Al-Qaeda

The threat from Islamic terrorism comes not from a single criminal mastermind, or even from one group. In this revealing account, award-winning journalist Jason Burke shows how Al-Qaeda is a convenient label applied misleadingly to a diverse, disorganized global movement with deep roots in the politics, societies and history of the Islamic world. Using thousands of interviews and hundreds of documents, he recounts the rise of Al-Qaeda with its successors: Jemaah Islamiyyah in Indonesia, Hamas in Palestine and Lebanon, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and East Timor, Ansar al-Islam in Tunisia and Algeria. He also takes us behind the scenes of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan revealing how they were fought.