Talk:Al-Qaeda

Starting discussion for planning

I saw your suggestion that the project needs some articles on some higher level topics like Al-Qaeda.

I have gathered some sources for beginning an article on Al-Qaeda. I will follow your style requests, to the best of my ability. I will ask you to try to regard it as a good faith attempt, without regard to how many aspects of it you think fall short of the standards you would like to see here.

I should put up a draft covering its founding after Osama bin Laden split from Abdullah Azzam's group, the group's movement to Sudan, the reports the group's role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, reports of the group's role in the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, the group's return to Afghanistan, its role in the bombing of the USS Cole, its role in the 2001-09-11 bombings -- in the next couple of days.

In my draft I could also begin to address al Qaeda's Afghan training camps, and its post 9-11 expansion as other groups, like Zarqawi's signed on board. I would like to ask you some questions about covering these two subtopics. George Swan 22:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Let's start an article simply to get a talk page, and move this discussion there. My suggestion would be to concentrate, at first, on the group's background and structure, more than its actions, although I offer a pointer to the best guesses as to its structural model, Clandestine cell system#Non-traditional models exemplified by al-Qaeda.

There may be reason to expand the bin Laden entry to get a better tie to Afghanistan as well as the Saudi groups with Azzam. Again in setting the foundation, we'll want to be sure to bring in the background from Sayyid Qutb and the Egyptian foundation groups.

Their theories of restoral of the Caliphate is important, as well as how they are regarded as heretics even by Wahhabis, much less more mainstream Sunnis and especially Shi'as. With the Sudanese tie-in, there's always he who made the Medici look simplistic, Hassan al-Turabi. [[[User:Howard C. Berkowitz|Howard C. Berkowitz]] 00:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thinking about it further, I wanted to reinforce the reasons I think it wise to separate al-Qaeda from its operations, although its known and suspected operations certainly can be in a Related Articles subpage or even a catalog. Consider the USS Cole (DDG-67). She had an existence before and after the attack. That, for example, she is a Burke-class destroyer is relevant to an article on the ship, but not especially to al-Qaeda. U.S. force protection procedures including THREATCON are more general than the ship, although the particular procedures and rules of engagement during the incident are relevant sections in a USS Cole (DDG-67) article. Immediate U.S. and international response, as well as the salvage, don't have that much to do with al-Qaeda. Investigation and trial do bear on al-Qaeda, the ship, and higher-level U.S. counterterrorism and law enforcement.

By way of comparison, I'm going to propose moving Guantanamo detainee's uniforms into Guantanamo Bay detention camp as they have little significance outside that context. The material certainly could link to an article on prison uniforms and grooming as a means of control and individuality, for which I don't have a concise name. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, in the U.S., certainly uses uniform and grooming [1]. Shaving and delousing and uniforms are characteristic of prisons worldwide. In some cultures, gang or political symbols are a sign of defiance and individuality, and are intensely suppressed, often down to the level of gestures.

Al-Qaeda is likely to justify subarticles just on its own politics, alliances, and theology, which I would address before its operations. Operations can be addressed in parallel, especially those operations where the degree of al-Qaeda sponsorship is not clear — it may have been suggested, or there may be a parallel in operational signatures, but little hard evidence. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)