Al-Qaeda

al-Qaeda is both terrorist organization and a "brand name" of affiliates, all of an extreme Salafist ideology centered around reestablishing the Caliphate through armed jihad. Its immediate predecessor was the Services Office created to support the Afghanistan War (1978-92) by Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden. It was joined by Egyptian Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri. They, in turn, trace their origins to modern Salafism derived from the medieval concepts of Ibn Tamiyya.

The group has been conducting terrorist operations since the mid-1990s, including the 9-11 attack, when its leadership was in Afghanistan. It has become a distributed worldwide organization, but the leadership is believed to be in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Origins

Its core began with the Services Office in Pakistan, supporting the resistance in the Afghanistan War (1978-92), a Pakistan-based groups supporting the Afghans, but also helping foreign volunteers, especially Arabs, to come to Afghanistan. Abdullah Azzam was its leader, with Osama bin Laden as his deputy.

Formation

Al-Qaeda proper was created in 1989, organized by Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi and bin Laden. Volunteers gave an oath of bayat to bin Laden. Their motivation was to carry on after the Soviets left.

Its first combat operation was the siege of Jalalabad, in 1989, where bin Laden demonstrated himself to be brave but tactically unskilled. He and his followers, often Arabs motivated by martyrdom, participated in the Afghan civil war until 1992, when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Bin Laden had come home to Saudi Arabia and witnessed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He offered his fighters to the Saudi government, who infuriated him by accepting Western troops on Saudi land.

Complaining overtly, they stripped him of his citizenship. Exiled to Sudan, his hate for the Saudi royal house continued to motivate him.

Sudan

At this point, from 1992 to 1996, al-Qaeda was principally a centralized organization, operating under the patronage of Hassan al-Turabi. Eventually, al-Turabi expelled them, but not before al-Qaeda had supported the Somalian resistance