Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iraq--come to be perceived as part of a wholesale war against Islam. This feeling of being under attack may be amplified by personal experience of discrimination and then validated by exchanges with like-minded friends, family members and Internet users before being converted into action by "al-Qaeda." Not, as Sageman puts it, "al-Qaeda Central" (made up of those who have sworn an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden) but al-Qaeda the informal network, mobilizing radicalized Islamists around the world without any contact with bin Laden...
...Qaeda Central, says Sageman, is on the wane, its leaders dead or on the run and increasingly isolated. It is the informal al-Qaeda--born after the attacks on Sept. 11 and exploding into raging adolescence after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003--that is the real threat, waging the "leaderless jihad" of the book's title chapter...
Poverty and lack of opportunity are not necessarily the factors that drive young men to commit violence in al-Qaeda's name. (Sheikh was middle class and educated at a private school.) "They view themselves as warriors willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of building a better world," Sageman explains, "and this gives meaning to their lives." They are also younger and less visible, blending in with the Western societies they grew...
Because of security crackdowns, they are unable to reach out to al-Qaeda's original leadership, but they can access jihadi Internet forums for guidance and bomb-making expertise. The Madrid train bombings of 2004, which killed 191 commuters, are an example of an atrocity committed by such young men. The attacks were an "offering to al-Qaeda Central leaders for ... admission into the ranks of global Islamist terrorism," Sageman writes...
Jose A. Rodriguez, former director of the clandestine service, is one policyholder. He'll need the money to deal with the legal consequences of ordering the destruction of videos showing the CIA's interrogation and possible torture of a pair of al-Qaeda suspects. Scores of other spies with their own potential legal problems are also believed to have purchased coverage, but their identities are not public. Wright & Co. of Arlington, Va., the company that sells most of the insurance, says a basic plan costs about $300 annually. That pays for up to $1 million worth of court judgments...