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The world since September 11th NO.91

The world since September 11th

¡¡¡¡IT STANDS to reason that 19 men cannot change history. But they did. Five years and two Americanª²led wars later, the world created by the September 11th hijackers is a darker place than almost anyone predicted at the start of the new century. Alª²Qaeda itself may have been battered and dispersed, but the idea it stands for has spread its poison far and wide.

¡¡¡¡The essence of that idea, so far as a coherent one can be distilled from the ferment of broadcasts and fat was issued by Osama bin Laden and his disciples, is that Islam is everywhere under attack by the infidel and that every Muslim has a duty to wage holy war, jihad, in its defence. America is deemed a special target for having trespassed on the Arab heartland. Intoxicated by their defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the jihadists are hungry to topple another superpower.

¡¡¡¡This cause had deadly adherents before the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre in 2001. Mr bin Laden issued his "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders" in 1998, the year alª²Qaeda bombed two American embassies in East Africa. But an honest tally of the record since September 11th has to conclude that the number of jihadists and their sympathisers has probably multiplied many times since then. It has multiplied, moreover, partly as a result of the way America responded.

¡¡¡¡The first of the two wars George Bush launched after September 11th looked initially like a success, and compared with the second it still is. Alª²Qaeda operated openly in Afghanistan and enjoyed the protection of its noxious Taliban regime, which refused America's request to hand Mr bin Laden over. America's invasion, one month after America itself had been attacked, therefore enjoyed broad international support.

¡¡¡¡The fighting ended swiftly and the political aftermath went as well as could be expected in a polity as tangled as Afghanistan's. By 2004 a firstever free election had legitimated the presidency of Hamid Karzai. A ramshackle but representative parliament took office in 2005. The country is plagued by warlordism and the opium trade, and Taliban fighters are mounting a challenge in the south. But they do not yet look capable of dislodging the new government in Kabul.

¡¡¡¡Even though Mr bin Laden himself eluded America's forces in Afghanistan, the invasion deprived alª²Qaeda of a haven for planning and training. This achievement, however, was cancelled out by the consequences of Mr Bush's second war: the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. There, three and a half years on, fighting and terrorism kill hundreds every month, providing the jihadists with both a banner around which to recruit and a live arena in which to sharpen their military skills.

¡¡¡¡Why has Iraq turned out so much worse than Afghanistan? Not only because of the familiar catalogue of Rumsfeldian incompetence-disbanding Iraq's army, committing too few American troops-but also because of alª²Qaeda itself. Like most Sunni extremists, some in alª²Qaeda regard Shia Muslims as virtual apostates. Abu Musab alª²Zarqawi, the movement's leader in Iraq, managed before being killed last June to organise so many attacks on Shias and their holy places that after a long forbearance the Shias at last struck back, turning what had been an insurgency against the Americans and the new government into a bitter sectarian war.