Volta
Conflict1988

Founding of al-Qaeda

Also called: al-Qaeda, al-Qaida

In 1988 Osama bin Laden founded the Islamist extremist group al-Qaeda among Arab volunteers fighting the Soviets. In 1996 it moved to Afghanistan and, under Taliban protection, made the United States its target.

Osama bin Laden (left) and al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, Afghanistan, November 2001 (interview by the Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir)
Osama bin Laden (left) and al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, Afghanistan, November 2001 (interview by the Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir)

Hamid Mir · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source

Al-Qaeda (“the base”) emerged in 1988 in Peshawar, Pakistan, among Arab volunteers who had come to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, son of a wealthy Saudi family, led it with money and recruits.

When US troops stayed in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, bin Laden turned against the United States. After a spell in Sudan he returned to Afghanistan in 1996, set up training camps under the protection of the Taliban, and in 1998 issued a call to kill Americans anywhere in the world.

That August simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 200 people, and in October 2000 al-Qaeda attacked the US destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. By then it was preparing a plan to hijack airliners and fly them into American buildings.

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States at the time
Afghanistan
Pakistan

People

  • Osama bin Laden1957 – 2011

    key figure · Saudi-born Islamist extremist who founded and led al-Qaeda from 1988 and ordered the September 11 attacks; killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011

Before and after

Earlier
1979 Soviet–Afghan War
Later
2001 War in Afghanistan

Themes that include this event

  • The September 11 Attacks1988 – 2014

    Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the four airliners hijacked on the morning of 11 September 2001 and the fall of the twin towers, the closing of the American sky, twenty years of war in Afghanistan and the death of bin Laden, and the memorial pools in the towers’ footprints