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POPSWill Al-Qa'eda's American-Born Propaganda Chief Make 9/11 DVD? Western intelligence sources in Pakistan believe that al-Qa'eda's prize American recruit and propaganda chief may have been killed in a CIA-directed airstrike. Evan Kohlmann, an investigator with the Nine Eleven Finding Answers (Nefa) foundation which monitors terrorist groups, said: "Al-Qaeda acknowledges that several of its leaders have been taken out. There aren't that many experienced leaders left in the middle ranks and they are being replaced by younger guys with no credentials but lots of enthusiasm." Watch video: 4:16
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POPSHow al Qaeda Will Perish
Al-Sahab, media arm of al Qaeda urgent call for recruits. "We call on the fathers and mothers not to become a barrier between their children and paradise." No less significant is that the rejection of al Qaeda is not a liberal phenomenon, in the sense that it represents a more tolerant mindset or a better opinion of the U.S. On the contrary, this is a revolt of the elders, whether among the tribal chiefs of Anbar province or Islamist godfathers like Sayyed Imam. They have seen through (or punctured) the al Qaeda mythology of standing for an older, supposedly truer form of Islam. Rather, they have come to know al Qaeda as fundamentally a radical movement -- the antithesis of the traditional social order represented by the local sovereign, the religious establishment, the head of the clan and, not least, the father who expects to know the whereabouts of his children. It would be a delightful irony if militant Islam were ultimately undone by a conservative style reaction.