With the arrival of the twenty-second anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the United States, the United States is still nursing its wounds from these deadly attacks on symbols of finance, trade, and the extraordinary American military power in the destruction of the World Trade Center in the heart of New York City, and the building of the US Department of Defense, the Pentagon, near... The American capital, at the hands of 19 terrorist kidnappers, when Americans woke up on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, to the news that the United States had been subjected to four coordinated terrorist attacks carried out by the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization, which was headed by Osama bin Laden.
The United States commemorated the 22nd anniversary in several places in the United States, most importantly Washington, D.C., and New York, for the most powerful attack on United States territory in the history of its existence, which claimed the lives of three thousand Americans, as the hijackers deliberately crashed two planes into the upper floors of the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex. In New York, and a third plane at the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) building in Arlington, Virginia.
As for the fourth plane, which was most likely trying to head to the Capitol building or the White House, it crashed in a forest in Pennsylvania, after a fight broke out between the plane’s passengers and its hijackers.
More than two decades after those attacks, at a staggering cost of $8 trillion and the death of nearly 5 million people (around the world), the horror of the events and their repercussions still haunts Americans, who lost a large portion of their personal freedoms because of the attack.
Although the overt conflicts in the "global war on terror" have subsided with the US departure from Iraq and Afghanistan, experts say that many of today's political tensions and unrest can be traced directly to the forces at work during the NATO-led global war. Counterterrorism funding continues to flow with few restrictions, strengthening the global security forces and military industry. The ongoing escalation of coups in West Africa also highlights the dilemma of Western aid that supports military institutions at the expense of civilian rule.
In the Global North, counter-terrorism experts, having rebranded themselves as totalitarian security experts, are calling for a tougher approach to confronting China and Russia.
Likewise, in Central Asia, global networks and organizations have created a development aid industry that does not always align with the needs of people on the ground, but buzzwords like “terrorism” and “security” have become music to the ears of international donors. Meanwhile, in places as diverse as Nepal, the ripples of the global war on terror can be felt directly with the revival of Gurkha training institutes, once used by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now at the disposal of private security companies.
Beyond its military footprint, the global war on terrorism has produced a draconian wave of invasive security logics and legal frameworks. From the United Kingdom and France to India and Indonesia, countries have invoked their own “9/11 moments” in the wake of domestic terrorism incidents, revealing a series of repressive laws that remain in place. These decrees have allowed for prolonged detention without trial, and widespread violations of privacy that require the surrender of freedom for the sake of security. Central Asian and Middle Eastern leaders, despite their authoritarian tendencies, have also recast themselves as indispensable to the US-led security architecture, taking advantage of the spirit of the global war on terrorism to suppress domestic dissent.
Even in Latin America, which appears far from the epicenter of 9/11, governments have weaponized these legal tools against a wide range of perceived adversaries, including civil society and grassroots organizations, while Muslims around the world remain in the crosshairs, even as the repercussions wane. The events of September 11.
As for the promoters of conspiracy theories, they are still circulating stories and allegations that appeared from the first moments of the attacks, blaming different centers, countries, and institutions. Among these theories, one said that the World Trade Center Towers fell as a result of deliberate explosions in their foundations and not because of the collision of the two hijacked planes. The collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper in the vicinity of the Twin Towers, helped spread many conspiracy theories. . This building, which houses the offices of the CIA, the Department of Defense and the Office of Emergency Management, collapsed hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers without being hit by a plane or being directly targeted.
But in 2008, a three-year investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the tower collapsed due to intense, out-of-control fires that lasted for nearly seven hours, started by debris from the fall of the nearby north tower.
There have also been widespread claims that “jet fuel cannot melt the steel girders” that make up the Twin Towers, suggesting that they may have been demolished with explosives. But according to an official report, the planes that hit them caused significant damage to the support columns of both towers and dislodged the fire-resistant materials.
In addition, the fire temperature reached 1,000 degrees Celsius in some parts, causing the steel beams to deform and the two buildings to eventually collapse.
