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Wednesday marks the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that changed the course of world history and dragged the US into wars in the Middle East which have brought her to the brink of bankruptcy, both financially and morally, and rocked her foundations.
The prestigious British Economist said, in an editorial commenting on the attacks, that the United States and its allies were used to dominating Arab and Islamic countries, but that al-Qaeda had hit at the heart of the West's financial capital (New York).
That initial response, in November 2001, ousted the Taliban regime and destroyed the military infrastructure of Al-Qaeda. Now, having spent more than a trillion dollars on the war on terror in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and having lost 5,000 soldiers, the US now finds itself begging the Taliban to negotiate with them in order to save face and arrange a safe exit.
Al-Qaeda prior to the September 11 attacks, had just one address: the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan. Now it has more than ten branches, increasingly powerful and vigorous, from Iraq to Yemen to Syria, not to mention the Islamic Maghreb, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
The new generation of Al-Qaida is more dangerous than the first, it inhabits Arab countries, not distant, Pashtun Afghanistan. Most of its cadres hail from the countries such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria and Morocco. In addition, it has drawn in fighters from Islamic countries such as Chechnya and Bosnia. It is a multinational, decentralized organization, whose independent branches share a common cause and help each other out when they need money or arms.
The biggest dilemma facing America and its regional allies is the growing presence of jihadi groups in Syria, where most estimates confirm that they represent about 30 percent of the size of the armed opposition fighting on Syrian territory to topple the Assad regime.
The Syrian regime, America and Russia all agree on the risk this poses to regional stability and on the need to eliminate them before talking about any political or military solution to the crisis.
