The attacks of September 11, 2001 were the bloodiest terrorist attacks in modern history and irreversibly changed the world. But they also turned out to be the biggest mistake and defeat of their creator. From documents and handwritten notes found on Osama bin Laden, we know what his real plan was, of which the attacks were supposed to be only the beginning. And how little this Saudi terrorist understood the modern world.
American researcher Nelly Lahoud spent three years studying and analyzing documents obtained from Osama bin Laden’s home. She described her findings in a book published two years ago, “The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family.”
We learn from it how the most wanted terrorist perceived the world for years and what he wanted to achieve by organizing the bloodiest terrorist attacks in modern history. The conclusions from it are unambiguous – the attacks of September 11, 2001 turned out to be the biggest mistake and defeat of Osama bin Laden, evidence of his poor understanding of the world and the beginning of the end of the entire Al-Qaeda.
The attacks of September 11, 2001PAP – Maria Samczuk, Maciej Zieliński
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Bin Laden’s biggest failure
Carrying out a series of terrorist attacks on the territory of the United States was never an end in itself. For bin Laden, it was supposed to be just the beginning, the trigger for enormous changes that would affect the entire world.
First of all, the September 11 attacks were supposed to be a “decisive blow” that would bring the United States to its knees. The leader of Al-Qaeda hoped that they would repeat the scenario that forced the Americans to withdraw from the Vietnam War. At that time, growing American losses in the war on the other side of the world led to the emergence of mass anti-war movements and pressure to withdraw from this unpopular conflict. And so it happened – American troops were gradually withdrawn from Vietnam, and Washington, under pressure from its own society, accepted defeat and the takeover of Vietnam by the communists.
Osama bin Laden assumed that killing thousands of people on American soil would work the same way – it would terrify the public and put pressure on the US to withdraw its military forces from Muslim-dominated areas. He thought that Americans would not want to fight “a war that is not ours” against Muslims and would take to the streets against the government. As he wrote in handwritten notes, the attacks in the heart of the United States were also intended to “break the fear of this false god and destroy the myth of American invincibility”, encouraging Muslims from all over the world to join al-Qaeda. The Saudi always thought globally – in his speeches he blamed the “blasphemous” US and Israel for shedding the blood of Muslims in Palestinian lands and Iraq as well as in Kashmir, Chechnya and Somalia.
Two weeks after the attacks, Osama bin Laden issued a short statement in which he conveyed “a few words to America and its people.” In it, he vowed that no one living in the United States “will be safe until security becomes a reality for us living in Palestine, and until all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed.” The withdrawal of U.S. forces and the mobilization of Muslims were supposed to lead to the next stage – to enable jihadists to openly fight the autocratic regimes that ruled in most Muslim countries, and to enable them to seize power there.
Only this was to be the way to achieve the most important goal of all Osama bin Laden’s actions – the re-creation of the historical “umma”, that is, the unification of all Muslims under one religious center of power. This was his plan, and this was the reason why he decided to carry out the attacks of September 11.
The attacks of September 11, 2001PAP/Reuters – Maciej Zieliński, Adam Ziemienowicz
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He knew history, but he didn’t understand the world.
The September 11 attacks shocked and changed the world, but today we know that in a completely different way than Osama bin Laden wanted. Above all, the terrorist understood the world much less than he thought. “He was well-versed in Islamic history, especially the military campaigns of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century, but he only superficially understood contemporary international relations,” Nelly Lahoud emphasized in “Foreign Affairs” on the 20th anniversary of the attacks.
The greatest mistake and failure of the leader of Al-Qaeda was to think that the attacks of September 11 would scare the United States. It happened exactly the opposite – the American public, in the face of the threat, united in support of President George W. Bush and his declared global “war on terror”. Instead of the withdrawal of American troops from the Muslim world, these troops were multiplied and attacked with full force – first on Afghanistan, then on Iraq.
This fundamental mistake, resulting from a misunderstanding of the US and Western democracies, triggered an avalanche of subsequent defeats for Osama bin Laden. As Lahoud emphasizes, because the Saudi did not expect any intervention, he was completely unprepared for the American attack on Afghanistan, in which he benefited from the protection of the Taliban. Meanwhile, less than a month after the terrorist attacks in the US, not only American bombs but also those of other NATO members began to fall on Afghanistan. The Taliban regime was wiped out, and bin Laden, losing ground under his feet, managed with the utmost difficulty to survive the manhunt and hide from the Americans.
In this way he saved his life, but lost almost everything else. Osama bin Laden had to hide so deeply that for years he could not even contact senior Al-Qaeda commanders. In this way he lost control of his own terrorist organization, which in the meantime under American blows became a shadow of itself. Its remaining leaders were killed or captured, and the few who avoided it could only save themselves by disappearing on the harsh border with Pakistan.
9/11 proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for al-Qaeda – the organization never recovered from it or regained the ability to carry out attacks in the West. Although the attacks initially brought it fame in the Muslim world and thousands of new recruits, this too proved to be short-lived, and bin Laden lost any opportunity he had dreamed of fighting “American hegemony.”
“Our suffering and problems were heartbreaking, and the weakness, failure and futility that befell us were terrifying,” a second-ranking al-Qaeda commander known as Tawfiq told bin Laden of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “Our lands were occupied, our resources were plundered. That’s what happened to the jihadists, and especially to us in al-Qaeda,” he emphasized. Powerless and cut off from bin Laden, the fighters increasingly engaged in killing other Muslims, battling other terrorist organizations for influence, rather than fighting the “infidel West.”
The End of Bin Laden
In the winter of 2010/2011, half a year before his death, Osama bin Laden did not hide his disappointment with the developments in the Middle East and the condition of Al-Qaeda. Commenting on the decline of his own importance and possibilities of action, he summed up: “we can do nothing more than intensify our prayers”. He planned to issue another appeal, creating at least a dozen more drafts, but he did not have time. On the night of May 2, 2011, 24 American commandos landed on his stronghold in Abbottabad, killing bin Laden on the spot and taking his body.
Today, Al-Qaeda, although much weaker, still exists. But Osama bin Laden did not achieve anything he planned with the September 11 attacks. The global changes he triggered turned out to be the complete opposite of his predictions. The only thing he managed to do was murder three thousand innocent, random people. Violence, as always, turned out to be the easiest.
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Foreign Affairs, tvn24.pl
