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Don't Panic!

• What is terrorism?
• Who are the terrorists?
• Terror tactics
  • Conventional
  • New threats
  • Post September 11
• When panic attacks
• Holidays in hell
• Find out more
• Credits

Graphical site

Terror tactics – Post September 11

The attacks of 11 September 2001, in which al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and killed over 3,000 people, were an epoch-making event. Within months, George W Bush had committed the United States government to a war on terror. Tony Blair was quick to follow suit.

In retrospect, there was nothing entirely new about the attacks:

• Al-Qaeda, formed in the late 1980s, bombed two United States embassies in 1998. Between them, the two attacks killed 224 people.
• The target was not new. Islamic terrorists tried to destroy the World Trade Center with a truck bomb in 1993.
• Even the tactics were not entirely unknown. A 1999 United States intelligence report warned of the possibility of al-Qaeda carrying out a 'kamikaze' hijack. Could al-Qaeda have known that as early as 1945, an aeroplane was flown – accidentally – into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building (which did not collapse)?

What is new about al-Qaeda, and the World Trade Center attack in particular, is the combination of organisation, method and goal. The organisation is international. Its method is to maximise bloodshed without regard for its own members' lives. Its goal is Islamist world government – an aim that will probably never be realised, allowing al-Qaeda to continue indefinitely.

Al-Qaeda poses a new kind of danger. It is a group whose main aim is to kill people – and it seems as if it can do so anywhere and at any time.

Will the al-Qaeda threat change our lives? Probably not. As anyone who has lived through an IRA bombing campaign will confirm, a threat that's always there soon fades into the background. Random, unannounced terrorist bombings are horrific and have tragic consequences. But for those not directly affected, they rapidly become just one more risk we live with.