Word: bin
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...Threats of occasional terror attacks - and the disruptive security precautions they necessitate - may be an uncomfortable fact of life for the foreseeable future, but the latest episode may well illustrate the weakness of Osama bin Laden's organization, not its strength. The very uncertainty in establishing whether such a group attempting a "Qaeda-type" operation is actually connected to al-Qaeda's own structures reflects the diffuse nature of the organization: Last year's July 7 London bombings, for example, were carried out by a homegrown cell whose leader had traveled to Pakistan. Authorities initially doubted any direct connection with...
...very moment where the political conditions for its existence may never have been better. Muslims around the world are far more enraged by the U.S. today than they had been five years ago, fueled by shooting wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan. Even if Bin Laden arguably helped provoke the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he has not managed to capitalize on the resultant outrage. In fact, it is among the active jihadists on some of those battlefronts that his isolation is most palpable...
...Even the Qaeda element in the Iraqi insurgency looked for immediate leadership not to Bin Laden and Zawahiri, but to Musab al-Zarqawi, who lived among them - and whose relationship with "al-Qaeda central" was always testy. When Zawahiri publicly criticized the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for contesting democratic elections, both organizations sharply rebuked him; they made clear they had no need of advice from the self-styled sheikhs of global jihad broadcasting not-quite-live from among the peasants of Waziristan. And the extent of their isolation was most evident in recent weeks when...
...clear that anybody cares. For angry young Muslims in search of a warrior icon of jihad, Hizballah's Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah cuts a far more appealing figure as his men trade blows and hold their own with the most reviled enemy of the Islamists than does Bin Laden, whose followers are more likely to target random civilians than "infidel" soldiers...
...conspiracy theories that had such currency in the Arab world after 9/11 blaming Israel for the attacks were, in themselves, instructive: Even many people who agreed with Bin Laden's worldview were clearly so repelled by the mass slaughter of innocents that they were unable to "own" the event, preferring instead to blame it on the Mossad...