Al-Qaeda's Founding and the Path to September 11

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Al-Qaeda formed in 1988 during the Soviet-Afghan War, when Osama bin Laden and associates organized a roster of Arab volunteer fighters bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam had recruited for the anti-Soviet mobilization in Afghanistan into a standing network. The group emerged as a Salafi-jihadist militant organization pursuing what it called global jihad against the far enemy, chiefly the United States and its allies, aiming to end their military and political presence in Muslim-majority countries. It carried out numerous attacks against that goal through the 1990s before its most consequential operation, the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, which killed thousands and reshaped a generation of international security policy.

Bin Laden led the organization as its founding leader from 1988 until he was killed in 2011; Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded him and led the network until his own death in 2022. The United Nations and numerous national governments have designated Al-Qaeda a terrorist organization, and analysts today describe it as a decentralized transnational network rather than a single command structure, its affiliates operating with substantial independence across multiple regions.