A close up view shows a hole in the French supertanker
DUBAI (AFP) - Al-Qaeda, the terror network whose followers are blamed for a fresh flurry of attacks in Yemen, Kuwait and Indonesia, is engaged in a "global confrontation" with the United States, the strategy so dear to its chief Osama bin Laden, pundits said.
"Following the 1991 Gulf War, bin Laden declared jihad (holy war) against the United States, accusing it of occupying his native Saudi Arabia by deploying troops" in the kingdom after Iraq invaded Kuwait the previous year, said London-based Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih.
"In a bid to galvanize his troops, bin Laden took a leaf out of the Hadeeth (sayings) of (Islam's) Prophet Mohammad, who from his deathbed called on the faithful to 'expel the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula'," said former Kuwaiti Islamist MP Abdullah al-Nafisi.
Bin Laden began practising what he preached in November 1995 when a car bomb explosed outside premises...