Terrorism in the New Millenium: A Case Study of A1 Qaeda

Abstract

Inception and Background A1 Qaeda comes from the Arabic root qaf-ayn-dal. It can mean a base or a camp or a house, or a foundation, such as that which is under a house. It can mean a pedestal that supports a column. It can also mean a precept, rule, principle, maxim, formula, method, model or pattern. The word or phrase 'A1 Qaeda' was certainly in use in the mid 1980s among the Islamic radicals drawn from all over the Muslim world to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan alongside local resistance groups. For most of them it was used in a relatively mundane sense: to describe the base from which they operated. 1 However, the word 'A1 Qaeda' was also used by the most extreme elements among the radicals fighting in Afghanistan, particularly those who decided that their struggle did not end with the withdrawal of the Soviets from the country in 1989. Abdullah Azzam, the chief ideologue of the non-Afghan militants drawn to fight alongside the mujahideen and an early spiritual mentor of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national and later leader of AJ Qaeda, used the word to describe the role he envisaged the most committed of the volunteers playing once the war against the Soviets was over. 2 In 1987, he wrote: "Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and [to] put up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. There is no ideology, neither earthly nor heavenly, that does not require...a vanguard that gives everything it possesses in order to achieve victory...It carries the flag all across the sheer, endless and difficult path until it reaches its destination in the reality of life, since Allah has destined that it should make and manifest itself. This vanguard constitutes the strong foundation or the expected society." 3 Osama bin Laden and a number of close-associates acted on Azzam's suggestion and sometime between 1988 and 1989 set up a militant group in Peshawar. To bin Laden's great distress, national and ethnic divisions reasserted themselves strongly among the volunteers. A1 Qaeda was formed with the express aim of overcoming these divisions and creating an 'international army', which would defend Muslims from oppression. The