamic Jihad Union[citation needed ]
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Jaish-e-Mohammed [citation needed ]
Jemaah Islamiyah[ citation needed ]
Jund al-Aqsa
Lashkar-e-Taiba [ citation needed ]
Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group[citation needed ]
Rajah Sulaiman movement [citation needed]
Leadership
Al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden in 2001 interview with Hamid Mir in Kabul
Osama bin Laden (1987 – May 2011)
Osama bin Laden was the most historically notable emir, or commander, and Senior Operations Chief of al-Qaeda prior to his assassination on May 1, 2011, by U.S. forces. Atiyah Abd al-Rahman was alleged to be second in command prior to his death on August 22, 2011. [53]
Bin Laden was advised by a Shura Council , which consists of senior al-Qaeda members, estimated by Western officials to consist of 20–30 people. One of them is thought to have been Sayed Tayib al-Madani .
after May 2011
Ayman al-Zawahiri , al-Qaeda's Deputy Operations Chief prior to bin Laden's death, assumed the role of commander, according to an announcement by al-Qaeda on June 16, 2011. He replaced Saif al-Adel , who had served as interim commander. [54]
On June 5, 2012, Pakistan intelligence officials announced that al-Rahman's alleged successor Abu Yahya al-Libi had been killed in Pakistan. [55]
Nasir al-Wuhayshi was said to have become second in command in 2013. He was the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), until he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2015. [56]
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." [57]
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 [58] were most successful in the year immediately following the September 11 attacks. [59] 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. [60] It also provides air tickets and false passports, pays al-Qaeda members, and oversees profit-driven businesses. [61] 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 Sharia law, and decides whether particular courses of action conform to it.
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
Al-Qaeda is not operationally managed by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Operational groups consult with the leadership in situations where attacks are in preparation (The Wilson Centre 2015). [62]
When asked about the possibility of al-Qaeda's connection to the July 7, 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." [63]
On August 13, 2005, however, The Independent newspaper, quoting police and MI5 investigations, reported that the July 7 bombers had acted independently of an al-Qaeda terror mastermind someplace abroad. [64]
What exactly al-Qaeda is, or was, remains in dispute. Certainly, it has been obliged to evolve and adapt in the aftermath of 9/11 and the launch of the 'war on terror'.
Nasser al-Bahri, who was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard for four years in the run-up to 9/11 gives a highly detailed description of how the group functioned at that time in his memoir. [65] He describes its formal administrative structure and vast arsenal, as well as day-to-day life as a member.
However, author and journalist Adam Curtis argues 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 US embassy bombings in East Africa:
As a matter of law, the US Department of Justice needed to show that bin Laden was the leader of a criminal organization in order to charge him in absentia under the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act , also known as the RICO statutes. The name of the organization and details of its structure were provided in the testimony of Jamal al-Fadl , who said he was a founding member of the group and a former employee of bin Laden. [67] Questions about the reliability of al-Fadl's testimony have been raised by a number of sources because of his history of dishonesty, and because he was delivering it as part of a plea bargain agreement after being convicted of conspiring to attack U.S. military establishments. [68][69] Sam Schmidt, one of his defense lawyers, said:
Field operatives
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir interviewing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, in 1997
The number of individuals in the group who have undergone proper military training, and are capable of commanding insurgent forces, is largely unknown. Documents captured in the raid on bin Laden compound in 2011, show that the core al-Qaeda membership in 2002 was 170. [70] In 2006, it was estimated that al-Qaeda had several thousand commanders embedded in 40 different countries. [71] As of 2009, it was believed that no more than 200–300 members were still active commanders. [72]
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. [73]
Insurgent forces
According to author 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. [71] 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. [71]
Other analysts have described al-Qaeda's rank and file as being "predominantly Arab," in its first years of operation, and now also includes "other peoples" as of 2007. [74] It has been estimated that 62% of al-Qaeda members have university education. [75]
Financing
Some financing for al-Qaeda in the 1990s came from the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden.[76] Other sources of income in 2001 included the heroin trade and donations from supporters in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic Gulf states .[76] A
WikiLeaks released memo from the United States Secretary of State sent in 2009 asserted that the primary source of funding of Sunni terrorist groups worldwide was Saudi Arabia. [77]
Among the first pieces of evidence of Saudi Arabia’s conspicuous support for al-Qaeda was the so-called "Golden Chain", a list of early al-Qaeda funders seized during a 2002 raid at the premises of the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) in Sarajevo by Bosnian police. [78] The hand-written list, validated by al-Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl, included the names of both donors and beneficiaries.[78][79] Osama bin-Laden’s name appeared seven times among the beneficiaries, while 20 Saudi and Gulf-based businessmen and politicians were listed among the donors.[78] Besides Osama bin Laden, among the most notable Saudi recipients were Adel Batterjee (founder of BIF and designated as a terror financier by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2004) and Wael Hamza Julaidan (U.S.-terrorist designated in 2002 as one of al-Qaeda’s founder). [78]
The most prominent Saudi figures among the donors included Saudi billionaire Saleh Kamel (CEO of Dallah Al-Baraka, accused of funding and supporting al-Qaeda operations), Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi (funder of SAAR Foundation, shut down within the framework of Operation Green Quest, and CEO of al-Rajhi Bank, investigated several times by U.S. authorities for its role in financing terrorism and al-Qaeda especially), and Ahmad Turki Yamani (son of former Saudi chief of Justice and former Saudi Minister of Petroleum). [78][80] Saleh Kamel’s case in particular reinforces Saudi Arabia’s role as sponsor of al-Qaeda. For years, Omar al-Bayoumi, an associate of Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two 9/11 highjackers, received a stipend from al-Baraka, the financial group kamel directed. [78] Kamel invested for several years in a Sudanese bank that held accounts under the names of senior al-Qaeda affiliates. [78][81] According to the Wall Street Journal , the Jidda-based al-Baraka Bank, one of the biggest subsidiaries of the financial group, was also suspected of providing banking services to al-Qaeda operatives. [80] In general, the documents seized during the 2002 Bosnia raid pointed out that al-Qaeda widely exploited charities to channel financial and material support to its operatives across the globe. [82] This was the case, for instance, with the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muslim World League (MWL). The former had solid ties with al-Qaeda associates worldwide, including al-Qaeda’s deputy Ayman al Zawahiri’s brother working for IIRO in Albania who had actively recruited on behalf of al-Qaeda and involved several Egyptian Islamic Jihad members in IIRO activities. [83] The latter was openly identified by al-Qaeda’s leader as one of the three charities al-Qaeda primarily relied upon for funding sources. [83]
Allegations of Qatari support
See also: Qatar and state-sponsored terrorism and 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis
Qatar has provided financial support to al-Qaeda as well. [citation needed ] On December 18, 2013, the U.S. Treasury designated Abd Al-Rahman al-Nuaimi, a Qatari citizen close to the al-Thani family and a human rights activist who founded the Swiss-based NGO Alkarama, as a global terrorist for his activities in support to al-Qaeda. [84] The U.S. Treasury has stated that Nuaimi, currently enjoying impunity in Qatar, "has facilitated significant financial support to al-Qa'ida in Iraq, and served as an interlocutor between al-Qa'ida in Iraq leaders and Qatar-based donors". [84]
Nuaimi was also accused of overseeing a $2 million monthly transfer to al-Qaeda in Iraq for a period of time as part of his role as mediator between Iraq-based al-Qaeda senior officers and Qatari citizens. [84][85] He also allegedly entertained relationships with Abu-Khalid al-Suri, al-Qaeda’s top envoy in Syria, who processed a $600,000 transfer to al-Qaeda in 2013. [84][85] Moreover, Nuaimi is known to be associated with Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad 'Abd al-Rahman al-Humayqani, a Yemeni politician and founding member of Alkarama listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the U.S. Treasury in 2013. [86] The U.S. authorities claimed that Humayqani exploited his role in Alkarama to fundraise on behalf of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). [84][86] A prominent figure among AQAP ranks, he was also reported to have facilitated the flow of funding to AQAP affiliates based in Yemen. Nuaimi was accused of investing funds in the charity directed by Humayqani to ultimately fund AQAP. [84] About ten months after being sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, Nuaimi was also restrained from doing business in the UK. [87]
Another Qatari citizen, Kalifa Mohammed Turki Subayi, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury on June 5, 2008, for his activities as a "Gulf-based al-Qaeda financier". Subayi’s name was added to the UN Security Council’s Sanctions List in 2008 upon charges of providing financial and material support to al-Qaeda senior leadership. [85][88] Subayi allegedly moved al-Qaeda recruits to South Asia-based training camps. [85][88] He also supported financially Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani national and senior al-Qaeda officer who is believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11 attack according to the 9/11 Commission Report. [89] Besides the activities of key facilitators, Qatar’s financial support to al-Qaeda has been channeled through Qatar’s largest NGO, the Qatar Charitable Society currently known as Qatar Charity . Al-Qaeda defector al-Fadl, who was also a former member of Qatar Charity, testified in court that Abdullah Mohammed Yusef, who served as Qatar Charity’s director, was affiliated to al-Qaeda and simultaneously to the National Islamic Front, a political group that gave al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden harbor in Sudan in the early 1990s. [79]
Legal proceedings from the trial "United States vs. Enaam M. Arnaout" also mentioned that Qatar Charity was cited by Bin Laden in 1993 as one of the charities used to channel financial support to al-Qaeda operatives overseas. [90] The same documents also report Bin Laden’s complaint that the failed assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had compromised the ability of al-Qaeda to exploit charities to support its operatives to the extent it was capable of it before 1995. [90] Qatar Charity’s track record of terror financing includes support to members of al-Qaeda in Chechnya, an accusation publicly denied by Hamad bin Nasser al-Thani. In 1999 Qatar Charity supposedly funneled money to Chechnya-based al-Qaeda affiliates. [91] Furthermore, Qatar Charity is among the NGOs allegedly channelling funds to Ansar Dine in North Mali, a piece of information confirmed by French military intelligence reports dating back to France’s intervention in the country in early 2013. [91][92] The group has long been suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda. [citation needed ]
Today, Qatar’s enduring financing of al-Qaeda’s enterprises mostly benefits al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria Jabhat al-Nusra and is channeled primarily through kidnapping for ransom. [93] The Consortium Against Terrorist Finance (CATF) reported that the Gulf country has thus funded al-Nusra since 2013. [93] Al-Awsat estimated that Qatar disbursed $25 million in support of al-Nusra through kidnapping for ransom.[94] In addition to this strategy, Qatar has also launched fundraising campaigns on behalf of al-Nusra. The
Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick wrote in December 2013 that al-Nusra acknowledged a Qatar-sponsored campaign ("Madid [sic] Ahl al-Sham") "as one of the preferred conduits for donations intended for the group". [95][96]
Strategy
On March 11, 2005, Al-Quds Al-Arabi published extracts from Saif al-Adel 's document "Al Qaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020". [97][98] Abdel Bari Atwan summarizes this strategy as comprising five stages to rid the
Ummah from all forms of oppression:

1. Provoke the United States and the West into invading a Muslim country by staging a massive attack or string of attacks on US soil that results in massive civilian casualties.
2. Incite local resistance to occupying forces.
3. Expand the conflict to neighboring countries, and engage the US and its allies in a long war of attrition.
4. 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 the US and countries allied with the US until they withdraw from the conflict, as happened with the 2004 Madrid train bombings , but which did not have the same effect with the July 7, 2005 London bombings.
5. The US economy will finally collapse by the year 2020, under the strain of multiple engagements in numerous places, making the worldwide economic system, which is dependent on the US, also collapse, leading to global political instability, which in turn leads to a global jihad led by al-Qaeda, and a Wahhabi
   Caliphate will then be installed across the world, following the collapse of the US and the rest of the Western world countries.
   Atwan also noted, regarding the collapse of the US, "If this sounds far-fetched, it is sobering to consider that this virtually describes the
   downfall of the Soviet Union." [97]
   According to Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist and author who has spent time in prison with Al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's strategy plan consists of seven phases and is similar to the plan described in Al Qaeda's Strategy to the year 2020: [99]
6. "The Awakening." This phase was supposed to last from 2001 to 2003. The goal of the phase is to provoke the United States to attack a Muslim country by executing an attack on US soil that kills many civilians.
7. "Opening Eyes." This phase was supposed to last from 2003 to 2006. The goal of this phase was to recruit young men to the cause and to transform the al-Qaeda group into a movement. Iraq was supposed to become the center of all operations with financial and military support for bases in other states.
8. "Arising and Standing up", was supposed to last from 2007 to 2010. In this phase, al-Qaeda wanted to execute additional attacks and focus their attention on Syria. Hussein believed that other countries in the
   Arabian Peninsula were also in danger.
9. Al-Qaeda expected a steady growth among their ranks and territories due to the declining power of the regimes in the Arabian Peninsula. The main focus of attack in this phase was supposed to be on oil suppliers and Cyberterrorism , targeting the US economy and military infrastructure.
10. The declaration of an Islamic Caliphate, which was projected between 2013 and 2016. In this phase, al-Qaeda expected the resistance from Israel to be heavily reduced.
11. The declaration of an "Islamic Army" and a "fight between believers and non-believers", also called "total confrontation".
12. "Definitive Victory", projected to be completed by 2020. The world will be "beaten down" by the Islamic Army.
    According to the seven-phase strategy, the war isn't projected to last longer than two years.
    According to Charles Lister of the
    Middle East Institute and Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute, the new model of al-Qaeda is to "socialise communities" and build a broad territorial base of operations with the support of local communities, also gaining income independent of the funding of sheiks. [100]
    Name
    The English name of the organization is a simplified transliteration of the Arabic noun al-qāʿidah (ﺍﻟﻘﺎﻋﺪﺓ ), which means "the foundation" or "the base". The initial al- is the Arabic definite article "the", hence "the base". [101]
    In Arabic, al-Qaeda has four syllables (/alˈqaː.ʕi.da/). However, since two of the Arabic consonants in the name (the voiceless uvular plosive [q] and the voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ]) are not phones found in the English language, the common naturalized
    English pronunciations include / æl
    ˈkaɪdə/ , / ælˈkeɪdə/ and / ˌælkɑːˈiːdə/ . Al-Qaeda's name can also be
    transliterated as al-Qaida , al-Qa'ida , or el-Qaida . [102]
    Bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera journalist Tayseer Alouni in October 2001:
    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". [104]
    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. [105] In April 2002, the group assumed the name
    Qa'idat al-Jihad ( ﻗﺎﻋﺪﺓ ﺍﻟﺠﻬﺎﺩ qāʿidat al-jihād ), 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 al-Zawahiri , with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control after his return to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s." [106]
    Ideology
    See also: Qutbism
    The radical Islamist movement in general and al-Qaeda in particular developed during the Islamic revival and the rise of the Islamist movement during 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." [107] In the 1950s-60s, 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 that a vanguard movement of righteous Muslims was needed in order to establish "true
    Islamic states ", implement sharia, and rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences, such as concepts like socialism and nationalism . In Qutb's view, the enemies of Islam included "treacherous Orientalists"[108] and "world Jewry," who plotted "conspiracies " and "wicked[ly]" opposed Islam.
    In the words of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a close college friend of bin Laden:
    Qutb had an even greater influence on bin Laden's mentor and another leading member of al-Qaeda, [110] Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri's uncle and maternal family patriarch, Mafouz Azzam, was Qutb's student, then protégé, then personal lawyer, and finally executor of his estate – one of the last people to see Qutb before his execution. "Young Ayman al-Zawahiri heard again and again from his beloved uncle Mahfouz about the purity of Qutb's character and the torment he had endured in prison." [111] Zawahiri paid homage to Qutb in his work Knights under the Prophet's Banner. [112]
    One of the most powerful of Qutb's ideas was his belief that many who said they were Muslims were really not. Rather, they were apostates . That not only gave jihadists "a legal loophole around the prohibition of killing another Muslim," but made "it a religious obligation to execute" these self-professed Muslims. These alleged apostates included leaders of Muslim countries, since they failed to enforce sharia law.[113]
    The Afghan jihad against the pro-Soviet government (December 1979 to February 1989) developed the Salafist Jihadist movement of which Al-Qaeda was the most prominent example. [114]
    Religious compatibility
    Abdel Bari Atwan writes that:
    History
    The Guardian has described five distinct phases in the development of al-Qaeda: beginnings in the late 1980s, a "wilderness" period in 1990–96, its "heyday" in 1996–2001, a network period from 2001 to 2005, and a period of fragmentation from 2005 to today. [116]
    Jihad in Afghanistan
    Main articles: Soviet–Afghan War and Jihadism
    CIA -funded and ISI -trained Afghan
    mujahideen fighters crossing the Durand Line border to fight Soviet forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government in 1985.
    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). [6] The US viewed the conflict in Afghanistan, with the Afghan
    Marxists and allied Soviet troops on one side and the native Afghan
    mujahideen, some of whom were radical Islamic militants, on the other, as a blatant case of Soviet expansionism and aggression.
    A CIA program called Operation Cyclone channeled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the Afghan Mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet occupation. [117] US government financial support for the Afghan Islamic militants was substantial. Aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan
    mujahideen leader and founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami radical Islamic militant faction, alone amounted "by the most conservative estimates" to $600 million. In addition to receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid, Hekmatyar was the recipient of the lion's share of Saudi aid. [118] (Later, in the early 1990s, after the US had withdrawn support, Hekmatyar "worked closely" with bin Laden.[119] )
    At the same time, a growing number of Arab mujahideen joined the jihad against the Afghan Marxist regime, facilitated by international Muslim organizations, particularly the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), [120] which was funded by the Saudi Arabia government as well as by individual Muslims (particularly Saudi businessmen who were approached by bin Laden). Together, these sources donated some $600 million a year to jihad. [121] [page needed ] In 1984, MAK, or the "Services Office", was established in Peshawar, Pakistan, by bin Laden and Abdullah Yusuf Azzam , a Palestinian Islamic scholar and member of the Muslim Brotherhood . MAK organized guest houses in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, and gathered supplies for the construction of paramilitary training camps to prepare foreign recruits for the Afghan war front. Bin Laden became a "major financier" of the
    mujahideen, spending his own money and using his connections with "the Saudi royal family and the petro-billionaires of the Gulf" to influence public opinion about the war and raise additional funds. [122]
    Omar Abdel-Rahman
    From 1986, MAK began to set up a network of recruiting offices in the US, the hub of which was the Al Kifah Refugee Center at the Farouq Mosque on Brooklyn 's Atlantic Avenue. Among notable figures at the Brooklyn center were "double agent" Ali Mohamed , whom FBI special agent Jack Cloonan called "bin Laden's first trainer", [123] and "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, a leading recruiter of
    mujahideen for Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda evolved from MAK. Azzam and bin Laden began to establish camps in Afghanistan in 1987. [124]
    MAK and foreign mujahideen volunteers, or "Afghan Arabs," did not play a major role in the war. While over 250,000 Afghan mujahideen fought the Soviets and the communist Afghan government, it is estimated that were never more than 2,000 foreign mujahideen in the field at any one time. [125] Nonetheless, foreign
    mujahideen volunteers came from 43 countries, and the total number that participated in the Afghan movement between 1982 and 1992 is reported to have been 35,000. [126] Bin Laden played a central role in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers.[127][128]
    The Soviet Union finally withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. To the surprise of many, Mohammad Najibullah 's Communist Afghan government hung on for three more years, before being overrun by elements of the mujahideen. With
    mujahideen leaders unable to agree on a structure for governance, chaos ensued, with constantly reorganizing alliances fighting for control of ill-defined territories, leaving the country devastated.
    Expanding operations
    Toward the end of the Soviet military mission in Afghanistan, some foreign
    mujahideen wanted to expand their operations to include Islamist struggles in other parts of the world, such as Palestine 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.
    Wright's research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed at an August 11, 1988, meeting between "several senior leaders" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad , Abdullah Azzam , and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. [129]
    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. [130] In his memoir, bin Laden's former bodyguard, Nasser al-Bahri , gives the only publicly available description of the ritual of giving bayat when he swore his allegiance to the al-Qaeda chief. [131] According to Wright, the group's real name wasn't used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret." [132]
    After Azzam was assassinated in 1989, the MAK split, with a significant number joining bin Laden's organization. [citation needed]
    In November 1989, Ali Mohamed , a former special forces sergeant stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, left military service and moved to California. He traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and became "deeply involved with bin Laden's plans." [133] In 1991, Ali Mohammed is said to have helped orchestrate bin Laden's relocation to Sudan. [134]
    Gulf War and the start of US enmity
    Main article: Gulf War
    Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 had put the Kingdom and its ruling House of Saud at risk. The world's most valuable oil fields were within easy striking distance of Iraqi forces in Kuwait, and Saddam's call to pan-Arab/Islamism could potentially rally internal dissent.
    In the face of a seemingly massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's own forces were well armed but far outnumbered. Bin Laden offered the services of his mujahideen to King Fahd to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi army. The Saudi monarch refused bin Laden's offer, opting instead to allow US and allied forces to deploy troops into Saudi territory. [135]
    The deployment angered bin Laden, as he believed 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 banished and forced to live in exile in Sudan.
    Sudan
    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 . [136]
    Zawahiri and the EIJ, who served as the core of al-Qaeda but also engaged in separate operations against the Egyptian government, had bad luck in Sudan. In 1993, a young schoolgirl was killed in an unsuccessful EIJ attempt on the life of the Egyptian prime minister, Atef Sedki . Egyptian public opinion turned against Islamist bombings, and the police arrested 280 of al-Jihad's members and executed 6. [137]
    Due to bin Laden's continuous verbal assault on King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, on March 5, 1994, Fahd sent an emissary to Sudan demanding bin Laden's passport; bin Laden's Saudi citizenship was also revoked. His family was persuaded to cut off his stipend, $7 million a year, and his Saudi assets were frozen. [138][139] His family publicly disowned him. There is controversy over whether and to what extent he continued to garner support from members of his family and/or the Saudi government. [140]
    In June 1995, an even more ill-fated
    attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Mubarak led to the expulsion of EIJ, and in May 1996, of bin Laden, by the Sudanese government. [citation needed ]
    According to Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, the Sudanese government offered the
    Clinton Administration numerous opportunities to arrest bin Laden. Ijaz's claims appeared in numerous
    op-ed pieces, including one in the Los Angeles Times[141] and one in The Washington Post co-written with former Ambassador to Sudan
    Timothy M. Carney. [142] Similar allegations have been made by Vanity Fair contributing editor David Rose, [143] and Richard Miniter , author of Losing bin Laden, in a November 2003 interview with World. [144]
    Several sources dispute Ijaz's claim, including the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the US (the 9/11 Commission ), which concluded in part:
    Refuge in Afghanistan
    Main articles: Taliban's rise to power and Afghan training camp
    After the fall of the Afghan communist regime in 1992, Afghanistan was effectively ungoverned for four years and plagued by constant infighting between various mujahideen groups.
    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. [146] The town is situated near Peshawar in Pakistan, but largely attended by Afghan refugees .[146] 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. [147] Another four of the Taliban's leaders attended a similarly funded and influenced madrassa in Kandahar.
    Many of the mujahideen who later joined the Taliban fought alongside Afghan warlord Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi's Harkat i Inqilabi group at the time of the Russian invasion. This group 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 it came to establish an enclave which it called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan . In 1994, it captured the regional center of Kandahar, and after making rapid territorial gains thereafter, conquered the capital city Kabul in September 1996.
    After the Sudanese made it clear, in May 1996, that bin Laden would never be welcome to return, [clarification needed ] Taliban-controlled Afghanistan – with previously established connections between the groups, administered with a shared militancy, [148] and largely isolated from American political influence and military power – provided a perfect location for al-Qaeda to relocate its headquarters. Al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban's protection and a measure of legitimacy as part of their Ministry of Defense, [citation needed ] although only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
    While in Afghanistan, the Taliban government tasked al-Qaeda with the training of Brigade 055 , an elite part of the Taliban's army from 1997–2001. The Brigade was made up of mostly foreign fighters, many veterans from the Soviet Invasion, and all under the same basic ideology of the mujahideen. In November 2001, as Operation Enduring Freedom had toppled the Taliban government, many Brigade 055 fighters were captured or killed, and those that survived were thought to head into Pakistan along with bin Laden.[149]
    By the end of 2008, some sources reported that the Taliban had severed any remaining ties with al-Qaeda, [150] while others cast doubt on this. [151] According to senior US military intelligence officials, there were fewer than 100 members of al-Qaeda remaining in Afghanistan in 2009. [152]
    Call for global Salafi jihadism
    Around 1994, the Salafi groups waging Salafi jihadism in Bosnia entered into a seemingly irreversible decline. As they grew less and less aggressive, groups such as EIJ began to drift away from the Salafi cause in Europe. Al-Qaeda stepped in and assumed control of around 80% of the terrorist cells in Bosnia in late 1995.