During the early 1990s, al-Qa’ida was beginning to coalesce as an organization, honing its operational techniques and dealing with its first internal conflicts. Its private deliberations during this period are revealed by a trove of documents captured in the course of operations supporting the Global War on Terror and maintained in the Department of Defense’s Harmony Database. Al-Qa’ida’s (Mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa, by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, draws on recently
declassified Harmony documents, predominately from the 1992-1994 time period, original field work by CTC personnel and careful country studies to enrich our understanding of the terrorist group’s early successes and failures in the Horn of Africa.