God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad

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Map 2: ‘The Peshawur Valley’: John Adye’s map of 1863 showing the Yusufzai country and Mahabun Mountain

Map 3: Arabia in the mid-nineteenth century

Map 4: ‘Mohmand, Swat and Buner’: map from 1898

Map 5: The North-West Frontier in the 1930s

In the three years since I wrote God’s Terrorists things have moved on. In the memorable words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ‘stuff happens,’ and chief among that stuff is the continuing fallout from the US-British intervention in Iraq. It alienated millions of mainstream Muslims who had previously felt sympathy for America in the wake of 9/11 and had supported its war against Osama bin Laden and his local allies, the Taliban. It gave new authority to the Al-Qaeda confederacy, once more able to present itself as the defender of Islam in the face of US-British aggression. And it led to the revitalization of the Taliban.

Three years ago there was a growing consensus among impartial observers of the Afghanistan scene that the war against the Taliban and their ‘Arab’ guests was close to being won. The reconstruction of the country under a democratically-elected government was under way. Military and political pressures had turned Osama bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and their lieutenants into hunted men, forced to keep moving from one hideout to another within the tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Their long-suffering Pathan hosts were showing signs that their famous tradition of limitless hospitality did indeed have limits.

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