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Al-Qaeda: The Next Generation

(Telegraph-UK) Praveen Swami - A decade after 9/11, the jihadist movement is more powerful than at any time in the past. Bin Laden himself, the scholar C. Christine Fair has noted, has emerged as a "kind of Che Guevara of the jihadist movement" - an inspirational icon who could fire the imagination of young recruits. In 2001, on the eve of 9/11, al-Qaeda had a core of just less than 200 cadre - 120 of them in a crack fighting unit. Perhaps 1,000 men had graduated from its Afghan training camps, but they were riven by ideological dissension. Now, jihadist groups that associate themselves with al-Qaeda's project are asserting influence from eastern China to North Africa.
2011-05-04 00:00:00
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