A Global Network Of Terror (Listings of all the major cells Including those of Bosnia and Kosovo)

Among the thousands of operatives trained by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization are fanatics from all over the world. Many now constitute semi-autonomous cells, all dedicated to bin Laden's jihad against America. But other operatives, after graduating from bin Laden's training camps, went back home to start a jihad against their own governments and people. Bin Laden also provides logistical, financial and ideological support for a number of notorious terrorist organizations around the world.

Though accurate information about bin Laden's grand alliance is hard to come by, it is clear that it does not include many of the states that United States regarded as enemies or potential enemies in the 1980s and 1990s. Iraq, Syria and Libya, for example, are largely secular nationalist regimes. While they abhor America, and no doubt rejoice at the murder of Americans, they are mortal enemies of the kind of Islamic fundamentalism represented by bin Laden and his allies. Iran, meanwhile, practices a Shiite brand of fundamentalist Islam that is vehemently opposed to bin Laden's version (the extremist Wahhabi tendency). Over the past five years, in fact, Iran has been financing a war against bin Laden and his Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

The only state that unambiguously supports bin Laden today is Afghanistan, ruled by the fanatical Taliban militias. Bin Laden can also count on the support of some parts of the governments of Pakistan, which has long supported the Taliban, and Sudan, wealthy donors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states, and a variety of underworld groups in Egypt and Algeria.

Here is a list--from West to East--of the terrorist organizations affiliated with bin Laden:

Groupe Islamique Armee (Armed Islamic Group), one of the three main Islamic groups fighting the secular Algerian government in the 1990s. Staffed by many bin Laden operatives, it began a terrorist campaign in 1992. Since then, it perpetrated a series of assassinations of Algerian government officials, multiple mass murders of villagers resistant to the bin Laden version of Islam, and the murder of about 100 foreigners in Algeria. Its most famous act was the hijacking of an Air France flight in December of 1994 and threatening to blow it up over Paris; the attack was stopped when French commandos stormed the plane at the airport in Marseilles and killed the terrorists. In 1995, the group carried out a series of deadly bombings in Paris.

Al Jihad (a.k.a. the Muslim Brotherhood), founded in the late 1970s by Omar Adbul Rakhman, inspired and helped orchestrate the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, as well as a number of other assassination attempts against members of the Egyptian government. Also engaged in terrorist acts against Egypt's Christian minority. Co-founded bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization in 1989. Omar Adbul Rakhman was later convicted in the U.S. for his role in conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.

Al Gamaa al Islamiya (Islamic Group), the sister organization of Al Jihad, engaged in the 1980s and 1990s in dozens of terrorist attacks on Egyptian government institutions, the country's Christian minority, and foreign tourists. The most famous incident: the massacre of 67 foreign tourists and 4 Egyptians at an archeological site in Luxor in November 1997.Sudan

Al Djaba al-Islamiya (National Islamic Front) is an Islamic fundamentalist political movement established in 1985 and headed by the fanatical Hasan Turabi. In 1989, this organization helped organize a military coup d'etat in northern Sudan (populated mostly by Muslims) and unleash a genocidal war against the Christian population in the southern part of the country. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, have been killed over the past decade. Bin Laden arrived in Sudan in 1991 and stayed until 1996; he is still believed to retain major commercial interests inside the country. But the military dictator of Sudan has recently arrested Turabi and his organization has seen its powers clipped.

The civil wars in the Balkans provided a rich new field of endeavor for bin Laden and he has long provided training and financial support to Islamic militants among the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian separatists in Kosovo and Macedonia; he has also sponsored brigades of professional Islamic fighters from abroad in their fight against the Serbs. Among his organizations in this part of the world is Edzir, a military training school based in Bosnia. Bin Laden may also be interested in establishing contacts with the Albanian heroin-trading networks operating out of the Balkans.

Khattab, a warlord of Saudi-Jordanian origin and adherent to the Wahhabi tendency of Islam, is known to have been an associate of bin Laden's in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Russian security services say that bin Laden's organization is providing financial and logistical help, as well as military training, to several international Islamic ! brigades fighting alongside the Chechen rebels against the Russians. Khattab, together with other Wahhabi-Arab warlords, Abdullah Malek and Muhammed Sharif, unleashed the latest war in Chechnya, when they led their brigades in an invasion of the neighboring province of Dagestan in August 1999. They are also notorious for their employment of car bombs in the cities of Chechnya and for publicly cutting the throats of Russian prisoners of war.

The Taliban appeared in Afghanistan in 1993, four years after the Soviet withdrawal. It started as an association of Islamic theological students, training mostly in Pakistan, under the patronage of the Pakistani intelligence services and fundamentalist groups. Bin Laden began helping the Taliban in the mid-1990s, with fighters and money; moved to Afghanistan in 1996. Over the past several years, the vast majority of Afghanistan surrendered to Taliban authority--some parts voluntarily, some parts conquered by force or terror. Today, the Taliban has instituted probably the most fanatical brand of Islamic government on earth; destroyed invaluable cultural landmarks, like the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan; two months ago, arrested eight foreign aid workers on suspicion of propagating Christianity; until last year, sponsored the world's largest center for the cultivation of poppies and manufacture of heroin. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan has become bin Laden's primary state sponsor.

The Islamic Renewal Movement of Tajikistan, a fundamentalist group battling the government in this impoverished former Soviet republic, receives financial, logistical and manpower support from bin Laden and the Taliban.

Djamat ul-Ulema-i-Islami (Society of the students of Islam), a fundamentalist political party, financed partly by Saudi donations, was formed in 1960. In the early 1990s, it helped finance and train the members of the Taliban. Maintained military training camps for its students on the Afghanistan border, as well as ar! ound the Afghan city of Khost (where bin Laden's primary base camps are located as well). Officially allied with bin Laden since 1998.

Kharkat ul-Ansar is a terrorist organization based in Pakistan, but its primary goal is the formation of an independent Islamic state in the Indian province of Kashmir. Established in 1993, by several hundred international veterans of the Afghan war, the group distinguished itself by a series of bombings and assassinations in India, as well as the kidnapping and beheading of European tourists. Fighters from this group have participated in fighting in Bosnia, Kosovo, Tajikistan, Burma and the Philippines. Formally allied with bin Laden since 1998.

Al Jihad, an Islamic fundamentalist group led by Fazlul ar-Rakhman Khalil, was one of the founders in 1998 of bin Laden's International Islamic Front. Other founders included Al Jihad and Djamaa al-Islamiya of Egypt, Djamat ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan of Pakistan, and Kharakat ul-Ansar of India. The stated aim of the International Islamic Front is to wage a "holy war" against all Jews and Christians.

Abu Sayyaf, is a terrorist group demanding an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines. Bin Laden was the group's primary financier and sponsor in the 1990s. The group gained notoriety with a car bombing campaign in Manila in the late 1990s and a series of kidnappings of foreign tourists. The Philippines also served as a base for bin Laden associate Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A plot Yousef had initiated--to blow up 11 American airliners over the Pacific--was foiled in 1995.

***About komrade krintoon & his 'policies' -
his war on Christianity, both at home and abroad,
no doubt pleased the Islamics.
***Bush wasn't about to continue that
and the terrorists have not only gone back to
attacking citizens of the country that is
the biggest threat to their insanity,
but have gone a step further
with an attack on our shores.

Don't know about the specifics of binladen's network,
but suspect that by the time any data is posted it may already be dated.

I am sorry. This article links a specific Islamic terror network that has world wide aspirations. The terrorists you speak are local movements. They have no bearing to this article.

I apologize. You are correct; the Basques, Tamils, FALN and IRA are local.

What about Kenya or Tanzania or Yemen? We believe Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the bombings in these places. Do they have terrorists cells or were the terrorists just visiting from out of town, staying just long enough to attack their targets?

If Yemen does indeed have an indigenous terrorist organization, it would be a tempting target for our first strike in the war against terrorism. Yemen is near water so there's no need to get permission from anyone for bases or flyovers, etc. We have naval forces in the area that would be happy to avenge the USS Cole. Attacking Iraq or Afghanistan will require more time to coordinate resources, etc.

No one has mentioned the PLO, founded and run by clintooon crony Yassar Arrafat who has ties to Hamas which attacked American aircraft around the world. And today is brainwashing the parents and children to become suicide bombers.

Yes. Shine a light on these bastards, whoever, and wherever they are. Put their names and pictures in the papers. Mark them. Take them out. Remove them from this world for the sake of those who know better than to prey on innocent life.

Meanwile, I wonder whether the American public can swallow the possibilty that terrorism can be eliminated without a great show of strength? I believe it can be done without fanfare, one terorist at a time.

If we want to take action that draws the attention of the world, then let us disgorge 50,000 parachuting pigs, each with a glow-in-the dark parachute and a special message from the USA. Disgorge them from the highest altititude possible, and equip them in such a way as to either remain afloat until shot down, or settle into the terrorist land for a fine, rotting, decaying, putrid, contaminated, end, just as the perpetrators of this atrocity deserve. Equip them with some horrendous audio, like the sounds of Heavy Metal Music - bands like "Irritant," and "Secretion."

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