I.

Introduction

Al-Qaeda, international terrorist network, founded by Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda seeks to purge Muslim countries of Western—and especially United States—influence and install fundamentalist Islamic rule. Al-Qaeda, also spelled al-Qaida, is the Arabic word for “the base” or “the camp”—meaning the base or camp from which worldwide Islamic revolution will be fought.

Al-Qaeda was responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. That day, 19 terrorists hijacked four passenger aircraft soon after they took off from airports in Boston, Massachusetts; Newark, New Jersey; and Washington, D.C. Two of the planes were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Both structures collapsed shortly afterward. A third aircraft was flown into the Pentagon, where the U.S. Department of Defense is located, severely damaging the southwest portion of that building. Meanwhile, passengers on board the fourth aircraft learned of the other attacks and struggled to subdue the hijackers. In the ensuing melee, the plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. The death toll in all four incidents totaled about 3,000 people.

Other significant al-Qaeda operations include the 1998 suicide bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the maritime suicide attack in 2000 on an American warship, the USS Cole, anchored in Aden, Yemen; and the commuter train bombings in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004 that killed more than 190 people and wounded more than 1,400.

II.

Al-Qaeda’s Mission

Al-Qaeda seeks to incite a global jihad (holy war) to overthrow regimes with predominantly Arab or Muslim populations that al-Qaeda considers corrupt and anti-Islamic. It wants to replace these regimes with a single Muslim nation or empire strictly governed according to sharia (Islamic law). Al-Qaeda sees the United States and other Western countries as blocking this goal because they are allied with many of the countries al-Qaeda considers corrupt.

Al-Qaeda also considers the presence of U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia an affront to the Muslim people because Saudi Arabia is the location of Islam’s two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden has issued two fatwas (Islamic religious edicts) calling for the expulsion of these forces from the Arabian Peninsula and sanctioning the use of violence to achieve this objective. A 1998 fatwa, issued in the name of “The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders,” declared that “the ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian or military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.” Bin Laden regards the U.S. military presence as a continuation of the Crusades, a series of wars during the Middle Ages in which Western Christians sought to capture the Holy Land from Muslims.

In addition, since the September 11 attacks bin Laden has sought to exploit Arab and Muslim hatred of Israel, calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. He has also tried to portray al-Qaeda as the true defender of Islam and protector of Muslims everywhere. He has opposed U.S.-backed sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations (UN) and the violence inflicted on Muslims in places such as Bosnia, Chechnya, East Timor, the Philippines, Sudan, and Somalia.

Al-Qaeda is arguably one of the world’s most formidable and resilient terrorist movements. Following the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush approved the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda lost its training camps, operational bases, and command headquarters in that country. Thousands of its fighters and many of its leaders were killed or captured. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda has demonstrated a remarkable ability to continue its violent attacks.

During 2002, for example, terrorist incidents linked to al-Qaeda occurred in places as diverse as Tunisia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Kuwait, the Philippines, Yemen, and Kenya. Its targets have included Australian, German, and Israeli tourists, and French engineers and a French oil tanker—as well as longstanding targets such as American diplomats and servicemen. Al-Qaeda has continued to use suicide-bombing tactics—on land and at sea. A group believed to be closely linked with al-Qaeda also kidnapped and subsequently executed an American journalist, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Commercial aviation remains a significant al-Qaeda target. In December 2001, for example, an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist with a bomb hidden in his shoe attempted to blow up a U.S. aircraft en route from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida. Eleven months later, a group in Kenya linked to al-Qaeda tried to shoot down an Israeli charter flight with a handheld surface-to-air missile.

III.

Al-Qaeda’s Organization

Western intelligence agencies have learned much about al-Qaeda’s internal organization from defectors and informants, especially from the testimony of four men convicted in a federal district court in New York City for their role in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to this information, al-Qaeda’s organizational structure incorporates both top-down and bottom-up approaches.

As part of the top-down approach, bin Laden is regarded as al-Qaeda’s emir-general. The emir-general provides spiritual guidance as well as strategic and operational oversight and is the preeminent leader of the movement, the most highly respected figure in al-Qaeda. As emir-general, bin Laden outlines al-Qaeda’s objectives and issues orders to ensure their implementation. A majlis al-shura (consultative council) addresses important policy and strategy issues, approving fatwas and authorizing major terrorist operations. Four operational committees, which are responsible for military activities, finance and business, fatwas and other religious matters, and publicity and media, report to the majlis al-shura.

At the same time, bin Laden also seeks ideas for attacks from below, encouraging creative approaches and “out of the box” thinking from al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers. He then provides funding to those proposals he finds most promising. In this respect, al-Qaeda is unlike most other terrorist groups, which tend to be organized hierarchically—that is, in a rigid pyramidal fashion with a commander at the top issuing orders to the individual cells below. Instead, al-Qaeda was conceived as a flatter, less rigid network. Accordingly, some al-Qaeda operations—especially the most important and spectacular attacks such as those of September 11, the embassy bombings, and the attack on the USS Cole—were likely planned and ordered by bin Laden and the majlis al-shura. However, others—like the shoe bomb attempt and the handheld missile attack—may have been independently carried out by local groups inspired or motivated, but perhaps only indirectly assisted, by bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda is therefore less cohesive in membership than traditionally organized terrorist groups, with a more diffuse and open structure. This flatter, more networked organization is a key strength that likely accounts for the movement’s continued longevity despite the global onslaught directed against it. Individual terrorists or groups under al-Qaeda’s umbrella are able to operate without having specific orders issued from a central command authority. This loose structure means that al-Qaeda does not have one set method of operating or a single, identifiable footprint. This makes it that much harder for military and law enforcement officials to effectively fight and ultimately defeat al-Qaeda.

IV.

Al-Qaeda’s Origins

Al-Qaeda’s origins can be traced to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Bin Laden, the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia, was among the many thousands of devout Muslims drawn to Afghanistan to help repel the Soviet invasion. He established himself as a patron of jihad (holy war) and together with Sheik Abdullah Azzam founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK or “Offices of Services”) in 1984. The MAK functioned as a recruiting office and coordination center for the international Muslim brigade that fought in Afghanistan.

Over the course of the decade-long conflict, the MAK reportedly trained, equipped, and financed somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 mujahideen (holy warriors) hailing from more than 50 countries. Although the MAK had branches around the world, including in Europe and even the United States, Saudi nationals made up nearly half its recruits. Other prominent members included Algerians, Egyptians, and people from other Muslim countries such as Yemen, Pakistan, and Sudan. Saudis made up the bulk of the recruits in part because of bin Laden. The prominence of his family's name and reputation in the kingdom gave him a stature that carried great influence. Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam also motivated many young men in that country to answer the call to defend Afghanistan and the Muslim world from “infidel” influences.

Toward the end of the anti-Soviet struggle, bin Laden and Azzam quarreled. The dispute arose over whether MAK should focus on Afghanistan, as Azzam wanted, or global jihad, as bin Laden argued for. In this respect, bin Laden was greatly influenced by radical Islamic theologians such as Sayyid Qutb, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Maulana Sayed Abdul A’la Maudoodi, an Indian-born journalist and intellectual who moved to Pakistan in 1947. They taught that jihad was a personal, individual responsibility and that it was therefore required of all Muslims to establish true Islamic rule in their own countries—through violence, if necessary. Western concepts of secularism (separation of government and religion) and democracy were deemed wrong, and the United States and the West were branded as enemies of Islam.

Although the broad outlines of al-Qaeda began to take shape during 1987 and 1988, it was only after Azzam was assassinated in 1989 that al-Qaeda formally split from MAK to become a jihadist movement in its own right. That same year, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. The mujahideen’s success in repelling one of the world’s two superpowers from a Muslim land had a significant impact on bin Laden. To his mind, the Soviet Union’s defeat set in motion the chain of events that resulted in the collapse of the USSR and the demise of Communism. Bin Laden, accordingly, concluded that confronting the United States would produce a similar result: causing U.S. withdrawal from the Arab and Muslim world and in turn toppling the corrupt, pro-Western regimes in those countries.

V.

Al-Qaeda’s Growth

In 1989 bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. He opposed the presence of U.S. and Western military forces in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and publicly criticized the Saudi monarchy for allowing the U.S. presence to continue after the war ended. In April 1991 bin Laden moved to Pakistan. In 1992 he relocated to Sudan where he was welcomed by the ruling National Islamic Front and its leader, Hassan al-Turabi, who had established strict Islamic rule.

From 1991 to 1996, bin Laden quietly built al-Qaeda into a formidable international terrorist network, with cells and operations in at least 45 countries. This process was facilitated not only by bin Laden’s personal wealth, which is estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, but also from the income derived from various sources. These sources include businesses that appear legitimate but actually funnel revenues to al-Qaeda, donations knowingly made to the group specifically for jihad, and money drawn illegally from donations made to legitimate Muslim charities.

Training camps were established in Sudan as early as 1989, and most of al-Qaeda’s operations were relocated there by 1992. Soon after, the first al-Qaeda attacks began. The group claims to have been responsible for a 1992 attack on American military personnel in Yemen and involved a year later in a battle fought in Mogadishu, Somalia, that killed 18 U.S. troops and became known as the Black Hawk Down incident. However, the first terrorist act conclusively linked to al-Qaeda was the bombing in 1995 of a joint Saudi-American military training center in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, which caused the deaths of 5 Americans.

Bowing to pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United States, in May 1996 Sudan expelled bin Laden and his fighters. Along with an entourage of 150 men, women, and children, he moved to Afghanistan and quickly forged a close, mutually beneficial relationship with that country’s Islamic fundamentalist rulers known as the Taliban. Bin Laden was especially close with the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. In exchange for sanctuary and the use of training camps and operations bases, bin Laden repaid his new hosts with money and fighters. In doing so the traditional state patron-terrorist client relationship was reversed. The war-weary Afghan state, with its economy in shatters, became dependent upon al-Qaeda due to bin Laden’s wealth. Hence, by the end of the 1990s, al-Qaeda had trained tens of thousands of Muslim warriors in both Sudan and Afghanistan.

In August 1998 al-Qaeda carried out near simultaneous suicide bombings against the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. More than 300 persons were killed and nearly 5,000 injured. The United States responded with a massive cruise missile attack on al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and, more controversially, against a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, that allegedly was producing nerve gas for bin Laden.

Thereafter bin Laden and his movement came under heightened scrutiny by U.S. intelligence agencies. A succession of anti-American terrorist acts by al-Qaeda operatives, in the United States and overseas, were thwarted. This included the arrest in December 1999 of a terrorist as he entered the United States from Canada on a mission to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Shortly afterwards, related plots to bomb an outdoor holiday market in Strasbourg, France, and to kill American and Israeli tourists in Jordan on the eve of the millennium celebration were disrupted. But less than a year later, al-Qaeda succeeded with a suicide attack on a U.S. Navy vessel, the USS Cole, in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others.

VI.

The September 11 Attacks

Although it is not known exactly when planning for the September 11 attacks commenced, evidence now suggests that the plan to crash aircraft into buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C., had crystallized by the end of 1999. During that time Mohammed Atta, the operation’s ringleader, and the terrorists who would pilot two of the other hijacked aircraft, traveled to Afghanistan to be selected for and briefed about the September 11 operation.

According to the congressional testimony of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet, the plot was noteworthy for its professional conception and execution. The terrorists’ tightly compartmented organization made the operation resistant to penetration and unmasking. The conspirators were also able to recover from a variety of setbacks and still implement their murderous plan.

Bin Laden and his confederates doubtless hoped that the September 11 attacks would deliver a “knockout” blow to the United States—crushing its economy and demoralizing its citizens and government. Bin Laden has often described the United States as a “paper tiger” on the verge of financial ruin and total collapse—with the force of Islam poised to push the nation over the edge. In this way, he might alter U.S. foreign policy and thus prompt changes in line with al-Qaeda’s aims, including ending U.S. support for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, withdrawing U.S. military forces from the Arabian Peninsula, and removing U.S. influence, business, and cultural activities from the Muslim world.

VII.

Al-Qaeda Since September 11

The United States reacted to the September 11 attacks by declaring a global war against terrorism. Offensive military operations started on October 7, 2001, when massive strikes were launched against al-Qaeda’s training and logistics bases in Afghanistan and against the Taliban rulers. By November the Taliban was defeated, and al-Qaeda was largely routed from its Afghan sanctuary. However, bin Laden and his top deputy, the Egyptian Ayman Muhammad Rabi’ al-Zawahiri, eluded capture.

Meanwhile, the United States and its allies mounted a worldwide campaign to block al-Qaeda’s funding and hamper its ability to obtain and transfer money. Front organizations and charities from which contributions were diverted to fund terrorism were closed down. A global counterterrorist law enforcement effort was also put into effect, resulting in the arrests of nearly 1,000 al-Qaeda operatives in more than 60 countries. By the end of 2002, more than 3,000 members of the international terrorist network were reported to have been apprehended, and a third of its top leadership had either been killed or captured. In March 2003 Pakistani and U.S. operatives captured Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, a high-level al-Qaeda military leader and the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, in Pakistan.

Although al-Qaeda was clearly weakened, continued terrorist attacks during 2002 in Tunisia, Bali, Kuwait, and Kenya and in 2004 in Spain demonstrated that it had not been destroyed. The multiyear planning cycle of prior al-Qaeda attacks suggests the possibility that some new monumental operation might already have been set in motion prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks.

VIII.

Al-Qaeda’s Future

An audiotape believed to be the voice of bin Laden was broadcast in November 2002, praising the spasm of anti-Western attacks that occurred in the fall of 2002 and threatening further attacks. Bin Laden specifically threatened Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and Spain—all countries that had arrested or cracked down on alleged al-Qaeda militants—for their cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

In April 2004 another audiotape by bin Laden indicated a new strategy by al-Qaeda to sow divisions between the United States and its European allies. It offered a truce to European countries that “do not attack Muslim countries” or “interfere in their affairs,” saying the truce would begin “when the last soldier leaves our countries.” Several European countries had sent troops to the mainly Muslim countries of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the United States led coalitions that toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

The delivery of the tape followed commuter train bombings in Madrid, Spain, on March 11, 2004, that killed more than 190 people and injured more than 1,400 others. Spanish authorities arrested several suspects linked to al-Qaeda, and a Spanish judge concluded that al-Qaeda was behind the bombings. Spain had joined the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, sending 1,300 troops. In the aftermath of the bombings, a new government began withdrawing Spain’s troops, following through on a campaign pledge that preceded the terrorist attack. Some observers believed that al-Qaeda hoped to force other European countries to withdraw from the U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, European governments unanimously rejected the offer of a truce, and many issued statements saying that they would not negotiate with terrorists. See also Spain.

A.

Al-Qaeda, Iraq, and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

More findings about al-Qaeda’s role in the September 11 attacks and its alleged links to the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein were released in July 2004. Two bipartisan reports, one by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and another by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq. The reports dismissed claims of a meeting between one of the hijackers and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, in April 2001, saying such a meeting never took place. The bipartisan National Commission also found that while the administration of President George W. Bush had been warned about al-Qaeda’s determination to launch an attack within the United States, there was probably no way to have prevented the attacks.

Al-Qaeda attempted to insert itself in the 2004 U.S. presidential election with the release of a videotape featuring bin Laden just days before the election. In the videotape, bin Laden addressed the American people, saying “Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential candidate John] Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.…Any state that does not mess with our security has naturally guaranteed its own security.” Intelligence analysts pointed out that the taped message was lacking in bin Laden’s usual radical religious jargon and seemed aimed at a broader base—secular Arabs opposed to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Bin Laden’s videotaped message was followed weeks later by another videotape, this one from al-Zawahiri and apparently made before the election but broadcast afterwards. “The results of the election do not matter to us,” al-Zawahiri said in that message. “Vote whoever you want, Bush, Kerry, or the devil himself. This does not concern us. What concerns us is to purge our land from the aggressors.”

Counterterrorism experts continued to be concerned about al-Qaeda’s attempts to acquire unconventional weapons, especially nuclear weapons. In November 2004 the CIA issued a report citing concerns that a Pakistani nuclear engineer may have aided al-Qaeda’s efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.

In January 2007 Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte testified before the U.S. Congress that al-Qaeda was no longer an organization “on the run.” In July 2007 the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate, a summary of possible threats to U.S. national security, characterized al-Qaeda as a global threat that was seeking to strike the United States again.

As the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approached, bin Laden issued another videotape message, his first since 2004. Intelligence experts verified the voice on the tape as that of bin Laden, and the taped message contained references to recent events. In it bin Laden railed against capitalism and global corporations as the chief cause of war and military conflict while maintaining that democracy was a failed system.

Although bin Laden continued to be the main symbol of al-Qaeda, some intelligence experts believed that his deputy al-Zawahiri had emerged as its principal leader and strategist. They cited intelligence reports indicating that bin Laden had not chaired a meeting of the majlis al-shura (al-Qaeda’s consultative council, or top decision-making body) for at least two years. According to some accounts bin Laden’s increased visibility in the fall of 2007 was an attempt on his part to reassert his leadership.

Bin Laden followed his sixth-anniversary videotape with an audiotaped message calling for the ouster of Pakistan’s leader Pervez Musharraf. The message condemned Musharraf for a crackdown on Islamic militants associated with the Red Mosque in Islāmābād.