The 5 ages of Al Qaeda 14, September 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Terrorism.Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Bukner diagram, jason burke, rumsfeld, Terrorism, The Guardian
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…is an excellent pictorial article in the Guardian co-authored by the insightful Jason Burke who is, as far as I am concerned, far and away the world’s leading expert on Al Qaeda. His book ‘Al Qaeda – the true story of radical Islam‘ was as groundbreaking on its release as it is today still essential for anyone wanting to understand what’s what with the amorphous phenomenon that came to be called Al Qaeda.
Burke moves away from the notion that Al Qaeda is or was some Machiavellian, secret, super-sleuth like terrorist organization (a la Rumsfeld’s hideous ‘bunker complex diagram‘ [a shocking bald-faced lie of immense proportions]) to describe how it evolved from the resistance in post-Soviet Afghanistan and resembles an ideology more than an organization. Al Qaeda means, after all, the base; as in the place that people were sent to to join in the anti-Soviet jihad: “go to Peshwar, to the base, to join the fighting” was, perhaps how the conversations went. I wonder, therefore, what we’d all be talking about today if instead of recruits being told to ‘go to the base‘ they were instead told ‘ithab ila bayt Omar‘…would we all be discussing this devilish terrorist group called Omar’s House?
The Swiss, Qatar and Neutrality 14, September 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.Tags: Egypt Daily News, Neutrality, Qatar, Swiss
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…was published in the Egypt Daily News…do go have a read.
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