Al-Qaida (also spelled al-Qaeda, al-Qa'ida, al-Quaida, Arabic for the base) is a guerrilla terrorist organisation established by Osama Bin Laden in the late 1980s to draw together Arabs who had gained combat experience in Afghanistan whilst fighting against the Soviet invasion. The organisation initially helped to finance, recruit and train Sunni Islamic extremists for the Afghan resistance. Al-Qaida is thought currently to have several thousand members. The ultimate goal of al-Qaida is to re-establish the Pan-Islamic Caliphate worldwide by working with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries. Al-Qaida's brand of Islamic intolerance has its roots in the Wahhabite sect, the creed embraced by the current rulers of Saudi Arabia. See Islamism.
Al-Qaida was formed in Afghanistan in the 1980s, partly thanks to $US40 billion in an investment campaign started by Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski, then moved to Sudan from 1991 to 1996. In that year it was expelled from the Sudan after possible participation in an attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The organization returned to Afghanistan.
Al-Qaida training camps trained thousands of militant Muslims from around the world; some of whom later applied their training in various conflicts around the world such as Algeria, Chechnya, the Philippines, Egypt, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Somalia, Yemen, Kosovo and Bosnia.
It issued a statement under banner of "the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders" in February 1998 saying that it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens, either civilian or military, and their allies everywhere.
They conducted the bombings in August 1998 of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 300 people and injuring more than 5,000 others. Al-Qaida plotted to carry out terrorist operations against US and Israeli tourists visiting Jordan for millennial celebrations, however the Jordanian authorities thwarted the planned attacks and put 28 suspects on trial. They also attempted the bombing of the Los Angeles airport during the millennium holiday although the bomber was caught at the US-Canadian border.
They claim to have shot down US helicopters and killed US servicemen in Somalia in 1993, and also to have carried out three bombings which were targeted at US troops in Aden, Yemen, in December 1992. They are also thought to be responsible for the October 2000 USS Cole bombing. The most destructive terrorist act performed by Al-Qaida was the series of attacks in the USA on September 11th, 2001.
They are also thought to have been involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1996 bomb attacks on American military personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Several attacks and attempted attacks since September 11, 2001 have been linked to al-Qaida include the attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid, the synagogue bombing in Djerba, Tunisia and attempted attacks in Jordan, Indonesia, Morocco, and Singapore. The network has also been implicated of complicity in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and suspected of complicity in the October 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia.
Al-Qaida has a worldwide reach, with cells in a number of countries and strong ties to Sunni extremist networks. Bin Laden and his lieutenants took shelter in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime in the 1990s. The group had a number of terrorist training camps there. Since the American attack, members of the group are suspected of fleeing to the tribal areas of the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan, Pakistan.
Al-Qaida has strong links with a number of other Islamic terrorist organisations including the Indonesian Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah.
Organizational specialists point out al-Qaida's network structure, as opposed to hierarchial structure is both its strength and a weakness. The decentralized structure enables al-Qaida to have a worldwide base; however, acts involving a high degree of organization, such as the September 11 attacks, take time and effort. American efforts to disrupt al-Qaida have been partially successful. Attacks made by al-Qaida since then have been simpler and involved fewer persons.
Did America create al-Qaida?
Many critics of American policy towards the Middle East and South Asia believe that al-Qaida would not have come into being without the funding and training given to the Afghan mujahadeen fighting the Soviet invasion of 1979 to 1989. The use of Saudi Arabian bases by American forces attacking Iraq in 1991 and enforcing the (United Nations-mandated no-fly zone since then has also been seen as a provocation. Furthermore, some claim that several key American polticians, such as George Bush have been involved in corporations, such as the Carlyle Group, which funded al-Qaida.
See also: terrorism, terrorist incidents, Carlyle Group.