How did the War on Terror impact Al-Qaida in the decade after 9/11? This is the first book to analyse the inner workings of the group through the eyes of its mid-level leaders in Pakistan, who were, in practice, running al-Qaida’s affairs when communications with Osama bin Laden were slow or absent.
The book relies on a large collection of little-known Arabic primary sources about al-Qaida, including the “Abbottabad documents” - the group’s own, internal communications between 2002-2011. Al-Qaida’s performance is assessed in three areas: the war in Afghanistan; the war in Iraq; and international terrorism.
Chapters explain why the group’s contributions to the Afghan war were modest, shows the reasons for Al-Qaida’s inability to influence events in Iraq, and charts its fading ability to organize international terrorist attacks. The Abbottabad documents reveal that Al-Qaida’s demise after 9/11 was not simply the result of effective counterterrorism.
Rather, the group’s organizational weaknesses and the fallibilities of individual leaders played a vital role. The book gives us the first glimpse into the instances where bin Laden’s lack of strategy meant al-Qaida’s mid-level leadership had to grapple with the consequences It also documents the detrimental impact of the relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban.
| Format |
Häftad |
| Omfång |
264 sidor |
| Språk |
Engelska |
| Förlag |
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Utgivningsdatum |
2026-02-19 |
| ISBN |
9780755648573 |
