Rarely does a day deserve to be called “the day that shook the world.” September 11, 2001, claimed that distinction the moment it happened. At first, many could scarcely believe what they were seeing on their screens. The sight of civilian aircraft exploding into symbols of American power and success in New York and Washington was shocking and deadly. A quarter-century later, there is no denying the mark that day left on the US, the Middle East and the world.
The day set in motion by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden brought down two governments: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Afghanistan may have returned to life under a diluted form of Taliban rule, but the Middle East is still paying the price for the regional imbalances created when the US military uprooted Iraq’s Baathist government.
The fall of both governments was an enormous, unintended gift to Iran, now engaged in a military conflict with the United States.
The world was not accustomed to seeing the US attacked at home. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Washington declared war on Japan the next day, and the rest is history.
On September 11, bin Laden brought the war onto American soil itself, prompting George W. Bush to launch a war against what he regarded as strongholds of terrorism.
It was no surprise that a wounded America, led by Bush, decided to topple the government of Mullah Mohammed Omar, who insisted on sheltering bin Laden and ignored calls to distance himself from the al-Qaeda leader or hand him over.
But the greater response came in the Middle East. In 2003, the region watched a US armored vehicle pull Saddam Hussein’s statue from its pedestal in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. It would later watch the hangman’s noose tighten around Saddam’s neck, alarming two men: Libya’s Moammar al-Gaddafi and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Bin Laden deliberately chose mostly Saudis for the team that attacked New York and Washington, hoping to provoke a crisis and rupture relations between Washington and Riyadh. He did not get what he wanted, but the attacks posed a test across the Muslim world.
Many voices in the US called for terrorism to be uprooted at its source. The attacks unsettled the US and the West’s relations with many countries. They also strained relations between Western governments and Arab and Muslim communities, particularly as waves of migration increased. Today, the far-right is on the rise in several parts of Europe.
Yasser Arafat was living in Gaza that day. He was troubled by the attention focused on a few Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who handed out sweets to celebrate the attacks and express their anger at American bias toward Israel.
Despite his advanced age, Arafat insisted on donating blood for those wounded in New York and Washington and went to a Gaza hospital. Some say that, in the first hours, he feared Palestinians might have been involved in carrying out the attacks.
Al-Gaddafi was also alarmed, although both he and Saddam initially imagined that the attacks would weaken the US. Al-Gaddafi asked Foreign Minister Abdulrahman Shalgham to arrange for Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to tell Bush that Libya was ready to normalize relations and open a new chapter with the US.
Bouteflika conveyed the Libyan position, but the US president told his visitor: “Tell al-Gaddafi that he must immediately surrender his nuclear program’s arsenal, or we will go and destroy it ourselves.”
Shalgham, having gauged the tense mood in America, told a meeting in Tripoli that the United States would occupy Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The Libyan leader did not hesitate to bow to Bush’s demands.
The US used Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for attacking the country. It also claimed that the Iraqi government had ties to al-Qaeda. Many did not believe the claim, particularly given the stark differences between Saddam and bin Laden and the vastly different ideologies that guided them.
The prevailing impression was that the allegation had been fabricated. In fact, no relationship existed. But Saddam made a serious error in the 1990s, while bin Laden was in Sudan, when he sent a member of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood to meet him there. The al-Qaeda leader showed no interest in cooperating with what he called the “infidel Baathist regime.”
The Iraqi government tried again, sending an intelligence official named Farouk Hijazi. A meeting with bin Laden was arranged through Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi. After the meeting, which lasted more than three hours, Hijazi returned to Iraq and advised Saddam to abandon the idea of working with bin Laden, who reportedly demanded permission to establish independent camps on Iraqi soil.
The Iraqi government dropped the idea of cooperating with bin Laden. But US intelligence agencies exploited murky threads of contact between the two sides and used them to justify the invasion of Iraq.
The US toppled the Taliban and Saddam’s government and launched a prolonged hunt for al-Qaeda leaders.
On May 2, 2011, bin Laden, hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was taken by surprise when US troops stormed his compound. America exacted revenge on the architect of the attacks on New York and Washington and disposed of his body at sea.
Osama bin Laden was gone, but al-Qaeda’s imprint exacted an enormous price from the countries of the Middle East.
