The History of Al Qaeda
According to BBC News, “Many volunteers from Arab countries had gone to Afghanistan during the 1980s. They wanted to help the Afghans fight the invading Russian army. When the Russian army was defeated, al-Qaeda was set up to continue the Jihad against people the volunteers thought were enemies of Islam.” Al Qaeda allies include …show more content…
From here, the terrorist group was getting stronger and more advanced in killing many people. They did many attacks which killed more than a thousand people. Many people lost their lives, and were severely injured. These attacks continued till September 11, 2001. On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda killed 2,974 innocent lives after crashing into the twin towers in New York, United States. According to History.com, “Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania…Over 3,000 people were killed during the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., including more than 400 police officers and firefighters”. This shows that the attacks were planned out because it flown into the towers and wiped out many innocent lives. In 2001, Al Qaeda was surrounding countries like Yemen, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Philippines, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since then, America has come to a decision to fight Al Qaeda. On October 2001, The US troops seized Afghanistan to capture Al Qaeda and ousting the Taliban’s in power. This was called “The War on Terror”. In November 2001, Osama Bin Laden escapes the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. On March 11, 2004, Al Qaeda attacked Madrid, which killed 191 people …show more content…
What makes them different from each other? ISIS and Al Qaeda have the same beliefs, but their targets are different. ISIS wants to create a new “Islamic caliphate”. A caliphate is a very powerful political and religious leader that claims he is the new successor after the last Islamic leader, Muhammad (PBUH). They want to create a unified Muslim area that has extreme Islamic beliefs. (Also known as Sharia Law). This can be frightening because they are the most known and scariest terrorist organizations in the world, and they can cause serious destruction throughout the