September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Responsibility

There were reports that the Palestinian group DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) took responsibility for the crashes, but this was denied by a senior officer of the group soon after. While there are filmed reports of celebrations on the West Bank, but according articles in the German magazine Stern and the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter[?] at least one of them was staged. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat denounced the attacks, saying it was counterproductive to any peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Next in line to claim responsibility were the Taliban of Afghanistan. The Taliban government subsequently denounced the attack and claimed that it was not connected to Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist living in Afghanistan who the U.S. government declared the prime suspect.

Although there is no explicit evidence linking Bin Ladin's Al-Qaida organization (or, indeed, any other group) to the crime, intelligence experts speak of a "short list" of prime suspects -- groups that possess both the means and the motive to carry out the crime. It appears certain that all hijackers have Arabic origins, and none are Afghani; moreover, both in their immense scale, careful planning and refraining from claiming responsibility, the attacks are reminiscent of Al-Qaida's previous attacks.

Virtually all world leaders, including traditional enemies of the United States such as Libyan president Qadhafi, Palestinian leader Arafat, Iranian president Khatami[?] and the Afghanistan Taliban government, denounced the attacks and expressed sympathy for the American people. An exception is Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq who called the attacks the fruits of U.S. crimes against humanity.

Various Arab- and Muslim-world news sources carried opinion pieces and articles that pointed to some form of Zionist conspiracy to frame the Arab world to the benefit of Israel. It is interesting to note that in a Gallup[?] survey of 10,000 inhabitants of sample countries with a Muslim majority, only 18% believed that the Arabs responsible.

Worldwide, a significant minority see the attack as an outcome of past United States involvement in the Middle East and surrounding area, and fear that a violent response will only continue the cycle. The majority worldwide viewpoint is that such acts of terrorism are only to be expected given the economic and cultural imperialism of the United States and the multinational corporations which are identified with it. The creation of pockets of hatred, according to this viewpoint, is an inevitable consequence of the overwhelming outside economic pressure placed on poor countries with minimal control of their political destiny. Notwithstanding this, the majority of people in most nations also believe that terrorism is an absolute evil, that cause does not equal justification.

September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack - Full Timeline
In Memoriam - Casualties - Missing Persons - Survivors - Personal experiences
Donations - Assistance - Closings and Cancellations - Memorials and Services
US Governmental Response - Responsibility - Hijackers - Political effects - Economic effects

See also: "War on Terrorism" -- U.S. invasion of Afghanistan -- 2001 anthrax attack -- World Trade Center -- The Pentagon -- New York City -- Washington, D.C. -- AA Flight 11 -- UA Flight 75 -- AA Flight 77 -- UA Flight 93 -- U.S. Department of Defense -- terrorism -- domestic terrorism -- Osama bin Laden -- Taliban -- Islamism -- Afghanistan -- collective trauma -- September 11

External Links & References

Official document containing information from intelligence and criminal investigation as released by the British PM Tony Blair on his official webside, Oct. 4, 2001: Responsibility for the terrorist atrocities in the United States, 11 September 2001. See:
http://www.pm.gov.uk/
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=97692
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

THE INVESTIGATION: Fugitive on F.B.I. List Arrested Outside Chicago (http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/national/20CND-WASH), New York Times, 9/20/2001]

 Millions of shares sold before disaster (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001320007-2001323297,00.htm), The Times, 9/18/2001

For a non-Islamic perspective unreservedly justifying the attacks, see Indian communist revolutionary Vaskar Nandy's article in the Oct 27, 2001 issue of Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay, India.([[1] (http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2001&leaf=10&filename=3635&filetype=html)])