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9/11 — a plan gone horribly wrong: French scholar

* Kepel says attack allowed neo-cons to further agenda in Middle East
* Jihad has proved detrimental to real cause

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Al Qaeda’s plan to galvanise jihad internationally and win the sympathies of the Muslim world through 9/11 attacks went horribly wrong and instead provided Washington an opportunity to attack Iraq and redraw the Middle East peace road map.

This was the crux of a lecture titled ‘War of Muslim Minds’, delivered by Dr Giles Kepel, professor and chairman of the Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris.

The lecture was arranged by the Institute of Strategic Studies in collaboration with the French Embassy and the Alliance Francaise on Thursday. Kepel has specialised in Middle Eastern affairs with special focus on radical Islamic movements, which started in the 1960s and 70s and has also authored a book on the fallout of 9/11, titled ‘Jihad’.

Building his thesis on the 9/11 incident, Kepel said the attack was planned after almost a year of the revival of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, to join the Muslim bandwagon at the world stage with a strong Arab backing and special focus on Palestine. However, he maintained that it was not clear who carried out the attack. He said radical Muslim movements had failed in Egypt, Bosnia, and Chechnya and more importantly in Algeria where they had come close to taking power. “They also failed to mobilise public support causing frustration among the ranks,” he said.

The failures perturbed ‘jihadis’ who ultimately resorted to suicide bombings like 9/11, Bali, Casablanca, Madrid and extreme actions like the Beslan School and Moscow Theatre incidents in an attempt to prove that they could strike anytime and anywhere in the world, he said.

“The anytime and anywhere threat was Zarqawi’s idea and was disseminated through pamphlets ‘Knights under the prophets banner’, he said. “Zarqawi is the brain behind Al Qaeda while Osama Bin Laden is being used as a symbol in the war against the infidels,” he said.

The pamphlet was a message, teaching followers that wars were not only fought in battlefields but also in people’s minds, he said. He added that the 9/11 incident backfired and instead of helping Al Qaeda, it provided an opportunity to new conservatives called neo-cons in Washington DC to further their agenda in the Middle East, which was the most complex problem Washington faced before 9/11.

“The neo-cons exploited the opportunity to make changes in the Middle East peace process in favour of Israel and also built a case to attack Iraq under the garb of finding weapons of mass destruction,” he said. He said the neo-cons had been planning to kill Yasser Arafat and replace Saddam Hussain since 1990s, once a darling of the USA, with a “friendly” administration in Iraq.

The motive behind the Iraq War was not only weapons of mass destruction but also to convince the world that the US army was capable of carrying out significant operations independently, he said, adding that that this would not last long as such actions could not be taken unilaterally without popular public support.

“Americans are now trying to divide Iraqis into Shias and Sunnis. This jihad has been detrimental to the real cause in my view,” he said.

“We should not draw causes from conclusions as suggested in the different conspiracy theories, which declare Mosaad and Central Intelligence Agency the masterminds of 9/11.” Shireen Mazari, Institute of Strategic Studies chairperson, thanked Kepel for his lecture but stressed that he should have deliberated upon different dialectical changes taking place in Europe vis a vis the emerging Muslim community in European countries.

She viewed that Europe was forcing Muslims to leave certain religious codes like scarf in the name of secularism, while at the same time it was allowing other religions’ symbols in educational institutions.

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