Blame Those Who Brought al-Qaeda to Life

The revived discussion about the resurgent strengths of Al-Qaeda and its associates continues to be wrongly framed around two narratives: Is Al-Qaeda becoming stronger and posing serious new threats around the world, and, has the American-led “global war on terror” achieved its aims or not? These are useless questions because, first, they mistakenly view Al-Qaeda as an organization that, like a country or a corporation, has its strong and weak moments in interacting with the world; and second, they stress the secondary issue of Al-Qaeda’s threat to the United States and the West, when the most important thing about the Al-Qaeda phenomenon is what it tells us about the slow unraveling of once coherent societies, mostly in the Middle East and South Asia.