Potus Versus Al-Qaeda

Stalin thought that Russian communism was doomed if it aligned itself with trying to overthrow foreign governments, and Trotsky, conversely, believed that Russian communism was doomed if it tried to contain itself in one country. Stalin ended the historical feud by exiling Trotsky and later sending his agents to Mexico to put a pickaxe in Trotsky's skull.

But no one can deny that they are a legitimate stakeholder in the future of Afghanistan -- especially if they agree to give up their guns. If we don't recognize this, the bloody war will continue for decades to come, and our young men will be collateral damage. In fact, more than a year ago the State Department argued before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the proposed swap of the five Taliban officials for Bowe Bergdahl would really be a first move in the service of a larger peace deal with the Taliban.

The five Taliban prisoners released from Guantanamo were certainly not terrorists in the traditional sense of the word, like al-Qaeda fighters are. Indeed, if they had refused to fight the American invaders, their home country would have considered them traitors. Four were former high-level public officials of the government of Afghanistan at the time of the U. Mohammed Nabi Omari, the fifth prisoner, was the military commander in the Haqqani network, formed and armed by the CIA to fight Soviet forces in the '80s.

After a year imprisonment in harsh conditions, the five high officials released last week are not likely to kill Americans in the next year while under house arrest in Qatar. After that, they will most likely try to fight against American soldiers remaining in their country. Hopefully, the new Afghan government and the U. These former government officials will be critical to any deal to be worked out in the future.

Such manufactured and blown-up conspiracies are certainly not without precedent in recent history. Sixty years ago the U. President Obama's recent commencement speech at West Point showed a sophisticated understanding of when, and when not, to endanger the lives of American soldiers. I guess this is what the president means when he says that the U. Write to Blake Fleetwood at jfleetwood aol. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost?

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 mujahideen movement and that a group called al-Qaeda was established in August Both of these documents contain minutes of meetings held to establish a new military group, and contain the term "al-Qaeda". Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", because it originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians.

According to Diaa Rashwan , this was "apparently as a result of the merger of the overseas branch of Egypt's al-Jihad , which was led by Ayman al-Zawahiri , with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control after his return to Afghanistan in the mids. The radical Islamist movement developed during the Islamic revival and the rise of the Islamist movement after the Iranian revolution.

Some have argued that the writings of Islamic author and thinker Sayyid Qutb , inspired the al-Qaeda organization. To restore Islam, Qutb argued that a vanguard of righteous Muslims was needed in order to establish "true Islamic states ", implement sharia , and rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences. In Qutb's view, the enemies of Islam included " world Jewry ", which "plotted conspiracies " and opposed Islam. In the words of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa , a close college friend of bin Laden:. Islam is different from any other religion ; it's a way of life.

We [Khalifa and bin Laden] were trying to understand what Islam has to say about how we eat, who we marry, how we talk. We read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation. Qutb also influenced bin Laden's mentor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Azzam was one of the last people to see Qutb alive before his execution. Qutb's argued that many Muslims were not true Muslims. Some Muslims, Qutb argued, were apostates. These alleged apostates included leaders of Muslim countries, since they failed to enforce sharia law.

The Afghan jihad against the pro-Soviet government further developed the Salafist Jihadist movement which inspired Al-Qaeda. While the leadership's own theological platform is essentially Salafi, the organization's umbrella is sufficiently wide to encompass various schools of thought and political leanings. Al-Qaeda counts among its members and supporters people associated with Wahhabism , Shafi'ism , Malikism , and Hanafism. There are even some Al-Qaeda members whose beliefs and practices are directly at odds with Salafism, such as Yunis Khalis , one of the leaders of the Afghan mujahedin.

He was a mystic who visited the tombs of saints and sought their blessings — practices inimical to bin Laden's Wahhabi-Salafi school of thought. The only exception to this pan-Islamic policy is Shi'ism. Al-Qaeda seems implacably opposed to it, as it holds Shi'ism to be heresy. In Iraq it has openly declared war on the Badr Brigades, who have fully cooperated with the US, and now considers even Shi'i civilians to be legitimate targets for acts of violence.

The Guardian in described five distinct phases in the development of al-Qaeda: In addition to American aid, Hekmatyar was the recipient of Saudi aid. At the same time, a growing number of Arab mujahideen joined the jihad against the Afghan Marxist regime , which was facilitated by international Muslim organizations, particularly the Maktab al-Khidamat MAK. 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.

Azzam and bin Laden began to establish camps in Afghanistan in MAK and foreign mujahideen volunteers, or "Afghan Arabs", did not play a major role in the war. While over , Afghan mujahideen fought the Soviets and the communist Afghan government, it is estimated that were never more than 2, foreign mujahideen on the field at any one time. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in Mohammad Najibullah 's Communist Afghan government lasted for three more years, before it was overrun by elements of the mujahideen. 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. Research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed on August 11, , when a meeting between leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad , Abdullah Azzam , and bin Laden took place.

An agreement was reached to link 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. Notes indicate al-Qaeda was a formal group by August 20, A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: In November , 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. In the face of a seemingly massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's own forces were outnumbered. The Saudi monarch refused bin Laden's offer, opting instead to allow US and allied forces to deploy troops into Saudi territory.

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. From around to , al-Qaeda and bin Laden based themselves in Sudan at the invitation of Islamist theoretician Hassan al-Turabi. During this time, bin Laden assisted the Sudanese government, bought or set up various business enterprises, and established training camps.

A key turning point for bin Laden, occurred in when Saudi Arabia gave support for the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords set a path for peace between Israel and Palestinians. In , a young schoolgirl was killed in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Egyptian prime minister, Atef Sedki. Egyptian public opinion turned against Islamist bombings, and the police arrested of al-Jihad's members and executed 6. Bin Laden's Saudi citizenship was also revoked. There is controversy as to what extent bin Laden continued to garner support from members afterwards.

According to Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz , the Sudanese government offered the Clinton Administration numerous opportunities to arrest bin Laden. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Ladin. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment out-standing. After the fall of the Afghan communist regime in , Afghanistan was effectively ungoverned for four years and plagued by constant infighting between various mujahideen groups.

The Taliban also garnered support from graduates of Islamic schools, which are called madrassa. Four of the Taliban's leaders attended a similarly funded and influenced madrassa in Kandahar. Bin Laden's contacts were laundering donations to these schools, and Islamic banks were used to transfer money to an "array" of charities which served as front groups for al-Qaeda. 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 lawlessness 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 , it captured the regional center of Kandahar, and after making rapid territorial gains thereafter, the Taliban captured the capital city Kabul in September In , Taliban-controlled Afghanistan provided a perfect staging ground for al-Qaeda.

While in Afghanistan, the Taliban government tasked al-Qaeda with the training of Brigade , an elite element of the Taliban's army. The Brigade mostly consisted of foreign fighters, veterans from the Soviet Invasion, and adherents to the ideology of the mujahideen.

Al-Qaeda - Wikipedia

In November , as Operation Enduring Freedom had toppled the Taliban government, many Brigade fighters were captured or killed, and those that survived were thought to have escaped into Pakistan along with bin Laden. By the end of , some sources reported that the Taliban had severed any remaining ties with al-Qaeda, [] however, there is reason to doubt this. In , the Salafi groups waging Salafi jihadism in Bosnia entered into decline, and groups such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad began to drift away from the Salafi cause in Europe.

At the same time, al-Qaeda ideologues instructed the network's recruiters to look for Jihadi international Muslims who believed that extremist- jihad must be fought on a global level. Al-Qaeda also sought to open the "offensive phase" of the global Salafi jihad. In , al-Qaeda announced its jihad to expel foreign troops and interests from what they considered Islamic lands.

Bin Laden issued a fatwa , [] which amounted to a public declaration of war against the US and its allies, and began to refocus al-Qaeda's resources on large-scale, propagandist strikes. On February 23, , bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, along with three other Islamist leaders, co-signed and issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Americans and their allies.

This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'. Neither bin Laden nor al-Zawahiri possessed the traditional Islamic scholarly qualifications to issue a fatwa.

However, they rejected the authority of the contemporary ulema which they saw as the paid servants of jahiliyya rulers , and took it upon themselves. Al-Qaeda has launched attacks against the Iraqi Shia majority in an attempt to incite sectarian violence. This was done through an orchestrated campaign of civilian massacres and a number of provocative attacks against high-profile religious targets. In February , after a prolonged dispute with al-Qaeda in Iraq's successor organisation, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIS , al-Qaeda publicly announced it was cutting all ties with the group, reportedly for its brutality and "notorious intractability".

In Somalia, al-Qaeda agents had been collaborating closely with its Somali wing, which was created from the al-Shabaab group. In February , al-Shabaab officially joined al-Qaeda, declaring loyalty in a video.

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The percentage of terrorist attacks in the West originating from the Afghanistan—Pakistan AfPak border declined starting in , as al-Qaeda shifted to Somalia and Yemen. In August , the group made an assassination attempt against a member of the Saudi royal family.

President Obama asked Ali Abdullah Saleh to ensure closer cooperation with the US in the struggle against the growing activity of al-Qaeda in Yemen, and promised to send additional aid. As the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen escalated in July , 50 civilians were killed, and 20 million were in need of aid. Key figures in the deal-making said the United States was aware of the arrangements and held off on drone attacks against the armed group, which was created by Osama bin Laden in The third plane crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia.

The fourth plane was crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. A former FBI agent identified Awlaki as a known "senior recruiter for al-Qaeda", and a spiritual motivator. US intelligence intercepted emails from Hasan to Awlaki between December and early On his website, Awlaki has praised Hasan's actions in the Fort Hood shooting. An unnamed official claimed there was good reason to believe Awlaki "has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the US [in ], including plotting attacks against America and our allies.

That required the consent of the US National Security Council , and officials argued that the attack was appropriate because the individual posed an imminent danger to national security. Bin Laden and those with him were killed during a firefight in which US forces experienced no casualties. In , President Bashar al-Assad revealed in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper that he doubted that al-Qaeda even existed. He was quoted as saying, "Is there really an entity called al-Qaeda? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now?

Following the mass protests that took place in , which demanded the resignation of al-Assad, al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Sunni sympathizers soon began to constitute an effective fighting force against al-Assad. Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist Sunni militant groups have invested heavily in the civil conflict, actively backing and supporting the Syrian Opposition. In September al-Zawahiri announced al-Qaeda was establishing a front in India to "wage jihad against its enemies, to liberate its land, to restore its sovereignty, and to revive its Caliphate.

The motivation for the video was questioned, as it appeared the militant group was struggling to remain relevant in light of the emerging prominence of ISIS. Leaders of several Indian Muslim organizations rejected al-Zawahiri's pronouncement, saying they could see no good coming from it, and viewed it as a threat to Muslim youth in the country.

A US intelligence analyst accused the Pakistan military of 'stage-managing' the terror outfit's latest advance into India. Al-Qaeda has carried out a total of six major terrorist attacks, four of them in its jihad against America. In each case the leadership planned the attack years in advance, arranging for the shipment of weapons and explosives and using its businesses to provide operatives with safehouses and false identities.

Al-Qaeda usually does not disburse funds for attacks, and very rarely makes wire transfers. On December 29, , al-Qaeda's launched its first terrorist attack. Two bombs were detonated in Aden , Yemen. The first target was the Movenpick Hotel and the second was the parking lot of the Goldmohur Hotel. The bombings were an attempt to eliminate American soldiers on their way to Somalia to take part in the international famine relief effort, Operation Restore Hope.

Internally, al-Qaeda considered the bombing a victory that frightened the Americans away, but in the US, the attack was barely noticed. No American soldiers were killed because no soldiers were staying in the hotel which was bombed. However, an Australian tourist and a Yemeni hotel worker were killed in the bombing. 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.

The Taliban Is Not al-Qaeda, and It's Very Dangerous for the U.S. to Confuse the Two

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. 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.

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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. This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed.

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