Owen Bennett-Jones

Owen Bennett-Jones interviews authors for a weekly show on the New Books Network.

In many respects Isis is a very modern organisation. The brochure detailing its 2012-13 activities is like a state of the art corporate report. The most striking page, with slick graphic design, has 15 silhouetted icons – time bombs, handcuffs, a car, a man running – with each representing a field of activity: roadside bombs, prisoner escapes, car bombs and the clearance of apostates’ homes. Next to a picture of a pistol is the word ‘assassinations’ and the number 1083: the number of targeted killings Isis claims to have pulled off in the year under review.

Bunches of Guys: Just the Right Amount of Violence

Owen Bennett-Jones, 19 December 2013

As they fled Afghanistan after 9/11 some of bin Laden’s followers wondered whether the attacks on the US had been a mistake. Among them was one of al-Qaida’s most acerbic writers, Abu Musab al-Suri. In public he backed bin Laden: privately he described him as an obstinate egotist. And he was scathing about the consequences of 9/11. Al-Suri believed that the Afghan Taliban regime had been destroyed for the sake of a provocative attack on a country al-Qaida could not defeat.

In her posthumously published book, Reconciliation, Benazir Bhutto named a man who she believed had tried to procure bombs for an unsuccessful attempt on her life in Karachi in October 2007: ‘I was informed of a meeting that had taken place in Lahore where the bomb blasts were planned … a bomb maker was needed for the bombs. Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government. He had been extradited by the United Arab Emirates and was languishing in the Karachi central jail.’

Letter
Raymond Tanter’s defence of his pro-MEK stance holds no surprises (Letters, 19 July). He states that the MEK is the most prominent group in rejecting clerical rule in Tehran. In a sense he is right: it is the most prominent group – but only in Washington, Paris and London. Exiles often dream of returning to power in their homeland and a few, such as Lenin and al-Malaki, have achieved it. They are...

Terrorists? Us?

Owen Bennett-Jones, 7 June 2012

The story of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK), is all about the way image management can enable a diehard enemy to become a cherished ally. The MEK is currently campaigning to be officially delisted in the US as a terrorist organisation. Once off the list it will be free to make use of its support on Capitol Hill in order to become America’s most favoured, and no doubt best funded, Iranian opposition group. The last outfit to achieve something similar was the Iraqi National Congress, the lobby group led by Ahmed Chalabi.

Pakistan has been described as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’, yet Owen Bennett Jones’s title is appropriate, for though storms rage all around Pakistan, the country itself...

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