Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda Goals and Purposes

Al-Qaeda's original goal was to unite Islamic fighters to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, but it evolved into a multinational, stateless army advocating global jihad to implement a worldwide caliphate: a single international governing body based on Sharia, or Islamic law. By the late 1990s, Al Qaeda had become a well-known terrorist entity operating from Afghanistan, which was controlled by the fundamentalist Taliban. Its attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, triggered a US-led global war on terror. The effort to eliminate al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere severely affected the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States.

The name al-Qaeda is taken from the Arabic word meaning “the base.” During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, it referred to the camp that had been established for the training of the mujahideen, Islamic volunteers who joined the fight against the invading Soviet forces. The terrorist movement that uses the name was formed at that time by Osama bin Laden, who was the group’s leader and figurehead, advised by a council of Islamic fundamentalist clerics and other supporters. Al-Qaeda functions as a network of isolated cells that receive funding and direction from the organization. Funding has come from numerous sources around the world, including bin Laden’s personal wealth, and is directed to different cells by various means. Each cell is anonymous; within each cell no member knows all of the other members of the cell, nor do members know who is in other cells. Thus each cell is essentially an autonomous body that uses the name of al-Qaeda.

The principal goal of al-Qaeda, as stated by various members of the organization, is to end the involvement and influence of the United States and other Western countries in the Middle East and to establish a global Islamic state. Al-Qaeda operatives have stated they plan to accomplish these goals primarily through effecting the collapse of the United States and global economies. To achieve these goals, al-Qaeda’s presumed strategy was to carry out an attack in the United States that would prompt the US military to invade a Middle Eastern country. Al-Qaeda operatives would then incite local resistance and expand the conflict into neighboring countries as a long war of attrition, while simultaneously carrying out attacks within allied nations so as to fragment international support for the United States. The purported belief then is that the ongoing economic strain of these accumulated factors would result in the collapse of the US and world economies, after which a fundamentalist Islamic state could be established throughout the world. While the strategy may seem to involve a rather large leap of faith in its last stage, it is worth noting that similar strategies were used during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and effectively destroyed the economy of the former Soviet Union, resulting in its eventual collapse.

World Trade Center Attack and Aftermath

After succeeding in helping to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s, al-Qaeda turned its attention to combating American influence in the Middle East. Throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century it carried out several attacks in countries allied with the United States and on US holdings. On February 26, 1993, a group of terrorists who had been trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan bombed the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six people. On August 7, 1988, al-Qaeda operatives bombed the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than two hundred people. On October 12, 2000, al-Qaeda operatives successfully exploded a bomb alongside the USS Cole as the ship refueled off-shore at a part in Aden, Yemen, killing seventeen American service members and severely damaging the ship itself.

While those actions brought al-Qaeda a reputation as a dangerous terrorist group, the organization made international terrorism arguably the number one global concern with the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Some three thousand people were killed in these attacks, which targeted the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Subsequently, the United States and allied nations launched the War on Terror that consumed trillions of dollars of the world economy throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, ostensibly on the grounds that the country had become a stronghold of al-Qaeda, was preceded by the invasion of Afghanistan to root out al-Qaeda supporters there. US forces worked alongside forces from Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and several other nations in Afghanistan to dismantle the Taliban, an alleged supporter of al-Qaeda, and to restore a stable democratic government. The effort was equal in importance to the ongoing search for Osama bin Laden and the destruction of al-Qaeda.

While many al-Qaeda forces were engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq or went into hiding, the organization continued to conduct international terrorist attacks. Several bombings were carried out in 2003 in Istanbul, Turkey, by a group with close ties to al-Qaeda; these attacks killed sixty-seven people and injured about seven hundred others. On March 11, 2004, al-Qaeda bombings in railway stations in Madrid, Spain, killed nearly two hundred people and injured more than one thousand others. The Spanish people reacted in outrage, with many Spanish citizens blaming the event on the Spanish government’s support for the United States and their military presence in Iraq. When a similar subway bombing occurred in London on July 7, 2005, it was widely speculated that this attack was also the work of al-Qaeda; however, an inquiry carried out by MI5, MI6, and the London police found no evidence of an al-Qaeda or other foreign mastermind.

As the Taliban lost its stranglehold on major portions of Afghanistan, its fighters withdrew to the mountainous wilds in the borderlands with Pakistan, where the organization could regroup and mount an insurgency into Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden evaded capture in Afghanistan, and removed himself and much of the leadership of al-Qaeda to Pakistan. For some time, bin Laden and members of his family lived in seclusion in the city of Abbottabad, in a walled villa only a short distance from the Pakistan military academy. He was eventually traced to that location, where he was ultimately killed by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. His death, and the deaths of several other top-level al-Qaeda agents, severely disrupted al-Qaeda activities, though the al-Qaeda terror network continued to be a powerful presence in world affairs. Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri became the leader of al-Qaeda following bin Laden's death.

In the years after bin Laden's death, al-Qaeda became more locally focused and decentralized. It struck alliances and effected mergers with smaller militant groups operating in single countries or regions, such as Iraq or North Africa. Some of these groups adopted al-Qaeda's name, such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM; located in North Africa), al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (located in Iraq), and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP; located in Saudi Arabia and Yemen). AQAP in particular was viewed by Western intelligence as highly active and internationally dangerous; it claimed responsibility for the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 that killed eleven people. Al-Qaeda also announced its expansion into India, though there was little evidence that it held much influence there.

After the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, al-Qaeda operatives moved into that country, regaining a stronghold there and fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad with the affiliated terrorist organization known as Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front. In July 2016, however, the Nusra Front formally split from al-Qaeda and took the name Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of Syria), becoming one of the most influential groups in the Syrian Civil War. Al-Qaeda also initially sought to collaborate with another radical Islamist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as IS, ISIL, or Daesh), which rose to prominence in the Syrian Civil War and eventually took control of a substantial area in the region. However, al-Qaeda leaders eventually declared their opposition to ISIS, which earned a reputation as even more brutal, and the two groups came into conflict. International antiterrorism efforts heavily focused on ISIS in the mid- to late-2010s, and as that group declined by 2018, al-Qaeda saw a resurgence.

By the 2020s al-Qaeda was estimated to have tens of thousands of fighters under al-Zawahiri's leadership and in various affiliates. Though less prominent than it had been in the early years of the War on Terror, the group remained in operation despite decades of antiterrorist operations and continued to be considered a significant threat by the United States and other Western powers. Many analysts also suggested that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed by September 2021, would allow al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to further rebuild, especially after the Taliban quickly regained control of the country.

Al-Zawahiri was killed by a US drone strike on July 31, 2022, that was conducted by the CIA and authorized by President Joe Biden. In a televised speech held several days after the event, President Biden confirmed that the strike, which was conducted on al-Zawahiri's house in Kabul, Afghanistan, successfully avoided any civilian casualties.

Al-Qaeda in Canada and the United States

Actions taken by the United States against al-Qaeda in the early twenty-first century had major and costly effects, such as the establishment of the US Department of Homeland Security and enactment of much stricter controls along the border between Canada and the United States. Tension between the two nations also arose over several issues involving border security and the disposition of individuals associated with al-Qaeda in Canada. These ranged in severity from the relatively minor inconvenience of requiring Canadian citizens to have a current passport in order to enter the United States, to the serious issues raised by the prolonged detention of Canadian citizens Maher Arar and Omar Khadr by the US government on terrorism charges. The refusal of the United States government to return Khadr to Canada for trial was a source of contention between the two nations, which was finally resolved in 2012 with the return of Khadr to Canada, where he would carry out the remainder of his sentence in a maximum-security Canadian prison.

One important aspect of the difference in constitutional jurisdiction that remained contentious for both Canada and the United States throughout the 2000s was the perceived ease with which terrorist agencies such as al-Qaeda seemed able to use Canada’s immigration system and border crossings to enter the United States. In many areas, the border runs through wide-open spaces where it is possible to walk across from one nation into the other undetected, and this is in fact a method that has been used by terrorist agents on occasion to enter the United States from Canada. The dissension helped to promote the passing of new federal antiterrorism laws in Canada that would circumvent the difficulties in bringing terrorism suspects to trial in Canada, with regard to the protection of rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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