The Unraveling

The New Republic ^ | May 26, 2008 | Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank

[Nony]

The jihadist revolt against bin Laden.

Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its kind since Al Qaeda had moved to Afghanistan in 1996. Benotman, the scion of an aristocratic family marginalized by Qaddafi, had known bin Laden from their days fighting the Afghan communist government in the early '90s, a period when Benotman established himself as a leader of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

The night of Benotman's arrival, bin Laden threw a lavish banquet in the main hall of his compound, an unusual extravagance for the frugal Al Qaeda leader. As bin Laden circulated, making small talk, large dishes of rice and platters of whole roasted lamb were served to some 200 jihadists, many of whom had come from around the Middle East. "It was one big reunification," Benotman recalls. "The leaders of most of the jihadist groups in the Arab world were there and almost everybody within Al Qaeda."

[PGalt]

Thanks for the ping, neverdem. Thanks for posting the article, Nony.

[knews_hound]

bbttt

[The Toll]

Sounds to me like nobody’s cousin is making it home from the Jihad. Excuse me if I don’t get all weepy eyed over this Jihadi Jane Fonda who now thinks this was all a bad idea from the start.
This isn’t the Soviet Union this time fella’s, your brother Akbar went to fight the Americans and you will never see him again. Don’t forget it!

[xJones]

As you pointed out in your post 15, "No one is saying that the act of murdering innocent civilians is wrong."

If al Queda could manage to kill only non-Muslim innocent civilians they would still have the vast majority of Muslims on their side. However, terrorist bombings don't discriminate, and a whole lot more of the innocent faithful have been killed compared to the number of dead kuffirs. IOW, it's morally just fine until ordinary Muslims start getting killed by their 'heros'.

In Saudi Arabia, only 10 percent now have a favorable view of Al Qaeda, according to a December poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank. Following a wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan in the past year, support for suicide operations amongst Pakistanis has dropped to 9 percent (it was 33 percent five years ago),