AL-QAEDA IN ARABIAN PENINSULA

Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula

Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula

Introduction

Al-Qaeda is one of the most famous terrorist organizations which took its strong roots in Arabian Peninsula. From the Arabian Peninsula, this terrorist group has strengthened itself and thus spread in the world with its demonic and orthodox ideology.

Arabian Peninsula

The Arabian Peninsula is a geographical area located in the south west of the continent of Asia at the confluence of Asia with Africa.

It includes the following countries

Saudi Arabia : 2,149,690 km Yemen : 555.000 km Oman : 309 000 km Jordan : 89.287 km UAE : 83,600 km Kuwait : 17 820 km Qatar : 11 437 km Bahrain : 665 km ( Island )

It covers a total area 3,216,551 square kilometers which include mostly deserts. Rain falls in areas such as the temperature could rise by up to 54 degrees Celsius in some cases. The region is economically important for the abundance wells of oil in it.

In 2009 the population of the Arabian Peninsula was about 75,333,897 people. It includes approximately 18,576,076 of foreign residents. The rate of population increase up to three million people a year.

Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 had put the Kingdom and its ruling House of Saud at risk. The world's most valuable oil fields were within easy striking distance of Iraqi forces in Kuwait, and Saddam's call to pan-Arab/Islamism could potentially rally internal dissent.

In the face of a seemingly massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's own forces were well armed but far outnumbered. Bin Laden offered the services of his mujahideen to King Fahd to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi army. The Saudi monarch refused bin Laden's offer, opting instead to allow U.S. and allied forces to deploy troops into Saudi territory

The Motivation and Ideology

Al Qaeda justifies their use of violence in a couple of ways. One is denying that their victims are truly innocent, because the victims are somehow complicit in the supposed mistreatment of Muslims. Indeed, these groups tend to see Western policy in the Middle East as part of a grand conspiracy to undermine Islam that started with the Crusades 1,000 years ago. They also see the state of Israel as the embodiment of the conspiracy, because it occupies land in the heart of the Muslim world and because it was able to defeat Arab armies only because of assistance given to it by the United States, which now is the leading state in the West.

Islamist terror groups also attempt to justify their use of violence through the concept of jihad. Jihad is also used to justify other forms of violence, such as insurgency and interstate war-for example, the Ottoman Empire declared jihad when it entered World War I.

The traditional consensus has been that jihad can only be declared with the approval of religious authorities, but Islam does not have a unified hierarchy like the Roman Catholic ...