Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973-2012 (Columbia/Hurst)

Drawing on a wealth of previously unstudied primary sources in several languages, Vahid Brown and Don Rassler map the anatomy of a group frequently described as the most lethal actor in the Afghan insurgency. The Haqqani network has for decades operated at the centre of a transnational nexus of Islamist militancy, lending support to the development of jihadi organizations from Southeast Asia to East Africa. Pouring over abundant new evidence documenting the Haqqani network's pivotal role in the birth and evolution of the global jihadi movement, this volume also significantly advances our knowledge of the history of al-Qaeda by fundamentally altering the portrait painted by existing literature on the subject.