The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda
Author: Fawaz A. Gerges
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 2011-09-14
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 0199790655
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe author re-evaluates the threat posed by Al-Qaeda following a decade of war.
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Revolt Against Al-Qa'ida
Author: Howard Clark
Publisher: Light of New Orleans Publishing
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780982776704
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe failure of classic counterterrorism tactics to defeat al-Qa'ida is discussed thoroughly in this strategic proposition. Redefining al-Qa'ida as a media organization filled with Internet-savvy inciters, rather than an entity that is susceptible to police and military force, it suggests a calculated policy change for governments, partner nations, and Muslim communities. The real-world examples here show how these organizations can relentlessly exploit al-Qa'ida’s critical vulnerability--its violent ideology--to effectively destroy its ability to attract Muslims to its cause. This book also shows how media and web campaigns can inspire Muslim communities to vigilance and even active resistance against al-Qa'ida’s recruitment efforts, as well as delivering cutting-edge recommendations to drown out the organization’s propaganda.
The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden
Author: Peter L. Bergen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2021-08-03
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 1982170522
DOWNLOAD EBOOKProvides a reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America's long wars with al-Qaeda and its descendants, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive
Unholy Terror
Author: John R. Schindler
Publisher:
Published:
Total Pages: 380
ISBN-13: 9781616739645
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAl-Qa’ida: in the 80s they were in Afghanistan, supported by America and fighting the Russians. In the new century they have metastasized throughout the world’s geopolitical body. Where were they in the 90s? Unholy Terror provides the answer, with all its terrifying implications for our world today. This book provides the missing piece in the puzzle of al-Qa’ida’s transformation from an isolated fighting force into a lethal global threat: the Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995. John R. Schindler reveals the unexamined role that radical Islam played in that terrible conflict--and the ill-considered contributions of American policy to al-Qa’ida’s growth. His book explores a truth long hidden from view: that, like Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia in the 1990s became a training ground for the mujahidin. Unholy Terror at last exposes the shocking story of how bin Laden successfully exploited the Bosnian conflict for his own ends--and of how the U. S. Government gave substantial support to his unholy warriors, leading to blowback of epic proportions.
The Terror Years
Author: Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2016-08-23
Total Pages: 466
ISBN-13: 0385352077
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. Here, in ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker, he recalls the path that terror in the Middle East has taken, from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS. The Terror Years draws on several articles he wrote while researching The Looming Tower, as well as many that he’s written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread. They include a portrait of the “man behind bin Laden,” Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the tumultuous Egypt he helped spawn; an indelible impression of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of silence under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, at the time compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; the 2006–11 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, a study in the disparate value of human lives. Other chapters examine al-Qaeda as it forms a master plan for its future, experiences a rebellion from within the organization, and spins off a growing web of worldwide terror. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and the head of the intelligence community. The book ends with a devastating piece about the capture and slaying by ISIS of four American journalists and aid workers, and our government’s failed response. On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, The Terror Years is at once a unifying recollection of the roots of contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, a study of how it has grown and metastasized, and, in the scary and moving epilogue, a cautionary tale of where terrorism might take us yet.
Joining Al-Qaeda
Author: Peter R. Neumann
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 82
ISBN-13: 0415547318
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis paper explains the processes whereby European Muslims are recruited into the Islamist militant movement. It reveals that although overt recruitment has been driven underground, prisons and other 'places of vulnerability' are increasingly important alternatives.
The Management of Savagery
Author: Max Blumenthal
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2019-04-02
Total Pages: 401
ISBN-13: 1788732286
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe rise of international jihad and Western ultra-nationalism In the Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind America’s dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of America’s imperial designs. Washington’s secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. In doing so, it created fertile ground for the Islamic State and brought foreign conflicts home to American soil. These failed wars abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the inevitable consequence of neoconservative imperialism in the post–Cold War age. Trump’s dealings in the Middle East are likely only to exacerbate the situation.
Ghost Wars
Author: Steve Coll
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2005-03-03
Total Pages: 736
ISBN-13: 0141935790
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.
Al-Qaeda
Author: Jason Burke
Publisher: ePenguin
Published: 2007-08-30
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 9780141031361
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTo most in the West, 'al-Qaeda' is seen as a byword for terror: a deadly, highly organised fanatical group masterminded by Osama bin Laden. But does this tell the whole truth? Prize-winning journalist Jason Burke has spent a decade reporting from the heart of the Middle East and gaining unprecedented access to the world of radical Islam. Now, drawing on his frontline experience of recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan, on secret documents and astonishing interviews with intelligence officers, militants, mujahideen commanders and bin Laden's associates, he reveals the full story of al-Qaeda - and demolishes the myths that underpin the 'war on terror'. Burke demonstrates that in fact 'al-Qaeda' is merely a convenient label applied by the West to a far broader - and thus more dangerous - phenomenon of Islamic militancy, and shows how eradicating a single figure or group will do nothing to combat terrorism. Only by understanding the true, complex nature of al-Qaeda, he argues, can we address the real issues surrounding our security today.
The Secret History of al Qaeda
Author: Abdel Bari Atwan
Publisher: Saqi
Published: 2012-07-15
Total Pages: 253
ISBN-13: 0863568432
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOver the last ten years, journalist and al-Qa'ida expert Abdel Bari Atwan has cultivated uniquely well-placed sources and amassed a wealth of information about al-Qa'ida's origins, masterminds and plans for the future. Atwan reveals how al-Qa'ida's radical departure from the classic terrorist/guerrilla blueprint has enabled it to outpace less adaptable efforts to neutralize it. The fanaticism of its fighters, and their willingness to kill and be killed, are matched by the leadership's opportunistic recruitment strategies and sophisticated understanding of psychology, media, and new technology - including the use of the internet for training, support, and communications. Atwan shows that far from committing acts of violence randomly and indiscriminately, al-Qa'ida attacks targets according to a decisive design underwritten by unwavering patience. He also argues that events in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are watershed moments in the group's evolution that are making it more dangerous by the day, as it refines and appropriates the concept of jihad and makes the suicide bomber a permanent feature of a global holy war. While Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remain al-Qa'ida's figureheads, Atwan identifies a new kind of leader made possible by its horizontal chain of command, epitomized by the brutal Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and the bombers of London, Madrid, Amman, Bali, and elsewhere. Scholarly, analytical, objective, it is also intensely readable, being by far the best book on the subject.' -- Tony Benn 'This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding our increasingly scary world.' -- Gavin Esler 'What shines out ... is a profound desire to investigate and reveal the truth. Intelligent and informative.' -- Jason Burke, Guardian 'Deeply researched, well reported and full of interesting and surprising analyses. It demands to be read.' -- Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc
