ABSTRACT

Any doubts concerning al-Qaeda’s (AQ) strategic intent to threaten international security are shattered upon reading the US Senate Select Committee on Foreign Relations’ (2009) report, ‘Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed To Get Bin Laden And Why It Matters Today.’ The document recounts a rendezvous on the outskirts of Kandahar in August 2001 when Usama Bin Laden (UBL) and Ayman al-Zawahiri met two Pakistani nuclear scientists to discuss AQ’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. Similarly, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) emir, Nasir al-Wahishi, told the organization’s publication, Inspire, in July 2010, ‘America’s actions require us to wipe them out of the map completely. America is a cancer that needs to be removed along with the West.’ However, words alone do not a viable threat network make.