“On 11 March 2005 al-Quds al-Arabi published extracts from a document titled ‘al Qaeda’s Strategy to the Year 2020,’ which had been posted on the Internet by Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi, al Qaeda’s main military strategist. …The document shows that al Qaeda has already started on its master plan, to pursue a long-term campaign of jihad to rid the umma [Muslim community] of all forms of oppression, and that this has five distinct stages. In the first stage, al Qaeda aimed to provoke what Makkawi describes as ‘the ponderous American elephant’ into invading Muslim lands. The 11 September attacks, which had been planned since at least 1998, resulted in the US’s full-scale attack on Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. The second stage in the military plan was to reawaken another ‘giant elephant’–the umma itself. According to Makkawi, the most effective way to do this was to bring large numbers of American soldiers onto Muslim soil, enraging the umma and provoking a full-scale confrontation. …The third stage…is to expand the conflict throughout the region and engage the US in a long war of attrition. …The aim is to create a ‘jihad Triangle of Horror’ which would start in Afghanistan, run through currently neutral Iran and Southern Iraq, then via southern Turkey and south Lebanon to Syria. The fourth stage is to become a global network through effecting organizational changes that will further take al Qaeda outside the scope and experience of international security forces. …The fifth and final stage sees the US stretched beyond even its megalithic capabilities, fighting wars on many fronts as it attempts to secure all the oilfields in the Gulf area and maintain the security of Israel. At this point…the American military budget will be crashed into bankruptcy, the cost in personnel will become catastrophic and the mighty superpower will implode. If this all sounds far-fetched, it is sobering to consider that this virtually describes the downfall of the Soviet Union.“
– Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of al Qaeda, Pages 283-284