The definitive work on Al Qaeda, this book is based on five years of research, extensive interviews with its members and field research in Al Qaeda-supported conflict zones around the globe. The book sheds light on Al Qaeda’s financial infrastructure and how the organization trains combat soldiers and vanguard fighters for multiple guerrilla, terrorist and semiconventional campaigns in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caucasus and the Balkans. In addition, Rohan Gunaratna investigates the clandestine Al Qaeda operational network in the West. Gunaratna reveals: How the charismatic fanatic Osama Bin Laden provides much of the brain power and most of the inspiration behind Al Qaeda; How Osama Bin Laden had his mentor and Al Qaeda founder, "Azzam", assassinated in order to takeover the organization and how other Al Qaeda officers who stood in his way were murdered; How Al Qaeda planned to destroy the British Parliament on 11 September and to use nerve gas on the European Parliament; How the Iran-Hezbollah-Al Qaeda link provided the knowledge required to conduct coordinated, simultaneous attacks on multiple targets, including failed plans to destroy Los Angeles International Airport, USS The Sullivans, the Radisson Hotel in Jordan and 11 U.S. commercial airliners over the Pacific Ocean; That one-fifth of international Islamic charities and NGOs are infiltrated by Al Qaeda; How the U.S. response is effective militarily in the short-term but insufficient to counter Al Qaeda’s ideology and strategy in the long-term; Finally, Gunaratna shows that for Al Qaeda to be destroyed or seriously weakened there needs to be a multipronged, multiagency and multinational response by the international community.
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