The text in question is allegedly called “Al Qaeda’s Strategy until Year 2020.” My search met a dead end at the website of the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. I don’t read Arabic, and that newspaper doesn’t show digital archives for 2005, which was the date when Makkawi’s writings were first made available to the general public. Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote a book on the subject, but Google Books doesn’t give a complete view of it.
The text in question is allegedly called “Al Qaeda’s Strategy until Year 2020.” My search met a dead end at the website of the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. I don’t read Arabic, and that newspaper doesn’t show digital archives for 2005, which was the date when Makkawi’s writings were first made available to the general public. Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote a book on the subject, but Google Books doesn’t give a complete view of it.
Ok, well your second source states the following:
The immediate question on the above is how much of these strategic theses of al-Qaeda actually predate events, or whether they constitute a ‘moving target’ that takes as much from the unfolding of events as it purports to steer them.
It would be interesting if an individual who was known to be a senior Al Qaeda official were known to have written BEFORE the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq that they had a plan to goad the US into such invasions. But without this kind of evidence, your claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
Various journalists have analyzed the writings of Al Qaeda strategist Muhammad Makkawi a.k.a. Saif al-Adel, concluding that:
“His goal, for at least five years, had been to goad America into invading Afghanistan...”
“September 11 constituted the first step: dragging the United States into the Arab region in preparation for an extended war of attrition.”
What exactly did he write and when?
The text in question is allegedly called “Al Qaeda’s Strategy until Year 2020.” My search met a dead end at the website of the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. I don’t read Arabic, and that newspaper doesn’t show digital archives for 2005, which was the date when Makkawi’s writings were first made available to the general public. Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote a book on the subject, but Google Books doesn’t give a complete view of it.
Ok, well your second source states the following:
It would be interesting if an individual who was known to be a senior Al Qaeda official were known to have written BEFORE the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq that they had a plan to goad the US into such invasions. But without this kind of evidence, your claim does not stand up to scrutiny.