9/11: 20 Years of Terror

9/11: 20 Years of Terror 

I remember vividly the events of September 11, 2001. I was in a public place and there was a television showing the news on CNN as it unfolded. As I watched the incredulous footage, some of those around me wondered if it was a scene from a movie, and I confirmed to them it was very real. From that moment, I knew that incident was a pivotal moment in world history. The events of that fateful day have shaped our lives in ways that could never have been imagined. But, to appreciate what occurred on 9/11 and its aftermath, issues have to be contextualised appropriately. 9/11 did not just happen; there were crucial events that led to the terror attacks, and critical events that occurred afterwards.

Cold War to Jihad
Cold War: As the battle for supremacy between the Soviet Union and the United States evolved Afghanistan became a proxy battleground. On December 24, 1979, the Soviets, under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, deployed its 40th Army to Afghanistan, and three days later they were in Kabul. Operation Storm-333: This was a covert operation also known as the Tajbeg Palace Assault that took place on December 27, 1979. The operation led to the assassination of Hafizullah Amin, the People's Democratic Party General Secretary in Afghanistan, and installed Babrak Karmal as president. The Soviet-backed putsch sparked off the Soviet-Afghan War.

Operation Cyclone: This was the code name for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan Mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Initially, the Jimmy Carter administration authorized the CIA to expend up to $695,000 in support of Afghan insurgents. Later, the amount increased to about $30 million per year. During the war, the United States National Security Adviser Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski visited the region and gave his support to the Mujahideen – “holy warriors”. Brzezinski stated: “We know of their deep belief in God, and we are confident their struggle will succeed”. Addressing the “holy warriors” – who had gathered in their hundreds for the meeting – Brzezinski said “That land over there is yours; you will go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail, and you will have your homes, your mosques back again. Because your cause is right and God is on your side”.
According to former CIA officer Milton Bearden, the former CIA director during Ronald Reagan’s tenure, William J. Casey, told him: “I want you to go to Afghanistan; I’ll give you a billion dollars a year. …And if a billion isn’t enough, I’ll give you more”. As part of the Soviet resistance efforts, Bearden stated that he gave the Afghan military commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud “$250,000 a month” during that period. And through the Karachi port, the Mujahideen were supplied, inter alia, sophisticated weapons – AK-47s, recoilless rifles, mortars, rocket launchers and stingers. The stinger missiles were very effective against Soviet planes and were the catalyst that won the war for the Afghans.

US-Funded Religious Indoctrination: A critical point that must be emphasized is that the United States expended millions of dollars on supplying Afghan schools with violence-oriented material. Pupils in schools across Afghanistan were indoctrinated with textbooks that contained violent images laced with religious teachings. The US initiative probably seemed a good idea at the time because the brewed animus was directed at the Soviets. When the realization of the far-reaching consequences of their tactical faux pas manifested, there were attempts to expunge extremist material from circulation, but it was too late – the damage had already been done. An entire generation was raised on extremist militant ideology and weaponized for infliction.

Call to “Jihad”: For the United States and its allies, their primary objective was to stem Soviet dominance and expansion. But to the Mujahideen, their objective had somewhat religious undertones, because they were motivated by the concept of a “holy war” against foreign invaders.  There was a worldwide call to Jihad by the Mujahideen, and those who heeded the call came from far and wide. Among the responders who arrived in Afghanistan was a group that came to be known as Al-Qaeda (The Base).

Enter Osama bin Laden: Osama came from a wealthy Saudi Arabian family who owned the construction conglomerate Binladin Group. Osama arrived in the region with funds and construction equipment, and was generally revered. From the prism of the United States Osama Bin Laden and other anti-Soviet elements fighting in Afghanistan were “freedom fighters”. In retrospect, the United States may have downplayed the import of the “Jihad” call. Their general oversight would later turn out to be costly, because these events manifested as the hydra-headed monster they had helped create. 
Essentially, Al-Qaeda was birthed from the assistance the United States rendered to the Mujahideen following the collapse of the détente that initiated the Soviet-Afghan war. Following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the infighting among the factions that made up the Mujahideen led to the emergence of factions, and the Taliban (Students) gradually took over power in the 1990s.

War on Terror
In the famous words of Howard Zinn; “How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?” 
Global War on Terrorism was a term used to describe the US led international military campaign initiated as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Following the 9/11 attacks, the United Kingdom, North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other countries joined the US in combating certain terrorist organizations. US President, George W. Bush was actually the first acknowledged person to emphatically use the phrase “War on Terror” on September, 20, 2001 and the media has trumpeted this warmonger’s jargon thereon.

Operation Enduring Freedom: This was the name given to the military campaign that was launched against Afghanistan in October 2001. Beyond Caspian geo-politics of gas pipelines tunnelling through Afghanistan to Asia – Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan- India (TAPI), the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan was based on the premise that the Taliban government was harbouring Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Operation Iraqi Freedom: The United States led the “Coalition of the Willing” in the invasion of Iraq. With the US led war on terror in Afghanistan extant, the case for the invasion of Iraq was concocted by the Bush administration. On September 12, 2002, George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly and tried to implicate Saddam Hussein’s regime. Despite no proven correlation between the 9/11 attacks – Al-Qaeda – Taliban and Iraq, the Gulf country was bizarrely the next military target for the US. As no solid links could be established between 9/11 and Iraq, a case had to be built against Saddam Hussein and alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). By no means was this task going to be so clear-cut for the United States, because those in the know within the intelligence community could safely point out that Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda were literally on opposing sides of the conflict spectrum in the region. There were operatives within the intelligence community that questioned the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. A retired four-star U.S Army general and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark stated; “My experience in the time I served would suggest the opposite, that Saddam was the least likely person to want anything to do with Al-Qaeda”. Andrew Willkie, a former Australian intelligence officer who had access to the US intelligence debunked any links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda: “Always a ridiculous preposition and always completely at odds with my experience in the intelligence community, that there was no hard intelligence to establish that there was a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda”.
On February 14, 2003, the United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix presented his investigations to the United Nation’s Security. Hans Blix was emphatic about the non-existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction by the Saddam Hussein regime during their inspection of various identified sites in Iraq. Excerpt from Hans Blix’s February 14, 2003 United Nations statement:
“How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed”. Hans Blix has been consistent with his Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction position, and reasserted the facts when he was questioned during the Sir John Chilcot Iraq War Inquiry, stating: “All in all, we carried out about 700 inspections at different 500 sites and, in no case, did we find any weapons of mass destruction”. Despite no tangible evidence the United States illegally invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003.

The War on Terror is a War of Terror and basically the repackaging of terror, and will inevitably produce more terror. The War on Terror has firmly established that violence does not solve all problems. It is almost impossible to defeat any ideology militarily; other alternatives that adopt intellectualism and diplomacy have to be explored. Violence begets violence and manifests a cycle of terror that inextricably produces more terrorists. The consequences of the War on Terror were obvious to those who warned against war two decades ago. For example, the anti-war protests of February 15, 2003 turned out to be the largest demonstration in UK history. One of the speeches at the epochal event was delivered by Jeremy Corbyn and the eerie predictions contained within those powerful words came to pass:
“And for those who say that this is a necessary and just conflict because it will bring about peace and security, September the 11^th [2001] was a dreadful event. 8,000 deaths in Afghanistan brought back none of those who died in the World Trade Center. Thousands more deaths in Iraq will not make things right, it will set off a spiral of conflict of hate, of misery, of desperation that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression and the misery of future generations.”

The War on Terror resulted in more terror groups, war crimes, conflicts across the globe, at least a million deaths, and trillions of dollars expended. In a recent documentary on 9/11, George W. Bush was asked about his decision to go to war, and he stated: “I am comfortable with the decisions I made”. And going by Tony Blair’s latest statement at the Royal Services Institute on September 6, 2021, it is evident that he still has “no regrets”.

Following the latest withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to power, the question arises about what exactly was achieved? Terror, death and destruction are the obvious achievements. For the warmongers it was fait accompli!

© M.B.O