Timeline

In December 1979, the Soviet Union (Russia) invaded Afghanistan. Afghan Muslim warriors, called Mujahideen, took up their arms and tried to turn the Russians back. It seemed an impossible task as Russia was a superpower.

Osama bin Laden and thousands of other extreme Muslims travelled from all over the world to fight against the Russians who had dared to attack a Muslim land. This war proved to be a great training ground for extreme Muslims to learn how to fight for their faith. The Al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks all trained in Afghanistan.

On 15th February 1989, the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan a decade after the initial invasion. The Muslim forces that defeated the Russians were called "Mujahideen".

Osama Bin Laden had led a group of Arab Mujahideen training and occasionally fighting the Soviet occupation forces. Although Bin Laden's Arab Mujahideen played a minor role in the conflict, the withdrawal of the Soviets (one of the two world superpowers) gave the extremist fighters a great deal of confidence. Bin Laden's followers created a mythology surrounding the withdrawal which inflated both Bin Laden and the Arab Mujahideen's role in defeating the Soviet Union.

While many Afghan Mujahideen were motivated by local and regional concerns, Bin Laden and the other Arab Mujahideen were often sidelined in the conflict and viewed as zealots who had a lack of military experience and often did not speak the local dialects in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the Civil War and rise of the Taliban which followed the Soviet withdrawal afforded Bin Laden the safe haven in Afghanistan he needed to establish al-Qaeda and mount attacks against targets around the world. 

Osama Bin Laden believed that his conviction that the global superpowers did not have the stomach for a long fight had been vindicated. Soon after the Soviet withdrawal, Bin Laden turned his sights to the other global superpower - the United States. 

After Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces had been forced out of Kuwait, the United Nations imposed strict controls (called sanctions) on Iraqi trade. The aim was to stop Saddam Hussein buying new weapons. However, the sanctions ruined Iraq’s economy. Saddam stayed rich but hundreds of thousands of Iraqis suffered.

Although bin Laden hated Saddam Hussein, he was horrified when reports reached him that thousands of Iraqi children were dying due to sanctions cutting medical supplies. He pointed out that the United Nations did nothing like this to Israel, even though the Israelis had never obeyed the United Nations’s orders to give back Palestinian land.

It was American ships and planes (including some based in Saudi Arabia) that enforced the sanctions. The 9/11 attacks aimed to make the US withdraw its bases from the Gulf region and end United Nations sanctions on Iraq. 

In 1993 a terrorist cell led by Ramzi Yousef detonated a truck bomb in the parking lot beneath the twin towers at the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, New York City.

Yousef had planned for the explosion to cause Tower 1 to collapse, leading to the collapse of Tower 2, killing all the civilians inside. However, although the explosion caused significant damage to the parking lot and lower floors of the World Trade Center, the towers remained standing. 6 people were killed in the attack. 

Yousef had spent time with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and was the nephew of Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, one of the principal architects of the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon buildings. Yousef had received training and financial support from his uncle and al-Qaeda to launch an attack against the United States. 

In pre-planned letters and his own trial, Yousef cited United States support for Israel as a justification for attacking the World Trade Center. As a symbol of the economic might of the USA, the World Trade Center would remain a target for terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. 

In mid-1996, a Muslim extremist called Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met Osama bin Laden at the Al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan. He put forward his plan to attack US cities by flying hijacked planes into well-known buildings. Bin Laden did not immediately support the idea.

In August 1996, bin Laden issued a "Declaration of War" on America for its support for Israel and its use of air bases in Saudi Arabia.

Over the next two years, bin Laden kept in touch with Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed and a version of his original plan was finally put into action on 11 September 2001. 

In 1998, Osama bin Laden issued another declaration against the USA. He called on all Muslims to serve God by killing Americans so that the USA would withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia and end its support for Israel. Secretly, he was already supporting several terrorist attacks against US targets in Africa.

In May, he allowed an American television reporter to interview him in his secret base in Afghanistan. In that interview he again warned the US to expect direct attacks by terrorists.

Al-Qaeda agents started to arrive in the USA to learn how to fly planes and prepare for the 9/11 attacks.

Hijacker Hani Hanjour and four others checked in to American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles. All were allowed to board, despite triggering security alerts, e.g. over photo ID and metal detectors.

Mohamed Atta and four other hijackers boarded American Airways Flight 11 to Los Angeles.

Hijacker pilot Marwan al Shehhi and four other hijackers boarded United States Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles.

Three of them had their baggage searched, but all were still allowed to board.

Flight 11 was hijacked.

Flight control overheard hijacker Mohamed Atta using the cockpit radio to tell passengers to stay calm. He used the phrase "We have some planes."

Fire officers in the World Trade Center South Tower told people not to evacuate that tower, as the problem was only in the North Tower. Some ignored this and left the South Tower.

A flight attendant informed United Airlines that Flight 175 had been hijacked.

A full evacuation of the North Tower of the World Trade Center was ordered, but many routes were blocked by damaged doors, etc.

Flight 175 crashed into floors 77 to 85 of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, filmed by news cameras. Hundreds - including all 65 on board the plane - died instantly.

Amazingly, one person escaped from an office that was struck directly by a wing of the plane.

People trapped by fire, heat and smoke began to jump from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. New Yorkers and television viewers watched them fall.

President Bush made a statement to the press and television: "It is an apparent terrorist attack on our country."

The White House and the Capitol building (like Britain's Houses of Parliament) were evacuated.

All US airports were shut down.

Passengers on Flight 93 attacked the hijackers as they had learnt from mobile phone calls to relatives that other flights had been flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Security forces learnt that there were other flights taken by hijackers.

A full evacuation of the Pentagon was ordered as news arrived that another plane might be about to attack.

US Defense chiefs ordered battleships and aircraft carriers to patrol the east coast of the USA, to intercept any other possible attacks.

Another World Trade Center building called Number 7 crashed to the ground, after being damaged by the collapse of the two towers.

Within minutes of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, all air space over the US was shut down. It remained closed for two days.

Since 9/11, airports all over the world have tightened security procedures, which now take much longer for passengers.

One week after the 9/11 attacks, the first "conspiracy theory" was published in the French newspaper, Le Monde. It claimed that the attacks were an "inside job" planned by Americans.

Many alternative theories about 9/11 have been put forward since then.

Despite warnings, the Taliban in Afghanistan refused to hand Osama bin Laden over to the USA.

On 7 October, a combined US and UK force attacked Afghanistan, aided by anti-Taliban Afghans called the Northern Alliance. The invasion started with massive bombing raids over the Tora Bora mountains where Osama bin Laden had his base.

Bin Laden escaped and was only found in 2011 when he was killed by US soldiers. The war in Afghanistan is still ongoing today, and up to 42 nations have supported the campaign.

The United Kingdom Government passed the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act on 19 November 2001. It allowed the UK authorities to detain indefinitely any non-British person if they were suspected of terrorist involvement. 

As in the USA, some people criticised the Government for threatening the liberty of the British people in an effort to prevent terrorism.

By December 2001, the Taliban regime had been overthrown by the forces of the USA, UK and the Afghan Northern Alliance.

A leading anti-Taliban Afghan politician called Hamid Karzai was installed as the leader of a temporary government until elections could be held. This eventually happened in 2004, when Kharzai became the official President of Afghanistan - even though the Taliban continued to control large areas of the country. 

Since the 9/11 attacks, there have been many more terrorist bombings around the world. The attacks that are remembered most in Britain are the 7/7 bombings in London, when four British Muslim suicide bombers blew up three Tube trains and a bus, killing 56 people including themselves.

The bombers left videotaped messages in which they praised Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders, and said that similar attacks would continue until Britain and America withdrew all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and ended support for Israel. 

Most British troops withdrew from Iraq in April 2009. US troops and a smaller contingent of British troops would remain until full withdrawal in 2011. 

In the first few months of 2011, mass pro-democratic protests spread across the Middle-East and North Africa, where corrupt and oppressive regimes had long been in place. Protestors effectively harnessed the power of social media and the internet to spread ideas and arrange demonstrations. 

In Egypt, Tunisia and Libya the protests led to the overthrow of the government. In Syria, the mass protests were met with force by the Assad Regime, leading to a defection of Army officers to form the Free Syrian Army, throwing Syria into a state of Civil War. In 2018, the Civil War in Syria is still raging and is believed to have killed some half a million people. 

Initial optimism over the future of democracy in the Middle-East out of the Arab Spring appears to be dashed in many instances, with a new dictatorship in Egypt and instability in Libya, Syria and Yemen - with many extremist groups leading the opposition, often marginalising the pro-democracy forces in the region.