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One of Al Jazeera's first bureaus was in Baghdad. For years, the United States and Europe had imposed sanctions on Iraq, and relations were consistently hitting new lows. On December 16, 1998, "Operation Desert Fox" was launched. US and British aircrafts and ships bombed Iraq for four consecutive days. For the world's media, Al Jazeera was a major source of video footage and information about what was happening, and that was one of Al Jazeera’s first introductions to a non-Arab audience.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban government had given permission for three international media organisations to open bureaus in the capital. Al Jazeera was one of them. The decision to open the Kabul bureau in May 1999 was a significant step forward for the international role that Al Jazeera would play in the years to come.

In Palestine, the Second Intifada erupted following the visit of a former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to Al Aqsa Mosque on September 28, 2000.

Clashes began to spread throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel began assassinating Palestinian leaders, and launching air and ground attacks on Palestinian cities, including missile strikes against Palestinian Authority offices in Ramallah on October 12.

Al Jazeera was the channel of record on the crisis for the next four years.

On November 11, 2004, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat succumbed to a mystery illness, amidst a campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to assassinate Palestinian leaders of all political backgrounds. His body was transported back home from France, where he was being treated, and he was buried in Palestine.

About a year later, on August 15, 2005, Sharon implemented his plan to withdraw from Gaza, while retaining control of the occupied territory from sea, air and land.

US officials claimed that Al Jazeera was wrong to broadcast the Bin Laden tapes, and accused Al Jazeera of endangering the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Before seizing full control of Kabul, US forces shelled Al Jazeera’s Kabul bureau on November 13, 2001.

Al Jazeera’s Kabul Bureau Chief Tayseer Allouni, a Spanish citizen of Syrian descent, was evacuated from Afghanistan.

On a visit to see his family in Grenada, Spain, in September 2003, he was arrested by Spanish police and sentenced to seven years imprisonment on 26 September 2005. Al Jazeera launched a campaign to fight for freedom of the press, and the unfettered right to interview newsmakers and access sources of information.

Allouni was released from jail on October 6, 2006, but served the rest of the term under house arrest.

Upon regaining his freedom, he has taken up residence in Doha since March 11, 2012.

In December 2001, Jordanian security forces detained Al Jazeera correspondent Yasir Abu Hilala for 24 hours. He had been covering a demonstration in support of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the southern town of Ma'an. Security forces also detained another one of Al Jazeera's correspondents in the Amman buruea, Sowsan Abu Hamda, for questioning.

Yasir Abu Hilala went on to become the Jordan bureau chief for Al Jazeera, and later the Managing Director of Al Jazeera Arabic, from July 24, 2014, to May 10, 2018.

In March 2002, Egyptian security forces arrested the Al Jazeera crew covering a pro-Palestine demonstration at Alexandria University. Al Jazeera was the only media organization covering the event.

On May 10, 2002, Bahrain banned Al Jazeera for two years.

In June, the Saudi government accused an Al Jazeera programme of insulting the country's royal family. The channel was banned from covering the pilgrimage to Mecca the following year and was later barred from the country except to cover special events, with special permission.

In November 2002, Kuwait shut down the Al Jazeera bureau again, after the Channel reported that the entire northwestern part of the country was shut down for US-Kuwaiti war exercises.

On March 4, 2003, the New York Stock Exchange banned Al Jazeera's financial correspondents - Ammar Sankary and Ramzy Shibr - who used to report from the floor of NYSE.

Al Jazeera's bureau in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, opened in 2003.

By this time, Al Jazeera had 23 bureaus and about 1,300 employees.

On March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies launched their land invasion of Iraq.

Al Jazeera had crews in all major population centers in Iraq, and went to great lengths to cover the unfolding events.

While other media told people where the rockets were fired from, Al Jazeera was showing where they land.

US forces bombed Al Jazeera's bureau in Baghdad on April 8, 2003, killing war correspondent Tarek Ayoub. Al Jazeera assistant cameraman Zouhair Nadhim, who was on the bureau's roof with Ayyoub, was injured in the blast.

Al Jazeera's former Kabul bureau chief, Tayseer Allouni, had just finished an overnight shift reporting from the rooftop of the building.

Allouni then went to visit friends in the Palestine Hotel, where foreign journalists were based. US forces bombed the hotel, killing José Couso, a Spanish cameraman for Telecinco, and Taras Protsyuk, a Ukranian cameraman working for Reuters.

The following day, US-led forces announced they had occupied Baghdad.

Salah Hassan El-Ejaili was a cameraman for Al Jazeera in Baghdad. On November 3, 2003, he was filming the aftermath of a roadside bomb attack on a US military convoy in Dialah. US forces arrested him, and repeated a popular refrain of US forces and politicians in Afghanistan and Iraq: the false claim that Al Jazeera has advance knowledge of attacks.

After a few days, US forces transferred Salah to Abu Ghraib prison, which was built by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to hold about 13,000 prisoners.

Salah was made to endure horrendous torture in Abu Ghraib, as was one of his colleagues in the Al Jazeera Baghdad bureau, Suheib Badr Darwish, who was arrested on November 18, 2003.

Salah was released a month later, on December 18, 2003. Darwish was released on January 25, 2004.

Salah is party to a lawsuit against the US sub-contractor that was managing Abu Ghraib at the time, CACI Premier Technology, Inc. The lawsuit was still ongoing as of late 2018.

In the first year of US occupation of Iraq, 21 Al Jazeera staffers were arrested. They were all released later without charge, but the continuous stream of run-ins with the new authorities was indicative of the uncomfortable sitation.

The Iraqi Transitional Government Council, created by the United States, ordered a two-week suspension of activities for Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau in September 2003.

In the same month, US forces detained an Al Jazeera crew in Baghdad headed by Atwar Bahjat. (Atwar was one of Iraq's best-known journalists. She left Al Jazeera in February 2006, and was assassinated three weeks later, while reporting in Samarra.)

In his State of the Union Address in January 2004, US President George W Bush referred to Al Jazeera as a source of "hateful propaganda" coming from the Arab world.

Iraq's US-installed interim governing council again prohibited Al Jazeera from covering its activities for a month.

On April 5, 2004, US forces attempted to enter the Iraqi city of Fallujah, but were confronted by fierce resistance and suffered human and material losses. Al Jazeera provided rolling coverage from Fallujah, which was subjected to the wrath of the US military after four American mercenaries working for Blackwater were killed there in March.

Referring to Al Jazeera’s exclusive coverage of the battle, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replied: "I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable."

Verbal attacks by US officials against Al Jazeera escalated. As the quagmire in Iraq broadened, media sources reported on supposed unpublished minutes of a discussion between US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair dated April 16, 2004, where the two allegedly discussed a US air raid on Al Jazeera's headquarters in Doha.

David Blunkett, a former British interior minister, revealed in his memoirs published in October 2006 that, during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he suggested to Blair that the British military should bomb the Al Jazeera television transmitter in Baghdad.

On May 21, 2004, Al Jazeera cameraman Rashid Hamid Wali was killed by US sniper fire in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala as he was filming clashes.

On August 7, 2004, the interim Iraqi government ordered a one-month closure of Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau. The shutdown was extended indefinitely in September, and the bureau was sealed for more than six years. The ban was finally lifted on March 3, 2011.

In 2013, the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission suspended the licenses of Al Jazeera and nine other channels. Al Jazeera continued to work from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the autonomous region located in the northern part of the country.

On April 14, 2016, the CMC withdrew Al Jazeera's work permit in the country for one year. A year later, the ban was lifted, and Al Jazeera resumed work in its Baghdad bureau.

Al Jazeera Media Training Centre was established on February 24, 2004, with the dual mission of providing continual development for Al Jazeera journalists, and training journalists from all across the world. It provides courses in all facets of journalism, media-related technology, the management of news organizations, and public communication. Beginning and mid-career journalists hone their skills with some of the best trainers in the world here.

A decade after its establishment, the center expanded to become the Al Jazeera Media Training Institute. The Institute has an extensive network of strategic partnerships with reputable media institutions and circles - all well-known on a local, regional and international level. The Institute continues to consolidate its relations and partnerships, and build new strategic partnerships with various media schools, in order to create a realistic media environment. The Institute also provides media institutions with consultancies to help them develop their potential and attain their strategic plans.

On April 18, 2005, Al Jazeera held its first International Documentary Film Festival in Doha, headed by film director Abbas Arnaout.

For 11 years, the Festival and annual awards ceremony became a meeting point for filmmakers and innovators worldwide.

The first year focused on Arabic-language made-for-TV productions only. The second year accepted entries from the Arab and non-Arab world. By the third year, documentary feature films (ie, not produced for television) were included, and this continued until the last time the Festival was held: November 26-29, 2015.

In November 2005, an unidentified assasilant attacked Ahmed Mansour, one of Al Jazeera's star talk-show hosts in Egypt.

In April 2006, security forces questioned Hussein Abdul Ghani, the bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Cairo at the time, about Al Jazeera's coverage of bomb blasts in the Sinai peninsula.

On January 28, 2008, Egyptian police detained Al Jazeera journalist Howadya Taha and her documentary crew. Security forces confiscated her tapes and charged her with tarnishing the country's reputation. Taha produced a documentary on the torture of citizens in Egyptian police stations.

The Al Jazeera Center for Studies was founded in 2006 to provide deep research and data to Al Jazeera's journalists, and provide public platforms for the global exchange of ideas.

The Center is home to world-class researchers and authors. The Center hosts ad hoc seminars and background briefings by opinion leaders and decision makers, and publishes policy briefs and analysis throughout the year.

The Center organizes the annual Al Jazeera Forum, bringing politicians, academics and journalists together to debate international affairs.

The University of Pennsylvania's Index ranks the Center in the Top 5 (out of 480) public policy research institutions in the Middle East and North Africa. (The Index is the result of an international survey of over 1,950 scholars, public and private donors, policy makers, and journalists who help rank more than 6,500 think tanks using a set of criteria developed at the University.)

In 2007, Al Jazeera was one of the few media organisations that managed to enter Ogaden, a bitterly disputed region between Somalia and Ethiopia.

Al Jazeera filed five reports on the conditions of the residents of the province, triggering years of tension between Ethiopia and Al Jazeera.

Ten years later, Al Jazeera was proud to open a bureau in Addis Ababa, on September 14, 2017.

Steeped in the belief that strong and vocal media can advance the cause of basic human rights, Al Jazeera established a permanent Human Rights desk within all of its newsrooms on November 1, 2008.

The desk focused attention on violations of civil liberties everywhere, with a special focus on the Arab world.

The Human Rights desks were reorganized and expanded into a Department in 2013. In 2015, the Public Liberties and Human Rights Centre was launched.

The Centre launches campaigns to create awareness of international humanitarian law and prevent the erosion of rights. With a special focus on the freedom of the press, the Centre also champions the cause of ending impunity for crimes against journalists.

All year round, the Center organizes workshops and seminars bringing human rights defenders together from different parts of the world.

The effort has been led by Sami al-Hajj, the only journalist to have been detained and tortured at the US internment camp in Cuba, Guantánamo Bay.

The years 2009/2010 were tough for journalists in Yemen.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh (resigned in 2012, assassinated in 2017) was waging war on Al Qaeda in Yemen, and a rebellion in the northern provice of Saada.

While covering a protest in Abyan, Al Jazeera journalist Fadhl Mubarak was seriously injured by unknown assailants in June 2009.

In March 2010, security forces broke in to Al Jazeera's bureau in Sana'a and confiscated broadcast equipment.

In November 2010, security forces temporarily detained a four-man Al Jazeera crew: Mubarak, Ahmed Shalafi, Sameer al-Nimri and Abdul Ghani Al-Shimairy.

In 2010, Al Jazeera teamed up with WikiLeaks to broadcast a series of programmes exposing the operations of US forces in the Iraq war.

Wikileaks had obtained a trove of 400,000 documents dated from 2004-2009, indicating that torture was sanctioned at the highest levels, that hundreds of Iraqi civilians had been killed at US-managed checkpoints in Iraq, listing violations by a major US mercenary firm, Xe (formerly Blackwater, currently Academi). amongst other abuses.

In April, Al Jazeera had covered the WikiLeaks video footage of a US army helicopter attack in Baghdad in which 12 people died, including two Reuters journalists. 

Some of the papers showed that the United States attempted to keep a death count throughout the war, in contradiction to the famous pronouncement of US Army Gen (ret) Tommy Ray Franks: "We don't do body counts" (March 23, 2002). Franks was Commander of the US Central Command at the time.

Al Jazeera partnered with WikiLeaks to provide an uncensored view of the war. The coverage was condemned by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Years later, the US Army intelligence analyst who leaked the documents, (born Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning), was pardoned from her 35-year jail sentence.

Being the journal of record in the region, Al Jazeera has been on the frontlines in conflict zones since its birth. And its courageous reporters have paid the ultimate price time and again.

Eleven of the Arab world's finest journalists have been killed while reporting for Al Jazeera:

• Iraq: 2
• Libya: 1
• Syria: 7
• Yemen: 1

In Libya, Al Jazeera Arabic cameraman Ali Hassan al-Jaber was killed as he covered fighting near Benghazi on March 12, 2011. The Qatari father of three was 55 years old. He held a master's degree in cinematography from Egypt, and had started his career in 1979. He was the first foreign journalist killed in the Libyan revolution.

In Yemen, Al Jazeera journalist Mubarak Al-Abadi was killed by a mortar shell while covering clashes between pro-government and rebel forces in Al-Jawf province on August 5, 2016.

(See entry on journalists killed while covering Syria's war.)

Despite the high risks and difficulties of covering the wars in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world, Al Jazeera's journalists strive daily to get the facts straight and present solid information and analysis to the world.

By the end of 2018, Al Jazeera was officially banned from more than a third of Arab countries.

In the span of four years, Al Jazeera lost seven brave souls who defied everything to tell the world what was going on in the fog of Syria's war. 

Mohamed Al-Massalma was killed on January 18, 2013, by a sniper. He was a correspondent, covering the fighting in Deraa, in southern Syria.

Hussein Abbas was killed on May 1, 2014. He was a citizen journalist on his way home after covering fighting in the outskirts of Idlib, in northern Syria.

Mohamed Al Qasim was killed on September 10, 2014, in an ambush staged by unidentified assailts, while on his way back from covering the fighting in the outskirts of Idlib.

Mahran Al Deery was killed on December 10, 2014. He was a digital correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, en route to cover clashes in Sheikh Miskeen, a suburb of Deraa.

Mohammed al-Asfar was killed on June 26, 2015. He was a cameraman, and was filming clashes in the Manshiya neighborhood of Deraa.

Zakariya Ibrahim was killed on December 7. He was a cameraman, and he was hit by shrapnel while covering the bombardment of a suburb of Homs, in western Syria.

Ibrahim Al Omar was killed on July 11, 2016. He was a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher killed in a Russian air strike on Termaneen near Idlib.

In September 2013, Al Jazeera announced that it would consider legal recourse to force the Egyptian government to respect the media outlets’ right to work freely in Egypt, and to stop Egypt's prolonged harassment of Al Jazeera journalists and properties.

On April 18, 2014, Al Jazeera sought arbitration with Egypt under a branch of the World Bank known as the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, DC.

According to a 1999 Bilateral Investment Treaty between Egypt and Qatar – which guaranteed fair treatment of investors in each country – Al Jazeera had to wait for six months before formalizing the arbitration process. Al Jazeera waited more one year for the Egyptian government to engage in fruitful discussions.

On January 20, 2016, Al Jazeera officially registered the dispute with the World Bank panel, citing breaches of the Bilateral Investment Treaty. The violations included detention of numerous staff without charge, sentencing others in absentia (including the death sentence of top editor Ibrahim Helal), jamming satellite transmissions, and the compulsory liquidation of Al Jazeera’s offices in Egypt –which had previously suffered attacks by military and para-military gangs supporting the government of Abdel Fattah Sisi since July 2013.

Al Jazeera estimated monetary losses in Egypt of at least $150 million.

On April 5, 2017, Al Jazeera requested “urgent and necessary” provisional measures in the case.

Cases before ICSID tribunals take years to resolve, especially if they are “non-traditional,” such as freedom of expression and human rights.

With passion, creativity, commitment to bringing new voices into the conversation and willingness to take risks, AJ+ grew from a small San Francisco creative shop in 2013 into an international brand, with millions of viewers across the globe.

On September 15, 2014, Al Jazeera formally launched AJ+. Specializing in videos optimized for mobile devices, it quickly shot to the forefront of the social media news revolution.

Today AJ+ produces world-class storytelling in four languages. AJ+ Español launched in 2015, AJ+ Arabi launched in 2016, and AJ+ français launched in 2017.

From March 19-21, 2016, the International Press Institute held its 65th Congress in Doha, in partnership with Al Jazeera.

Under the banner of "Journalism at Risk," IPI members from across the globe exchanged experiences on best practices for journalists to be able to cover events timely, safely and independently.

IPI is a global network of journalists, editors and media executives from nearly 100 countries from across the world and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. It was founded in 1950 to defend media freedom and the free flow of information.

On its 20th birthday (November 2016) Al Jazeera Arabic undertook its biggest shifting of programming in years, with 14 new shows launching on the screen:

1) This Morning (هذا الصباح): A daily morning show.

2) More to the Story (للقصــة بقيــة): A weekly talk show that starts with a 30-minute documentary on a current issue, then a discussion hosted by Fairouz Ziani.

3) Off the Script (خارج النص): Documentary series on the lives of writers and artists that have dared to go against the grain.

4) More Than Meets the Eye (ما خفي أعظم): Chasing leads to open mysteries. Presented by former Gaza correspondent Tamer Misshal.

5) Ground Zero (المسافة صفر): Current affairs documentary series hosted by Salam Hindawi.

6) The Interview (المقابلة): Personal interviews. Now defunct, as the host, Ali Dhufairi (a Saudi citizen), was forced to resign from Al Jazeera at the outset of the Gulf crisis.

7) Entrepreneurs (رواد الأعمال): Documentary series on Arab business pioneers worldwide.

8) Expatriates (مغتربون): Documentary series on influential Arabs abroad.

9) The Traveller (المسافر): Exploring different countries and cultures with Hazem Abu Watfa. 

10) Above Authority (فوق السلطة): Weekly talk show that looks at current affairs with a sarcastic lens. Hosted by Nazih Al-Ahdab.

11) The News Race (سباق الأخبار): Host Mahmoud Morad opens it up for the viewers to vote on the top story of the week, and the top personality of the week.

12) Eye of Al Jazeera (عين الجزيرة): Roundtable discussion with Al Jazeera reporters around the world, hosted by Abdul Qader Ayyad.

13) Scenarios (سيناريوهات): Launched in November 2017, host Mhamed Krichen hosts a discussion laying out different ways current conflicts may run their course over time.

14) Smart Life (حياة ذكية): Launched in May 2016, this tech show focuses on the latest developments in technology, and how they intersect with our lives.

Other changes included the cancellation of Palestine In Focus after a 10-year run, and a total makeover for Al Jazeera's nightly newshour, Al-Hasad (The Day's Harvest). Instead of a traditional one-hour news broadcast covering the events of the day, the show now focuses on the three biggest topics of the day, and devotes about 20 minutes to each.

Almost immediately after the visit of US President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia on May 20, 2017, the region entered a long period of destabilization.

Three Gulf countries banned Al Jazeera's websites on May 24, and Egypt followed suit the next day.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia withdrew the license for Al Jazeera to operate in the country, and on the next day, Jordan followed suit.

On June 9, Saudi officials threatened to cancel the license of any hotel in the kingdom that offered Al Jazeera in its guest rooms.

On June 17, 2017, the main account of Al Jazeera Arabic - which had close to 12 million followers at the time - was suspended for three hours.

Officials in Riyadh demanded that any Saudi nationals who worked for Al Jazeera resign. On June 21, Al Jazeera lost a well-respected talk show host, Ali Dhufairi, amongst other journalists.

On September 13, 2017, Snap Inc. was requested by the Saudi government to block its residents from accessing Al Jazeera on its Snapchat app. Four days later Snapchat complied.

Snap had been in long discussions with Al Jazeera in the run-up to launching Arabic channels in Snapchat Discover, and Al Jazeera had just become available in May of that year. A few months later, a Saudi prince invested $250 million in Snap Inc.