Book Description

In Al-Qaeda, Jane Corbin, crosses four continents in search of bin Laden's terror network. The result of four years research, reporting and travel throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America, she has conducted hundreds of interviews with key eyewitnesses, investigators, and intelligence officers around the world.

Tracing al-Qaeda's roots back to the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Corbin picks up the complicated trail that led to the collapse of the Twin Towers and beyond. Exploring the tradecraft of "The Base," she shows how they used the training drilled into them in the Afghan terror camps to stay below the radar of the world's most sophisticated intelligence agency. Here too are descriptions of the parallel deadly plots to kill hundreds in Europe, only uncovered in their final stages.

Finally, as President Bush's "war on terror" in Afghanistan poses more questions than it answers, Corbin examines the West's response to the threat of al-Qaeda and declares it a failure.

Publisher Comments :

Jane Corbin, Emmy nominee and the BBC?s award-winning senior correspondent specializing in the Middle East, has broken many stories on the growth of Al Qaeda over the past decade. Here she explores how one man with a medieval view of good and evil, living in a cave, brought the world?s only remaining superpower to its knees. Exploring the methodology of Al Qaeda (The Base), Corbin shows how they used the training instilled in them in the Afghan terror camps to stay below the radar of the world?s most sophisticated intelligence agency. Here, too, are descriptions of the parallel deadly plots to kill hundreds in Europe, only uncovered in their final stages. Further attacks are not only feared but also expected. Al Qaeda continues to grow. Bin Laden is still at large and has a growing if silent constituency now, not only among young and dispossessed Muslims but among a wider and more-educated audience in cities and suburbs. As Bush?s ?war on terror? poses more questions than answers, Corbin examines the West?s response to September 11 and?eviction of the Taliban notwithstanding?declares it a failure. Corbin has conducted hundreds of interviews with key eyewitnesses, investigators, and intelligence officers around the world. She also has the advantage of reporting from an unmuzzled European perspective, unlike her American counterparts who are denied information from both State and Pentagon sources, and who are caught up in a patriotic ?us vs. them? mentality.

From Publishers Weekly

BBC correspondent Corbin has been pursuing bin Laden for a long time ("For three years he was my screen-saver"). The West's response to terrorism, she says provocatively, is characterized by "weakness and exploitation and a failure of imagination... not to mention political correctness...." She raises questions about, for instance, the failure of the siege at Tora Bora, but most of her background history and account of events up through the present, though compact and readable, will be familiar to American readers. Maps.

Book Dimension

Height (mm) 216 　　　　　　　　　　　 Width (mm) 147