Al-Qaeda, officially known as Qaedat al-Jihad, is a multinational militant Sunni Islamic extremist network composed of Salafist jihadists. It was founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other Arab volunteers during the Soviet–Afghan War.
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, also transliterated as Usama bin Ladin, was a founder of the Pan-Islamic militant organization al-Qaeda. The group is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various countries. Under bin Laden's leadership, al-Qaeda was responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States, and many other mass-casualty attacks worldwide.
Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, simply called Ansar al-Islam, also known as the Kurdish Taliban, is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al-Qaeda members, coming back from Afghanistan, in 2001. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state and to protect Kurds. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border. Its ideology follows a traditionalist interpretation of the Quran and Salafism.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian terrorist known for being the leader of terrorist group al-Qaeda since June 2011, succeeding Osama bin Laden following his death, and is a current or former member and senior official of Islamist organizations which have orchestrated attacks in Asia, Africa, and also some in North America and Europe. In 2012, he called on Muslims to kidnap Westerners in Muslim countries.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), also known as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya, was an armed Islamist group. Militants participated in the 2011 Libyan Civil War as the Libyan Islamic Movement, and are involved in the Libyan Civil War as members of the Libya Shield Force. Alleged militants include alleged Al Qaeda organizer Abd al-Muhsin Al-Libi who now holds a key command position in the Libya Shield Force.
Islamic terrorism refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations were made by American government officials who claimed that a highly secretive relationship existed between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the radical Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003, specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). In the lead up to the Iraq War, George W. Bush administration officials alleged that the Saddam Hussein regime had an operational relationship with al-Qaeda, basing the administration's rationale for war, in part, on this allegation and others.
Jason Burke is a British journalist and the author of several non-fiction books. A correspondent covering Africa for The Guardian, he is currently based in Johannesburg, having previously been based in New Delhi as the same paper's South Asia correspondent. In his years of journalism, Burke has addressed a wide range of topics including politics, social affairs and culture in Europe and the Middle East. He has written extensively on Islamic extremism and, among numerous other conflicts, covered the wars of 2001 in Afghanistan and 2003 in Iraq, the latter of which he described as "entirely justifiable from a humanitarian perspective".
This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass, also translated as Administration of Savagery, is a book by the Islamist strategist Abu Bakr Naji, published on the Internet in 2004. It aimed to provide a strategy for al-Qaeda and other extremists whereby they could create a new Islamic caliphate.
Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki was a Yemeni-American imam who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by an American drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a U.S. drone strike without the rights of due process being afforded. US government officials argued that Awlaki was a key organizer for the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda, and in June 2014, a previously classified memorandum issued by the U.S. Department of Justice was released, justifying al-Awlaki's death as a lawful act of war. Civil liberties advocates have described the incident as "an extrajudicial execution" that breached al-Awlaki's constitutional right to due process, including a trial.
Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism, or radical Islam refer to extremist beliefs and behaviors associated with the Islamic religion. These are controversial terms with varying definitions, ranging from academic understandings to the idea that all ideologies other than Islam have failed and are inferior to Islam. This can also extend to other sects of Islam that do not share such beliefs. Political definitions include the one used by the government of the United Kingdom, which understands Islamic extremism as any form of Islam that opposes "democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs".
Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a militant Islamist group and former unrecognized quasi-state that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam. It was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in 2014, when it drove Iraqi security forces out of key cities during the Anbar campaign, which was followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by the French acronym GSPC, was an Algerian terrorist faction in the Algerian Civil War founded in 1998 by Hassan Hattab, a former regional commander of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). After Hattab was ousted from the organization in 2003, the group officially pledged support for al-Qaeda, and in January 2007, the group officially changed its name to the "Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM).
The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), popularly known as the war on terror, is the term that refers to an ongoing international military campaign launched by the United States government following the September 11 attacks. The targets of the campaign are primarily Islamist groups located throughout the world, with the most prominent groups being al-Qaeda, as well as the Islamic State and their various franchise groups.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is an Islamist militant organization that aims to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state. To that end, it is currently engaged in an insurgency campaign in the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
Terrorism, in some of its definitions, serves to communicate a message from terrorists to a target audience (TA). By extension, symbols play an important role in such communication, through graphics that the organizations use to represent themselves, as well as the meaning and significance behind their choice of targets.
The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) is an Islamist propaganda organization that is associated with the terrorist group, al-Qaeda, and other jihadist groups. The GIMF is known by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as an "underground media" organization. The GIMF specializes in production of jihadist material for distribution. It is one of several organizations that jihadists use to spread information via the Internet, including the well-known As-Sahab. Their slogan that is used on their materials is "Observing Mujahideen News and Inspiring the Believers." There is no indication who the leader of this organization is.
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad, formerly called simply Islamic Jihad, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and then the Jihad Group, or the Jihad Organization, is an Egyptian Islamist group active since the late 1970s. It is under worldwide embargo by the United Nations as an affiliate of Al-Qaeda. It is also banned by several individual governments worldwide. The group is a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The history of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) began with the group's foundation in 1999 by Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād. In a letter published by the US State Department in February 2004, Zarqawi wrote that jihadists should use bombings to start an open sectarian war in Iraq so that Sunnis from other countries would mobilize against the assassinations carried out by Shias, specifically the Badr Organisation, against Ba'athists and Sunnis. The Islamic State would eventually grow to control territory with a population of millions.
