The Al Qaeda During The Arabian Peninsula

Al Qaeda was founded in 1988 by the most wanted terrorist in America, Osama Bin Laden, to bring together Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Invasion. Al Qaeda works with allied Islamic extremist groups to take over regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and remove Westerners from Muslin countries. The organization first began with three members and now there are approximately 200 to 1,000 current members. Al-Qaeda began to construct and offer training camps and guesthouses to its recruits; while they also attempted to pull in U.S. citizens for financial, communication, and operation reasons for the benefit of Al-Qaeda and its other affiliations. By 1990 Al-Qaeda was providing military and intelligence training in various areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Sudan.

America, a country founded and based upon the ideas of democracy, saw issues in the actions of Soviet Union and engaged in wars in these satellite nations, such as the War in Afghanistan – starting in 1978. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms. On one side was the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool. On the other side was Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union. America seeked the help of Afghans to assist them in the fighting against the Soviets. Many volunteers from Arab countries had gone to Afghanistan during the 1980s. They wanted to help the Afghans fight the invading Russian army. They supported the Afghans as they were also followers of Islam. For the Arab volunteers the battle was a Jihad or holy war. However, when the Soviet army was defeated, these people continued to fight. When the Russian army was defeated, al-Qaeda was set up to continue the Jihad against people the volunteers thought were enemies of Islam. An organization and its leader who was funded and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency run by the U.S. Government, would attack America decades later.

During and After the Afghans conflict, bin Laden met Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who would become the No. 2 leader of al Qaeda. When bin Laden returned to his family business after the war, he had falling out with the royal family over its decision to billet American troops during the Persian Gulf War. Bin laden saw the continued presence of U.S. troops there as a defilement of the land that is home to Medina and Mecca, two of Islam’s holiest cities. By the early 1990s, bin Laden was falling out of favor in Saudi Arabia. In 1991, he left for the Sudan. In 1996, under pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he return to Afghanistan. He formed a group of militant organization called the International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. It included Al-Qaeda and groups from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The group issued an edict, known as a fatwa: To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty to every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible: Bin Laden followers complied and began their involvements in the following attacks:=

Al Qaeda is a network with global reach and is reinforced by its ties to Sunni extremist networks. Until the American-led attack, Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda's base of operation, logistics, and training facilities were. Al Qaeda has since branched out and has cells or collaborators found in south Asia, Southeast Asia, the

In 2009 it declared that "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" are coming together (Both branches of the Saudi and Yemeni al-Qaeda). Shortly afterwards, the United States announced that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula pose a significant threat, largest than Al-Qaeda Afghanistan and Iraq branches.

The last three conflicts have been more recent and are actually still ongoing (National Counter Terrorism Center, 2014). The emergence of other groups opposed to AQ at least in political aspects such as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has especially overshadowed the operations of AQ (Laub and Masters, 2014). This has led to lack of clarity on what exactly AQ is planning or indeed occurring inside the organisation. There are possible explanations for the current trends, especially in the Middle East and particularly in the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen (Turner, 2015). Some argue that Al-Qaeda has lost its mandate and has been supplanted by ISIL. Others believe that AQ could be simply taking advantage of the current crisis in the Middle East to regroup and reorganise itself so that it will re-emerge after some time (Hoffman, 2013). Others believe that AQ cannot possibly let itself be overshadowed in this way by the likes of ISIL; and that if it really still exists then it will be forced to act to prove that it is still in control of affairs in the region (Atwan, 2012). These arguments require detailed investigation in light of available data on the group and its

It would not at all be surprising if this decade comes to be known as the decade of terrorism in years to come. Since the turn of the millennium, terrorism, maybe more than any other global issue or topic, has plagued the world stage with constant news and horror. It can be argued that terrorism is a problem with no solution and no end in sight. The Islamic militant group, Al-Qaeda, is the most well known terrorist organization in the world. Al-Qaeda has been held accountable for some of the most tragic and horrifying acts of terror in history. Still, many people do not fully understand what Al-Qaeda is, who is behind it, and why it exists. A fluid, agreed-upon definition does not exist for the extremist

Al Qaeda started out with three members and grew over the years, becoming one of the most widely known terrorist organizations in the world. Al Qaeda was founded in 1988 by Abdullah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, who later became the most wanted terrorist in America. Abdullah had a position as a lecturer at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where he most likely met Bi Laden who was enrolled there as a student. As bin Laden’s teacher and mentor Azzam influenced and helped Bin Laden start the Al Qaeda organization in 1988. Ayman al-Zawahiri later joined to two and is currently the leader of Al Qaeda. . The organization started out in Pakistan and Afghanistan and later spread across five different continents. Over the years

Extremist are marred with many flaws built in disillusionment of reality outside of their own social, cultural and religious belief system. The failure that Al Qaeda had in advancing their ideology and strategy plans was due to this misguided and fanciful worldview that’s been generated through jealousy, ignorance and false facts (McCabe, 2010). With each loss throughout the 80’s and 90’s Al Qaeda was able to hold strong and reorganize their efforts because they had established an organization with functional divisions and leadership roles with a collective goal orientation. Their Flaw was that they were narrow minded as to the depth of the United States reach across the globe, a lack of understanding in their own governments, and the reality

The group was established around 1988. Al-Qaeda became a household name after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, quickly surpassing the IRA, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Al-Qaida is a multi-national network possessing a global reach. .Al-Qaeda produced the Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad in the 90s, which served as a detailed how-to guide for using handguns, explosives, and biological and chemical weapons.

Al-Qaeda has its origins in the insurrection against the Soviet tenure of Afghanistan. Thousands of volunteers from around the Middle East came to Afghanistan as holy warriors fighting to protect companion Muslims. In the 1980s, Osama bin Laden became the primary investor for an organization that recruited Muslims from mosques around the globe to join his cause. These warriors, which were numbered in the thousands, were severe in the overthrow of Soviet forces. When the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, Bin Laden returned to his native land of Saudi Arabia. Once he returned he then founded an organization to assist veterans of the Afghan war, many of these veterans embarked on a journey to battle in another location which comprise the basis of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda's commandership is made up of a loosely organized plexus of cells. It can recruit members from thousands of Afghan veterans and radicals around the globe. Its infrastructure is weak, fickle, and decentralized, every cell acts independently with its members while not knowing the actions of other cells. Lower level operatives usually do not know any of the

In 2001, the groups were only active in Afghanistan and Pakistan and had little support from other areas. Now, the network has spread across five different continents, with seven different groups. They have a group in the Islamic Maghreb, Afghanistan, Europe, Oceana, Pakistan, East Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. They have a great advantage by having all these different groups in different places because now they are so easily able to conduct an attack anywhere around the world. Each specific group has different targets. The Al Qaeda in East Africa (AQEA) is focused on bombing US embassies in Africa while the Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is focused on bombing US Warships and Tanks in the Middle East. Al Qaeda has grown in the number of supporters. As John Ellis, an American

This paper covers the origins of the Haqqani network. This document describes the Operational Environment of the Haqqani network and their leadership structure. This document explains the Haqqani network objectives, and the methods they are using to accomplish their goals. The Haqqani network would be unable to accomplish their goals without external support, which comes from Pakistan. Pakistan has a role in supporting the Haqqani network by providing military assistance. The Haqqani network is using direct action techniques in order to achieve their goals. The Haqqani network had one type of leadership until recent. Some of these leaders are a replacement for those that have been captured, killed, or are too ill to perform. The Haqqani

Founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, who fought and trained alongside the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the 1989 Soviet Invasion, al-Qa’ida (variant al-Qaeda, al-Qaida), is an international Sunni Islamist terrorist organization. Literally translating to ‘the Base,’ this organization is considered the top terrorist threat to the United States, its interests abroad, and its allies. The organization is wanted for orchestrating and conducting the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a rather large number of lesser attacks. It is the only terrorist group to have successfully conducted a large-scale attack on American soil. In order to escape the post-9/11 U.S.-led invasion and war in Afghanistan, many of the group’s members fled to Pakistan, in the process securing a safe haven.

The formation of Al- Qaida is believed to have occurred after the Soviet –Afghan wars (1979-1989) (MI5).The word “Al – Qaida” means “the base”. This idea occurred after the Iraq invasion of 1990, he opposed the presence of foreign military force in Saudi Arabia. The group leader Osama bin