The Al-Qaeda Myth

The story of how al-Qaeda came to be is a famous one. A movement of Arab Islamists who went to fight in Afghanistan against the Russian army later turned their experience and their ideology, sharpened by the 1990 Gulf War, against the "apostate" regimes back home, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the Western nations supporting them. But what about the supposed al-Qaeda branch-offs that have displaced the original group (now largely contained in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region) in ability to both kill and to terrify Westerners on al-Qaeda's behalf? Their stories are a little different -- and don't quite fit with what al-Qaeda would like you to believe.