Philip Brown has an interesting article about the birth of Al Qaeda that started me thinking. Philip uses the date of August 11, 1988 as the date for his chart; however, the book I just read by CNN’s terrorism expert Peter Bergen called “The Osama bin Laden I Know” outlines the dates for the formation of the Al Qaeda network, as excerpted on TMPcafe.com:

• August 11, 1988: bin Laden and Mohamed Loay Bayazid, or Abu Rida, meet to discuss a new military group for Jihad.
• August 18, 1988: Three-day meeting at the home of bin Laden established an advisory council and outlined the requirements for joining and the oath of allegiance. Friday night, August 19, the meeting of the Advisory Countil began at sunset. bin Laden notes that the items on the agenda were “complaints” and mismanagement of bin Laden’s previous organization the Services office.
• August 20, Saturday morning, the Advisory Council met to begin to outline the work of the group.
• September 10, 1988 – work of the group commences.

So what date marks the birth of Al Qaeda? The day it was discussed, the day the Advisory Council met or the day the actual work began? There was evidently no signing of any kind of official agreement, and the fact that the attacks on the US were carried out within a day of the September 10 anniversary makes me think that this is the true beginning of Al Qaeda.

Using a noon chart on September 10, 1988, we have a very interesting chart.