The dismantling of some terrifying terrorist myths

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 30 April 2011

Hidden deep in the leaked Guantanamo files is a small but important trove of information, too historical and too technical to have commanded much space in newspapers keener on hyperventilating about ''nuclear al-Qaeda hellstorms'' this week. Each of the 700-plus files includes a short biography of its subject. These cover his ''prior history'' and ''recruitment and travel'' to wherever he became fully engaged with violent extremism and, with brutal if unintended efficiency, demolish three of the most persistent myths about al-Qaeda.

The first is that the organisation is composed of men the CIA trained to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan who then turned on their mentors. In fact, among the bona fide al-Qaeda operatives detained in Guantanamo Bay there are very few who are actually veterans of the fighting in the 1980s, and none of these were involved with groups that received any substantial technical or financial assistance from the US.