Throughout the second half of the 1990s, European Union (EU) institutions made declaratory statements linking ongoing violence in Afghanistan with regional instability, drug trafficking and international terrorism (Bulletin EU 1996). Under the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) framework, these declarations mirrored the Union's escalating apprehension about Afghanistan's increasing instability and potential repercussions for the global international system (Hassan 2010). Notably, the EU's concerns contradicted many assertions that the importance of terrorism was waning. As Weinberg summarizes:

In the United States (US), the Clinton administration sought to capitalize on the end of the Cold War ‘peace dividend’. This entailed the US politically moving towards a more significant domestic focus, even after a bombing at the World Trade Center in February 1993. At the time, with over 1,000 injuries and six killed, this was the deadliest attack on American soil. Yet, the mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, was suspected of having ties to Iraq and not Afghanistan; there was no evidence of links between Yousef and the Iraqi regime (Mylroie 1995; Kean et al 2004). It was only later discovered that Yousef had received explosives training in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, which helped him make the truck bombs placed inside the World Trade Center. Moreover, Yousef planned another series of attacks, including President Clinton's assassination in Manila, before being captured in Pakistan in 1995 (Kean et al 2004, 147–9).

Within the Clinton and subsequent Bush administration, significant concerns around terrorism and Afghanistan were only shared by narrow sections of their officials. This proved to be a catastrophic failure in intelligence for both administrations (Clarke 2004). What was initially perceived as a global terrorist ‘network’ subsequently came to be identified as ‘al Qaeda’.