Existing comment:
1980: Osama bin Laden travels to Afghanistan to help recruit fighters and finance the struggle against Soviet occupation.
1989: In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama bin Laden and other militant Islamists found al Queda, which means "the base."
1991: The leadership of al Qaeda, including bin Laden, moves to the Sudan, sets up a network of businesses as well as training camps for terrorists, and remains there for five years before returning to Afghanistan.
February 26, 1993: Terrorists with ties to al Qaeda detonate a truck bomb in a parking garage under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000.
August 1996: From his camp in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden issues a fatwah -- a ruling by an Islamic leader entitled "Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula." The two holy mosques are in the cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
August 1998: Al Qaeda-trained terrorists detonate bombs at the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, the eighth anniversary of the arrival of US troops in Saudi Arabia. The attacks kill 224 people and injury about 5,000.
On August 29, the US Navy launches an unsuccessful cruise missile attack against Osama bin Laden. |