Deep into the Base of The Base ( AL-QA’
IDA)
Bari Atwan’s
book “The secret
history of Al-Qa’ida” is purely based on his years of observation and his personal visit to the Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora caves in 1996. The book is certainly a significant contribution to the emergent body of literature on the Al-Qaeda. Atwan makes clear at the opening of the book that he is not trying to justify the “Jihadist” project but purely setting out all its aspects, including inspiring factors at play, so that the phenomenon can be properly understood. It provides some details that were not recorded earlier and it offers an Arab outlook of Al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden. Osama claims that he embarked on his ‘ Jihad’ because the West was in his observation inflicting inestimable harm on Muslims all over the world. The Al-Qaeda leader claims that his rage was triggered by the televised images of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The United States became willy-nilly the target of his hatred since it backed the Zionist state. Further down to the line, Osama was to add to his litany of grievances and tack on the U.S
military presence in Saudi Arabia during and after the 1991 Gulf War; the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands; the oppression of the Palestinians; and, the military occupation of Iraq. But neither Osama nor anyone else has been able to explain how the “Salafi Jihad” against innocent civilians all over the globe can be the solution to this existential problem.
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