18.10 Al-Qaeda (1988)

Al-Qaeda was founded in 1988 near the end of the Soviet–Afghan War. It grew out of the network of Arab foreign fighters, recruiters, financiers, and ideologues who had mobilized to support the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union.

The name Al-Qaeda means “The Base.” It is usually understood as a reference to a foundational base of training, recruitment, and organization for militant jihad.

One of the central figures in its formation was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born militant who had supported Arab volunteers in Afghanistan during the war.

Another major influence was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Sunni scholar who argued that defending Muslim land from foreign occupation was an individual duty for Muslims. Although Azzam did not develop Al-Qaeda into what it later became, his writings helped shape the ideological atmosphere from which it emerged.

Al-Qaeda is important because it marked a major shift in Islamist extremism.

Unlike groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas, which were rooted in specific national and territorial struggles, Al-Qaeda developed a much more explicitly transnational jihadist model. Instead of focusing on a single country or local conflict, it treated conflicts across the Muslim world as part of one larger struggle and promoted violent jihad across national borders.

A key part of Al-Qaeda’s ideology was the distinction between the “near enemy” and the “far enemy.”

The near enemy referred to local governments in Muslim-majority countries that Al-Qaeda viewed as corrupt, apostate, or insufficiently Islamic.

The far enemy referred especially to the United States and its Western allies, which Al-Qaeda believed propped up those governments and dominated the Muslim world through military, political, and economic power. Over time, Al-Qaeda concluded that attacking the far enemy was the more strategic priority. Its leaders believed that if the United States could be weakened, local governments aligned with it would eventually collapse as well.

This ideology translated into terrorism on a global scale.

Al-Qaeda became associated with a series of major international attacks, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and most famously the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, in which hijacked airplanes were used to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These attacks killed thousands of people and brought Al-Qaeda to the center of global politics.

Osama bin Laden was killed in a covert U.S. military operation in May 2011. His successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed in July 2022. Al-Qaeda has not publicly introduced a universally recognized new leader, although analysts and reporting often point to Saif al-Adel as the likely successor. Some analysts and UN reports attribute this silence to the sensitive fact that he is believed to be operating from Iran, which creates theological and political tension for a Sunni group, and to avoid embarrassing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda also differed from some earlier Islamist movements because it was initially less interested in directly governing a single territory than in building a flexible global network. It relied on training camps, ideological propaganda, personal loyalty, and affiliated groups operating in different regions. This helped it survive even when its central leadership came under military pressure.

Its influence extended far beyond the original organization. It inspired and helped create regional branches and affiliates, including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and al-Shabaab in Somalia, which later became one of its most important allies. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) later evolved into the Islamic State of Iraq, which eventually developed into ISIS, although Al-Qaeda and ISIS later became bitter rivals. In this way, Al-Qaeda became not just one terrorist group, but the center of a wider jihadist network.

As of 2026, many analysts view Africa, especially Somalia and the Sahel, as the area where Al-Qaeda-linked activity is most dynamic, with groups such as al-Shabaab and JNIM playing major roles in ongoing insurgencies. At the same time, Al-Qaeda’s ability to carry out large-scale far-enemy attacks on the level of 9/11 appears far weaker than it was at its peak. It is also in constant competition with ISIS, especially in Africa and Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda is especially important in this module because it helped define the model of modern Sunni transnational jihadist terrorism. It transformed jihad from a struggle tied mainly to particular local conflicts into a broader ideological project aimed at global confrontation. Later groups, especially ISIS, built on parts of this model while also differing from Al-Qaeda in important ways.

In section 18.11, we will examine Boko Haram (2002), a regional jihadist insurgency in Nigeria that reflects another form of Islamist extremism shaped by local grievances, weak governance, and violent religious ideology.