Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

How we trained al-Qa’eda

Brendan O’Neill says the Bosnian war taught Islamic terrorists to operate abroad

issue 13 September 2003

For all the millions of words written about al-Qa’eda since the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked – the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today.

Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qa’eda and other terror groups’ origins back to the Afghan war of 1979

Brendan O’Neill
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Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.

This article originally appeared in the UK edition

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