9/11

The publication online of documents seized at Osama bin Laden’s house underlines the gulf between western and jihadi thinking.

The question now is will al-Qaeda, with its new North African leadership, be able to capitalise on the politcal instability which follows revolution?

The most senior British diplomat working on Afghanistan has given the most damning assessment of the UK’s record in the country that I have heard from a serving official. Jonathan Rugman reports.

It has become quite fashionable to say 911 didn’t really change the world. A rash of commentary has recently argued that the decade of Al Qaeda while bloody and terrible will not have the future consequences we may once have feared. The argument runs : the world changed, the centre of economic gravity changed, the role and power of America in the world changed but much of it happened regardless of the “war on terror” and the clash of civilisations will never quite happen – especially now Bin Laden is dead. This makes for clever columns but seems ultimately rather unhelpful. The need to understand what has changed seems greater than ever before anyone claims victory and moves on, just because the troops are coming home from Afghanistan.

Sarah Smith blogs from New York on reaction to threats by Florida Pastor Terry Jones to burn copies of the Koran – with one Muslim describing how members of his faith are “the new communists”.