In early 2017, ISIL controlled approximately 45,377 square kilometers (17,520 square miles) of territory in Iraq and Syria and 7,323 km2 of territory elsewhere, for a total of 52,700 square kilometres (20,300 sq mi).

The ISIL-related terrorist attacks in Turkey refers to a series of attacks and clashes between Turkey and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as part of the spillover of the Syrian Civil War.

New diplomatic relations established in November 2006, were heralded as the beginning of an era of close cooperation between Iraq and Syria. Both countries fought against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In the Syrian Civil War, Iraqi volunteers have been fighting in Syria alongside the Syrian Army.

Right: Peshmerga special forces gathered near Syria. Middle: An American F/A-18C Hornet aboard USS George H.W. Bush prior to the launch of operations over Iraq. as of October 18, 2019….International military intervention against ISIL.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (became the Islamic State of Iraq, which later seceded from al-Qaeda and became ISIL) Al-Qaeda in the Lands Beyond the Sahel (inactive since 2015) Ansar al-Islam (majority merged with ISIL in 2014)

Bin Laden was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim. From 1968 to 1976, he attended the elite secular Al-Thager Model School. He studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University.

Al-Qaeda’s name means “the base.” It was started in the 1980s by volunteers in Afghanistan, a Muslim nation that had been invaded by Soviet forces. Muslims were angry that a non-Muslim country had soldiers on Muslim soil. Bin Laden and other Arabs came to Afghanistan to help fight the Soviets.

The US stated that the intent was to remove “a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world.” For the invasion of Iraq the rationale was “the United States …

The Pakistani official informed U.S. intelligence that bin Laden had been located by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI in 2006, and held under house arrest near Pakistani intelligence and military centers ever since.

At 8:46 a.m., five hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the northern facade of the World Trade Center’s North Tower (1 WTC). At 9:03, another five hijackers crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the southern facade of the South Tower (2 WTC).

American Airlines Flight 77

On September 11, 2001, the aircraft flying this route—a Boeing 757-223—was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists. The hijackers crashed the plane into the Pentagon on purpose. The crash was part of the September 11 attacks.

George Bergstrom