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The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda (Paperback)
Loot Price: R774
Discovery Miles 7 740
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The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda (Paperback)
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Total price: R794
Discovery Miles: 7 940
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In this concise and fascinating book, Fawaz A. Gerges argues that
Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive
largely by the self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to
spawn. In The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda, Gerges, a public
intellectual known widely for his expertise on radical ideologies,
including jihadism, argues that the Western powers have become
mired in a "terrorism narrative, " stemming from the mistaken
belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a
crippled al-Qaeda. To explain why al-Qaeda is no longer a threat,
he provides a briskly written history of the organization, showing
its emergence from the disintegrating local jihadist movements of
the mid-1990s-not just the Afghan resistance of the 1980s, as many
believe-in "a desperate effort to rescue a sinking ship by altering
its course. " During this period, Gerges interviewed many jihadis,
gaining a first-hand view of the movement that bin Laden tried to
reshape by internationalizing it. Gerges reveals that transnational
jihad has attracted but a small minority within the Arab world and
possesses no viable social and popular base. Furthermore, he shows
that the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a major
miscalculation-no "river " of fighters flooded from Arab countries
to defend al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as bin Laden expected. The
democratic revolutions that swept the Middle East in early 2011
show that al-Qaeda today is a non-entity which exercises no
influence over Arabs' political life. Gerges shows that there is a
link between the new phenomenon of homegrown extremism in Western
societies and the war on terror, particularly in
Afghanistan-Pakistan, and that homegrown terror exposes the
structural weakness, not strength, of bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Gerges
concludes that the movement has splintered into feuding factions,
neutralizing itself more effectively than any Predator drone.
Forceful, incisive, and written with extensive inside knowledge,
this book will alter the debate on global terrorism.
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