7 - FUTURE TRUST NETWORKS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
Summary
They told us so! The U.S. State Department's annual report “Patterns of Global Terrorism” for 2000, issued on April 30, 2001, contained this description of al-Qaida:
Established by Usama bin Ladin in the late 1980s to bring together Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. Helped finance, recruit, transport, and train Sunni Islamic extremists for the Afghan resistance. Current goal is to establish a pan-Islamic Caliphate throughout the world by expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries. Issued statement under banner of “the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders” in February 1998, saying it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens – civilian or military – and their allies everywhere.
(State 2001: 2450)The report went on to say that al-Qaida had organized the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), engineered the assault of the USS Cole in Yemen (2000), and plotted numerous attacks on Westerners elsewhere. The document singled out South Asia as a base for vindictive violence directed toward U.S. interests, calling special attention to the Afghan Taliban's provision of safe haven for Usama bin Ladin and his network.
When State issued its report on 2000's terror attacks in April 2001, most of the nineteen men – four pilots and fifteen “muscle hijackers” – who would ram fuel-packed, passenger-filled American airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field on September 11th had already entered the United States.
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- Trust and Rule , pp. 151 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005