The five years between 2001 and 2006 were momentous years in the history of Pakistan, the United States and the Greater Middle East. This book chronicles some of the major events that took place during this period. This book is not just about the beginning of a century but about the beginning of history.

Human conflict is the common thread running throughout the book. This conflict did not spring anew in the new century. The seeds had been sown in pdor conflicts. But the way iii which the conflict evolved was unique and disturbing.

Pakistan, which had alternated between democracy and state racy for its half decade of existence, succumbed once again to the latter. But what loomed most menacingly over it were not the usual threats to civil liberties posed by militarism. It was the spectre of a “final conflict” with India brought on by misguided “jihadis” who had been reared by the military to fight external proxy wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In addition, there was the reality of ongoing domestic conflicts along the nation’s multiple fault lines.

America, which adopted the mantle of global hyper power after the fall and splintering of its erstwhile nemesis, the Soviet Union, was hit by a band of jihadis early on the morning of September ii, 2001. In a fit of rage, it launched a war on Afghanistan for which there was much global sympathy. But the subsequent decision to launch a war on Iraq and remake the Greater Middle East In its image was misguided. The human and financial cost of the conflict was enormous but even that was overshadowed by the loss of its image on the global stage. Its actions represented a classic case of strategic overreach.

A definitive work on Al Qaeda, this book is based on five years of research, including extensive interviews with Al Qaeda members: field research in Al Qaeda-supported conflict zones around the globe: and monitoring of Al Qaeda’s infiltration of diaspora and migrant communities in North America and Europe.

This book sheds light on Al Qaeda’s financial infrastructure and how the organization trains combat soldiers and vanguard fighters for multiple guerrilla, terrorist and semi conventional campaigns in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. In addition, the author investigates the clandestine Al Qaeda operational network in the West.

Gunaratna reveals how the charismatic fanatic Osama bin Laden provides much of the brainpower and most of the inspiration behind Al Qaeda

– How Osama bin Laden had his mentor and Al Qaeda founder ‘Azzam’ assassinated in order to take over the organization and how other Al Qaeda officers who stood in his way were murdered

– How Al Qaeda planned to destroy the British Parliament on September 11 and to spew nerve gas on the European Parliament

– How the lran-Hezbollah-Al Qaeda link provided the knowledge required to conduct coordinated, simultaneous attacks on multiple targets, including failed plans to destroy Los Angeles International Airport, USS The Sullivans, the Radisson Hotel in Jordan, and eleven US commercial airliners over the Pacific Ocean

– That one-fifth of international Islamic charities and NGOs are infiltrated by Al Qaeda

– How the US response is effective militarily in the short term but insufficient to counter Al Qaeda’s ideology and strategy in the long term.

Gunaratna shows that for Al Qaeda to be destroyed there needs to be a multipronged, multiagency, and multidimensional response by the international community.

Reaping the Whirlwind provides the first comprehensive profile of the Taliban in the twenty-first century. Drawing on numerous interviews with key protagonists, conducted over a period of several years, Michael Griffin provides a fascinating eyewitness account of the Afghan conflict. He explains the origins and beliefs of the Taliban movement, its religious and political ethos, and the character of its particular brand of so-called Islamic fundamentalism.

Crucially, he examines the controversial nature of the Taliban’s international links with the US, Saudi Arabia, and other vested interests. Griffin also explores the Taliban’s connections with Osama bin Laden, drug barons and drug dealers, and the CIA’s ambiguous relationship with what is often viewed as an international Islamist conspiracy. Situated between Asia, the Middle East and the former Soviet states, Afghanistan has historically fulfilled the role of an artificial ‘buffer state.

Resource rich and strategically important, it has been of particular interest since the end of the Cold War to Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan and the United States, as well as to drug barons, arms dealers and oil corporations. Afghanistan’s unstable and problematic history has been further complicated in recent years by the emergence of the Taliban-perhaps the most conservative and least understood Islamic movement in the world.

This book follows a generally linear historical form. It starts with an account of the country and its people, and then describes and analyses its history, with particular reference to its relations with neighbouring powers and its dominant internal theme, the ongoing struggle between its rulers and tribal society. Attention is paid to the growing dichotomy during the twentieth century between an increasingly sophisticated urban elite and the traditional countryside, and its culmination in the communist coup and Soviet invasion. This is followed by an analysis of the reasons for the Soviet withdrawal and the subsequent civil war.

This book gives a detailed account of the jurisdiction of the High Courts and Supreme Court of Pakistan under Article 199 and Article 184(3) respectively of the Constitution of Pakistan. It also contains Interpretations and meanings assigned by the superior courts to different expressions employed in these articles of the constitution.

The objective of the book is to enable concerned individuals to grasp the jurisdiction of the superior courts under these two articles and to know the intention of the framers of the constitution to have these two articles enshrined therein. The constitution provides a list of Fundamental Rights/Human Rights and a forum under Articles 184(3) and 199 for the enforcement and protection of these Fundamental Rights. An attempt has been made to expound these in this book. The author also discusses a majority of the important cases that attract Article 184(3) of the Constitution and analyses many significant cases decided under Article 199 by the four High Courts of Pakistan.

THE events which the following work endeavours to bring before the reader in their connection did not fail, as they severally occurred, to strike the public mind with humiliation and grief, or with joy and exultation. They partially aroused England to a sense of the greatness of the trust conferred upon her by Divine Providence, and forcibly called her attention to the vast Empire won by the genius and courage of a few great men, repeatedly perilled by the weak and rash; and the preservation of which may at any hour depend on the individual to whom for the time its destinies have been entrusted.

A consideration of events after the excitement of defeat or victory has been allayed, and when the retrospect can be calmly made, may want freshness of novelty in its incidents, but can scarcely fail to prove instructive.