Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

There are problems. Foremost among them is Gunaratna's charge that Osama bin Laden acquiesced in the killing of his mentor, Sheikh Azzam, in 1989. This claim is worded more boldly on the cover flap: "[Gunaratna reveals] how bin Laden had his mentor and Al Qaeda founder, 'Azzam,' assassinated in order to take over the organization and how other Al Qaeda officers who stood in his way were murdered."

Gunaratna may "reveal" this to readers who haven't heard the rumors, but he doesn't prove it. He simply asserts that there was a falling out between Azzam on one side, and bin Laden and Egyptian members of their group on the other, because Azzam opposed using terror tactics. He claims the Egyptians assassinated Azzam after having "won over Osama to their cause"--that he "sanctioned, if not condoned" the killing. A sample of Gunaratna's biased writing: "All this is of a piece with Osama's exceedingly duplicitous nature."

How's this for evidence of involvement? "[Bin Laden's] cunning was...demonstrated by the fact that he left Pakistan for Saudi Arabia in the year that Azzam died. It has been impossible to pin down when exactly he left, and no sources on this have been forthcoming, but one should not in the least be surprised if it transpires he was not in Pakistan when Azzam was murdered, furnishing himself with a sound alibi and allowing him to distance himself from the act as much as possible."

The only source Gunaratna cites in support of his claims is a statement made by a prisoner a decade later: that bin Laden ordered the assassination because he believed Azzam was aiding the CIA. That's a completely different motive from the one he alleges.

What about those other murders of people who stood in bin Laden's way? More may be described in the book, but this is the only one I've found: "Mustafa Shalabi, who was close to Azzam, was killed on March 1, 1991. Although there is no evidence that Osama ordered his death, it is clear that Shalabi was not with the Egyptians who backed Osama."

No evidence. Gunaratna admits it.

Here's another blurb from the cover flap: "[Gunaratna reveals] how the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui forced Al Qaeda to move forward on the September 11 attacks." This implies that the date was moved up, as others have speculated; but again, there's no hard evidence. All Gunaratna shows is that the hijackers' financial activity picked up in the week after Moussaoui's arrest. That could well have been the case, in a late August time frame, if the attacks were planned all along for about September 11.

There are other problems. Gunaratna states in one chapter that some of the world's intelligence agencies aren't convinced al-Qaida #3 man Muhammad Atef is dead. It may be excusable that in another chapter, he says without qualification that Atef was killed last November. What's not excusable is that he also says Abu Hafs was killed in January. Muhammad Atef and Abu Hafs are or were the same man! [A later note, 8/29/02: A recent news account made clear that a second man, Mafouz Walid, used the same nom de guerre, but was usually differentiated from Atef by calling him "Abu Hafs the Mauritanian." Walid was supposedly killed in January, but it's now claimed he's still alive. Could this name-confusion have influenced the suspicions that Atef is alive?]

Something else: Gunaratna tells us Sudan's President al-Bashir once offered to extradite bin Laden to the U.S. The wording implies this happened in 2001--when bin Laden was nowhere near Sudan. Gunaratna can't mean 2001; he says the U.S. President was Bill Clinton. But the passage is hopelessly unclear.

The book's most interesting claim is that the 9/11 plot was meant to include strikes on the British Houses of Parliament, the Indian Parliament, and a target in Australia. This is based on statements made by a single prisoner, which may or may not be proven true as more facts come to light. Less startling, but new to me: Gunaratna says the men wounded in the capture of Abu Zubaydah included "1 Pakistani and 3 American officers." If he has more details, I wish he'd shared them.

Despite my quibbles, I give the book four stars for its information on names, dates, and terrorist activities in obscure parts of the world.

Well, there is now one thing worth adding. This week's 64 CNN Al Qaeda training tapes have provided visible verification of what Dr. Gunaratna wrote and published last spring, notably including the animal chemical weapons tests.

If one cannot quite handle this data rich volume in toto, at least read the two concluding chapters on Asia and on Al Qaeda's threat and the international response.

For importance, this book rates a 5. For content, it also rates a 5. For editing, only a 3. Net conclusion: 4 plus.

I did think this book had two virtues. The country-by-country survey of al-Qaeda operations gave a very thorough and complex picture of the ways in which al-Qaeda infiltrates and liaises with local groups and causes, while retaining its global ideology and focus. And the reporting is happily free of the America-centric emphasis of so much recent work on al-Qaeda. Although sympathetic to the American position, the author lets al-Qaeda 'speak for itself' and stresses the danger it poses in many countries, not just the United States.

Frankly, I would not allow such a shoddily edited book (obviously hastily rushed to press to capitalize on the current crisis) to be published under my name, particularly when I clearly had such a detailed command of a subject, as this author seems to.