Citation

Winkates J. Journal of Third World Studies 2006; 23(1): 87-115.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

Following the devastating 9/11 suicide attacks, major inquiries and investigations were able to put the pieces together. Specifically, they were able to link Al Qaeda in sequential attacks leading to 9/11, starting with the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, the 1993 Somalia humanitarian mission, the Khobar Towers assault in 1996, the US embassy bombings in East Africa 1998, and the USS Cole assault off Yemen in 2000. Evidence was also obtained pointing to "a new breed of terrorists," characterized mainly as dogmatically committed to killing large numbers of noncombatants, without an overt state sponsor, loosely organized, favoring an Islamic agenda, and possessing an extreme penchant for violence. The first substantive indication of a definitive change occured in 1995 when the Philippine National Police uncovered a bomb-making laboratory in Manila and multiple plots organized by Ramzi Yousef to kill the Pope, bomb the US and Israeli embassies in Manila, blow up 11 US commercial airliners over the Pacific, and crash a plane into CIA Headquarters. Yousef later was discovered to have ties to Osama bin Laden. With the 9/11 attacks, terrorism had come to US shores and to the Americal people at work and in transit. To avoid such devastation in the future, analysts need to explore how this form of violence might again revisit the US.

Language: en

Keywords

suicide; Middle East; Africa; Asia; Philippines; terrorism; international relations; World Trade Center; Eurasia; Southeast Asia; East Africa; international organization; Somalia; Sub-Saharan Africa; Yemen