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Just about everything happens for a reason. Especially big things like the attacks of September 11.
Who planned the attacks? Why? Who carried out the plan? What did they hope to accomplish? The background story of 9/11 is long. It’s also complicated. And it involves different times in history. People from different parts of the world. And ideas you may find difficult to accept.
▲ People have wondered about the date of the attacks. September 11. Why choose that particular date? One idea is connected to emergencies. In the United States, 9-1-1 is the universal telephone number to call to get help in an emergency. A more widely accepted idea is connected to events that took place long ago, in 1683. Before that time, Europeans had fought against Muslims. Their goal was to recover the Holy Land, which the Muslims controlled. (The Holy Land refers to several places. They include Israel and the Palestinian Territories. They also include western Jordan and parts of southern Lebanon. Plus southwestern Syria.) On September 11, 1683, the king of Poland began a battle. The battle turned back the farthest advance of the Muslim army. It was embarrassing for the Islamic world. For the next 300 years, Christian society overshadowed Islam. According to Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower, Osama bin Laden saw the attacks as Islam’s “big comeback.” (Osama bin Laden would become the mastermind of September 11.)
In 1993, a bomb went off in a parking garage under the World Trade Center. Six people died and more than 1,000 were injured. An FBI investigation linked four terrorists to the bomb. Bin Laden praised the attack openly as he continued to develop al-Qaeda. In 1996, he issued a fatwa, or religious opinion. The fatwa announced a holy war against the United States. He had three reasons for doing so. He said the U.S. was occupying holy sites of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula. He said the U.S. was looting the natural resources of the Muslim world. And he said the U.S. was supporting governments that gave in to U.S. interests in the region. Bin Laden’s idea was to drag the U.S. into a war with Muslims. His goal was to put an end to the way events and power in the world were controlled. He also wanted to create a single Islamic state. ▶
◀ Osama bin Laden came from a wealthy family. The family had close ties to the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 1988, bin Laden founded al-Qaeda. Its original purpose was to fight against the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (now Russia). Bin Laden believed the invasion was an attack against Islam. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989. That’s when bin Laden began establishing al-Qaeda throughout the Middle East. Through the organization, he started camps to train future terrorists.
Al-Qaeda flag
◀ Between 1989 and 1996, al-Qaeda had headquarters in Sudan, Africa. (Sudan is across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia.) There, bin Laden set up camps to train Muslims in military skills. In 1996, he established al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. This effort had the backing of the Taliban. The Taliban is an Islamist political and military organization. That same year, bin Laden declared a jihad against the U.S. (A jihad is a war against the enemies of Islam.) He condemned the influence of the United States in Muslim-majority countries. The jihad led to violent attacks on U.S. interests abroad.
▲ September 11, 2001, was the first time al-Qaeda had attacked the U.S. on its own soil. But it was not the first time it had attacked the U.S. In August 1998, in Africa, bombs blew up right outside two American embassies. One was in Nairobi, Kenya. The other was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The bombs went off at almost the exact same time. More than 4,500 people were wounded in the attacks. Plus, 224 people died, including 12 Americans. The FBI investigated the attacks. It linked these attacks directly to al-Qaeda. As it did in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. This was a navy destroyer ship. It was refueling in the port of Aden, Yemen. (Yemen is a country in the Middle East.) The blast was set off by suicide bombers in a small boat alongside the ship. It killed 17 sailors and injured many more.
◀ In 1986, Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammad earned a college degree. It was in mechanical engineering at Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. After graduating, he returned to the Middle East. While holding jobs in engineering, he developed a hatred for the United States. Why? Because of its foreign policy. In 1996, KSM, as he is sometimes referred to, met with bin Laden. He gave bin Laden the idea for hijacking planes and using them as missiles to attack buildings in the U.S. But he didn’t get the “green light” to develop the plan until 1998 or early 1999. By the end of 1999, he had led a meeting with three al-Qaeda leaders. They would organize and carry out the attacks.
