Al-Qaeda

al-Qaeda is a major terrorist organization, of an extreme Islamist ideology centered around reestablishing the Caliphate. It developed from principally Arab organizations associated with the Afghanistan War (1978-92), principally a Saudi group under Osama bin Laden and Egyptian Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri. The group has been conducting terrorist operations since the mid-1990s, including the 9-11 attack, when its leadership was in Afghanistan. It has become a distributed worldwide organization, but the leadership is believed to be in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.