WALTER LAQUEUR
333
nomenon in recent Italian publishing history. It showed, to put it cau–
tiously, a certain discrepancy between the views of sections of the West
European intelligentsia and the rest of the country.
Among other new books on this subject I found Robert Baer's
See
No
Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
of interest. Mr. Baer served for more than twenty years in the Middle
East, India, and Central Asia, as well as in Washington, and has some
revealing but depressing stories to tell. The most important piece of
information is on the very first page of this book-how he walked along
Edgware Road, London, and found in the Arab bookshops some very
interesting books and pamphlets banned in most Middle Eastern coun–
tries. He realized that his colleagues at the London station were not
aware of this literature, and they would not have been able to read it
anyway. This might be an exaggeration, because most of the Muslims in
Britain, as in other parts of Europe, do not read Arabic, and there are
many English translations.
A visit to these bookshops is rewarding. The prospective buyer will find
the autobiography of Ayman al-Zawahiri, a surgeon by training and bin
Laden's second-in-command. AI-Zawahiri's family is well known in
Egypt. His father was a professor; his grandfather one of the leading
sheikhs at al-Azhar; an uncle was Azzam Pasha, the founding secretary of
the Arab League; and another uncle was ambassador to Pakistan (which
did not prevent young al-Zawahiri's plans to blow up the embassy). In his
autobiography he describes why and how the attempt failed. AI-Zawahiri
was involved in Egyptian terrorism since his youth and his book describes
the exploits of the various groups, their attacks, their internal quarrels,
and eventually his departure from Egypt to Sudan and Afghanistan.
But the visitor will also find a new book very critical of al-Zawahiri
written by Muntasser al-Zayyat
(Al-Zawahiri, kama araftuh-AI–
Zawahiri, As I Knew Him). AI-Zayyat is certainly qualified to write
such a book; he shared a prison cell for a few years with al-Zawahiri
after the murder of Anwar e1-Sadat. He, too, had been involved in rad–
ical Islamic politics for a long time, and he appeared as a lawyer defend–
ing al-Zawahiri in many trials. He tried to create unity between the
Gamaa and Islamic Jihad, the main Egyptian terrorist groups, though
not very successfully, and in later years he attempted to bring about a
truce between the terrorists and the Arab governments. It was the old
quarrel about the strategy of jihad, whether the governments at home
or the external foe were the main enemy. AI-Zayyat eventually suc–
ceeded. He mobilized, among others, Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman
(now in a New York prison), who was involved in the first bombing of
