1990's and 2000's Terrorism
1993 World Trade Center Attack
On April 26th, 1993, two men drove into the underground parking garage in a van with a bomb. The bomb weighed about 1,200 lbs and it created a hole that was pretty big. It killed 6 people and injured another 1,042, most of which occurred after the bomb went off. The goal was to get the bomb to go off and make the bottom of the building facing the North tower collapse so the whole South tower falls into the North tower and destroys them both. This plot failed terribly.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing
Picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/WTC_1993_ATF_Commons.jpg
1995 OKC Bombing
On April 19, 1995, Tim McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck outside of a federal building and lit 2 timed fuses. He left and when the bomb blew up, it damaged or destroyed over 300 buildings. Tim had help from two other men, and he was sentenced to death on June 11, 2001, 3 months before the 9/11 attacks.
Source: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing
Rise of bin Laden
Osama bin Laden was a terrorist in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead of being like his siblings, he stayed near home and married young. He joined the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood like most men his age, and their ideas appealed to him greatly. He made his own group, al-Qaida, or the base, in 1988, and he was a world-renowned terrorist throughout the 1990's and early 2000's before his death in 2011.
Source: http://www.history.com/topics/osama-bin-laden
Picture: http://t1.gstatic.com/imagesq=tbn:ANd9GcTiffXKLQmvNDF4rxFrZn8UAKaLY9YnJ31hclkPZMXu3uHiyL1d8gb5AUs
War in Afghanistan
The war in Afghanistan mainly involved the U.S. because the Soviet Union was there. In 1979, Daud Khan overthrew the monarchy government there. Khan was communist, so he had the Soviet Union's ideals in mind. The U.S. was interested because they wanted to see if Russia could successfully set up a communist government that was loyal to them, so they funded insurgent forces to fight Russia.
Source: http://terrorism.about.com/od/warinafghanistan/ss/AfghanistanWar_2.htm
Rise of ISIS
The group began in 2004 as al Qaeda in Iraq, before rebranding as ISIS two years later. It was an ally of, and had similarities with, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda: both were radical anti-Western militant groups devoted to establishing an independent Islamic state in the region. But ISIS, unlike al Qaeda, which disowned the group in early 2014, has proven to be more brutal and more effective at controlling territory it has seized. The group has already been seen burning victims alive and committing mass beheadings. The U.S. is currently fighting ISIS with a sustained bombing campaign, but no troops will fight on foreign soil.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/14/world/isis-everything-you-need-to-know/