Olivier Roy is one of those few academics who also work in the public sphere, having been a consultant for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan and head of the OSCE mission to Tajikistan. He is counted to be among the best authorities on Iran and Central Asia.

The book (first published in French in 2002) set itself an ambitious task, as shown in the description on the cover:

Al Qaida was unable to realize its lethal potential until it found sanctuary in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden fled after being expelled from Sudan. But why was the network's sanctuary not attacked before September 2001, especially after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998? Abou Zahab and Roy argue that the Taliban was part of a much wider radical Islamist network in the region, whose true center was Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Al Qaida, the Taliban, the Pakistani Deobandis - all of these groups are based in Pakistan, which continues to serve as the regional hub for Islamist movements and their terrorist offshoots.

This indispensable book investigates and explains the almost twenty-five-year gestation of these interlinked radical Islamist networks of Pakistan, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, out of which Al Qaida emerged. Taking into account the networks' divergent histories and doctrinal rifts, the authors lay bare the political contingencies that enabled these disparate Islamist movements to coordinate with the aim of attacking what became their common adversary: the United States.

The small volume (82 pages of text) is organized into 4 chapters plus introduction and conclusion. The chapters are "Ex-Soviet Central Asia" (7 pages), "Afghanistan: From the Islamists to the Taliban and Al-Qaida" (7 pages), "Pakistan: from Religious Conservatism to Political Radicalism" (27 pages), and "Connections and Dynamics" (25 pages). This organization already shows the weighing of the book: it is mainly concerned with Pakistan.

As a matter of fact, the more I read into the book, the more it looked to me as if Oliver Roy had come across a research paper by Mariam Abou Zahab, a fellow academic in France (at some point she worked at INALCO), on Jihadist groups in Pakistan and said, "This should be published, but lets add a bit on Afghanistan and Central Asia so it's more attractive for the general public."

Indeed, where the two chapters on Pakistan are fascinating reading as they thoroughly describe the genesis and development of Islamism in Pakistan including biographies of all the major leaders as well as an insight into the sociology of the movements, the two chapters on Central Asia and Afghanistan are almost embarrassingly thin. The first chapter reads almost like a freshman presentation, forgetting any historical or even contemporary political background (none whatsoever had been provided in the preceding Introduction) and starting with the sentence, "In Central Asia three movements are dominant." Where they came from and in what political, social, economic, religious environment they operated is not mentioned. The chapter is nothing more than short summaries of the developments of those above-mentioned three movements, which could be found in any book or article on the development of post-Soviet Central Asia.

The same can be said about the following, equally short chapter on Afghanistan.

The next two chapters are the meat of the book and the reason why anyone should read it. With the general focus on the (Arab) Middle East, Pakistan is too often overlooked or seen as nothing but a staging ground for the Taliban, whose "actual" thrust is towards Kabul and not Islamabad. Taking into account that Pakistan is, so far, the only country in the Muslim world that possesses nuclear weapons, one would think that it, and its domestic Islamist movements, should warrant more attention. Roy and Abou Zahab (it is impossible to tell who wrote what, although my money is on the latter) show how out of Islamist movements grew a number of decidedly Jihadist ones, i.e. groups that hold the position that enemies (be they the Indians in Kashmir or the Americans in the World) have to be fought militarily. This led to a clear split within the Islamist sphere - into "moderates" and "Jihadists" - but, eventually in 2002 also to the decision by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to stop the government's dalliance with and covert support of the Islamist groups in general.

For that work, the thorough dissection of the developments of the Islamist networks in Pakistan, the two authors are to be commended. But to hint, as the back cover summary (also appearing on Amazon.com) does, that this book substantially deals with Al Qaeda or the regional network would be misleading.

After having read the book I wondered: just who is the target audience? It can't be the general public, because the book assumes extensive background knowledge of the history and politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and ex-Soviet Central Asia. Also, one is almost forced to create a cheat sheet with all the names, lest one wants to lose track after the first twenty or so. A consistent practice of using abbreviations for the various movements would have been helpful.

That leaves, as target audience, the specialist. However, if that was the case, then the two mini-chapters on Central Asia and Afghanistan are unnecessary and the two chapters on Pakistan could've been published as an article in an academic journal.

In the end, I suspect that this genre has become more attractive to laypeople in the post-9/11 world. However, I do believe the end product could have been so very much better - either through limitation to the Islamist movements in Pakistan or through a more thorough treatment of Central Asia and Afghanistan.