{"product_id":"9780199790654-1","title":"The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda","description":"\u003cbr\u003eIn this concise and fascinating book, Fawaz A. Gerges argues that Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive largely by the self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to spawn. \u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eThe Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda\u003c\/em\u003e, Gerges, a public intellectual known widely for his expertise on radical ideologies, including jihadism, argues that the Western powers have become mired in a \"terrorism narrative,\" stemming from the mistaken belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a crippled al-Qaeda. To explain why al-Qaeda is no longer a threat, he provides a briskly written history of the organization, showing its emergence from the disintegrating local jihadist movements of the mid-1990s-not just the Afghan resistance of the 1980s, as many believe-in \"a desperate effort to rescue a sinking ship by altering its course.\" During this period, Gerges interviewed many jihadis, gaining a first-hand view of the movement that bin Laden tried to reshape by internationalizing it. Gerges reveals that transnational jihad has attracted but a small minority within the Arab world and possesses no viable social and popular base. Furthermore, he shows that the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a major miscalculation--no \"river\" of fighters flooded from Arab countries to defend al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as bin Laden expected. The democratic revolutions that swept the Middle East in early 2011 show that al-Qaeda today is a non-entity which exercises no influence over Arabs' political life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGerges shows that there is a link between the new phenomenon of homegrown extremism in Western societies and the war on terror, particularly in Afghanistan-Pakistan, and that homegrown terror exposes the structural weakness, not strength, of bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Gerges concludes that the movement has splintered into feuding factions, neutralizing itself more effectively than any Predator drone. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForceful, incisive, and written with extensive inside knowledge, this book will alter the debate on global terrorism.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47042069135600,"sku":"9780199790654","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780199790654_p0.jpg?v=1763671447","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780199790654-1","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}