had set up a training camp
in Afghanistan during
the war against the Soviets, dreamed of creating
an Islamic state, but their hopes were dashed
when civil war erupted among the heavily armed
Afghan guerrilla factions. In August 1988 Azzam,
bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, and fellow Arab jihad-
ists secretly met to form what they called “the
Military Base” (al-qaida al-askariyya), an armed
organization that evolved into the international
terrorist group that attacked the United States in
2001. Bin Ladin was considered a hero by many
young Saudis, but he was regarded with suspicion
by Saudi authorities. In particular they were con-
cerned about his opposition to the large influx of
U.S. forces into Saudi Arabia at the time of the
1990 Gulf War against Iraq. As a consequence of
Saudi opposition, al-Qaida’s chief base of opera-
tions shifted from Afghanistan to s
Udan
in 1992
at the invitation of the new Islamist government
that had established itself there in a 1989 coup.
Al-Qaida had limited success in Sudan, although
it was in this period that bin Ladin began to
publicize his hatred for the “Crusader-Jewish
alliance” and the House of Saud. Under pres-
sure from e
gypt
, Saudi Arabia,
and the United
States, the Sudanese government expelled bin
Ladin and associates from the country in 1996.
Al-Qaida returned to Afghanistan, where it found
safe haven under the auspices of the t
aliban
, a
group of young militants who were emerging as
the most dominant of the factions fighting in the
Afghan civil war. The close relationship between
the Taliban and al-Qaida lasted until 2001, when a
U.S.-led international coalition invaded the coun-
try as a consequence of this relationship and its
connection with the 9/11 attacks. Until that time,
al-Qaida’s encampments in Afghanistan provided
training in guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics to
thousands of young jihadists coming mainly from
the Middle East and Asia.
The ideology espoused by al-Qaida’s leader-
ship was drawn essentially from two sources:
(1) the anti-Western jihadism of Sayyid Qutb as
interpreted by Azzam and al-Zawahiri, and (2)
the puritanical reformism of m
Uhammad
ibn
a
bd
al
-W
ahhab
(d. 1791). The
first formed in reaction
to the secular authoritarianism of Abd al-Nasir’s
Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s, the second in
conjunction with the establishment of Saudi rule
in the Arabian Peninsula, together with funding
made possible by that country’s vast
oil
revenues.
The radical agenda of al-Qaida seeks the establish-
ment of Islamic government based on the
sharia
through an elite vanguard of true believers engag-
ing in jihad. However, its leaders have called upon
all Muslims to participate in this struggle. Al-Qai-
da’s ideology has been further shaped by the per-
ception that it was Islam that had brought about
the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan and that
it would ultimately triumph over its remaining
enemies, especially the United States and i
srael
.
The public declarations of bin Ladin and al-Zawa-
hiri also list specific grievances for which they
seek revenge. These include the corruption and
immorality of the Saudis and other pro-U.S. rul-
ers, the Israeli occupation of p
alestine
, the 1982
Israeli invasion of l
ebanon
, the stationing of U.S.
troops in the land of Islam’s two holy mosques (in
Mecca and Medina), the deaths of Iraqi civilians
caused by the U.S.-led embargo of the 1990s, and,
most recently, the U.S.-led occupation of i
raq
.
Al-Qaida is a loosely knit organization, lik-
ened to clusters of grapes, a business consortium,
or a network. Funded by governments and private
donors, it disseminates its ideas through the Inter-
net and has had some success in recruiting fol-
lowers at the grass-roots level. Its organizational
structure and outreach program have allowed it
to operate on a global scale and elude detection
of its centers of operation by American and other
intelligence agencies. Although its exact size is
impossible to gauge at this time, it is known to
have gained its recruits from a volatile mix of
idealistic young Muslims, drifters, and militant
opponents of pro-U.S. governments such as Saudi
Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from
Saudi Arabia. The 9/11 attacks were preceded
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