The Last Refuge Quotes

“Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s biggest donor, warned the US against putting cash into the country, saying it usually ended up in Swiss bank accounts.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Salih was more greedy and paranoid than ever, describing him as “unrealistically and stupidly confident.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“They are surrounded but continue to fight like donkeys,”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Abdullah al-Sallal, the first president of the republic, came from a low-class butcher family.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“The US had its link. From an interrogation room in Sanaa, bin Laden’s bodyguard tied the hijackers to al-Qaeda.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Even from the air, the poverty was apparent. There were no rivers, no cities, and no green, just a single, unending collage of dusty grays and browns unfolding below like a rumpled quilt.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“I pledge before God my obedience to carry out both pleasant and unpleasant orders at good times and bad, and to work selflessly and not to disobey my commanders.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“They were gateway schools, innocuous on the surface but deadly in retrospect.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Taught by Egyptian and Saudi exiles, the institutes didn’t necessarily turn students into terrorists, but they did create a student more prepared for al-Qaeda’s message.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“As he walked out of the apartment, Hilah made his decision. Within minutes the Yemeni spy dialed a number he knew well and informed the man who answered that he had a traitor in his ranks.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Both Salih and bin Laden wanted to erase all traces of the past. The bikini beaches were closed and the beer gardens wiped away by sweaty men with guns and beards. It was time for a new start.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“In Aden’s wide, British-built thoroughfares, broken glass lay everywhere as soldiers smashed windows and display cases, carting off the booty as partial payment for their services. Some men simply backed their trucks up to buildings and disassembled them piece by piece, stripping the walls down to bare concrete before shipping them north.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Bid was convinced that in order to get outside help, particularly from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whose leaders still harbored a grudge against Salih for backing Saddam during the Gulf War, he needed to formally secede.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Once again, Salih and the jihadis were on the same side.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“At the presidential palace in Sanaa, the same polished stone building where he had recruited for the jihad in Afghanistan, Salih reacted to the news of the battle by calling Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, the radical preacher with the carrot-colored beard who had also played a major role in sending Yemenis abroad to fight.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“This will be the most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast,” Baker told the diplomat.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Salih turned a blind eye to the jihadis flooding into Yemen in the months after unification in early 1990.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“US president George H. W. Bush warned Salih that Yemen was making the wrong choice. Bush wanted to make the Gulf crisis—the first post–Cold War conflict—a showcase for the new world order. To do that, the US needed a broad, multinational coalition. Yemen’s grandstanding and calls for an “Arab” solution to the crisis were ruining the show. Making matters worse, Yemen was scheduled to take over the presidency of the UN Security Council on December 1, 1990.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“In the early 1990s, Salih and the jihadis were on the same side.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Unlike other Arab governments, who publicly supported the jihad while privately discouraging their young men from traveling to Afghanistan, North Yemen, then a separate state, sent scores of its best and brightest. For an entire generation of young Yemenis, a trip to the front lines in Afghanistan became a rite of passage.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Fadhli was indoctrinated in the same theological school that would produce bin Laden and eventually al-Qaeda.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“At Azzam’s funeral, days later, a brokenhearted Zindani tried to hold the movement together. Standing before hundreds of mourners on a hill outside Peshawar, he made an impassioned plea, his voice rising and falling in the microphone, as he praised Azzam’s ability to reconcile different factions and called for unity now that Azzam was gone. But Zindani couldn’t replace Azzam. No one could.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Saudi Arabia put Egyptians like Qutb on salary, giving them positions in state mosques and schools where they would go on to mold a generation of students with their understanding of the Quran and jihad.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

“Afghanistan, the shaykh’s voice rang out from the front of the mosque, is a land where Muslims are under attack. Soviet pilots strike from the air, murdering entire families in their homes as they sleep, he said.”
― Gregory D. Johnsen, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia