Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...monolithic. It is composed of several layers: a hard-core group of former Taliban commanders (including Mullah Omar) who operate out of sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan and who maintain ties with Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency (though Islamabad vehemently denies this); bands linked to al-Qaeda whose ranks have recently swelled with Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters operating in the craggy, northeastern ranges of Afghanistan; and, a last group, probably the largest, made up of local tribesmen who have allied themselves loosely with the Taliban as a result of President Hamid Karzai's often corrupt provincial officials pitting...
...time, the country was torn apart by rival warlords. Like Afghanistan too, out of that chaos arose an army of radical Islamist warriors who were determined to bring strict religious law and order to the country, but who were also open to funding from and cooperation with al-Qaeda. The first shots in what became known as the war on terror were fired by Somalia-based militants when they blew up the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, killing 213 and 11 people, respectively. But Afghanistan, and later Pakistan, became the focus...
...Somali branch of al-Qaeda never retired. On Nov. 26, 2002, al-Qaeda killed 15 people when, according to the FBI, gunmen led by Nabhan attacked the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and fired two missiles at an Israeli charter airliner in Kenyan airspace the same night (they missed). In 2003, staff at the new U.S. embassy in Nairobi evacuated for a week over reports that al-Qaeda wanted to level the building; there was also a never-executed plot to attack a U.S. military base in Djibouti in 2006. Bin Laden has released frequent video recordings urging...
...radicals in their ranks declared a jihad on neighboring Ethiopia - a mixed Muslim and Christian country - and Ethiopia invaded Somalia in December of that year. U.S. special operations troops hitched a ride with that operation, using the opportunity to track down the U.S. embassy bombers and any other al-Qaeda operatives in the country. During that invasion, al-Qaeda bombmaker Tariq Abdullah, a.k.a. Abu Taha al-Sudani, was killed in a hit carried out by an Ethiopian military helicopter. (Read about an Australian crackdown on Somali terrorist suspects...
Despite that success, concerns over al-Qaeda in Africa have continued to grow as the group demonstrates an ever more muscular presence with a series of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations, from Mauritania to Somaliland. The Somali connection is proving to be a particular worry with the regrouping of militants under the new unified command of a group called al-Shabaab and the discovery that scores of young Muslim men from the U.S., Britain and Australia are traveling to Somalia to receive weapons training in al-Shabaab camps. This year, three men from Minneapolis pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges...