9/11 Commission (Glossary, Developments, Victories on Both Sides)

GLOSSARY:

AIM - Armed Islamic Movement. The Khartoum-headquartered umbrella orgnaization of Islamist terrorist organizations - those committed to both local causes *(the overthrow of regimes in their own countries) and global pan-Islamic causes.

Allah - The word God in Arabic and all other languages used by Muslims.

Bayan - A doctrinal manifesto or policy statement.

Dua - A prayer-sermon read in mosques instructing the believer how to answer teh Call of Islam (Dawah). An Islamist dua often addresses contemporary and political issues, not just religious issues.

Emir - A religious-military leader whose legitimacy and power as a leader are derived from his success on the battlefield rather than from his formal religious stature.

Fatwa - A decree issued by a religious leader/scholar or a group of religious leaders (either as individuals or as an Islamic court). Fatwas usually provide guidance to the believers on addressing and meeting challenges. Believers are obliged to do what the fatwa tells them to do.

The Hajj - Pilgrimage to Islam's holy shrines in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia. Every Muslim is expected to make at least one Hajj in his/her lifetime.

HAMAS - Acronym in Arabic for the Islamic Resistance Movement - the Sunni Islamist terrorist movement operating in Israel, the Israeli-held territories, and the areas controlled by Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

HizbAllah - Originally the name of teh Lebanon based, Iran-sponsored Shiite terrorist organization; the name means, "party of God," currently the name HizbAllah is used to signal strong sponsorship and control by Iran for any terrorist organization whether it is local HizbAllah of the (Persian) Gulf and HizbAllah Palestine, or international, such as HizbAllah International.



On the organization chart, bin Laden was at the top with a shura, consultative council, directly beneath him. Among the shura members were a Nigerian, an Omani, a Yemeni, some Saudis and Egyptians - it was a United Nations of radical Islam. Committees with responsibilities in areas such as military operations, religious affairs, finance, and publicity reported to the council. There was also a cadre of in-house experts: a Libyan named Abu Anas was al-Qaeda's computer specialist; Abu Musab Reuter was the media specialist - the surname Reuter was given to him in recognition of hi skils - and published the group's newspaper. Others were knowledgable about tanks, mortars, and explosives. Along with all these specialists, most of whom would have counterparts in any ministry of defense, there was Abu Muaz al-Masry, whose specialty was the interpretation of dreams. Oneiromancy is taken seriously in al-Qaeda, as was demonstrated by bin Laden's first video after the Sept. 11 attacks, in which prophetic dreams are discussed (I've seen it, there's a lot of God-praising, Lordy, every other sentence in fact).

With the end of the fighting in Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia and his family's firm while al-Qaeda remained in its camps in Afghanistan adn its guesthouses in Pakistan. The withdrawal of the Soviets may have been a crowning achievement, but the various factions of mujahidin still refused to overcome their differences as they fought on fractiously against teh Soviet-installed regime in Kabul that was led by the former secret plice chief Najibullah. Bin Laden was fed up.
Saudi Arabia was in many regards no more satisfying. The returning soldier who finds himself at odds with society at home is a cliche, but for bin Laden, it had a powerful truth. Those who had fought a holy war came home to no fanfare and little appreciation. After August 1, 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, bin Laden's disaffection turned to disgust....

al Qaeda's official spokesman, Shaykh Sulayman Abu Gayeth asks...."What is Japan's concern? What is making Japan join this hard, strong, and ferocious war? It is blatant violation of our children in Palestine, and Japan didn't predict it would be at war with us, so it should review where it stands. What is the concern of Australia in the farthest south with the case of those weak Afghans? And those weak in Palestine. What is Germany's concern with this war? Besides disbelief and crusade, it is war which is repeating (bringing back) the Crusades, similarly to the previous wars. Richard the Lion Heart, and Barbarossa from Germany, and Louis from France...simlarly is the case today, when they all went immediately forward on the day Bush lifted the cross. The Crusader nations went forward."

Victories for the United States & Its Allies, 2001-2004 - s

• 9-24 Dec. 2001: Singaporean police break up a Jamaah Islamiya (JI) cell and arrest fifteen Islamists, fourteen Singaporeans, adn one Malaysian. Thirteen of fifteen were JI members, and eight of those recieved physical and religious training in Malaysia and military training in Afghanistan. The cell was formed in 1997 and had planned six truck-bomb attacks against U.S., UK, Israeli, and Australian diplomatic and military targets, as well as against U.S. - owned businesses
• 14 Dec. 2001: U.S. Marines enter the Qandahar airport to establish the U.S.-led coalition's control of the Taleban's capital. The action ends the Afghan war's first battle, one that evicted the Taleban and al Qaeda from Afghan cities.
• 20-21 Dec. 2001: Egyptian Islamic Jihad faction leaders Ahmad Husayn Aghiza and Mohammed Sulayman al-Dharri are extradited from Sweden to Egypt. Aghiza took part in the 1995 bombing of Egypt's embassy in Pakistan.
• 19 March 2002: Ibn al-Khattab, leader of the Arab Afghans fighting in Chechnya, is killed by a letter contaminated with poison. The letter was made by Russian authorities and delivered to Khattab by a Chechen suborned by them. Khattab also had fought in Tajik and Afghan jihads and was a folk hero among; Islamists. A Saudi national, his true name was Salim Suwaylin.
• 28 March 2002: Al Qaeda ally Abu Zubaydah was captured in Faisalbad, Pakistan. A thirty-year-old Palestinian with Saudi citizenship, Zubaydah was a chief recruiter and ran an Afghan training camp. He was under a Jordanian death sentence for his part in a al Qaeda's millenium plot to attack U.S. and Israeli targets.
• Late May 2002: Moroccan security arrests five al Qaeda fighters of Saudi nationality in Rabat and Casablanca for planning attacks on U.S. an UK warships in the Straits of Gibraltar. The Saudis had come to Morocco from Afghanistan after transiting Iran and Syria.
• 10 Sept. 2002: Ramzi bi al-Shibh is arrested in Karachi. He was to be a pilot in the 11 Sept. attacks but failed to get a U.S. Visa.
• 12 Sept. 2001: Al Qaeda's chief for northern and western Africa, a thirty seven year old Yemeni named Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan is killed by Algerian police in eastern Algeria. Alwan was al Qaeda's liason to the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian Islamist insurgent group.
• 13-15 Sept. 2002: The FBI arrests seven Yemen-born men in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, saying they are an al Qaeda sleeper-cell" and had recieved religious training in Pakistan and military training in Afghanistan.
• Late Oct. 2002: United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities arrest al Qaeda's Persian Gulft operations chief, Abdel-Rahim al-Nashiri. A Yemen-born Saudi citizen, Nashiri is charged with planning to destroy "vital economic targets" in the UAE. He also helped plan attacks on U.S. and UK warships in the Straights of Gibraltar, adn ships of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Al-Nashiiri was an explosives specialist, fought in Afghanistan with bin Laden, and fought in Bosnia. he took part in al Qaeda's 1998 East Africa attacks, the attacks on the U.S. destroyers The Sullivans and Cole, and the attack on the French super tanker Limburg.
• 3 Nov. 2002: CIA's unmanned "Predator" aircraft destroys a vehicle, killing six al Qaeda members. Among the dead are al-Qaeda's chief in Yemen, al-Qaed Sinan al-Harithi, and U.S. citizen/al Qaeda member Ahmed Hijazi. Afterward al Qaeda deputy leader al-Zawahiri said: "When Abu al-Harithi was killed by U.S. missles in Yemen, it was a warning to us that the Israeli method of killing mujahideen in Palestine has come to the Arab world."
• 5-23 Jan. 2003: British police arrest eight men - six Algerians, an Ethiopian, and a Moroccan - and one woman in London. They find equipment for a chemical laboratory and traces of the toxin ricin in one of the raided apartments. The British suspect the group may be tied to Algerian Islamists in France and the Islamist leader Abu Musab-al-Zarqawi, who is allied with al Qaeda.
• 12-15 Feb. 2003: Bahrain's National Security Agency arrests al Qaeda associated Bahrainis for plotting terrorist attacks. It also got four AK-47s, two handguns, ammunition, chemical "powders, bomb-making manual on a CD-ROM
• 13 Feb. 2003: Police in Quetta arrested Mohammed Abdel Rahman, son of jailed Gama'a al-Islamiyya's spiritual leader Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman. Bin Laden had cared for him after his father's arrest in the United States.
• 24 Feb. 2003: Kuwaiti police arrest three Kuwaiti nationals were planning to attack U.S. military convoys in Kuwait. One () in Afghanistan in 2001, and all three expressed support for bin Laden after their arrest.
• 1 March 2003: A car bomb kills EIJ leader Abd-al-Sattar al (Masri) @ Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp in Lebanon. Al-Masri - true name (Abdel-Hamid Shanouha - was an explosives expert. He was al Qaeda's leader in the camp and was killed by Israelis or their proxies.
• 1 March 2003: Pakistani police arrest al Qaeda operations chief Sheikh Mohammed in an upscale section of Rawalpindi. They () his computer, cell phones, and documents. Mohammed designed () September attacks, was involved in the East Africa and Cole bombings and participated in Ramzi Ahmed Yousef's 1995 plot to destroy airliners flying Pacific routes.
• 1 March 2003: Pakistani police arrest al Qaeda financial officer () Ahmed al-Hisawai funded the 11 September attackers () transfers.
• 15 March 2003: Pakistani authorities arrest Moroccan nationals al Jazeri, who, according to U.S. officials, was a trusted subordinate of Osama bin Laden. He was responsible for facilitating communes among al Qaeda leaders and was captured in a posh neighborhood in Lahore.
• 29 April 2003: In Karachi, Pakistani police arrest Tawfiq bin Attash Amar al-Baluchi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew. A Saudi of Yemeni origin, bin Attash was a close friend of bin Laden - in Afghanistan he lost a leg - involved on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Al-Baluchi was an al-Qaeda financial () and had sent nearly $120,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September attacks.
• 6 May 2003: Saudi security raids an al Qaeda safe house in Riyadh. The Saudis captured no one but found more than eight hundred pounds of explosives, fifty-five hand grenades, dozens of assault rifles, other weapons, disguises, twenty-five live rounds of ammunition, and eighty-thousand dollars in cash. Some weapons are traced to stocks owned by Saudi National Guardsmen.
• 31 May 2003: Saudi police kill Yusuf bin Salih al-Ayiri, al Qaeda's senior propagandist, and capture his deputy Abdullah ibn Ibrahim Abdullah al-Shabrani. The shootout occured near the town of Ha'il; two Saudi officers were killed and three wounded. Al-Ayiri ran al Qaeda's Al-Neda website and was said to be the group's "unknown soldier." The UK-based EIJ exile and specialist on Islamism Hani al-Saba'i said al-Ayiri was a close friend of bin Laden and traveled on the same plane when al Qaeda's chief flew from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991.
• 12 June 2003: U.S. forces raid and destroy base for non-Iraqi mujahideen at Rawah, Iraq, about thirty miles from the Syrian border. The attack kills more than eighty foreign Muslims in Iraq to fight the U.S.-led occupation. Among teh dead were Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians, Afghans, and Sudanese.
• 12 Aug. 2003: Thai police arrest operations chief Nurjaman Ridwan Isamuddin - a.k.a. Hambali - in Ayuttahya, north of Bangkok. U.S. officials say he played an "important role" in the Oct. 2002 Bali attack adn was al Qaeda's "top strategist" in Southeast Asia. Before Thailand, Hambali lived in the Muslim community of Phnom Phenn, Cambodia, from Sept. 2002 to March 2003. Hambali fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, worked in the 1990s with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, and was one of the few non-Arabs in al Qaeda authorized to make independent decisions.
• 20 Sept. 2003: Pakistani security arrests fifteen Asian Islamic seminary students in Karachi - two Malaysians, thirteen Indonesians - and charges them with being linked to the Jemaah Islamiya, the Indonesian militant group allied with al Qaeda.
• 25 Nov. 2003: Yemeni authorities announce the arrest of Abu-Asim al-Makki, a leading member of the al Qaeda organization in Yemen. The Yemenis also announce the earlier arest of al Qaeda leader Hadi Dalqam
• 15 and 23 January 2004: In Iraq, U.S. authorities capture al Qaeda operatives Husam al-Yemeni and Hasan Ghul. Ghul is known to have been a senior aide to 11 Sept. planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
• 15 March 2004: Saudi security forces kill two senior al Qaeda operatives - Khaled Ali Ali Haj and Ibrahim al Mezeini - in Riyadh when they try to run a roadblock. The dead Yemeni nationals had six grenades, two AK47s, three 9mm pistols, and 137,000 cash in their car.
• 31 March-2 April 2004: Ten Islamist fighters are arrested in Canada and Britain after a long police investigation; all are Pakistanis and naturalized Canadians or Britons. British police also seize eleven hundred pounds of fertilizer suitable for making a bomb. UK intelligence sources tell teh media that the eight men in London were tied to al Qaeda members in Pakistan.
• 4 April 2004: Spanish police corner six members of the al Qaeda cell that conducted the 11 March 2004 railway bombings in Madrid. The six fighters blew themselves up rather than be captured. The leader of the railway attack - the Tunisian Sarhane Abdelmajid Fakhet - was one of the dead. Police recover twenty-two pounds of explosives identical to those used in the railway bombing.

Al Qaeda Victories 2001-2003

• 7 October 2001: U.S. and UK air forces bomb Taleban bases in Afghanistan, starting a U.S.-led invasion and guerrilla war bin Laden long wanted.
• 1-15 Dec. 2001: After two weeks of U.S. air bombardment of al Qaeda foces in the Tora Bora Mountains, the Northern Alliance fails to fully engage al Qaeda; bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and most of their fighters escape to Pakistan. Of this victory, bin Laden says, "If all the forces of world evil could not achieve their goals on a one sq. mile area against a small number of mujahideen...how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world?"
• 23 January 2002: Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is abducted in Karachi while going to interview Shaykh Sayyid Giliani, leader of Jammat al-Fuqra, a group based in Pakistan and North America and tied to al Qaeda and Kashmiri guerrillas, Pearl is beheaded. His remains are found in May 2002.
• 27 February - 2 March 2002: After Muslims burn cars of a passenger train in Godhra, in India's Gujarat State -killing fifty-eight Hindus, wounding forty - Hindu mobs riot in Ahmedabad, killing more than two thousand, mostly Muslims. reports claim that Hindu government "turned a blind eye" to the killings and property destruction. Satellite television coverage of the riots again validate for Muslims bin Laden's contention that the West will not intervene to stop the killing of Muslims.
• 3-18 March 2002: A U.S. military offesive into the Shahi Kowt area of eastern Afghanistan ends in failure when most of al Qaeda's force escape into Pakistan. The U.S. military's Afghan auxiliaries are again reluctant to fight. U.S. forces suffer eight killed and about one hundred wounded; many casualties come from an undetected al Qaeda ambush in the helicopter landing zone. Intial U.S. estimates claim seven hundred to one thousand al Qaeda fighters are killed, but only a few dozen bodies are recovered.
• 17 March 2002: An attack on the Protestant International Church in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave kills five and wounds forty-six; two dead and nine wounded are Americans. The church was attended by foreign diplomats, their families, and other expatriates.
• 5 April 2002: Four thousand men in Sakaka in al-Jawf Province demonstrate against Riyadh's support for Israel and the U.S. Five hundred Saudi riot police are sent to control the area.
• 11 April 2002: An al Qaeda fighter detonates a truck bomb at a synagogue on Tunisia's Djerba Island, killing fourteen German tourists and seven others. Al Qaeda's postattack statement said, "The Jewish synagogue in Djerba village was targeted by one singl person, the hero Nizar (Sayf-a-Din al Tunisi)...It followed the same pattern and course of the blessed jihad in defense of our Islam's sacred places and in support for the jihad of our Muslim brothers in all parts of the world."
• 17-18 April 2002: On 17 April, Chechen guerrillas kill six Russian soldiers in Noviye Atagi, a village ten miles southeast of Grozny. On 18 April, guerrillas detonate a mine in a roadway in Grozny, killing seventeen Russian servicemen.
• 8 May 2002: In Karachi, a car bomb is driven into a minibus carrying French naval technicians who were working for Pakistan's navy. Eleven French workers are killed, twelve wounded; two Pakistanis are killed and twelve wounded. Al Qaeda said that "the armed operation that targeted the French military technicians has come to show the weakness of this regime (Pakistan's) and prove that what the regime has built (has) started to crumble like a deck of cards."
• 17 June 2002: A car bomb explodes outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, killing eleven and woundingmore than forty.
• 4 July 2002: Egyptian Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet kills two U.S. citizens at the El Al counter in Los Angeles airport. He is killed by El Al security (Meanwhile I lock myself in an Amsterdam bathroom & two Islamic boys rescue me with the key to the door that locked behind me).
• 13 July 2002: Grenades are thrown at an archaelogical site near Manshera, Pakistan, wounding twelve, including seven Germans, one Austrian, and one Slovak.
• 5 August 2002: Islamists raid a Christian school for the children of foreign aid workers northwest of Islamabad. Six staffers are killed.
• 10 Aug. 2002: A Christian church in Taxila, Pakistan, is bombed. Five people are killed, including three nurses, and twenty five are wounded.
• 19 Aug. 2002: In Beijing, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage announces U.S. support for Chinese military actions against Uighur separatists in western China, saying the United States agreed that the Uighurs have "committed acts of terrorism." In Washington, the State Dep. adds the East Turkistan Islamic Movement to its list of proscribed terrorist organizations.
• 6 Oct. 2002: An al Qaeda suicide bomber sails an explosives-laden boat into the 290,000 ton, French-owned tanker Limburg off Aden, Yemen. The tanker was carrying 397,000 barrels of Saudi crude to Malaysia. The attack was a warning to France, said al Qaeda's claim for the bombing, as well as to "the regime of treason adn treachery in Yemen (that) did all it could...to hunt down, pursue, and arrest the Muslim mujahid youths in Yemen." The attack was the second success in al Qaeda's maritime jihad and was meant to "stop the theft of the Muslim's wealth (i.e. oil) for which nothing worth mentioning is paid."
• 8 Oct. 2002: Two Islamists kill a U.S. Marine and wound another on Kuwait's Faylaka Island. Both Islamists are killed. Al Qaeda claims the attack, saying it was "the correct, on-target attack at this stage," praises "the mujahideen Anas al-Kandari and Jasim Hajiri," and tells "the Americans: your road to Iraq and the other countries of the Muslims will not be as easy as you imagine and hope."
• 12 Oct. 2002: Indonesia's al Qaeda-tied Jemaah Islamiya (JI) detonates a suicide car bomb at a Bali nightclub, killing more than two-hundred, about half Australians. A JI fighter named Amorzi, who ran the attack, later said, "There's some pride in my heart. For the white people it serves them right. They know how to destroy religion by the most subtle ways through bars and gambling dens."
• 23-26 Oct. 2002: Two attackers - a Libyan and a Jordanian - kill U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley at his home in Amman, Jordan. Foley worked in the U.S. embassy. The attackers probably were from Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, which is tied to al Qaeda and Iraq's Ansar al-Islam.
• 20 Nov. 2002: President Bush supports Russia's handling of the Oct. 2002 Chechen raid on a Moscow theater, stating Chechnya "is Russia's internal affair..." He equates Chechens with "the killers who came to America," says President Putin should "do what it takes to protect his people," and rejects those who "tried to blame Vladimir. They ought to blame the terrorists. They're the ones who caused the situation, not President Putin." Al Qaeda damns Washington and its allies for letting Russia "liquidate Chechen issue through brutality."
• 20 Nov. 2002: American nurse Bonnie Penner Wetherall is killed at a Christian church in Sidon, Lebanon. Penner was an active proselytizer bent on converting young Muslims to Christianity. Penner had been warned to stop, and Shaykh Maher Mammoud of Sidon said that "the murder occured within the context of widespread anger at America...we do not condemn it."
• 20-23 Nov. 2002: Muslims rioting in Kaduna, Nigeria, leave 220 dead, fifteen hundred wounded, six thousand families homeless, and sixteen churches and nine mosques destroyed. Rioting was sparked by a reporter's "blasphemous" claim that, it alive, the Prophet might have wanted a wife from the women in the Miss World contest to be held in Kaduna. The event was moved to the United Kingdom. Muslim leaders called it a "parade of nudity" and criticized the government for agreeing to host the Miss World contest during Ramadan.
• 21 Nov. 2002: A Kuwaiti policeman wounds two U.S. soldiers after he stops their car. The policeman flees to Saudi Arabvia but is returned.
• 28 Nov. 2002: Al Qaeda attacks Israeli interests in Mombasa, Kenya, using a suicide car bomb against the Israeli-Owned Hotel and firing a surface-to-Air-missile at a Boeing 757 owned by an Israeli charter company. Twelve Kenyans and three Israelis are killed, forty others were wounded. The missile misses the aircraft, which was carrying 261 Israelis. "The message here," Al-Ansar explained, "is to pursue the Zionist targets all over the world..."
• 27 Dev. 2002: Ahmed Ali Jarallah kills Yemen's Socialist Party chief. When captured, Jarallah says he killed the man because he was a "secularist" and says: "I do not regret what I did because I am seeking paradise. I wish I had an atomic bomb that explodes and incinerates every secularist and renegade."
• 27 Dec. 2002: In Grozny, Chechen fighters drive car bombs into the headquarters of the Russian-backed regime and a communications center. More than sixty people are killed and more than a hundred are wounded.
• 30 Dec. 2002: Islamist fighters from a group linked to al Qaeda attack the Jiblah Hospital in southern Yemen, killing three American medical workers and wounding another. The hospital had been run for thirty-five years by Southern Baptist missionaries from the United States. Yemeni officials later said the facility was attacked because it was converting Muslims to Christianity.
• 21 Jan. 2003: A U.S. military civilian contractor is killed and another wounded when a car is ambushed on a Kuwaiti highway near Qatar. The attacker is a Kuwaiti civil servant, Sami Mutairi. He flees to Saudi Arabia but is captured and returned by Saudi authorities. Mutairi tells Kuwaiti officials the attack was meant as a "gift for Osama bin Laden."
• 16 Feb. 2003: A group of thirty-two editors, representing the world's leading scientific journals, say they will delete details from strories they publish if they might help terrorists build biological weapons. The editors said they would censor scientific data" and admitted this could slow breakthroughs in basic science and engineering. Among the to-be-censored journals are Science, Nature, The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• 17 Feb. 2003: Islamists ambush and kill Dr. Hamid bin-Abd-al-Rhaman al-Wardi, the U.S. educated, deputy governor of Saudi Arabia's al-Jawf Province. Al-Wardi had been involving Saudi politicians in women's gatherings, and in doing so, according to the Islamist website Ilaf, had "angered the people of al-Jawf who are known for their hard-line attitude on matters of honor."
• 20 February 2003: Robert Dent, a thirty-seven year-old British Aerospace employee, is shot to death at a traffic light in Riyadh. Saudi police arrest Yemen-born Saudi national Saud ibn Ali ibn Nasser and suggest he is tied to al Qaeda.
• 21 February 2003: Islamists attack Pakistani police guarding the U.S. consulate in Karachi, leaving two dead and five wounded, Pakistani officials claim that "the policeman were hate-targets because they were protecting Americans."
• 18 March 2003: A Yemeni Islamist shoots four Hunt Oil Company employees in the Al-Safir area of northern Yemen, killing an American, a Yemeni, and a Canadian. Another Canadian is wounded. The attack then kills himself.
• 20 March 2003: The U.S.-led coalition invades Iraq. "Bin Laden must be laughing in his grave or cave," Professor Gerges Fawaz wrote in the Los Angeles Times. :What was unthinkable 18 months ago has happened. The u>S. has alienated those in the Islamic world who were its best hope." Al Qaeda applauded the war, rejoicing that with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, and Iraq, "The Enemy is is now spread out, close at hand, and easy to target."
• 25 March 2003: Two Saudi security officers are shot by drive-by gunmen at a roadblock in Sakaka, al-Jawf Province. One is killed, the other wounded.
• 11 April 2003: Ten al Qaeda fighters escape a Yemeni high-security prison. All are suspects in the Oct. 2003 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole (a daring escape I've read); two of them are thought to have run the attack; Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Qasa.
• 1 May-1 June 2003: Chechen insurgents attack Russian forces using ambushes, land mines, and remotely detonated mines. In this period, thirty-two Russian military and security personnel are killed, eight wounded, and twenty-nine trucks, cars, and armored vehicles are destroyed. Russian sappers, in addition, defused 120 explosive devices - including twenty-four land mines - between 26 May and 1 June.
• 12 May 2003: A two-story building housing officials of the Russian-backed Chechen government and of the Russian security services is destroyed in the town of Znamenskoye. The town is in an area of northern Chechnya that had been largely untouched by war. The insurgents drove a suicide truck bomb containing about a ton of TNT into the compound, killing fifty-nine and wounding 197.
• 12 May 2003: Al Qaeda suicide bombs hit three expatriate compounds in Riyadh; bin Laden hinted at the attacks in late 2002, warning "The people of the Peninsula....are facing difficult days ahead and very dangerous ordeals that Allah will test you with..."Nearly simultaneous attacks kill thirty-four people - nine U.S. citizens - and wound two-hundred. The cars drove far into two compounds, suggesting that the guards helped. For Muslims, the attacks had anti-Christian salience; the two compounds were named by the Saudis - with their usual contempt for the West - for three Christian-occupied cities of Islamic-Andalusia, today's Spain.
• 16 May 2003: Fourteen Islamists in five teams attack targets in Casablanca, Morocco, including a Spanish restaurant, a Jewish-owned Italian restaurant, a Jewish cemetary, a Kuwaiti-owned hotel, and a Jewish community center. The attacks are roughly simultaneous and use homemade explosives strapped to the attackers; fourteen of the fifteen fighters are killed. The attacks kill forty-six and wound about one hundred. Moroccan police said the fighers belonged to local Islamist groups and had received fifty thousand dollars from al Qaeda to fund the operations.
• 5 June 2003: A female Chechen suicide bomber stops and destroys a bus near Russia's military airfield at Mozdok, North Ossetia. The attack kills twenty Russian air force personnel and wounds fifteen. Mozdok is the main north Causasus air base for fixed-and rotary--wing aircraft flying combat missions in Chechnya.
• 7 June 2003: In Kabul, a taxi explodes next to a bus of German troops from the International Stabilization adn Assistance Force. Four die; twenty-nine are wounded.
• 5 July 2003: Two female Chechen suicide bombs detonate themselves at a concert at Moscow's Tushino airfield. Sixteen are killed and twenty wounded.
• 1 August 2003: Chechens detonate a suicide truck bomb at Russia's military hospital in Mozdok, killing fifty, wounding sixty-four, and destroying the hospital.
• 5 August 2003: A JI suicide bomber attacks the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta - a popular meeting place for Americans - killing ten and wounding 152. Indonesian police said casualties would have been worse, but the driver detonated the bomb prematurely. Imam Samudra, on trial for the 2002 Bali bombing, said: "I'm happy....Thanks to Allah...(The Marriot attack) was part of the war against America. The revenge on the suppressors of Muslims will continue.
• 7 Aug. 2003: A car bomb is detonated at the perimeter wall of Jordan's embassy compound in Baghdad blowing a thirty-foot hole in the wall and damaging several buildings. The attack kills nineteen and wounds sixty-five. The al Qaeda related group Ansar al-Islam is among the suspected perpetrators.
• 20 August 2003: A suicide truck bomb is driven into the UN's Baghdad headquarters in the Canal Hotel. The UN special representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and twenty-two others are killed; more than a hundred are wounded. "This criminal, Sergio Vieira de Mello," al Qaeda wrote in claiming of the attack, "was the Crusader who carved up part of the land of Islam (East Timor).
• 25 August 2003: Two taxis packed with the military explosive RDX are detonated fifteen minutes apart in the Indian city of Mumbai, illing fifty-three and wounding more than 190. Indian police arrest four men they say belong to teh Kashmiri Lashkar-e Tayyiba - an ally of al Qaeda - and are tied to India's Student Islamic Movement. The Indians say the group also detonated bombs in Mumbai in December 2002, killing seventeen and wounding 189, and speculate that both attacks were retaliation for anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat state in March 2002.
• Sept.-Oct. 2003: Egypt and Yemen release, respectively 113 and one thousand Islamists from prison, the former group reportedly at the end of their sentences, the latter because they repented. Many of the Yemenis are tied to al Qaeda; all the Egyptians belong to the Islamic Group. The releases mimic the way some Arab regimes freed jailed Islamists early in the Afghan jihad if they would go to Afghanistan and join the mujahideen. If past is prologue, as Victor Hanson Davis wrote, the regimes might use the same device to "export them all to Iraq."
• Sept. - Oct. 2003: Events undercut Pakistan president Musharraf's pro-U.S. policy. Israeli prime minister Sharon made an official visit to India, supported India on Kashmire, and sold India three Phalcon radar systems. The Phalcons will allow India to see far into Pakistan and, said Jane's Defense Weekly, "give India a big strategic advantage over Pakistan." The visit coincided with U.S. criticism of Musharraf for letting Kashmiri fighters enter India, and a joint U.S-Indian Special Forces exercise in Indian Kashmir. Al Qaeda's al-Zawahiri cited the events, warning the arms deal and "the visit by criminal Sharon...are only the tip of the iceberg. This U.S.-Jewish-Indian alliance is against Muslims.
• 11 September 2003: The Salafist Gruop for Call and Combat (GSPC) Algeria's main Islamist insurgents - declares an allegiance to "the direction of Mullah Omar and the (al Qaeda) organization of Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin," as well as intention to attack U.S. interests. The GSPC was long stubbornly Algeria-centric, and its decision to take al Qaeda's lead and give priority to anti-U.S. attacks is a major accomplishment for bin Laden.
• 11-13 Sept. 2003: Two elderly Moroccan Jews are killed in Casablanca and Meknes, respectively. The police tie the attacks to the Salafia Jihadia group, which was linked to the 16 May 2003 Casablanca bombings.
• 7 Oct. 2003: NATO announces it will deploy more troops in Afghanistan, and for the first time deploy them outside Kabul. The action appears to Afghans as the spreading and lengthening of the Western occupation of their country.
• 26-27 Oct. 2003: On 26 Oct., rockets hit Baghdad's Al-Rashid Hotel - headquarters of the U.S. occupation authority - killing U.S. soldier and wounding seventeen people. On 27 oct. the headquarters of teh International Committee of the Red Cross and four Baghdad police stations are car-bombed in a period of forty-five minutes. A fifth police station is spare when the driver of another vehicle is shot. The attacks, which kill thirty-five and wound 224, are attributed to foreign mujahideen.
• 9 Nov. 2003: Al Muhaya residential compound in Riyadh is bombed; eighteen are killed and more than two hundred wounded. Nearly all casualties are expatriate Muslims. Al Qaeda issues a statement denying responsibility for the attack.
• 12 Nov. 2003: The headquarters of the Italian military police in Nasariyah, Iraq, is attacked with a truck bomb. Eighteen Italian military personnel and eleven Iraqis are killed. More than a hundred people are wounded.
• 15 Nov. 2003: Two Jewish synagogues in Istanbul are attacked by suicide car bombs; twenty-three people are killed and 303 are wounded.
• 20 Nov. 2003: The UK Consulate and HSBC Bank building in Istanbul are attacked with suicide car bombs, killing twenty-seven people and wounding at least 450. In Iraq, a remotely detonated bomb destroys a Polish military vehicle but causes no casualties; earlier, on 6 Nov., a Polish officer was killed by insurgents.
• 30 Nov. 2003: Insurgents kill seven Spanish intelligence officers near Baghdad and two Japanese diplomats in Tikrit. Another Spanish intelligence officer was killed in Baghdad on 9 Oct. 2003. In March 2003, an al Qaeda associate had warned Spain not to go to Iraq. "The wound of the occupation of Andalusia (Spain) has not healed." Ahmed Rafat wrote, "And the decision of your government, which represents the old crusaders, to support the new crusade of U.S. Protestants is a real threat to the safety of every Spaniard..."
• 5 Dec. 2003: A female Chechen suicide bomber detonates herself on an intercity commuter train in Russia's Stavropol region near Chechnya. At least forty-two people are killed, and more than one hundred wounded.
• 14 and 25 Dec. 2003: Pakistan president Musharraf survives two attempted assassinations near Islamabad. On 14 December a mine is detonated along his travel route; on 25 Dec. his convoy is hit by two suicide car bombs.
• 27 Dec. 2003: In Karbala, Iraq, Islamist fighters kill four Bulgarian soldiers and two Thai soldiers.
• 27-28 January 2004: Suicide car bombs in Kabul on successive days kill a Canadian and a UK soldier; three Canadian and four UK soldiers are wounded.
• 1 Feb. 2004: In Iraq, Islamist insurgents detonate themselves in the Irbil headquarters of the two main Kurdish political parties killing 110 and wounding almost 250
• 6 Feb. 2004: A Chechen suicide bomber detonates himself on the Moscow subway, killing thirty-nine people and wounding 134.
• 11 March 2004: In Madrid, al Qaeda detonates ten nearly simultaneous bombs in four packed commuter trains, killing 191 people and wounding more than twelve hundred. When claiming responsibility for the attack, al Qaeda described the operation as "part of a settlement of old accounts with Crusader Spain, the ally of the United States in its war against Islam." Several days later, the conservative Spanish government is defeated in a general election, and the new socialist prime minister announces he will withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.
• 15 March 2004: Iraqi mujahideen kill four Southern Baptist missionaries near Mosul, in northern Iraq. The attack brought to eight the number of Southern Baptist missionaries killed by Islamists around the world since 2003.
• 22 March 2004: Israel assassinates wheelchair-bound Hamas leader Shaykh Ahmed Yasin as he leaves the mosque after praers. Yasin is a loss to Hamas and the Islamist movement generally, but his status as martyr will increase recruits for Islamist groups worldwide. The United States enhances the benefit derived by Islamists from Yasin's murder by vetoing a UN resolution censuring the Israeli attack and reasserting Israel's "right to defend herself from terror."
• 28-31 march 2004: Multiple bombs are detonated by Islamist fighters in Uzbek capital Tashkent over three days. The bombings and subsequent gunfights result in the death of thirty-three Islamists, seven of whom are women. Fourteen Uzbeks - including ten policemen - are killed and thirty-five are wounded. The Uzbek government suspects that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was responsible for the attacks.

*Between 2002 and 2004, almost 3,500 people died in worldwide terrorist attacks, and almost 10,000 were wounded