Terrorism and Statecraft: Al-Qaeda and Western Covert Operations after the Cold War

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

A chapter in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, 2006, pp 149-188 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Al-Qaeda is conventionally portrayed as a monolithic, hierarchical organization whose activities – coordinated by the network's leader Osama bin Laden – are the source of international terrorism today. Al-Qaeda is considered a radical tendency within the broader Islamist Salafi movement, legitimizing its terrorist operations as a global Islamist jihad against Western civilization. Al-Qaeda's terrorist activity today is considered, “blowback” from long finished CIA and western covert operations in Afghanistan. The conventional wisdom is demonstrably false. After the Cold War, Western connections with al-Qaeda proliferated around the world, challenging mainstream conceptions of al-Qaeda's identity. Western covert operations and military – intelligence connections in strategic regions show that “al-Qaeda” is a network whose raison d’etre and modus operandi are inextricably embedded in a disturbing conglomerate of international Western diplomatic, financial, military and intelligence policies today. US, British, and Western power routinely manipulates al-Qaeda through a complex network of state-regional and human nodes. Such manipulation extended directly to the 9-11 hijackers, and thus to the events of 9-11 itself.11This paper advances an original argument based partially on research in Ahmed (2005), supplemented here with significant new data and analysis. Also see Ahmed (2002).

Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rpeczz:s0161-7230(06)23005-0

DOI: 10.1016/S0161-7230(06)23005-0

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