Books about Al qaida from Amazon.com

Based on over five years of research, Inside Al Qaeda provides the definitive story behind the rise of this small, mysterious group to the notorious organization making headlines today..
Price: $4.12 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An in-depth look at why America is losing the War on Terror and what we should do if we really want to defeat Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda

"I first met al-Qaeda before there was an al-Qaeda, way back in the winter of 1984. It was an encounter that came within a split second of costing me my life."

So begins Rob Schultheis's gripping account of his journey into the heart of one of the world's most dangerous places, on the trail of the world's most wanted man. A veteran war correspondent (he was one of a handful of Western journalists who covered the Russian war in Afghanistan from inside the country), Schultheis offers a first-hand look at how the seeds of al-Qaeda were planted by foreign jihadists in the 1980s, before most Americans knew what the word "jihad" meant. He then offers a radical assessment of why bin Laden remains at large, detailing the complicit role Pakistan has played in both offering him sanctuary and in helping al-Qaeda establish an almost impregnable stronghold in the Middle East. Finally, fresh from a recent visit to Afghanistan and armed with analysis of current satellite imagery, Schultheis makes his case for where exactly Osama bin Laden is hiding—and why the U.S. government is not acting on this information..
Price: $6.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat..
Price: $22.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

All terrorist groups eventually end. But how? Most modern groups have ended because they joined the political process or local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members. This has significant implications for dealing with al Qa1ida and suggests fundamentally rethinking post-9/11 U.S. counterterrorism strategy: Policing and intelligence, not military force, should form the backbone of U.S. efforts against al Qa1ida..
Price: $19.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This timely book synthesizes the perspectives of Osama bin Laden and his fellow Salafi jihadists on how to wage war on their many enemies A team of experts from the Institute for Defense Analyses working on the Terrorist Perspectives Project undertook the study in order to help U.S. military and civilian policymakers, planners, and educators better understand terrorists. In assembling strategic and operational perspectives of Al Qaida and Associated Movements (AQAM), they focused on the Salafi jihadists intellectual leadership and a sampling of their followers, who together comprise the vanguard of the global jihad and share a common enemy--the West. This project is sponsored by the United States Joint Forces Command..
Price: $9.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the wake of 9/11 no one knew when the next attack would come, or where it would come from. America's enemies seemed gathered on all sides, and for several nerve-racking months, we lived in fear that the perpetrators might be plotting another action or, worse, that our most dangerous enemies -- al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's murderous regime in Iraq -- could be banding together against us.

The Bush administration and CIA director George Tenet warned against complacency and pointed to growing indications that al Qaeda and Iraq were in league. But their case was undercut by unnamed intelligence officials, skeptical politicians, and a compliant media. So America relaxed. A comforting consensus settled in: Osama bin Laden was an impassioned fundamentalist, Saddam a secular autocrat. The two would never, could never, work together. ABC News reported that there was no connection between them, and the New York Times said so too, and pretty soon just about everyone agreed.

Just about everyone was wrong.

In The Connection, Stephen Hayes draws on CIA debriefings, top-secret memos from our national intelligence agencies, and interviews with Iraqi military leaders and Washington insiders to demonstrate that Saddam and bin Laden not only could work together, they did -- a curious relationship that stretches back more than a decade and may include collaboration on terrorist acts, chemical-weapons training, and sheltering some of the world's most wanted radicals.

Stephen Hayes's bombshell Weekly Standard piece on this topic was cited by Vice President Cheney as the "best source of information" about the Saddam-al Qaeda connections. Now Hayes delves even deeper, exposing the inner workings of America's deadliest opponents and providing a clear-eyed corrective to reams of underreported, politicized, and just plain wrong information.

The Connection is both a gripping snapshot of the War on Terror and a case study in how bureaucratic assumptions and media arrogance can put us all at risk..
Price: $0.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Award-winning reporter Jason Burke shows how the threat from Islamic terrorism comes not from a single criminal mastermind, or even from one group. In this revealing account, he characterizes it is a broad movement with profound roots in the politics, societies and history of the Islamic world. Using hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Burke shows how "Al-Qaeda" is a convenient label applied misleadingly to a diverse, disorganized global movement dedicated to fighting a "cosmic battle" with the West. This is the definitive account of the mysterious organization, retelling its story from scratch and challenging many myths that threaten the very foundations of the "War on Terror."
.
Price: $30.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Why did so many of the 9/11 hijackers spend time in Germany? How did terrorist sleeper cells plant themselves in cities like London, Paris, Rome, and Hamburg? What exactly is Al-Qaida's connection to Europe? Terrorism analyst Evan F. Kohlmann unveils a new angle to the deadly international terrorist organization and reveals the root of its terror lies in the Bosnian War. He includes recently declassified American and European intelligence reports, secret Al-Qaida records and internal documents, and interviews with notorious figures such as London-based Bin Laden sympathizer Abu Hamza Al-Masri. This is the first book to uncover the secret history of how Europe was systematically infiltrated by the ranks of the most dangerous terrorist organization on earth, as told by the terrorists themselves and the daring investigators who have tirelessly tracked them over the past decade.
.
Price: $10.39 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Osama bin Laden’s words carry a great deal of weight in the West. When he speaks, or allegedly speaks, we listen. But what about the words of other key leaders in the Al-Qaida terrorist network? We can learn how to conduct the war on terrorism more successfully when we study their own manuals, written for their followers. But few Americans, despite their expertise in intelligence or security, know Arabic.

Fortunately Norman Cigar is fluent, and here he presents the first English translation of Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin’s “A Practical Course for Guerrilla War.” Saudi security forces killed Al-Muqrin, Al-Qaida’s leader in the Arabian Peninsula, in June 2004. Published posthumously, his Arabic-language manual provides a window into Al-Qaida’s strategic thinking and into how these terrorists operate. Accompanying the text’s translation is material on al-Muqrin’s life and Cigar’s cogent and detailed analysis of the key ideas in the jihadist’s doctrine and the results of Al-Qaida’s insurgency efforts on the Arabian Peninsula.

This important work provides a primary source for students in the professional military education system who want to read a variety of military thinkers and develop insights into all warfighting philosophies, especially those emanating from non-Western sources. Academics, think tank analysts, and government officials in the United States and abroad will also find the work relevant to their own work on Al-Qaida and insurgency theory. With a foreword by Julian Lewis, MP, the Shadow Defence Minister for Great Britain..
Price: $17.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The late 1990s saw a number of attacks against American military and governmental offices, most notably the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. On 11 September 2001, the scale of this conflict changed dramatically. As in 1998, the terrorist group responsible for this devastating campaign was Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, a loose network of extremists, many of whom are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause—the promotion of a militant form of Islam and the destruction of the West. Award-winning international journalist Jane Corbin reports from an unmuzzled European perspective and her account of Operation Anaconda and the U.S. assault on Tora Bora differs greatly from the highly varnished Pentagon and State Department versions. Based on a number of trips she has made to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the wake of September 11, and on dozens of interviews with key eyewitnesses, investigators, and intelligence officers in the region, Corbin shows that al-Qaeda have not been "smoked out.".
Price: $5.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]