The myth of al Qaeda

Newsweek magazine senior editor Michael Hirsh says that the US government has given more prominence to the supposed strength of terrorist group al-Qaeda than in reality.

He says the movement led by Osama bin Laden was a failing group before the Sept 11 attacks, on the way of losing its control and never represented the mainstream jihadi community.

Then came 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and two years later the Iraqi war. To garner support for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government identified many so-called high level al-Qaeda operatives in these regions that must be stopped.

Now Hirsh says that most of the people identified by the US as high-level al Qaeda terrorists are in actual fact made up of low-level messenger men, one who was even slightly daft. He says that they were more life's losers, “the kind who in a Western culture would join street gangs or become a petty criminals but who in the jihadi world could lose themselves in a "great cause", making some sense of their pinched, useless lives”.

However he admits that there were ruthless ones like lead 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta and 9/11 master strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in al Qaeda. Still, he argues, it was the US who made these terrorists heroes they are now in some parts of the world today.

He says the US government had altered its foreign policy and had waged war, especially in Iraq, over these and now had inevitably turned this group into a global voice for the jihadis.

He finishes his article by stating: “America ventured into the lands of jihad and willingly offered itself as a target in place of the local regimes. And as a new cause that revived the flagging al Qaeda movement. It is, no doubt, bin Laden's greatest victory”.

Read his full article here.