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EARLY HISTORY OF AL-QA'IDA

ABSTRACT Although the broad outlines of al-Qa'ida's story are well known, less attention has been paid to its early development and evolution. How and why did al-Qa'ida leaders latch on to the United States as a primary adversary? What motivated Usama bin Laden to form al-Qa'ida in the first place? Did this motivation change over time? This article utilizes a series of recently discovered al-Qa'ida documents – such as al-Jihad magazine financed by Usama bin Laden during the 1980s, internal memos written in the early 1990s and captured by the US military in Afghanistan, and autobiographical accounts written since 2001 by former Afghan Arab fighters – to deepen our understanding of a clandestine organization that has caused havoc for the past two decades.