Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda - Hardcover

Nasiri, Omar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465023886 ISBN 13: 9780465023882

Publisher: Basic Books, 2006

Synopsis

Between 1994 and 2000, Omar Nasiri worked as a secret agent for Europe’s top foreign intelligence services - including France’s DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), and Britain’s MI5 and MI6. From the netherworld of Islamist cells in Belgium, to the training camps of Afghanistan, to the radical mosques of London, he risked his life to defeat the emerging global network that the West would come to know as Al Qaeda. Now, for the first time, Nasiri shares the story of his life-a life balanced precariously between the world of Islamic jihadists and the spies who pursue them. As an Arab and a Muslim, he was able to infiltrate the rigidly controlled Afghan training camps, where he encountered men who would later be known as the most-wanted terrorists on earth: Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, Abu Zubayda, and Abu Khabab al-Masri. Sent back to Europe with instructions to form a sleeper cell, Nasiri became a conduit for messages going back and forth between Al Qaeda’s top recruiter in Pakistan and London’s radical cleric Abu Qatada.A gripping and provocative insider’s account of both Islamist terror networks and the intelligence services that spy on them, Inside the Jihad offers a completely original perspective on the ongoing battle against Al Qaeda.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"A chillingly detailed portrait of life inside the Afghan training camps. Omar Nasiri's memoir offers a unique insider's perspective on the crucial years during which a loosely connected group of regional Islamist movements coalesced into Al Qaeda's global jihad." --Ahmed Rashid, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Taliban

"A terrific book. Omar Nasiri offers a groundbreaking account of the process by which young men became mujahidin. His description of life inside the Afghan training camps is more complete than any intelligence we had available to us in the 1990s. It indicates a level of professionalism within the camps that we were only able to infer from the fragmentary accounts available to us-- and which policymakers dismissed at the time as CIA scare-mongering. As a micro-level description of the whole training process within the camps, Nasiri's account has, I believe, no peer in the publications of the American intelligence community." --Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit and author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror

About the Author:

Omar Nasiri (not his real name) was born in Morocco and currently resides in Germany with his wife.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0465023886
• ISBN 13: 9780465023882
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384