What are the splinter groups associated with Al Qaeda?

Question

Which terrorist groups have known links with Al Qaeda?

Answer 1

Check the State Department list of terrorist groups. It won't answer your question directly, but groups known as al-Qaida sympathizers are there.

Answer 2

All the fundamentalist islamic Jihad group. However, i'd like to point that Al Qaeda is not one group but a collection of fundamentalist groups.

Answer 3

The CIA. They created Al Qaeda (Al CIA-duh).

Osama Bin Laden was one of their employees.

Answer 4

It is like the ganesh mandals in maharashtra- india. You will find one in every street corner. no one knows how many. so is al quaida. where ever muslims are there alquaida is also there. They themselves do not know how many

Answer 5

if you want hahahaha what a stupid question

Answer 6

Unlike David W's retarded, non-factaully based, propagandized bullshit answer, I will try explain a few things and give you a few groups to research. I apologize for the length, but I think everyone should understand what al-Qa'ida actually is and is not.

The following paragraphs are a portion of a paper that I have written discussing that what we (non-Muslims) face today is not a global war on terror but rather a global Islamic insurgency.

Islamic extremist have been active since the 1920s and the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt by Hassan al-Bana. Several Islamic political parties and extremists have tried numerous times throughout the last 80 years to harness an ideology that would appeal to the majority of Muslims allowing for the creation of an “ideal” Muslim society. For the most part they have failed miserably, largely due to regional governments outlawing opposition groups and crushing insurgencies which targeted different regimes. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979 would spark the evolution of the global Islamic insurgency we face today. In defeating the Soviet Union, the mujahideen gained notoriety and their mystique grew exponentially, and out of the ashes of the Afghan-jihad battleground al-Qa’ida was born.

It was al-Qa’ida’s leadership, mainly UBL, which realized early on that in order to achieve success Muslim masses must be informed and mobilized in a global fight. Therefore, they declared war on infidels across the globe. Two powerful statements demonstrate commander’s intent when analyzing what al-Qa’ida stands for and what they offer to a host of Islamic extremist organizations. The first was made in August 1996, entitled the “Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula.” (1) It was a call to arms for all Muslims and a declaration of war against the U.S., telling Saudis specifically they had a “moral right” to attack the Americans stationed on the Arabian Peninsula. (2) The second was made in February 1998 entitled, “Declaration of War by Usama bin Laden, together with leaders of the World Islamic Front for the Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders.” (3) The text of the declaration was faxed to a London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, and was signed by UBL; Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad; Abu-Yasir Rifa’i Ahmad Taha, a leader of Gama’a Islamiyya (IG); Sheikh Mir Hamzah, a leader with Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan; and Fazlul Rahman, emir of a Bangladeshi Jihad movement. The signatories displayed the growing strength of the international brotherhood UBL was drawing together. The fatwa, issued just six months before the devastating East Africa embassy bombings, was seen as establishing a legal precedent for attacking even civilians in the effort to kill Americans. It was a clear declaration of war against Americans everywhere, as well as allies of the U.S. Al-Qa’ida lead by UBL was acting as the grand facilitator and organizer to help bring many of the world’s radical Islamic organizations under one umbrella (al-Qa’ida) and focus them on achieving common goals.

In discussing al-Qa'ida metamorphosis, it is essential to understand that what is seen today as a decentralized movement working and cooperating with other organizations is not a new phenomenon. In fact, this is a misinterpretation that is derived from our conceptual model of al-Qa'ida as it existed in Afghanistan with its bureaucratic and hierarchical nature in 2001. However, by studying al-Qa'ida manuals, its original by-laws, and writings from its key leaders and ideologues, al-Qa'ida was originally designed to function in a manner representative of its name – variously translated as "the base of operation," "foundation," "precept," or "method." Al-Qa'ida's by-laws outline four general goals central to the organization:

- Spread the feeling of Jihad throughout the Muslim nation.

- Prepare and qualify the needed personnel for the Muslim world by training and practical fighting participation.

- Support, aid and help the Jihad movements around the world as possible.

- Coordinate among the Jihad movements around the Islamic world in order to create a united global jihad movement. (4)

In other words, the concept of al-Qa'ida was to have a central organization managed by a core leadership loyal to Usama bin Laden (UBL) while inspiring like-minded individuals and organizations throughout the world to unite as a global front against a perceived common enemy, the U.S., Israel and the West, hence UBL's February 1998 declaration. (5) At the time of this statement, however, the intelligence community viewed al-Qa'ida fatwas and proclamations merely as propaganda and considered the threat to U.S. interests as minimal except in the Arab Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Following 9/11, leading analysts and policy makers properly interpreted the fatwas as an al-Qa'ida declaration of war on the U.S., creating a targeting effort against al-Qa'ida as an entity with a top-down hierarchical structure that could be defeated in much the same way as a nation's army. In late 2001, targeting efforts against al-Qa'ida were direct because there was a distinct and clear center-of-gravity to the organization and its safehaven in Afghanistan. The organization had established a hierarchical structure maintaining training camps and liaisons with other terrorist organizations training in the country such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) (6) and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM). (7) Upon destruction of this safehaven by U.S. forces, UBL and the al-Qa'ida organization was forced to re-shape their unitary and lethargic organization into a leaner, more diffuse network, with greater autonomy among local leaders and the desire to continue the global jihad. Therefore, the organization was forced to return to its original design morphing into a less powerful, but more resilient enemy harder to identify and define, cooperating with individuals and networks from several other jihadist/terrorist organizations. (8)

Although U.S. efforts have since denied extremists a stable safe-haven and captured numerous senior leaders within al-Qa'ida, attacks have continued and each successive one has been harder to attribute to al-Qa'ida, yet there have been obvious signs of involvement from either al-Qa'ida or one of its affiliates. Examples of such attacks include those in Djerba, Tunisia (Apr 02), Bali, Indonesia (Oct 02), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Casablanca, Morocco (May 03), Istanbul, Turkey (Nov 03), Madrid (Mar 04), London (Jul 05). (9) Following these attacks, there have been numerous allegations of what group was actually responsible and whether or not al-Qa'ida leadership provided direction and support. There has also been frustration and failure to understand why so many different extremists previously thought to be associated with individual groups have worked together, while providing logistical support and facilitation to each other. This has given way to the current dilemma faced by the intelligence community, decision and policy makers, and the U.S. Government in general; the lack of a true definition for al-Qa'ida, its affiliates, its associates, it sympathizers and its appeal.

I hope this helps