Leading article: Ten years on

Historical eras rarely start or finish smoothly. But the tenth anniversary of September 11th next week presents a useful opportunity to reflect on the decade since those attacks — what we have won and where we have lost.

In the immediate aftermath, and facing the prospect of further attacks, Britain and America acted decisively. The first phase of the war in Afghanistan, designed to remove al-Qa’eda training camps, was swift and successful. Al-Qa’eda were still able to inspire terrorist atrocities — notably in the ensuing years, in Bali, Madrid and London — but their use of Afghanistan as an active operations base ended and the Taleban was toppled. When they moved to Pakistan, targeted attacks by American drones (increased fourfold by Barack Obama) successfully decapitated the al-Qa’eda leadership, leading to the killing of Osama bin Laden himself.