The September 11 attacks were an organized terrorist act carried out by 19 hijackers, and organized by numerous members of al-Qaeda. Reasons for the attacks were stated before and after the attacks in several sources, including the the videos of Ayman al-Zawahiri and Fatawā, interviews of Osama bin Laden and videos and audio recordings of Osama bin Laden. The motivations identified for the attacks include the support of Israel by the United States, presence of the U.S. military in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. enforcement of sanctions against Iraq.
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Before the attacks, Al-Qaeda issued proclamations that provide insight into the motivations for the attacks: one was the fatwā of August 1996,[2] and a second was a shorter fatwa in February 1998.[3] Both documents appeared initially in the Arabic-language London newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi and they specifically mentioned support of Israel by the U.S. and the presence of the U.S. in Saudi Arabia.[2][3] After the attacks, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have published dozens of video tapes and audio tapes, many describing the motivations for the attacks. Two particularly important publications were bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America",[4] and a 2004 video tape by bin Laden.[5] In addition to direct pronouncements by bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, numerous political analysts have postulated motivations for the attacks.
On 6 August 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee. After the end of the Gulf War and after the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the sanctions were linked to removal of weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687.[6] From 1991 until 2003 the effects of government policy and sanctions regime led to hyperinflation, widespread poverty and malnutrition. On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) was questioned by Leslie Stahl "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it." She later wrote "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean";[7] and regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel".[8]
In the 1998 fatwa, Al Qaeda identified the Iraq sanctions as a reason to kill Americans: "despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation....On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim..."[9]
In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, Osama calls this "the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known"[10]
After the 1991 Gulf war, the US maintained a presence of 5,000 troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.[11] One of the responsibilities of that force was Operation Southern Watch, which enforced the no-fly zones over southern Iraq set up after 1991, and the country's oil exports through the shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf are protected by the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.
Since Saudi Arabia houses the holiest sites in Islam (Mecca and Medina) — many Muslims were upset at the permanent military presence. The continued presence of US troops after the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia was one of the stated motivations behind the September 11th terrorist attacks,[11] and the Khobar Towers bombing. Further, the date chosen for the 1998 United States embassy bombings (August 7), was eight years to the day that American troops were sent to Saudi Arabia.[12] Bin Laden interpreted the Prophet Muhammad as banning the "permanent presence of infidels in Arabia".[13] In 1996, Bin Laden issued a fatwa, calling for American troops to get out of Saudi Arabia. In the 1998 fatwa, Al-Qaeda wrote "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples."[9] In the December 1999 interview with Rahimullah Yusufzai, bin Laden said he felt that Americans were "too near to Mecca" and considered this a provocation to the entire Muslim world.[14]
In his November 2002 "Letter to America", Bin Laden described the United States' support of Israel as a motivation: "The expansion of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily."[15] In 2004 and 2010, Bin Laden again repeated the connection between the September 11 attacks and the support of Israel by the United States.[16][17]
Support of Israel was also mentioned before the attack in the 1998 Al-Qaeda fatwa: "[T]he aim [of the United States] is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."[3]
Some motives for the attacks—such as globalization and a desire to provoke the United States—have been inferred by political analysts, although these motives are not explicitly stated by Al-Qaeda.
Bernard Lewis is the best-known exponent of the idea of the "humiliation" of the Islamic world through globalization. In the 2004 book The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, he argues animosity toward the west is best understood with the decline of the once powerful Ottoman empire, compounded by the import of western ideas— Arab socialism, Arab liberalism and Arab secularism.
During the past three centuries, the Islamic world has lost its dominance and its leadership, and has fallen behind both the modern West and the rapidly modernizing Orient. This widening gap poses increasingly acute problems, both practical and emotional, for which the rulers, thinkers, and rebels of Islam have not yet found effective answers.[18]
In an essay titled 'The spirit of terrorism', Jean Baudrillard described 9/11 as the first global event that "questions the very process of globalization".[1]
Some middle-east scholars like Michael Scott Doran and Peter Bergen have argued that 9/11 was a strategic way to provoke America into a war that incites a pan-Islamist revolution.
Michael Scott Doran argued that the attacks are best understood as being part of a religious conflict within the Muslim world. In an essay, Doran argued that Bin Laden's followers: "consider themselves an island of true believers surrounded by a sea of iniquity".[19] Doran further argued that bin Laden hoped U.S. retaliation would unite the faithful against the West, sparking revolutions in Arab nations and elsewhere; and that the Osama bin Laden videos were attempting to provoke a visceral reaction in the Middle East aimed at a violent reaction by Muslim citizens to increased U.S. involvement in their region.[20]
Correspondent Peter Bergen argued that the attacks were part of a plan to cause the United States to increase its military and cultural presence in the Middle East, thereby forcing Muslims to confront the idea of a non-Muslim government and establish conservative Islamic governments in the region.[21]
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