Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb In May 2011, President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. After a decade long exhaustive manhunt, the US had finally caught the leader of the most feared jihadi terrorist organization in the world, Al Qaeda. Two months later, Defense Secretary Panetta said that the United States was “within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda.” After pouring billions of dollars into a counter-terroris...
...invasion of Afghanistan. In both Cayton and Boorstin’s books, bin Laden becomes “a prime suspect” in the plot, and is portrayed as the mastermind behind the attacks. There is little discussion on the rest of al-Qaeda’s role in 9/11, with bin Laden labeled solely responsible. Most glaringly, there is never a reason given as to why the attacks occurred. The books characterize them as an isolated incident that seemingly tran...
In February, the United States Navy and Yemeni security forces seized a shipment of allegedly Iranian-made shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles heading to Houthi insurgents in Yemen. Far from a one-time incident, it is symptomatic of a larger and more disturbing trend in the region. Through the Quds force—a mix of an intelligence agency and special forces— Iran has begun providing significant support to various groups across the Middle East. Th...
even more than it has now. And obviously no one can know for sure. But no, I don’t think it’s like it was before partly because of what happened after, and everyone including the Taliban knows this. Yes, there are ties to Al Qaeda. Some ties are of religion although they are not completely so. Some of it is ideology. But I don’t think we should exaggerate those. They [the Taliban] are concerned with different things. They care about attacking th...
...le, it is no surprise that the trauma remains fresh in our collective consciousness. At the time, the shock of this loss and the seemingly intractable and inhuman belligerence and disorder of the nation compelled the U.S. and all other foreign forces to withdraw. Somalia did not fit with the spirit of the times, the notions of how intervention and aid was to be conducted. After 1993, Somalia dropped off the map of U.S. foreign policy, relegated t...
...n the book? JM: What we found out was that there were covert operations that [the United States] was launching inside of Libya. These operations were through Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and they were targeting an al-Qaeda personality, an Iranian that’s acting as a money and foreign fighter facilitator. They were targeting him inside of Libya, and they were also taking and destroying the weapons that [Libyan] militias had captured dur...
So far in our discussion of drone policy, started here by Urja Mittal, we have assumed that this technology is the most efficient for fighting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. By Urja’s account, the debate over drones is currently an issue of educating the public and finagling legal details. I cannot accept this as an initial premise. Before diving into this debate, I wish to make the following clear: drone technology is promising and may solve long-st...
sident may be able to ponder who to kill miles away, the rest of the world does not believe that America legitimately has the right to do so. And they must recognize that while drones continue to kill almost daily—a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed just today—and have killed up to 3,000 people since their inception, many in the Middle East may just decide that it is time to fight back. ...
...0;home-grown” extremists materializing everywhere from Portland, Oregon, to Fort Hood, Texas. The future of terrorist attacks in the U.S. is not going to be on the scale of Sept. 11. Instead, recent broadcasts by Yemeni al-Qaeda operatives show that their future strategy is to give America a “death of a thousand cuts”, rather than elaborate and theatrical events like Sept. 11. Nevertheless, the narrative justifying a continued p...
...ce war between Tuareg separatists and Islamist organizations. Though many militia groups have been involved in this conflict, each with its own ideology and ethnic or tribal make up, the main contenders for power have been Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Ansar Dine on the side of the Islamists, and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) on the side of the Tuareg separatists. The former are seeking to impose shari’a i...
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