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Al Qaeda Terrorist Group

Al Qaeda Terrorist Group

Paul Leclair
University of Phoenix
CJA/300
William Barnes
December 8, 2005

Abstract

Al Qaeda is arguably the most well-known and most dangerous Islamic terrorist organization in the world.   It was established around 1990 by a Saudi millionaire, Osama Bin Laden, to bring together Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion.   The goal of the organization is to reestablish the Muslim state throughout the world.   Al Qaeda works with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and remove Westerners from Muslin countries.   Groups affiliated with Al Qaeda have conducted numerous bombings and other violent attacks throughout the world that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians. In 1996, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States, and two years later, he vowed to attack Americans and their allies, wherever they are.

Al Qaeda is the leading multi-national Islamic terrorist network.   It was founded and is still led by Osama Bin Laden, a multimillionaire from Saudi Arabia who became an active Islamist in 1979, when he went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union.   Though Al Qaeda financially and operationally supports Islamist terror groups around the globe, its core remains Bin Laden and the Arabs who fought alongside him during the 1980's.   This paper will talk about the history and structure of Al Qaeda, along with some of the operations and activities Al Qaeda has carried out in the past and the participants before and after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The origins of Al Qaeda are rooted in the Afghanistan resistance to the Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989.   Believing that the war with the Soviet Union was a holy battle between Islam and the infidel, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a wealthy Saudi contractor, traveled to Afghanistan to aid in the fight.   At the time of the war, Afghanistan lacked both the infrastructure and manpower for a...