Al-Qaeda

Model answer

One aim of al-Qaeda was to force US troops to leave Saudi Arabia, the land of Islam's holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Another aim was to overthrow governments in Muslim countries, such as the Saudi royal family, which bin Laden saw as corrupt puppets of the USA, and replace them with strict Islamic rule.

Model answer

Source A shows sympathy for the USA because its headline, 'We are all Americans', means that the French people stood alongside the American people as if they had been attacked themselves. The editorial describes a moment so tragic that words could not express the shock. This reflects the scale of the attacks on 11 September 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people from more than 90 countries were killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The provenance makes the sympathy especially striking. Le Monde was one of France's most respected newspapers and had often been critical of American foreign policy, so if even it declared that 'we are all Americans', this shows how widely the world shared America's grief. It was written the day after the attacks, when the shock was greatest. The source fits the wider reaction at the time: on 12 September NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time in its history, treating the attacks as an attack on all its members, and President Chirac of France was the first foreign leader to visit the USA after the attacks.

Model answer

Source B is very useful for studying al-Qaeda's aims because it is Osama bin Laden's own declaration of war, so it shows directly what he wanted. Its main demand is that the Americans be driven out of the Arabian Peninsula, which he calls the greatest aggression since the death of the Prophet. This fits what I know: US troops had arrived in Saudi Arabia in August 1990 to defend it against Iraq, and several thousand stayed after the Gulf War, close to Islam's holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Source B also shows a second aim, overthrowing the Saudi royal family, which bin Laden attacked for letting the troops in, and it shows that he wanted to appear as the defender of Muslims everywhere, from Palestine to Chechnya. The provenance adds to its value but also limits it. It was issued in August 1996, just after Sudan had expelled bin Laden under Saudi and US pressure, so it is full of anger at the Saudi government. It was written in Arabic for Muslims, so it uses religious language and stresses the Saudis' failings in order to win supporters. The advice to use secret, fast-moving forces is useful because it shows that al-Qaeda planned terrorism, not a conventional war.

Source C is useful because it shows how al-Qaeda's aims had widened by 1998. In 1996 bin Laden had targeted American troops; in Source C he says that all Americans, soldiers or civilians, are targets, and he adds ending US support for Israel. This matches the fatwa of February 1998, which made killing Americans a religious duty. His comment on Somalia is useful because it shows why he thought terrorism would work: he believed the USA would withdraw if it suffered casualties, as it had after the deaths of US soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993. However, the provenance means it must be used carefully. It was an interview for American television, so bin Laden wanted to frighten Americans and make al-Qaeda seem powerful, and he may have exaggerated. Its timing makes it especially valuable, though: less than three months later al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, proving that the threats were real.

Overall, the two sources are very useful together. Both come from al-Qaeda's leader, so they show its stated aims more directly than any outside observer could, and together they show the aims growing from expelling US troops in 1996 to a war on all Americans by 1998. Their weakness is that they are propaganda: they show what bin Laden wanted people to believe, and they say little about the long-term aim of a strict Islamic state or the different priorities of others in al-Qaeda, such as al-Zawahiri.

Model answer

Al-Qaeda grew from a small group of Arab veterans in 1988 into an organisation able to attack the USA in 2001. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was essential to its rise, because without it al-Qaeda would not have existed. However, the war does not explain why al-Qaeda turned against the USA or how it became so strong, which depended on the Gulf War, bin Laden's leadership and the protection of the Taliban.

The Soviet war created the foundations of al-Qaeda. After the Soviet invasion in December 1979, thousands of Arab volunteers travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight a jihad against the atheist superpower. Osama bin Laden used his wealth and contacts to raise money, and in 1984 he and Abdullah Azzam set up the Services Bureau in Peshawar to recruit and house volunteers. The war gave bin Laden a heroic reputation, gave thousands of men military training, and created a network of camps, donors and contacts across the Muslim world. Al-Qaeda itself was founded in Peshawar in August 1988, as the Soviets prepared to leave, to keep these fighters together. The Soviet withdrawal in February 1989 convinced bin Laden that faith could defeat a superpower, and that belief later encouraged him to take on the USA. The war also left Afghanistan in chaos, which allowed the Taliban to take power in the 1990s.

However, the Soviet war did not make the USA al-Qaeda's enemy. In fact, the USA had funded the mujahideen. The turning point was the Gulf War. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, King Fahd rejected bin Laden's offer to defend Saudi Arabia and invited US-led forces instead. Bin Laden believed that non-Muslim troops in the land of Mecca and Medina were an insult to Islam, and when US troops stayed after 1991 this became al-Qaeda's main grievance, as his 1996 'Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places' shows. US support for Israel and the sanctions on Iraq added to the anger that al-Qaeda could use.

Al-Qaeda's rise also depended on bin Laden's leadership. He gave it a clear strategy of attacking the 'far enemy', declared in the 1998 fatwa, and used interviews with CNN and ABC and broadcasts on Al Jazeera to make it famous and attract recruits and money. Finally, the protection of the Taliban after 1996 was vital. When Sudan expelled bin Laden, al-Qaeda was weakened, but in Afghanistan Mullah Omar protected him despite US missile strikes in 1998 and UN sanctions in 1999. There, al-Qaeda trained thousands of recruits and planned the 9/11 attacks.

In conclusion, I partly agree. The Soviet war was the most important long-term reason, because it created the fighters, money, networks, reputation and confidence without which al-Qaeda could not have existed at all. However, it was the Gulf War that turned al-Qaeda against the USA, and it was bin Laden's leadership and the Taliban's protection that made it powerful enough to strike on 11 September 2001. The Soviet war made al-Qaeda possible; the events of the 1990s made it the organisation that attacked America.