After Sept 11

A QUARTER of a century since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the world continues to feel the effects of that epochal event. The US response to the attacks on its soil went beyond a counterterrorism operation. It metastasised into a sprawling imperial ‘crusade’ that laid to waste countries that had nothing to do with the terrorists who had hijacked the American airliners. In fact, the US misadventure in Iran is a continuation of these flawed policies. Today, the world is no safer from religiously inspired terrorism than it was 25 years ago, reflecting the futility of the American-led ‘global war on terror’ and its modern-day iterations. Soon after the attacks, Muslims, including Arabs, in the US faced intense discrimination. Matters may have improved in some respects; after all, New York City, which was the epicentre of the terrorist attacks, today has elected a Muslim mayor. But conversely, Islamophobia in the US is currently at historic levels, spiking after the launch of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in 2023. The current US administration has contributed to this bias, with many of President Donald Trump’s close confidantes spewing reprehensible views. Big Tech, too, has played a significant role in mainstreaming anti-Muslim hate across the larger West. In the field of foreign policy, little has changed. Post-Sept 11, Washington launched invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the first instance, after a two-decade nation-building experiment, the Americans beat a hasty retreat, leaving Kabul to the Afghan Taliban who returned to power. In Iraq, the US occupation resulted in a vicious sectarian war, which paved the way for the rise of the self-styled Islamic State group. IS was arguably even more brutal than Al Qaeda, the outfit the Americans had sought to crush for carrying out the Sept 11 attacks. Though its abilities stand diminished today, IS continues to threaten global security, putting a question mark over America’s transnational counterterrorism campaign. Following George W. Bush, even ‘liberal’ presidents, such as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Barack Obama, backed regime-change operations in Libya and Syria. Today, both remain broken states. Despite some bitter lessons, the current US president champions American exceptionalism, and violates the sovereignty of other nations in pursuit of his nebulous goals. Where the Iranian misadventure is concerned, the reasons cited for Washington’s aggression have kept changing. America’s ‘war on terror’, in fact, spawned even more lethal terrorist groups, while leaving in its wake gulags such as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, alongside populations in several Muslim countries grappling with the residue of collapsed states. The post-Sept 11 period offers lessons in imperial overreach, and how not to fight terrorism. But as its actions continue to show, the US has learnt no lessons at all. Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2026

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