Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, Essay Example

Examining the roles of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan in terms of who played the “bigger” role in the 9-11 terrorist attacks is perhaps an oversimplification which overlooks the complexity of contemporary geopolitics that transcends simple nation-state boundaries. Such oversimplification becomes apparent when we consider the diverse ways in which relations between geopolitically relevant actors develop: for example, whereas most of the terrorists involved in 9-11 were of Saudi origin (The Economist), many of them were trained in Afghanistan. However, at the same time, Saudi Arabia “helped foster the rise of the Taliban beginning in the mid-1990s.” (Bruno) Furthermore, the U.S. was directly responsible for the formation of the Taliban, “supporting the Afghan resistance movement against the Soviet occupation.” (Bruno) From this complicated genealogy of the Taliban movement that provided a safe haven for Osama bin-Laden and thus the al-Qaeda movement (although bin-Laden was also in Afghanistan in the 1980s contributing to the resistance against the Soviets, and thus financed by the U.S.) it follows that any attempt to map out the blame for the terrorist attacks of 9-11 on a single sovereign nation-state is a gross underestimation of the diverse number of political forces that shaped, in various ways, these attacks.

From the perspective of the United States’ leadership of the time, the 9-11 attacks required a direct military action: this military action took the form of an action against a particular state. However, the problem remains as follows: if terrorism or a singular terrorist group is not defined by a single state support system, namely, a single terrorist group may exist in any number of countries simultaneously, the combating of terrorism through an attack on a single nation-state does not seem to be the correct strategy to avenge terrorist actions efficiently.

Works Cited

Author Unknown. “Afghanistan: One Battle the Terrorists Won”, The Economist, May 22, 2012. Retrieved October 10, 2013 at http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/03/afghanistan

Bruno, Greg. “Saudi Arabia and the Future of Afghanistan.” Council on Foreign Relations, December 11, 2008. Retrieved October 10, 2013 at http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/saudi-arabia-future-afghanistan/p17964