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    Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists
    Unavailable
    Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists
    Unavailable
    Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists
    Ebook283 pages4 hours

    Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists

    By Camille Tawil

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    ’Meticulously researched debut' - Publishers Weekly

    'An excellent source for anyone interested in the region.' - New York Journal of Books

    'Brothers in Arms sheds a clear and indispensable, if troubling, light on a religious war that is far from over. ' Michael F. Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit and professor of security studies, Georgetown University

    'Camille Tawil delivers a carefully reported assessment of al Qaeda and its affiliated Arab jihadist groups.' Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.

    Since 2001 America's War on Terror has achieved what Osama bin Laden could not: the unification of the jihad under al-Qa'ida's banner. Although today al-Qa'ida is seen as the epitome of jihad, when it first emerged other militant Islamists rejected its vision of a holy war against the West.

    Investigative journalist Camille Tawil charts the history of conflict and complicity between al-Qa'ida and its brothers in arms from the late 1980s to the present day. Drawing on a network of contacts in Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Algeria's Armed Islamic Group, and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, he shows how the failure of their separate national struggles brought them increasingly under the influence of Osama bin Laden and his global agenda.

    From prison cells in Morocco to the caves of Tora Bora, Tawil gives us unique access to the key players behind the jihadist movement and the evolution of its violent ideology.

    Born in 1965, Camille Tawil is a Lebanese writer and investigative journalist. He has covered Islamic militant groups for al-Hayat Arabic daily in London since the early 1990s.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSaqi Books
    Release dateOct 10, 2011
    ISBN9780863564741
    Unavailable
    Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists
    Author

    Camille Tawil

    Born in 1965, Camille Tawil is a Lebanese writer and investigative journalist. He has covered Islamic militant groups for Al-Hayat Arabic daily in London since the early 1990s. His blog is http://camilletawil.blogspot.com/.

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    Reviews for Brothers In Arms

    4.5/5

    4 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Just as I was nearing the end of this dense, detailed, sometimes exhausting but overall pretty interesting look into the origins of and relationships between the various Middle Eastern terrorist groups that influenced Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. Worst timing ever, right? Except the book doesn't get into huge detail about bin Laden himself; the bulk of the detail is about Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, because he is a prolific writer in Arabic so much more about him is known. And now as I write this, Zawahiri was just announced as the new titular leader of Al Qaeda (which is maybe a little like being called "The leader of Communism" or "The captain of soccer" but whatever). So, best timing ever!And great news for America, if author Camille Tawil is to be believed. Ayman al-Zawahiri is the most petty, small-minded, political jerk in jihadidom. He consistently used his power as head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1980s to assassinate, sermonize against and in every way he could bully, slight and take down rival islamic radicals. Every attack Zawahiri directed that Tawil describes in this book was against other Muslims who made the mistake of crossing his path. Tawil describes bin Laden as succeeding to get Zawahiri to focus on the "long objective" of striking the United States, and giving up on the "short objectives" of smiting his enemies. Without bin Laden's vision and influence, Zawahiri is likely to use Al Qaeda's networks and resources to settle now 15 years' of postponed grudges he accumulated while Bin Laden was in power. That...sounds pretty terrific, actually!It's a fairly dry book, and only about 10 percent of it is about bin laden and the al qaeda network, with another 10 percent about zawahiri. The rest is an incredibly meticulous litany of long-dead jihadis from the Sadat era in Egypt and the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. This book will make you smarter, but it's a slog at times to read. Still the details are so useful in this current news cycle I give it four stars for its currency.
    • 3/5
      This book is an exhaustively detailed account of Al-Qaeda, from its origins in Afghanistan in the late 1980s into the post-9/11 "War on Terror". Osama bin Laden plays a surprisingly small role in the book; most of it centers on Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former leader of the Egypt-based group known as EIJ (and, according to some news reports, bin Laden's successor as head of Al-Qaeda.) In their early days, Al-Qaeda stood out among radical Islamic groups because they had a global agenda, whereas most groups were strictly interested in overthrowing the government of their home country. The story is an interesting one, but the author gets excessively bogged down in detail, and getting all the way through the book was a chore. It's very dense and very dry, with lots of unnecessary details about minor squabbles within and between the various groups. Every page has at least 2-3 footnotes, with more information on the background of the hundreds of people named in the book. For someone who is serious about learning more about Islamic terrorist groups, I would definitely recommend this book, but it is not an easy one to follow.
    • 5/5
      Camillie Tawil is an investigative reporter for Arabic language agencies. His interactions and the trust the Jihadists seem to have in him have given the author a unique opportunity to interview key personnel in a variety of movements. As we read in the early decades before our current millennium most groups focus regardless of bases for training were within the borders of their own country. And groups with differing views would become at odds with themselves. The evolution of some of the main groups discusses from Algeria, Egypt and Libya for example are quite interesting. And almost all existed before Al-Qa'ida was invented as an administrative and training organization in Afghanistan. Al-Qa'ida's attack on U.S.A. soil brought so much pressure to bare on all Jihadist organizations with even cursory ties with Al-Qa'ida it all but caused its practical demise. The author, as western intelligent agency have ascertained, admits that Al-Qa'ida is now a group of separate autonomous groups that had taken on their name to lend legitimacy to their cause in the eye of Jihadist after the invasion of Iraq. Osama bin Laden was never able too unit the various Jihadist groups, but after the fateful attack in America in 2001, the Jihadist had no choice but to at least attempt to work together for their own survival as small independent groups using the Al-Qa'ida name as a franchise would. The author surmises that we will see if the new moderate ideas will overcome the radical and violent methods of those using the the name Al-Qa'ida for their own causes.
    • 4/5
      Brothers in Arms is a fairly comprehensive primer on Al-Qaeda and its origins in Islamic militant groups that spawned across North Africa. The book focuses more on the disparate groups that arose in Algeria, Libya and Egypt then on Al-Qaeda itself. The failure of those militant groups to topple the autocratic regimes in their home countries combined with the common experience of jihad in Afghanistan helps explain how Al-Qaeda transformed from a collection of disparate insurgencies into global brand. It is this explanation, combined with an impressive depth of references, that makes Brothers In Arms an interesting read. That said, Brothers in Arms does not tell as detailed a picture of Al-Qaeda as books like The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. While it explains the consolidation of Islamic militancy following 9/11 under the Al-Qaeda banner and the subsequent franchising of Al-Qaeda that gave rise to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, this is a smaller portion of the book. The focus is much more on the pre-9/11, nation focused, Islamic militants.The other criticism, which is almost certainly unfair, is that recent events have left this book in serious need of an update. While the book does a very good job of explaining how the various groups of Islamic militants arose with the goal of removing Libya's Quaddafi and Egypt's Mubarak, a reader cannot help but wonder how the (relatively) peaceful toppling of Mubarak and the shattering of Libya plays into the Islamic militant narrative. Moreover, with yesterday's news of the death of Osama Bin Laden in mind even more unanswered questions about the future of Al-Qaeda come to mind. Maybe these questions are unanswerable right now but they were questions that I would have at least liked hear Tawil's take on.
    • 5/5
      A lucid investigation of the various threads within the modern Islamist movement. While the media, especially television, is prone to turn Middle Eastern anti-government dissent into a monolith labeled "terrorist," Camille Tawil, an investigative journalist, dissects the various theological and political rifts within the Islamist movement.Borne within the crucible of the Afghan-Soviet War and unified by religious rhetoric and corrupt tyrants supported by the United States, the Islamist movement attracted both the devout and the sadistic."Brothers in Arms" is an illuminating exploration of the variegated Islamist movement. Written in 2007, the book lacks information on the more recent London and Bali bombings. The greatest irony facing the Islamist movement is its oncoming irrelevence due to the Arab Spring passing across the Middle East like the European Revolutions of 1848 and the dissolution of the Iron Curtain from 1988 to 1993. The social networked young secular activists, despite the best efforts of the United States to sit on the fence, will do what arms and terror cannot and shove extremist terror into the dustbin of history.
    • 3/5
      A comprehensive look at Muslim terror cells and movements from Europe to Afghanistan. What’s interesting to note is that for some time, these terrorists has the same goals as Western Governments, the toppling of Arab dictators and other occupiers. Getting rid of Libya’s Gaddafi, Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the Algerian government, and the Soviets out of Afghanistan were all major goals. Ironically, two of those governments fell without any help from them. I think that point sets the tone for most of the book. Most of the events in the book take place pre 9/11, and most of those events are the groups forming, failing, and internal struggles that only lead to disaster. Only the last 50 pages covers post 9/11 and mostly documenting the destruction of most of these cells in the terror sweeps, stating that 9/11 has thrown much of the terror leadership into the incinerator of history. Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida don’t take a prominent role into the last 50 pages, even though he is mentioned throughout. If not for the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened and many of these terror groups wouldn’t have had a safe place to plan and train. Even though this book was originally published in 2003 with a dated ending, it still predicts the folly of going into Iraq and ignoring Afghanistan. Even today the Afghanistan government cannot eliminate the Taliban threat. The author also highlights Bin Laden’s goal in all of his activity, to drag the United States into a protracted war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, helping to topple Arab governments that supported the United States, and villainizing all of them. Even the 9/11 report stated that we needed to have a limited activity in these events as the military presence only makes things worse. Without a common enemy, many of these terror cells would have nothing to work against. "Bin Laden and his associates therefore decided that they had to draw the US into a conflict with the Islamists; this would force Arab governments and the religious establishments of the region to defend the Amercans, which would in turn destroy their legitimacy in the eyes of the public." P 151The author has unprecedented access to major players and that analysis is very interesting. What western analysts would guess at, Camille Tawil would have hard evidence. Overall, a very detailed history, highly recommended for a background on Muslim terrorists, but it needs a major update to cover 2003 to present. Too much has happened and the information just becomes an interesting history on the time period, not current events.
    • 4/5
      Camillie Tawil is an investigative reporter for al-Hayat Arabic in London. The author's two decades of contact and reporting has given him opportunities and trust from militants others have not had. Therefore this book has a perspective on the history and agenda’s of these Islamic militant groups unlike any other. He gives the reader an overview of the main groups from Algeria, Egypt and Libya up through Afghanistan where A'-Qa'ida started off as an administrative and training organization. The author covers how Osamba bin Laden had a goal of uniting all Islamic militant groups together to fight the west that he felt allowed the corrupt Middle Eastern government to stay in power. Where as almost all of these jihadist groups were focused on what they saw as liberating their own countries and performing a task some like in Algeria believed the people wanted. Al'Qa'ida evolved into a militant group that could carry out its own attacks. Al'Qaida in its zeal to bring jihad to the soil of the USA was effective in accomplishing what he thought he wanted...western troops in the Middle East fighting the jihadist. The assault and force with which the USA responded after 11 September 2001 was so over whelming that not only did Al-Qa'dia fail to exist as an operational organization but even Islamic countries had their governments over thrown. All this constant warfar on Islamic militants caused by the aspirations of the original Al-Qa'dia.Today there are many independent groups who perform acts of violence in the name of Al-Qa'dia trying to gain some respect for their group from other extremist. Well the moderate members of Islam continue to stay quiet or will the inaction of today’s youth bring and slow end to these groups. Only time will tell. I believe that this book gives an object and truthful accounting from what information was available to the author. The sources were mainly his notes or recordings of interviews, pamphlets or web sites published by this militant groups among other sources which now are all no longer available anywhere but from the author.
    • 3/5
      While reading “Brothers in Arms” I was reminded of the baseball adage “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” There are dozens of players and teams that are Arab terrorist affiliates. While the US (at least publicly) has focused the war on terror on al-Qa’ida, it would appear that these players, even those that have had a more nationalistic agenda, have lit up the radar since 9/11. What is also eye opening about the book is how small these groups are and how (relatively) unsuccessful they have been in their stated aims. With the recent death of bin Laden and the efforts to democratize the Middle East, these groups now appear marginalized. Camille Tawil writes a concise history of the militant Islamists of Egypt, Algeria, and Libya since the late 1980s. With the 9/11 attack al-Qa’ida may have won a battle but America’s response has eliminated thousands of terrorists — whether or not they supported bin Laden’s jihad against the West. While Islamic militancy remains a force to be addressed, maybe there is hope that moderate voices will prevail. This book brought me a better understanding of what we are facing in our world today. A tough read, but worth it.