On May 2, , U. The entire operation, which lasted only 40 minutes from start to finish, was the culmination of years of calculated planning The United States launched the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, terrorist attacks.
The conflict lasted two decades and spanned four U. By August , the war began to come to a close with the On September 11, , 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Bin Laden and the Origins of al Qaeda During the Soviet-Afghan War in Afghanistan, in which the Soviet Union gave support to the communist Afghan government, Muslim insurgents, known as the mujahideen, rallied to fight a jihad or holy war against the invaders.
Recommended for you. Osama bin Laden. Al Capone. Married to Khairiah , his death , and had child Hamza or Married to Siham , his death , and had children Kadhija , Khalid , Miriam and Sumaiya Married to an unknown woman , annulled within days.
Married to Amal , his death , and had children Safiyah , Aasia , Ibrahim , Zainab and Hussain Religion: Sunni Muslim. Other Facts. Bin Laden was the 17th of 52 children of construction magnate Muhammad Awad bin Laden, an immigrant from neighboring Yemen , who ran the company Saudi Binladin Group.
Muhammad Awad bin Laden became a billionaire by building his company into the largest construction firm in the Saudi kingdom.
Bin Laden married for the first time at age 17, to a Syrian cousin, Najwa. Reportedly walked with a cane and suffered from kidney disease. He remains there for a decade, using construction equipment from his family's business to help the Muslim guerrilla forces build shelters, tunnels and roads through the rugged Afghan mountains, and at times taking part in battle.
Bin Laden is reportedly outraged at their presence, and soon begins to target the United States for its presence near the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. December - US forces land in Somalia , spearheading a UN-authorized humanitarian plan to bring in famine relief supplies. Part of their challenge is disarming the various warlords who control the country.
Prosecutors charge that bin Laden threw himself into the midst of this conflict, sending some of his followers to Somalia to train the warlords to fight the US troops. Six Muslim radicals, who US officials suspect have links to bin Laden, are eventually convicted for the bombing.
Although bin Laden is named as a possible unindicted co-conspirator, investigators do not recover conclusive evidence that the al Qaeda leader orchestrated the attack. October - Eighteen US servicemen, part of a humanitarian mission to Somalia, die in an ambush perpetrated by militants who reportedly trained with al Qaeda.
His family disowns him. He moves with his children and wives to Afghanistan, where he receives harbor from the Taliban. The United States indicts bin Laden on charges of training the people involved in the attack that killed 18 US servicemen in Somalia. It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us.
February - According to court documents, bin Laden orders the militarization of the East African cell of al Qaeda, a move that culminates in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, , eight years to the day after US troops landed in the Saudi kingdom.
Even in many Muslim countries where the Islamic State does not have a strong presence, its rise is radicalizing their populations, fomenting sectarianism, and making a troubled region worse. The two are now competing for more than the leadership of the jihadist movement: they are competing for its soul. Who will emerge triumphant is not clear.
The United States can exploit this split, both to decrease the threat and to weaken the movement as a whole. My testimony today will focus on comparing Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. I argue that Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain a threat to the U. Al Qaeda is weaker and less dynamic than the Islamic State, but the former remains more focused on attacking the United States and its Western allies. My testimony is organized into four sections.
I first offer some general background on the origins of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. I then discuss the threat profiles for each group, assessing both their strategies and tactics. The third section looks at the struggle to win over affiliate groups in the Muslim world. I conclude my testimony by discussing the policy implications and recommendations for the United States.
Al Qaeda emerged out of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the s. As the Soviets prepared to withdraw, Osama Bin Laden and a few of his close associates—high on their perceived victory over the mighty Soviet Union—decided to capitalize on the network they had built to take jihad global.
By the mids, he wanted to reorient the movement as a whole, focusing it on what he saw as the bigger enemy underwriting all these corrupt local regimes: the United States. For local jihadists, pledging allegiance to Bin Laden and adopting the Al Qaeda brand meant obtaining access to a wide range of assets: money, weapons, logistical support, expertise, and, of course, training—Al Qaeda training camps were the Ivy Leagues of jihadist education. The attacks on two U.
The attacks demonstrated the power, capabilities, reach, and sheer audacity of the organization. Over the next decade, the U. It remained a symbol of the global jihadist movement, but its inability to successfully launch another major attack against the United States meant that symbol was becoming less powerful. The death of the charismatic Bin Laden and the ascension of the much less compelling Ayman al-Zawahiri to the top leadership position further diminished the power of the Al Qaeda brand.
The Islamic State began as an Iraqi organization, and this legacy shapes the movement today. Jihadist groups proliferated in Iraq after the U. Yet even in its early days the group bickered with the Al Qaeda leadership.
Zawahiri and Bin Laden pushed for a focus on U. Zarqawi and his followers also acted with incredible brutality, making their name with gruesome beheading videos—a tactic that its successor organizations would also use to shock and generate publicity. Zarqawi also kept his focus on Iraq and its immediate environs. Despite the fears of U. When the Syria conflict broke out in and electrified the Muslim world, Zawahiri urged Iraqi jihadists to take part in the conflict, and Baghdadi—who had taken over leadership of the Iraqi group in —initially sent small numbers of fighters into Syria to build an organization.
Syria was in chaos, and the Iraqi jihadists established secure bases of operations there, raising money and winning new recruits to their cause. Their ambitions grew along with their organization, expanding to include Syria as well as Iraq. In Syria, the group took over swaths of territory, benefiting as the Syrian regime focused on more moderate groups while the Syrian opposition as a whole remained fractious.
Daniel L. Although the Syria conflict revived the Iraqi jihadist movement, it also eventually led it to split with the Al Qaeda leadership. Zawahiri encouraged the Iraqi affiliate to move into Syria, but he also wanted to establish a separate group under separate command, with Syrians in the lead to give it a local face.
Jabhat al-Nusra was thus created as the Syrian spinoff. But whereas Zawahiri saw this as a positive development, Baghdadi and other Iraqi leaders feared the group had simply gone native and become too independent, focusing too much on Syria and ignoring Iraq and the original leadership.
In an attempt to rein it in and reestablish Iraqi authority over the group, Baghdadi declared Jabhat al-Nusra part of his organization.
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