Terrorist Organizations

Some terrorist incidents, such as the Oklahoma City and Orlando attacks described above, are the work of one or two individuals who are not formally associated with terrorist organizations. Most recent attacks, however, have been carried out by members belonging to terrorist organizations. Prominent terrorist organizations in recent years include al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and Boko Haram, as well as the Taliban.

Terrorist Attacks With at Least 100 Fatalities, 2000-2017

Al-Qaeda

Responsible for the 2001 World Trade Center attack was Al-Qaeda (an Arabic word meaning “the foundation,” or “the base”). The terrorist organization was founded around 1988 by Osama bin Laden to unite several groups of fighters in Afghanistan as well as his supporters elsewhere in Southwest Asia. Osama’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, a native of Yemen, established a construction company in Saudi Arabia and became a billionaire through close connections to the royal family. Osama bin Laden, one of about 50 children fathered by Mohammed with several wives, used his several-hundred million-dollar inheritance to fund al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden moved to Afghanistan during the mid-1980s to support the fight against the Soviet army and the country’s Soviet-installed government. Calling the anti-Soviet fight a holy war, or jihad, bin Laden recruited militant Muslims from Arab countries to join the cause. After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled in 1991 for opposing the Saudi government’s decision permitting the United States to station troops there during the 1991 war against Iraq. Bin Laden moved to Sudan but was expelled in 1994 for instigating attacks against U.S. troops in Yemen and Somalia, so he returned to Afghanistan, where he lived as a “guest” of the Taliban-controlled government.

Bin Laden issued a declaration of war against the United States in 1996 because of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and Israel. In a 1998 fatwa (“religious decree”), bin Laden argued that Muslims have a duty to wage a holy war against U.S. citizens because the United States was responsible for protecting the State of Israel and for maintaining the Saud royal family as rulers of Saudi Arabia. He claimed that destruction of the Saudi monarchy and the Jewish state would liberate from their control Islam’s three holiest sites of Makkah (Mecca), Madinah, and Jerusalem.

Al-Qaeda’s most deadly attacks since 9/11 have been in Iraq, especially between 2007 and 2011. Its most notorious terrorist attack was a 2015 attack at the Paris offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Two members of an al-Qaeda branch based in Yemen killed 11 people in the office and 6 more elsewhere in Paris, and injured 22. The attackers were protesting cartoons depicting Muhammad in the newspaper, a practice considered taboo in Islam. Several cartoonists were among the victims.

Al-Qaeda is not a single unified organization, especially since U.S. forces tracked down and killed bin Laden in 2011. Instead, it adapted a decentralized structure with loosely associated so-called franchises that are ideologically aligned with al-Qaeda’s goals but not financially tied to it.

Bin Laden Bunker, Abbottabad, Pakistan

Bin Laden was killed in his bunker by a U.S. military special operations unit, May 2, 2011.

Pause & Reflect 8.3.6

Translate “je suis Charlie.” Why might people in Paris carry signs saying this after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks?

Boko Haram

Boko Haram, which is Arabic for “Western education is forbidden,” was founded in 2002 in northeastern Nigeria. It seeks to transform Nigeria into an Islamic state, and it opposes adoption of Western cultural practices, especially by Christians in the south of the country. Boko Haram has been responsible for killing more than 20,000 Nigerians and displacing 2.6 million.

During its first seven years, the organization peacefully ran a religious complex and school that attracted poor Muslim families. A violent uprising in July 2009 resulted in the arrest of several hundred followers and the death of its founder Mohammed Yusuf. Six hundred incarcerated Boko Haram members broke out of prison the following year. Since then, Boko Haram has resorted to terrorist tactics.

Taliban

When the Taliban (which means “religious students”) gained power in Afghanistan in 1996, many Afghans welcomed them as preferable to the corrupt and brutal warlords who had been running the country. U.S. and other Western officials also welcomed them as strong defenders against Russia, which had invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and was forced to withdraw in 1989.

However, once in control of Afghanistan’s government in the 1990s, the Taliban imposed very strict laws inspired by Islamic values as the Taliban interpreted them (Figure 8-50): “Western, non-Islamic” leisure activities were banned, such as playing music, flying kites, watching television, and surfing the Internet. Soccer stadiums were converted to settings for executions and floggings. Men were beaten for shaving their beards and women stoned for committing adultery. Gay men were buried alive, and prostitutes were hanged in front of large audiences. Thieves had their hands cut off, and women wearing nail polish had their fingers cut off.

Taliban Destruction

(a) A 1998 image of a 55 meter (180-foot) statue of Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan; (b) the empty niche after the Taliban destroyed the statue in 2002. The statue was destroyed because the Taliban claimed it violated Islamic principles.

A U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban in 2001 and replaced it with a democratically elected government. However, the Taliban was able to regroup and has regained control of parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)

The Islamic State originated in 1999 and became an affiliate of al-Qaeda in 2004. The two organizations split apart in 2014 because of lack of agreement on how to cooperate and consult with each other. The Islamic State is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Members of the Islamic State are Sunni Muslims who seek to impose strict religious laws throughout Southwest Asia. They have maintained control of territory through human rights violations, such as beheadings, massacres, and torture. The organization claims that it has authority to rule Muslims around the world. The Islamic State has had success recruiting members through Internet and social media communications that show beheadings and destruction of sites of historical importance, such as Shiite Muslim shrines.

The Islamic State controlled much of northern Iraq and eastern Syria for several years. However, its control of Iraq dropped from 40 percent in 2014 to 2 percent in 2018.

Distribution of World Terrorism

The number of deaths from terrorism between 2000 and 2016 has been documented by the Institute for Economics & Peace. The number of deaths from terrorism increased from 5,000 in 2000 to 32,000 in 2014, before declining to 25,000 in 2016 (Figure 8-51). Most of the terrorist incidents and fatalities have occurred in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria.

Deaths From Terrorism

The use of religion by groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko Haram, and the Taliban to justify attacks has posed challenges to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. For many Americans and Europeans, the challenge has been to distinguish between the peaceful but unfamiliar principles and practices of the world’s 1.9 billion Muslims and the misuse and abuse of Islam by Islamic terrorist groups.