Page 342

REVISTA IEEE 11

342 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 11 / 2018 «Saudi money financed the establishment of religious organizations, such as the World Islamic League, the building of mosques, and the mass distribution of religious literature, including the works of Ibn Tamiyya…/…it reinforced in all countries of Moslem population, including those in Europe, a fundamentalist vision of Islam, which favored the emergence of Salafist jihadism». The paradox is that the jihadists would later denounce Saudi Arabia as one of the regimes which had repudiated true Islam9. After this necessary introduction, the central nucleus of the book follows a chronological as well as analytical order, and sets forth a process in which the prime initial element is nationalism, both of the secular type, as represented by the Palestinian PLO, as well as of the religious, whose exponent is the Palestinian Hamas. A series of events would prove to be determinants in the evolution towards a radicalized Islam; in the first place, the defeat of pan-Arab nationalism in the Arab-Israeli war in June of 1967, and just over a decade later, the triumph of the Iranian revolution of 1979, the same year in which the Afghan war began. Nasser died in 1970. Sadat, his succesor, gave a great turn-about to Egyptian policy, breaking off the cooperation treaty with the USSR, and domestically, confronting movements close to the USSR and moving closer to the Islamists. Within this turn-about was his policy of approach to Israel and his resulting assassination in 1981 by the aforementioned Islamist radical group «Tanzim al Jihad». The following years, which saw a growing weight of jihadism in Egypt, almost coinciding with the Algerian civil war and the rise of the Islamic Front for Salvation, give way to the fourth chapter, on the origins and first steps of al Qaeda, the figure of Bin Laden and his ideological and social influence, as well as the first actions of the network at the end of the 1990’s (Afghanistan, assaults on embassies, etc.). The two following chapters (five and six) study the attacks on September 11th of 2001. The former examines the complexity of their preparation, the failure of the U.S. measures to prevent them, as well as the supposed aims of Al Qaeda, quoting al-Zawahiri and the importance he gave to the necessity of having an echo among the Arab masses similar to that achieved by the Palestinian Intifada10. The latter analyses the response of the U.S. and the measures taken in the «war on terror», among them the invasion of Iraq in 2003 which is, for many, the greatest error committed by President Bush11. The seventh chapter, focused on the analysis of the attacks of March 11 2004 in Madrid is a must reading one for, in his concise style, the author presents with clarity and balance facts which had undeniable social and political repercussions in Spain. The same concise style and balance characterize the eighth chapter, which analyses the so-called «Arab spring» (pp. 141-146) as well as the following chapter, which studies, 9  Avilés, J. (2017), op. cit., pp. 44-45. 10  Zawahiri (Ayman al-Zawahiri), 2001. Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, www.fas.org/irp/world/ para/ayman_bk.html (quoted in Avilés, 2017, op.cit. p. 91). 11  Avilés, 2017. Ibid, p. 105. http://revista.ieee.es

REVISTA IEEE 11
To see the actual publication please follow the link above