1.5.0 Middle Eastern Terrorism

In 1989, the communist system in the Soviet Union was brought to an end. The communist satellite states obtained political independence and the Union itself divided into 14 separate states. The great enemy of the United States and its satellite states and allies, suddenly diminished and the threat to the American people vanished; there was no longer a standing reason for overseas wars or tight domestic control.

The military-industrial-political system is designed around times of war; it relies on war to centralise power. And so, a new and even more universal threat than communism, was created: terrorism, in particular Middle Eastern Islamic extremist terrorism. The organisation that would be at the centre of this threat would be al-Qaeda.

Through the 1980s, the Reagan Administration funded and supplied weapons to both sides of the Iraq-Iran War, and to the Afghan "freedom fighters" (in the words of Ronald Reagan) fighting against the Soviets in the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-89). This group was known as the Muhajadeen and it was funded and controlled by the CIA and their ally Pakistani counterparts, the ISI. One of the leaders of the Muhajadeen was a key CIA asset codenamed "Tim Osman": this man was Osama Bin Laden, son of the owner of the Saudi Bin Laden Group, an investment firm with assets in oil companies and numerous other industries including weapons manufacturing, security and defence contracting. With the end of communism, part of the Muhajadeen became a terrorist organisation called al-Qaeda ("the base"), with Osama Bin Laden as its leader.

Between 1989 and 2001, several acts of terrorism against the United States were attributed to al-Qaeda. These include the World Trade Center bombing (1993), the bombing of American embassies in Africa and Asia (1998), and the bombing of the USS Cole (2000). Additionally, there was the bombing of the A.P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people. Each attack was used by the Clinton Administration to justify successive new laws which increased domestic control, and budgets and powers of the military, intelligence and security branches of the government.