Al Qaeda has a sympathiser

. The problem with works like these is their presentation of deep insider stuff that is unverifiable; the reader wonders how the author came by all this information.

For my money, any serious book on the Al Qaeda must come from an author who has had significant personal experience with the people he is writing about, within the cultural landscape from where they spring. Abdel Bari Atwan, an editor-in-chief with the enormously respected Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, empathises with perspectives within the Arabic-speaking world, and equally within the west, from where he has reported as a journalist for decades. He is one of the few journalists who has spent time with Osama bin Laden. His book, The Secret History of Al Qaeda, is beautifully balanced, credible, lucid and deeply understanding of the diverse perspectives in Arabia and the west.

The highlight of the book, Atwan's three-day sojourn with bin Laden in his Tora Bora hideout in Afghanistan, is, unsurprisingly, Chapter 1 of the book. The author retraces his journey across Pakistan's wild tribal areas and the badlands of eastern Afghanistan, admitting frankly that he was shaking in his shoes for much of it. His arrival before bin Laden, he says, filled him with a sense of safety. Atwan describes in detail his time with bin Laden and his impression of the man, but the charisma of the Al Qaeda chief comes through less in what Atwan writes than in the way he writes it. Atwan is clearly swept away by bin Laden. The austerity in which the Saudi multi-millionaire has cheerfully, even humorously, chosen to live makes a deep impression on the fresh-from-London journalist. It is a typically Arabian adoration of the seductive purity of jehad; the reader can easily grasp why bin Laden evokes such respect across Arabia.

The author provides an excellent analysis of the ideological roots of the Al Qaeda. The search for ideological purity has been fundamental to one section of Islam and Atwan traces it back to the first of the Salafists, the 12th century Islamic scholar, ibn-Taymiyyah. After the Mongol armies captured the Abbasid capital, Baghdad, ibn-Taymiyyah sharply criticised not just the Abbasid caliphate for diluting the teachings of the Prophet, but also the Mongol converts, who rejected the Shariah in preference for their own Yasa code of law. That caused ibn-Taymiyyah to issue a fatwa against the Mongols, establishing a precedent of jihad against kafirs, even if they happened to be rulers. That precedent has been replicated again in Iraq. When bin Laden issued his dramatic "Declaration of Jihad against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" (which was first printed in al-Quds al-Arabi in London) in 1996, the document referred directly to ibn-Taymiyyah.

Easily the best chapter in the book is Atwan's discussion of the deeply intertwined, love-hate relationship between the Al Qaeda and the state of Saudi Arabia. While the Al Qaeda's jihad against the United States captures the headlines, Saudi Arabia is the focus of bin Laden's deepest anger and also the recruiting ground for most of the Al Qaeda's recruits. The author dissects the twisted ménage e trios of the deeply corrupted House of Al Saud, the heavily compromised Wahabi ulema, and the third side of the triangle, the Al Qaeda, which sees itself as standing up for the common man and for the word of the Prophet. The book details the Al Saud royal family's patronage of bin Laden, their growing disillusionment with his insistence on Islamic purity, and the final break after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. That came when the Saudi King opted for American troops on Saudi soil as a bulwark against Saddam, rather than the mujahideen warriors that bin Laden offered to bring in from Afghanistan. The author describes how Saudi opposition to the Al Qaeda and bin Laden had severely damaged the group; it was the US intervention in Iraq that resuscitated the Al Qaeda and created the conditions for the emergence of far more brutal and radical factions like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Atwan's pacy, readable and sympathetic account of the Al Qaeda will be an important reference work for scholars of terrorism and an excellent read for the uninitiated.

The secret history of Al-Qaeda

Abdel Bari Atwan
Abacus
Price: £8.99; Pages: 292