329 Carlos Setas Vílchez What are we talking about when we talk about al- Qaeda? In 1986, Osama bin Laden set up his own jihadist group together with Abu Ubayda al-Banshiri and Rida al-Tunisi in the Jaji mountains in north Paktia.14 Bin Laden’s money allowed them to set up their own base with the consent of the Haqqani group who controlled the region. The base and this initial jihadist structure were called Masadat al-ansar. In 1988, the name was changed to al Qaeda and a hierarchical organisational structure established. In late 1989, bin Laden left Afghanistan to return to Saudi Arabia. However, the al Qaeda training camps and activity in Afghanistan as a jihadist group continued. Throughout the 1990s, the organisation’s ideology was formed, and international developments incorporated into the organisations’ view of the world. In 1989, bin Laden proposed to the head of the Saudi intelligence services, Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud, that illegal Saudi veterans of Afghanistan be used to overthrow the communist regime in South Yemen,15 a proposal that was rejected. In late 1990, the Saudi authorities again rejected bin Laden’s offer to place the al Qaeda jihadists at its disposition to defend the Kingdom against the threat posed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.16 Instead, the Saudi king sought the aid of its ally, the United States, who sent almost half a million soldiers to the peninsula to recover Kuwait from the Iraqis. Bin Laden saw this as a violation of the teachings of the Prophet who, according to him, did not allow the presence of infidels in Arabia. Furthermore, using U.S. troops to defend the peninsula was, in his opinion, a humiliation for the Kingdom and Islam. Successive attempts by bin Laden to secure support from religious academics exhausted the patience of the Saudi authorities who eventually banished him in 1991. Bin Laden took refuge in Sudan in 1992, after a brief stay in Peshawar where he witnessed the start of the civil war of the Afghan mujahideen. In Khartoum, the regime of General al Bashir, influenced by the Islamic ideologue Hassan al-Turabi, welcomed bin Laden with open arms. Over the next four years bin Laden established a new base for al Qaeda in Sudan, a safe haven from which to plan the continuity of the jihad. Here he was joined by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The two had coincided in Afghanistan in the 1980s, although al-Zawahiri had 14 LAHOUD, Nelly, “Beware of Imitators, Al-Qa’ida through the Lens of its Confidential Secretary”, CTC Harmony Program, 2012. Lahoud’s work is based on an analysis of the autobiography of Fadil Harun, a member of al Qaeda since 1991. The manuscript, comprised of two volumes, 1,156 pages and written in Arabic, appeared in Internet in February 2009 and became one of the most interesting sources for the study of al Qaeda at the time. For an assessment of the interest and reliability of the document, see pp.15-29 of Lahoud’s analysis. The original manuscript, in Arabic, is available at http:// www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-war-against-islam-the-story-of-fazul-harun-part-1-original-language-2 y http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-war-against-islam-the-story-of-fazul-harun-part-2-original-language- 2 15 WRIGHT, Lawrence, The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda’s Road to 9/11, London, Penguin, p.153. 16 COLL, Steve, “Ghost Wars: the Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”, New York, Penguin, 2005, pp.222-223.
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