Page 49 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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22———Al Qaeda

All the while, from 1989 through 1991, bin Laden JIHAD AGAINST AMERICA
lived again in Saudi Arabia, where he launched a
campaign against the House of Saud. He also believed After the attacks against Americans in Saudi Arabia,
that the regime did not rule Saudi Arabia in a way that America levied sanctions against Sudan for harboring
was consistent with the “proper” interpretation of bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Under intense U.S. pressure,
Islam. After the 1991 Gulf War, he also vociferously Sudan ousted bin Laden in May 1996. Bin Laden and
opposed the presence of American troops on Saudi his entourage left for Afghanistan, where a brutal
soil. His speeches were recorded and distributed regime of radical Muslims called the Taliban had
by the thousands throughout Saudi Arabia. Bin recently conquered more than half of Afghanistan in a
Laden’s activism put him in the surveillance of Saudi civil war between rival factions.
intelligence. Soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, bin Laden
Under pressure from the now-angered Saudi regime, issued a declaration of war against the United States.
bin Laden left Saudi Arabia. He, his family, and an esti- On August 23, 1996, he declared “Jihad on the
mated 300 to 480 dedicated Al Qaeda cadres left for Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred
Sudan, a country that came under the control of Omar Places.” Two years later, in February 1998, bin Laden
al-Bashir of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1989. In coor- also announced the creation of an umbrella organiza-
dination with Sudan’s leading radical ideologue and tion he called the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against
leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF), Hassan al- Jews and Crusaders. Bin Laden stated, in the form of a
Turabi, bin Laden established new roots for Al Qaeda fatwa, that Muslims should kill Americans, including
in Khartoum and its environs. Sudan provided asylum civilians, wherever they were to be found.
for Al Qaeda, land for new training camps, and hun- On May 28, 1998, bin Laden announced the for-
dreds of passports so that members could travel under mation of yet another umbrella group: the Inter-
different identities. In return, bin Laden helped finance national Islamic Front for Jihad Against America and
infrastructure for Sudan’s Islamic fundamentalist Israel. The creation of this front organization finally
regime. Through the government of Sudan, Al Qaeda provided analysts with an idea of the depth and
was also thought to have established ties with the breadth of the Al Qaeda network. The Front included
government of Iran and the terrorist organization the Egyptian Al Jihad, the Egyptian Armed Group, the
Hezbollah. Al Qaeda was growing. Pakistan Scholars Society, the Partisans Movement in
In April 1994, bin Laden’s dissatisfaction with the Kashmir, the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, and
Saudi regime culminated in the creation of the Advice the Afghan military wing of the Advice and Reform
and Reform Committee. This group—an arm of Committee. In his announcement, bin Laden declared
Al Qaeda—produces literature criticizing the Saudi war on America and Israel and stated that the United
regime and is still active today. States was vulnerable, that it could be defeated in war,
While in Sudan, Al Qaeda is believed to have had and that civilians were now fair targets in Al Qaeda’s
links to two attacks on U.S. military personnel in Saudi jihad.
Arabia. The first took place in Riyadh in November On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda orchestrated the near-
1995. Five Americans and two Indians were killed simultaneous bombing of the American embassies
when a large truck bomb exploded just outside of an in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The
American-run Saudi National Guard training center. attacks killed 224, and wounded thousands of others.
The second was an attack on the Khobar Towers, a The embassy in Kenya was attacked, bin Laden noted,
U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, in June 1996. because “it was considered to be the biggest intelli-
Nineteen Americans were killed and 500 were injured gence gathering center in the Middle East.” The date of
when a large truck bomb was detonated just outside the bombings was significant in that it was seven years,
the barracks. to the day, that U.S. troops were dispatched to Saudi
Al Qaeda was definitively linked to two other Arabia in Operation Desert Shield.
attacks in 1995—the assassination attempt on Egyptian On the heels of these attacks came the biggest
president Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in breakthrough for U.S. intelligence. It came on August
June 1995, and the car bombing at Egypt’s embassy in 15, 1998, with the arrest of Mohammed Odeh at the
Pakistan that killed 15 Pakistanis and Egyptians and Karachi International Airport in Pakistan. Odeh, an Al
injured 80. Qaeda operative, under intense interrogation divulged