Al Qaeda Al Queda

Al Qaeda Al Queda

Where does al-Qaeda operate?
We don’t know if it has a headquarters anymore. From 1991 to 1996, al-Qaeda worked out of Sudan. From 1996 until the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, al-Qaeda operated out of Afghanistan and maintained its training camps there. U.S. intelligence officials now think al-Qaeda’s senior leadership is trying to regroup in lawless tribal regions just inside Pakistan, near the Afghan border, or inside Pakistani cities. Al-Qaeda has autonomous underground cells in some 100 countries, including the United States, officials say. Law enforcement has broken up al-Qaeda cells in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Albania, Uganda, and elsewhere.

Is al-Qaeda connected to other terrorist organizations?
Yes. Among them:

• Egyptian Islamic Jihad
• Jamaat Islamiyya (Egypt)
• The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
• Islamic Army of Aden (Yemen)
• Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Kashmir)
• Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
• Salafist Group for Call and Combat and the Armed Islamic Group (Algeria)
• Abu Sayyaf Group (Malaysia, Philippines)

These groups share al-Qaeda’s Sunni Muslim fundamentalist views. Some terror experts theorize that Al-Qaeda, after the loss of it Afghanistan base, may be increasingly reliant on sympathetic affiliates to carry out it agenda. Intelligence officials and terrorism experts also say that al-Qaeda has stepped up its cooperation on logistics and training with Hezbollah, a radical, Iran-backed Lebanese militia drawn from the minority Shiite strain of Islam.

Just some background Obama might use before he claims victory in Afghanistan and retreats.