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Record Nr. |
UNINA9910953585803321 |
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Autore |
Gerges Fawaz A. <1958-> |
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Titolo |
The rise and fall of Al-Qaeda / / Fawaz A. Gerges |
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Pubbl/distr/stampa |
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Oxford ; ; New York, : Oxford University Press, c2011 |
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ISBN |
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9786613232212 |
9780199790746 |
0199790744 |
9780190252540 |
0190252545 |
9780199911714 |
0199911711 |
9780199790654 |
0199790655 |
9781283232210 |
1283232219 |
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Edizione |
[1st ed.] |
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Descrizione fisica |
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Disciplina |
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Soggetti |
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Terrorism |
Terrorism - Religious aspects - Islam |
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Lingua di pubblicazione |
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Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
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Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
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Nota di bibliografia |
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Includes bibliographical references and index. |
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Nota di contenuto |
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Introduction : life after death -- The rise of Al-Qaeda -- The growing rift -- A success and a miscalculation -- Decline and fall -- Legacies and aftershocks -- Conclusion : down to size. |
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Sommario/riassunto |
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In this concise and fascinating book, Fawaz A. Gerges argues that Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive largely by the self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to spawn. In The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda, Gerges, a public intellectual known widely for his expertise on radical ideologies, including jihadism, argues that the Western powers have become mired in a "terrorism narrative," stemming from the mistaken belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a crippled al-Qaeda. To explain why al-Qaeda is no longer a threat, he provides a briskly written history |
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of the organization, showing its emergence from the disintegrating local jihadist movements of the mid-1990s-not just the Afghan resistance of the 1980s, as many believe-in "a desperate effort to rescue a sinking ship by altering its course." During this period, Gerges interviewed many jihadis, gaining a first-hand view of the movement that bin Laden tried to reshape by internationalizing it. Gerges reveals that transnational jihad has attracted but a small minority within the Arab world and possesses no viable social and popular base. Furthermore, he shows that the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a major miscalculation--no "river" of fighters flooded from Arab countries to defend al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as bin Laden expected. The democratic revolutions that swept the Middle East in early 2011 show that al-Qaeda today is a non-entity which exercises no influence over Arabs' political life.Gerges shows that there is a link between the new phenomenon of homegrown extremism in Western societies and the war on terror, particularly in Afghanistan-Pakistan, and that homegrown terror exposes the structural weakness, not strength, of bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Gerges concludes that the movement has splintered into feuding factions, neutralizing |
itself more effectively than any Predator drone. Forceful, incisive, and written with extensive inside knowledge, this book will alter the debate on global terrorism. |
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