LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Al Qaeda
built 85 days ago
Al Qaeda today is a global operation—with a well-oiled propaganda machine based in Pakistan, a secondary but independent base in Iraq, and an expanding reach in Europe. Its leadership is intact. Its decentralized command-and-control structure has allowed it to survive the loss of key operatives such as Zarqawi. Its Taliban allies are making a comeback in Afghanistan, and it is certain to get a big boost there if nato pulls out. It will ... claim a victory when U.S. forces start withdrawing from Iraq. "The waves of the fierce crusader campaign against the Islamic world have broken on the rock of the mujahideen and have reached a dead end in Iraq and Afghanistan," a spokesperson for the newly proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq said on November 29, 2006.
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Now the movement against Al Qaeda is spreading. "Salvation councils" similar to the Anbar Awakening have been formed in mostly Sunni Salahuddin province (north of Baghdad),Shiite-Sunni mixed Diyala province (northeast of the capital) and mostly Shiite Babil province (south of Baghdad). In some cases, their coming together coincides with cease-fires between U.S. forces and non-Al Qaeda insurgent groups. All are striving to reestablish normal relations with the Iraqi government.
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Al Qaeda's relocation to Pakistan has ... provided new opportunities for the group to expand its reach in the West, especially the United Kingdom. Thanks to connections to the Pakistani diaspora, visitors from Pakistan have relatively easy access to the Pakistani community in the United Kingdom, and Pakistani-born Britons can readily travel to Pakistan and back—facilitating recruitment, training, and communications for jihadists. (By one estimate, Pakistan received 400,000 visits from British residents in 2004.) The large communities of immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh living in the United Kingdom—and some disaffected Muslim British citizens—have become targets for recruitment. With entry into the United States made more difficult because of U.S. homeland security measures, the United Kingdom has become a focal point of al Qaeda's activities in the West.
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Al Qaeda has forged alliances with like-minded fundamentalist groups such as Egypt's Al Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah, Sudan's National Islamic Front, as ... terrorist outfits in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. Al Qaida also has ties to the "Islamic Group," led at one time by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence since his 1995 conviction for his role in the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York in February 1993 in which six persons were killed and thousands injured as also for hatching a plot to bomb the United Nations, FBI offices, and other New York landmarks. Two of Sheik Rahman's sons are reported to have joined forces with bin Laden in the late 1990s. Since 1992 bin Laden and other Al Qaeda cadres have targeted US military forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, as also those stationed in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia.
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Al Qaeda now functions on several different levels. First, there is the core leadership that developed around bin Laden and his lieutenants. The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan essentially dismantled this central hierarchy and at least temporarily hindered its ability to carry out attacks. The terrorist training camps were destroyed, thousands of fighters were captured or killed, and those that escaped were scattered. Subsequent U.S. intelligence successes, such as the March arrest of al Qaeda’s operational commander Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, have further pushed al Qaeda’s leadership to the brink of collapse. Still, new leaders may be emerging - Saif al-Adel, a weapons expert involved in the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, has apparently filled the role of operational chief in the wake of Mohammed’s arrest.
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Al Qaeda, an Arabic word meaning "the Base," was founded in approximately 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and Muhammad Atef --the latter a native Egyptian and a onetime member of the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al Qaeda grew out of the Services Office, a clearinghouse for the international Muslim brigade that opposed the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, under the leadership of bin Laden and the Palestinian religious scholar Abdullah Azzam, the Services Office recruited, trained, and financed thousands of foreign mujahideen, or "holy warriors," from more than fifty countries. Seeking to extend the Islamic jihad, or "holy war," beyond the borders of Afghanistan even after the March 1988 Soviet pledge to withdraw its forces, bin Laden created al Qaeda. The organization today supports Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, and Kosovo. It ... trains members of terrorist organizations from the Philippines, Algeria, and Eritrea.
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