Terrorism experts

When George W. Bush declared war on terrorism nine days after the 9/11 attacks, he told Americans grappling to come to terms with what had happened that the terrorists hated what the US stood for.

"They hate what we see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

In essence, his message was that Western values did not jibe with the ideology of al Qaeda. But Guido Steinberg, terrorism and Islamism expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin told Deutsche Welle that the Bush administration didn't entirely grasp the point.

"The message behind the attack was: Move out of Saudi Arabia, out of Egypt and out of other Arab countries. If you don't, we will launch such attacks on Americans all over the world, and we will launch them in your country too."

The al Qaeda strategy

Originally al Qaeda's strategy was to directly target US-backed authoritarian regimes in the region, but Steinberg says the group changed its approach in the mid-1990s, when it began to focus on what jihadists describe as the "distant enemy." The plan was to use the US as a means of destabilizing the same authoritarian regimes.

According to Steinberg, Bush's advisers were aware that problems in the Middle East were at the heart of the issue, but he says the shock of 9/11 distorted the al Qaeda phenomenon.

"It was never anything more than a terrorist organization with a few thousand members," Steinberg said, adding that in pulling off the attacks on the world's economic and financial heart, al Qaeda revealed the weakness of its opponent.

British terrorism expert Michael Chandler notes how al Qaeda has changed over the past 10 years.

"At the time of 9/11, every indication was that it was fairly well structured, bin Laden and his immediate entourage had their shura council, rather like a cabinet," he told Deutsche Welle. "But after the American-led intervention into Afghanistan when they tried to capture him, we saw a change in the way they were organized."

From regional to international

He says it gradually became apparent through the different affiliated groups around the world, that al Qaeda had become an ideology. With off-shoots springing up all over the place, some experts even began to talk in terms of franchising.

Those franchise groups carried out further attacks in places including Madrid, Djerba, London and Bali. But instead of concentrating on the regional causes of jihadism and fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban on Afghani and Pakistani soil, the US administration turned to Iraq, which had never been regarded as a hotbed of terrorism.

Guido Steinberg says the decision was strategically wrong, because it meant the Bush administration had to plough the resources it could have used in Afghanistan and Pakistan into Iraq.

"The war in Iraq had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, even if the Bush administration said it did," he said, adding that it was one of the biggest disasters in the war on terror "because a lot of young men from the Arab world felt bound to go and fight. Among them were many who had previously had no involvement with al Qaeda or militant groups."

As far as Steinberg is concerned, it would have made much more sense to skip the Iraq war, to concentrate instead on Afghanistan and to demand changes from regimes in the region.

Al Qaeda 10 years on

Most experts agree that a decade after 9/11, Islamic terrorism has still not been beaten. Regional groups largely operate independently of one another and home-grown terrorists seek out targets in Western countries where they grew up.

But Steinberg says al Qaeda has been marginalized by both the death of Osama bin Laden and the revolutions in the Arab world. He believes developments in countries such as Egypt and Algeria prove that the terrorist organization has lost some of its political influence and that its ideology is now further from the reality of people's lives.

That does not, however, remove the possibility of further attacks, or the need for clear anti-terrorism measures to ensure that there is never a repeat of 9/11.

Author: Birgit Görtz / tkw
Editors: Jennifer Abramsohn/Rob Mudge