9/11 five years on - Terrorist attacks changed the world

By Eva-Maria McCormack and Pat Reber Sep 11, 2006, 13:46 GMT

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States became a watershed in the history of the US, with consequences that eventually reached across the globe.

The worst attacks ever on US soil - with an estimated 3,000 deaths - brought the realization that global conflicts are fought out even on America's home ground.

They also set the tone for the two-term presidency of George W Bush, radically changing both domestic policies on security and individual freedoms as well as foreign politics.

The subsequent US-led 'war on terror' saw the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq removed, with many unresolved issues, violence and a remaining foreign military presence in both countries.

It saw the United States, the world's only superpower after the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union, flexing its military muscle for the first time without diplomatic consensus or the backing of key allies.

The five-year-long ripple effect has created new international alliances and a major shift in global politics, producing, in the eyes of critics, a further polarization of Western versus Islamist political ideologies and a vilification of Islam as a religion.

At the very least, the war against terrorism has posed the question of how governments should respond to a battle that is ideological yet fought with military means.

As such, the 'War on Terror' has shaped regional conflicts across the world, in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Southeast Asia, and Chechnya. It also played a role in the nuclear standoff with Iran.

Symbolic for frustration over the war, the destroyed World Trade Centre site in Manhattan still awaits development. Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who masterminded the attack, has eluded capture despite a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head.

There have been no further attacks on American soil, suggesting that the US strongly expanded security policies such as wiretaps and fingerprinting foreign arrivals has been effective.

But five years of major terrorist attacks in Britain, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Morocco, Kenya and Tunisia point to a spiral of violence nonetheless.

A group of 100 top American foreign policy experts, polled by the magazine Foreign Policy, say by a margin of 86 per cent that the war on terrorism has made the world more 'dangerous' for the US and Americans.

Poll participant Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, told the magazine that the war was being lost because symptoms, not causes, were being treated.

'Our insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time ... feeds al- Qaeda's vision of the world,' she was quoted as saying.

British Defence Secretary John Reid believes that the West is only one of the battlefields. He recently told a Washington audience that the heart of the global terrorism struggle was within Islam itself, whether its prevailing worldview looked 'forward into the 21st century or ... back to the 8th century.'

Besides Afghanistan, a key area for that struggle is now Iraq, destabilized by the US invasion and now prime training ground for the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Terrorists use Iraq as a base for foreign attacks, such as that last year on a series of hotels in Amman, Jordan.

Even in Asia, with the world's largest populations of Muslims, experts say that hardline Islamic organizations have become more radical as they capitalize on anger over perceived US bullying.

'Extremist groups that were modest in size have grown significantly,' said Rohan Gunaratna, a regional terrorism analyst.

But many Muslims in South-East Asia, mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia, also resent Islamist terrorism and 'feel that our religion is being threatened,' said Yusri Mohamed, president of the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia.

Beyond the religious divide, the war on terrorism also appears to have served the domestic political needs of governments. In Asia, muddled signals from Bush's 'war on terror' prompted many Asian governments to tar their local insurgencies and anti-government groups with the terrorist tag.

Thailand under the five-year-old premiership of Thaksin Shinawatra has noticeably backtracked in its human rights record, with an estimated 2,000 extra-judiciary killings.

In Russia, the Kremlin has increasingly linked Islamic rebel forces in Chechnya with international terrorism, deflecting foreign criticism of the brutal conduct of Russian troops in the separatist republic.

After the 2004 seizure by gunmen of a school in Beslan and the deaths of more than 300 hostages, many of them children, Putin's Kremlin pushed through parliament a package of purported anti- terrorist measures, including the abolition of popular elections of regional leaders, a step that was claimed to 'strengthen democracy.'

The death in July of top Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev and the surrender of more than 170 militants boosted Russia's internal war on terrorism. Following the murder of four of its diplomats in Iraq this summer, Russia now also reserves the right to take action against terrorists anywhere in the world.

The war on terrorism also prompted changing international alliances, which in turn impacted on national agendas and triggered domestic opposition to several dovernments.

In 2004, just days after the Madrid train bombings, Spanish voters turned out the favoured conservative and Bush-friendly government of prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, in anger over Aznar's haste to blame the bombings on Basque separatists and mask the al-Qaeda involvement.

New Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero recalled Spanish troops from Iraq and switched from an Atlanticist to a pro- European foreign policy.

In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair faces increasing opposition over the war in Iraq. In the United States, Republicans are scrambling to hold on to their majority in Congress in November elections.

Perhaps more than anywhere else on Earth, the Middle East has seen a drastic hardening of the fronts, according to many analysts who argue that Israel has become more isolated, while Iran's influence has grown.

Washington's push for democracy in the Palestinian Territories saw militant Hamas take over the government, and in Lebanon, Hezbollah extremists hold high positions. Over the past months, Israel fought a two-front war against both neighbours.

Tehran's influence in the Middle East has been strengthened by the US-led war on terrorism, experts at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London said in a recent study.

The ouster of regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq suddenly put the 'Great Satan' (United States) on Iran's north-western, western and south-eastern borders - but also rid Tehran of its erstwhile rivals.

The Israel-Hamas/Hezbollah conflicts further destabilized the region and, in turn, strengthened Iran confidence in its conflict with the West over its nuclear programme, the Royal Institute said.

When then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon described the 9/11 attacks as a 'turning point' in the war against international terrorism, he believed they would prompt greater international support for Israel in the Mideast conflict. The sub-text of many Israeli comments on September 11 was, 'Now do you understand how we feel?'

It did not work out that way. Instead, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come to be seen as one of the reasons for the rise of militant Islam.

In the years since September 11, 2001, pressure has grown on the Jewish state to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians, and Israel's war against Palestinian militants is seen as fuelling Muslim discontent.

While some Israeli observers accept this thesis, others believe that Islamist anger against the West would also exist without Israel.

The worldwide repercussions of this anger, however, continue do rock the safety of people and their trust in governments, while international political solutions appear to have shown little effect so far.

(dpa correspondents Jeff Abramowitz, Nick Allen, Thomas Burmeister, Anne-Beatrice Clasmann, Joe Cochrane, John Hale, Peter Janssen, Ofira Koopmans, Farshid Motahari, Veronica Sardon, Sinikka Tarvainen, Benita van Eyssen, and Julia Yeow contributed to this report.)