al-Qaeda

al-Qaeda (‘the Base’) A terrorist organization founded in 1988, originally recruited from the Islamic fundamentalist resistance fighters who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Headed by Osama Bin Laden, it is a highly secret organization whose effectiveness has been ensured by the idea of compartmentalization. It meant that its different divisions in over 30 countries (which included Kenya, Pakistan, Somalia, the Sudan, and the Philippines) had little detailed knowledge of each other's activities. In 1998 it was held to be responsible for an attack on the US embassy in Kenya, killing 213 people, and on the US embassy in Dar-es-Salaam, killing eleven. The organization then organized the attack on USS Cole in Aden in 2000. Sustained by volunteers and money coming from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other predominantly Arab states, the al-Qaeda network is sustained by a belief that the US epitomizes values that are opposed to Islam, and which must be fought by a holy war. The organization was behind the September 11 attacks, after which it became the prime target in the War on Terrorism led by President George W. Bush. Al-Qaeda's fighters were the backbone of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and when the Taliban fell, many al-Qaeda fighters were captured by Northern Alliance forces and other tribal groups. Some were handed over to the US forces, which transported them to special imprisonment to Guantanamo Bay, where they were protected neither by the US Constitution nor by the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.