What is al-Qaeda? (Extract from Jason Burke book)

[Emillereid]

In this extract from his new book, Al-Qaeda: Casting a shadow of terror, The Observer's chief reporter, Jason Burke, looks at the true nature of bin Laden's organisation and why the west's misunderstanding of the broad and diverse phenomenon of modern Islamic militancy undermines its response to terrorism

Sunday July 13, 2003

The fighters came back in the middle of the night. Their weapons and the ammunition slung around their shoulders reflected the dull red glow given out by the embers of the fire. The men sleeping in the room sat up and moved to make space by the fire for the new arrivals. Outside it was cold enough for frost to form wherever there was standing water.

During the day two men had been taken prisoner and several others killed or wounded and the fighters did not talk much. One of them cleaned and checked a captured light machine gun while the others ate the remnants of a thin chicken stew cooked several hours earlier. It was 3am and everyone knew, at least if the routine established over the previous two days continued, the bombing would not start again for two or three hours and now was the time to sleep.

Through the day the B-52s had been overhead. We had watched their distinctive quadruple contrails tracking in straight lines from the north towards their targets. Then they would make a sharp turn to the west and we would see great gouts of smoke, dirt, rock and flame on the steep slopes above us. A second or so later the noise and the blast would reach us, tugging at our clothes. When I woke three hours later all the men in the room were awake. They wrapped their blankets over their thin shalwar kameez, hitched the straps of their Kalashnikovs over their shoulders, put magazines in their pockets and moved outside into the cold. Many of their blankets, bought in the city of Jalalabad some 30 miles away, had been imported from Iran and were bright green and pink and covered in gold prints of large flowers. The men moved off in small groups towards their assault positions.

The sky had begun to lighten. To the north, behind us, lay Jalalabad and the dirt-coloured desert around it. Strands of mist hung over the irrigated lands around the Kabul River. And then high overhead, scoring confident white lines across the pale sky like a steel cutter across glass, came the first set of the quadruple vapour trails of the B-52s of the day. When they appeared the trails were white against the dawn sky. But the rays of the early morning sun were angled up into the sky like searchlights and when they struck the vapour trails, at an altitude of 10,000 feet, the sun's rays turned them a pink as bright and as out of place as the printed flowers on the blankets wrapped around the soldiers thin shoulders. The trails powered forwards towards the mountains and then dipped away to the West. And then came the boiling, orange flames and the oily, dark smoke and the noise rolling over the hills.

The Americans had started bombing the caves - known locally as Tora Bora - on November 30th 2001. Seventeen days earlier the Taliban and their Arab and Pakistani auxiliaries had pulled out of Kabul. Within hours the troops of the Northern Alliance had entered the city. With a group of mujahideen I had smuggled myself across the border and arrived in Jalalabad a few hours after it had been liberated. Over the next weeks American warplanes and special forces troops scoured Afghanistan mopping up retreating Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. Resistance was minimal. ...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,996509,00.html

Excellent overview of al-Qaeda

[teryang]

1. Very informative!

I'll have to look for the book.

[bemildred]

2. Interesting piece.