Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

parts of the world shared this perspective on the attacks – in contrast to the
genuine outpouring of grief and sympathy in Europe, especially Western
Europe, in the South the reaction was far more muted, and not just in the
so-called Muslim world. Still, those Latin Americans and Africans who
regarded the fall of the towers as a blow against the empire would have been
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less enthusiastic, presumably, had they reflected on the contempt with which
the terrorists treated the lives of their victims, many of whom were, as it
happened, Hispanic or African in origin. Al Qaeda’s particular brand of rad-
ical Islam regards all non-Muslims – and all Muslims who take a different
path – as of no moral significance, deserving only of the kind of benevolence
to which animals are entitled, a comparison explicitly made in the notes of
Mohammed Atta, the leader of the team. There is some doubt as to whether
the attackers actually expected to bring down the towers and kill quite so
many people, but their leaders have expressed no regrets for their action.
Not surprisingly, 9/11 galvanized the American people, and President
Bush’s declaration of a ‘War on Terror’ was widely welcomed in the US, and
in much of the rest of the world – although some argued that the use of the
term ‘war’ was unwise; the terrorists were criminals not soldiers, and more-
over, wars are discrete events whereas the campaign against Al Qaeda was
unlikely to have a decisive end. Still, the initial international reaction to the
idea of a war on terror was positive, and US relations with Russia, China
and India improved overnight – each of these countries had their own
domestic terrorist movements to contend with and welcomed the idea of
being able to generalize these struggles; they welcomed in particular the
thought that the US would no longer criticize their anti-terrorist policies on
human rights grounds. Reaction in the Muslim world was more complex,
but many Muslim-majority societies also faced threats from radical
Islamicists and were willing to accept US help in dealing with them. The
first campaign in the war on terror, inevitably, was directed against the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Taliban supported Al Qaeda’s theology
and provided sanctuary for its leader, Osama Bin Laden, thus making itself
a prime target for US post-9/11 action. The Taliban’s main international
supporter had been Pakistan, and one of the most momentous shifts in the
immediate aftermath of 9/11 was when President Musharraf of Pakistan
brought his country into the war on terror in alignment with the US.
American air-power, plus special forces cooperating with anti-Taliban
forces in Afghanistan, and with the assistance of a small number of reliable
old friends such as the UK and Australia, and new allies such as the
Russians and the central Asian republics, soon brought down the Taliban
regime – although setting up a viable government in Afghanistan is taking
a lot longer and requires the assistance of NATO and the UN. The first
campaign of the war on terror was at least a qualified success.