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Seven others, mostly Yemenis, were severely injured. Salim referred to a famous fatwa appointed by Ibn Taymiyyah , a 13th-century scholar much admired by Wahhabis, which sanctioned resistance by any means during the Mongol invasions. However, intelligence agents intercepted a message before the motorcade was to leave, and alerted the US Secret Service.
Agents later discovered a bomb planted under a bridge. In retaliation, a barrage of cruise missiles launched by the US military devastated an al-Qaeda base in Khost , Afghanistan. The network's capacity was unharmed. On October 12, , al-Qaeda militants in Yemen bombed the missile destroyer USS Cole in a suicide attack, killing 17 US servicemen and damaging the vessel while it lay offshore.
Inspired by the success of such a brazen attack, al-Qaeda's command core began to prepare for an attack on the US itself. The September 11 attacks were the most devastating terrorist acts in American history, killing 2, people, including 2, civilians, firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers, and 55 military personnel. Two commercial airliners were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth, originally intended to target either the United States Capitol or the White House , crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It was also the deadliest foreign attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, The attacks were conducted by al-Qaeda, acting in accord with the fatwa issued against the US and its allies by persons under the command of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and others.
Messages issued by bin Laden after September 11, , praised the attacks, and explained their motivation while denying any involvement. 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. 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 US The targets were later altered by al-Qaeda, as it was feared that such an attack "might get out of hand". Al-Qaeda is deemed a designated terrorist group by the following countries and international organizations:.
The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the US would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks. US President George W. Bush responded by saying: Soon thereafter the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan, and together with the Afghan Northern Alliance removed the Taliban government as part of the war in Afghanistan. As a result of the US special forces and air support for the Northern Alliance ground forces, a number of Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps were destroyed, and much of the operating structure of al-Qaeda is believed to have been disrupted.
After being driven from their key positions in the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan, many al-Qaeda fighters tried to regroup in the rugged Gardez region of the nation. By early , al-Qaeda had been dealt a serious blow to its operational capacity, and the Afghan invasion appeared to be a success. Nevertheless, a significant Taliban insurgency remained in Afghanistan. The US State Department released a videotape showing bin Laden speaking with a small group of associates somewhere in Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban was removed from power.
The tape was aired on many television channels , with an accompanying English translation provided by the US Defense Department. By the end of , the US government proclaimed that two-thirds of the most senior al-Qaeda figures from had been captured and interrogated by the CIA: The West was criticized for not being able to handle Al-Qaida despite a decade of the war. Al-Qaeda involvement in Africa has included a number of bombing attacks in North Africa, while supporting parties in civil wars in Eritrea and Somalia. From to , bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were based in Sudan. Islamist rebels in the Sahara calling themselves al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have stepped up their violence in recent years.
It seems likely that bin Laden approved the group's name in late , and the rebels "took on the al Qaeda franchise label", almost a year before the violence began to escalate. In Mali, the Ansar Dine faction was also reported as an ally of al-Qaeda in Following the Libyan Civil War , the removal of Gaddafi and the ensuing period of post-civil war violence in Libya , various Islamist militant groups affiliated with al-Qaeda were able to expand their operations in the region.
Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, is suspected of having been carried out by various Jihadist networks, such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb , Ansar al-Sharia and several other Al-Qaeda affiliated groups. Three al-Qaeda operatives carried out the Mostar car bombing in Language skills and knowledge of Western culture were generally found among recruits from Europe, such was the case with Mohamed Atta , an Egyptian national studying in Germany at the time of his training, and other members of the Hamburg Cell. Following the attacks, Western intelligence agencies determined that al-Qaeda cells operating in Europe had aided the hijackers with financing and communications with the central leadership based in Afghanistan.
In , Islamists carried out a series of bombings in Istanbul killing fifty-seven people and injuring seven hundred. Seventy-four people were charged by the Turkish authorities. Some had previously met bin Laden, and though they specifically declined to pledge allegiance to al-Qaeda they asked for its blessing and help. In , three Londoners, Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar and Ahmed Abdullah Ali, were convicted of conspiring to detonate bombs disguised as soft drinks on seven airplanes bound for Canada and the US The MI5 investigation regarding the plot involved more than a year of surveillance work conducted by over two hundred officers.
In , Russian Intelligence indicated that al-Qaeda had given a call for "forest jihad" and has been starting massive forest fires as part of a strategy of "thousand cuts". Following Yemeni unification in , Wahhabi networks began moving missionaries into the country. Although it is unlikely that bin Laden or Saudi al-Qaeda were directly involved, the personal connections they made would be established over the next decade and used in the USS Cole bombing. In Iraq, al-Qaeda forces loosely associated with the leadership were embedded in the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Specializing in suicide operations, they have been a "key driver" of the Sunni insurgency. Al-Qaeda did not begin training Palestinians until the late s. This may have changed recently. The Israeli security and intelligence services believe that al-Qaeda has managed to infiltrate operatives from the Occupied Territories into Israel, and is waiting for an opportunity to attack. As of [update] , Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are openly supporting the Army of Conquest , [] [] an umbrella rebel group fighting in the Syrian Civil War against the Syrian government that reportedly includes an al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar al-Sham.
Lastly, he argues that Americans could not have trained the mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan, and that the Afghan Arabs were almost invariably militant Islamists reflexively hostile to Westerners whether or not the Westerners were helping the Muslim Afghans. Specializing in suicide operations, they have been a "key driver" of the Sunni insurgency. It made them identifiable as a group and therefore made it easier to prosecute any person associated with al-Qaeda for any acts or statements made by bin Laden. 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 "socialize communities" and build a broad territorial base of operations with the support of local communities, also gaining income independent of the funding of sheiks. This information was uncovered from interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, an operative of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami , who had been arrested in India. Retrieved from " https: Archived from the original on January 22,
By , Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had become a part of the al-Qaeda coalition. Many of the militants active in Kashmir were trained in the same madrasahs as Taliban and al-Qaeda. Fazlur Rehman Khalil of Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was a signatory of al-Qaeda's declaration of Jihad against America and its allies. US officials believe that al-Qaeda was helping organize a campaign of terror in Kashmir in order to provoke conflict between India and Pakistan. Panag argued that the army had ruled out the presence of al-Qaeda in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
Maulana Masood Azhar , the founder of Kashmiri group Jaish-e-Mohammed , is believed to have met bin Laden several times and received funding from him. This hijacking, Riedel stated, was rightly described by then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh as a 'dress rehearsal' for September 11 attacks. Al-Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf , who was one of the accused in transatlantic aircraft plot , was related to Maulana Masood Azhar by marriage. Lashkar-e-Taiba , a Kashmiri militant group which is thought to be behind Mumbai attacks , is also known to have strong ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders living in Pakistan.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is a member of al-Qaeda. In a video released in , American-born senior al-Qaeda operative Adam Yahiye Gadahn stated that "victory in Kashmir has been delayed for years; it is the liberation of the jihad there from this interference which, Allah willing, will be the first step towards victory over the Hindu occupiers of that Islam land.
This information was uncovered from interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, an operative of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami , who had been arrested in India. In January , US Defense secretary Robert Gates , while on a visit to Pakistan, stated that al-Qaeda was seeking to destabilize the region and planning to provoke a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda and its successors have migrated online to escape detection in an atmosphere of increased international vigilance. The group's use of the Internet has grown more sophisticated, with online activities that include financing, recruitment, networking, mobilization, publicity, and information dissemination, gathering and sharing.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri 's al-Qaeda movement in Iraq regularly releases short videos glorifying the activity of jihadist suicide bombers.
In addition, both before and after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq , the umbrella organization to which al-Qaeda in Iraq belongs, the Mujahideen Shura Council , has a regular presence on the Web. The range of multimedia content includes guerrilla training clips, stills of victims about to be murdered, testimonials of suicide bombers, and videos that show participation in jihad through stylized portraits of mosques and musical scores. A website associated with al-Qaeda posted a video of captured American entrepreneur Nick Berg being decapitated in Iraq.
Other decapitation videos and pictures, including those of Paul Johnson , Kim Sun-il , and Daniel Pearl , were first posted on jihadist websites.
In December an audio message claiming to be from bin Laden was posted directly to a website, rather than sending a copy to al Jazeera as he had done in the past. Al-Qaeda turned to the Internet for release of its videos in order to be certain they would be available unedited, rather than risk the possibility of al Jazeera editing out anything critical of the Saudi royal family. Alneda was initially taken down by American Jon Messner, but the operators resisted by shifting the site to various servers and strategically shifting content.
The US charged a British information technology specialist, Babar Ahmad , on terrorism charges related to his operating a network of English-language al-Qaeda websites, such as Azzam. He was convicted and sentenced to and-a-half years in prison. In , al-Qaeda released Mujahedeen Secrets , encryption software used for online and cellular communications. A later version, Mujahideen Secrets 2 , was released in Al-Qaeda is believed to be operating a clandestine aviation network including "several Boeing aircraft", turboprops and executive jets , according to a Reuters story.
Based on a US 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 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 Europeans for ransom.
The profits from the drug and weapon sales, and kidnappings can, in turn, fund more militant activities. The following is a list of military conflicts in which Al-Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken part militarily. Robin Cook , British Foreign Secretary from to , 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.
The strategy to support the Afghans against Soviet military intervention was evolved by several intelligence agencies, including the C. After the Soviet withdrawal, the Western powers walked away from the region, leaving behind 40, militants imported from several countries to wage the anti-Soviet jihad. Pakistan was left to face the blowback of extremism, drugs and guns. Bergen and others argue that there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land since there were a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight.
Lastly, he argues that Americans could not have trained the mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan, and that the Afghan Arabs were almost invariably militant Islamists reflexively hostile to Westerners whether or not the Westerners were helping the Muslim Afghans. According to Bergen, who conducted the first television interview with bin Laden in There's no evidence of this Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.
Al-Zawahiri has become a close aide of bin Laden Bin Laden was only loosely connected with the [Hezb-i-Islami faction of the mujahideen led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar], serving under another Hezb-i-Islami commander known as Engineer Machmud. However, bin Laden's Office of Services, set up to recruit overseas for the war, received some US cash. Anders Behring Breivik , the perpetrator of the Norway attacks , was inspired by Al-Qaeda, calling it "the most successful revolutionary movement in the world. Islamic extremism dates back to the Kharijites of the 7th century.
The Kharijites were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to Takfir , whereby they declared other Muslims to be unbelievers and therefore deemed them worthy of death. According to a number of sources, a "wave of revulsion" has been expressed against al-Qaeda and its affiliates by "religious scholars, former fighters and militants" who are alarmed by al-Qaeda's takfir and its killing of Muslims in Muslim countries, especially in Iraq.
Noman Benotman , a former Afghan Arab and a militant member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group LIFG , went public with an open letter of criticism to Ayman al-Zawahiri in November , after persuading the imprisoned senior leaders 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 , the Libyan government released 90 members of the group from prison several months after "they were said to have renounced violence. In , on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, [] 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 s, is a widely respected critic of jihadism.
My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed 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 had dropped in the Muslim world in the years before Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World. Although once associated with al-Qaeda, in September LIFG completed a new "code" for jihad, a page religious document entitled "Corrective Studies".
Given its credibility and the fact that several other prominent Jihadists in the Middle East have turned against al-Qaeda, the LIFG's reversal may be an important step toward staunching al-Qaeda's recruitment. The documentary included interviews with former members of the group who stated their reasons for leaving al-Shabab. The members made accusations of segregation, lack of religious awareness and internal corruption and favoritism.
In response to Kareem, the Global Islamic Media Front condemned Kareem, called him a liar, and denied the accusations from the former fighters. In mid after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared that they had restored the Caliphate , an audio statement was released by the then-spokesman of the group Abu Muhammad al-Adnani claiming that "the legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the Caliphate's authority".
The speech included a religious refutation of Al-Qaeda for being too lenient regarding Shiites and their refusal to recognize the authority Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi , al-Adnani specifically noting: He also recalled a past instance in which Osama bin Laden called on al-Qaeda members and supporters to give allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi when the group was still solely operating in Iraq, as the Islamic State of Iraq , and condemned Ayman al-Zawahiri for not making this same claim for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and that Zawahiri was encouraging factionalism and division between former allies of ISIL such as the al-Nusra Front.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the militant group. For the Iraqi newspaper, see Al-Qaidah newspaper. In the Af-Pak region: Qatar and state-sponsored terrorism and Qatar diplomatic crisis. This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam Iqbal s. Principles of State and Government Asad Ma'alim fi al-Tariq "Milestones" Qutb Governance of the Jurist "Velayat-e faqih" Khomeini Soviet—Afghan War and Jihadism.
Taliban's rise to power and Afghan training camp. This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. Al-Shabaab militant group and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Controlled by Al-Shabaab and Allies. Controlled by al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia. Death of Osama bin Laden. Controlled by al-Nusra Front. Timeline of al-Qaeda attacks. Responsibility for the September 11 attacks.
War on Terror and List of wars and battles involving al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda involvement in Africa. Al-Qaeda involvement in Europe.
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Archived from the original on June 28, Using the information and tools provided in the text, individuals as well as organizations—internet-savvy or not—can help drown out the pervasive pro-Al Qaeda propaganda. Paperback , 75 pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Aug 18, TomF rated it liked it. Curious little non-profit 'pamphlet' book which aims to animate non-government sources to spread anti-al Qaeda Islamic stances on the web. You have to trawl through his references and the web to get some juicy examples of pacifists an Curious little non-profit 'pamphlet' book which aims to animate non-government sources to spread anti-al Qaeda Islamic stances on the web.
You have to trawl through his references and the web to get some juicy examples of pacifists and militants condemning suicide bombing etc plenty out there for the former, and some for the zealot-friendly latter , as the book itself is more a powerpoint presentation in paper form. There are still some interesting titbits flagged up in the main text, including a Pew poll on the drop in support for suicide bombing in the Islamic world etc Some of it is accidentally comical: Wordpress as a terrorist's favourite hence he recommends it , militaristic hierarchy trees for NGOs is 'web chief' a normal title?
Still, a fairly worthy, and not too frothy, approach. George rated it liked it Jan 08, Maude rated it it was amazing Apr 14, Victoria marked it as to-read Nov 14, Emily Reznicek marked it as to-read Jul 05,