Word: bins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sure, al-Qaeda continues to issue vituperative missives by video from its hideouts, many of them directed at the likes of Iran and Hamas. But Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan seemed to sum up al-Qaeda's plight two years ago, when responding to a particularly rabid attack from bin Laden's No. 2. Ayman al-Zawahiri had accused Hamas of "joining the surrender train" by participating in elections and agreeing to form a unity government with Fatah. Hamas, sneered Hamdan in response, had no need of advice from a "fugitive in the Afghan mountains" and did not accept criticism from...
Even among those who share much of bin Laden's animus toward the U.S. and Israel, al-Qaeda has remained largely irrelevant, its strategy of global jihad rejected in favor of an Islamist radicalism focused on more limited national goals...
...flaw in bin Laden's strategy of trying to capture the imagination of the Muslim masses through spectacular acts of terrorism was obvious even in the immediate wake of 9/11. In much of the Arab and Muslim world, there was a pervasive refusal to believe that Muslims had been responsible for the attacks, even after bin Laden claimed responsibility. The denial inherent in the tendency common from Egypt to Indonesia to blame Mossad or the CIA for 9/11 reveals a damning negation of al-Qaeda's tactics. So repulsive was the mass murder of innocents to ordinary Muslims that most...
...Even in countries where al-Qaeda had hoped to capitalize on resentment against American influence, its networks were largely rolled up by security services as the population looked on indifferently. By invading Iraq, the Bush Administration probably did a far more effective job than bin Laden of weakening U.S. influence in the Muslim world and rallying its youth to resistance. Yet even in Iraq, al-Qaeda's efforts to gain control of the resistance failed because its ideology and tactics were so loathsome to even the bulk of the Sunni insurgents fighting the Americans that they eventually made common cause...
Similarly, in Afghanistan, bin Laden's erstwhile stomping ground, the fight against the U.S. is being waged by the Taliban, which may once have been an ally of al-Qaeda but now exists entirely independently of bin Laden's movement and will ultimately make its strategic decisions based on its national interests. The sobering reality for bin Laden is that even among those dedicated to resisting the U.S. and its allies, his ideology of global jihad against the "far enemy" (the U.S.) has failed to supplant the more pragmatic Islamist movements such as Hamas, Hizballah and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood...