In 1998, a wealthy dissident Saudi Islamist, Osama bin Laden, declared a fatwa calling for the killing of "Americans and their allies -- civilians and military... in any country in which it is possible to do it" in order to bring to an end the ongoing enforcement of the sanctions against Iraq and presence of US troops in the Arabian Peninsula, thus bringing Australians into the line of fire in what would latterly grow to be defined as the War on Terror. Following the 11 September terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda in 2001, On 14 September 2001, the Australian Government cited the terrorist attacks against the US as sufficient basis for invoking the mutual-defence clauses of the ANZUS Treaty. This was the first time the Treaty's clauses on acting to meet a common danger had been invoked since it was enacted in 1952.