As Americans and many around the world commemorate the 22nd anniversary of one of the most tragic events on the American soil, and the wider West, the world has ever witnessed in the post-war era -- ie the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York -- many ought to ask whether lessons have indeed been learned or not? Of course, the lives of all those who died in such a horrific attack can never be forgotten. However, what is more astonishing is that the focus in the West has been on 3,000 people who died and yet tragically there has been little focus on hundreds of thousands of innocent people who died -- nearly one million as a result of the full weight of America’s “war on terror” that had been unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq, both countries with almost all of the population living below poverty line and had little to do with the tragic 9/11 events.
What the war on terror did show was America’s way of avenging the terrorist attacks through using even mightier sheer military violence at its disposal to cause “maximum terror and destruction” killing over 920,000 lives in destitute regions in exchange for 3,000 lives in the 9/11 attacks, with the cost exceeding $8 trillion; an American and white-dominated Western countries’ way of showing who is more civilized and whose lives count more when it comes to number crunching of those who are killed. Save for capturing al-Qaeda (AQ) figurehead Osama bin Laden (OBL) and weakening AQ apparatus, there has been little benefit from the war on terror other than causing mass destruction of millions of lives, permanently changing the destitute regions with millions of refugees spilling over -- with countries like Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon paying the full price of absorbing the bulk of refugees of the American led war on terror, not to mention lining up billions of dollars profits into the pockets of defense contractors and corporate lobbyists sustaining the war economy.
More so, the war on terror gave birth to hundreds of dangerous militants and insurgent groups, among them the most dangerous group being ISIS or Daish as it’s commonly known, and further offshoots such as ISIS-K. Assassinating or taking out OBL -- who was more of a figurehead as opposed to having full control over AQ-affiliated activities carried by various AQ stakeholders -- instead of putting him on trial or allowing the then Afghan Taliban government to place OBL on extradition trial (a code of honour prevalent in Afghan Pashtun society and in the region that all guest and visitors’ safety is “inviolable at all costs” unless rightfully tried and proven guilty of criminality or violating host’s terms or host’s honour which includes using host’s land or hospitality to launch unprovoked attacks on others) only created further zeal among many disenfranchised AQ loose affiliates, becoming further motivated from OBL’s achieving “martyrdom” from their perspective, to create many more OBLs.
The Afghan Taliban I government at the time in power between 1996 and 2001 was already tired of AQ for overstaying their welcome and would have been unlikely to fight their way to keep OBL or AQ fighters on their territory in case of OBL was tried and founded guilty enough to be extradited hence there was a real chance of avoiding Afghan war that resulted in 241,000 deaths including 83,000 lives in neighbouring Pakistan. The devastating after-effects of the war on terror would continue to metastasize and would be felt across the affected regions, entrenching further hatred for the West in a region where history says people in the region in question do not easily forgive or forget the transgression and devastation inflicted upon by the empires.
This is in addition to Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred unleashed by the West before and more so after 9/11 by predominantly focusing on the Muslim world purely through white supremacist imperialist’s lenses, ie “crusader” terms of “us versus them”, “you are either with us or against us,” and through the prism of security instead of looking into the root underlying causes that incubates and serves as a fodder for terrorists’ agenda. It would be a momentous task for the West to show that it has the resolve and the will to fight and eradicate Islamophobia and anti-Muslim anti-Arab hatred by reaching out not to out-of-touch Muslim apologists for Western values (aka “house Muslims” or “passive Muslims”) but mainstream active Muslims majority on board.
Of course, America and the West have legitimate concerns and the right to ensure their lands remain free from terrorism or external threats and citizens live without fear. America can only do so much to defend itself and take the fight to terrorists but until the root underlying humanitarian and political events and circumstances that serve as a fodder for terrorists’ causes eg US-led West’s inconsistent double standard foreign policy and meddling in foreign regions’ affairs, aiding and abetting settler colonial apartheid state Israel’s war crimes amidst illegal occupation including collective punishment and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians from their lands under dubious pretext of military reasons, supporting or condoning oppressive dictators who are involved in overthrowing democratically-elected governments in respective regions or supporting fascist governments (eg Egypt’s dictator Sisi, Tunisia’s Said, Pakistan’s military establishment led by dictator generals eg General Bajwa ousting the elected Prime Minister Imran Khan’s PTI government with the continuing support to the military brass led by General Asim Munir in enforcing de facto martial law, Saudi Arabia’s de facto dictator ruler Muhammad bin Salman, UAE’s autocratic ruler Muhammad bin Zayed, India’s far right Hindu supremacist BJP Modi government on whose watch the brutal suppression of the Muslim minorities, etc) have taken place at an unprecedented scale, everything else would remain elusive and it would forever be stuck in defensive and damage limitation measures to no avail.
Prevention is better than cure.
The majority of the problems and the resulting effects rising in the form of today’s terrorism and militancy hailing from the Muslim or Arab world mainly go back to the Middle East and surrounding regions and its effects spread well beyond, all mainly as a result of America’s interference in others’ regions, engaging and supporting illegal occupations eg supporting settler-apartheid state Israel that functions more as an satellite imperial outpost of the West in the Middle East.
The newly declassified 9/11-related information shows that there is a “strong connection” between Israel being supported by America in its illegal occupation-led settler apartheid state policies against the Palestinians, and the terrorists hijacking the cause and causing 9/11. America’s entire or predominant part of Middle East policy is based on protecting and strengthening Israel’s superior might of illegal occupation and settler colonialism-driven apartheid system at the expense of indigenous Palestinians and the grievances of the majority population in the region.
From intimidating Iran at the behest of the war criminal settler colonial state Israel (notwithstanding Iran’s own politically problematic misadventures including backing the brutal Assad regime in Syria), to illegal invasion of Iraq by waging unprovoked illegal Iraq war whose policies are solely responsible for all the aftereffects and by-products eg Islamic State, almost all of these US-Middle Eastern foreign policy blunders were mainly down to protecting the satellite protege settler colonial state Israel. In fact, members from the US establishment already say that Israel lobbyists played a decisive role in pushing for illegal Iraq invasion that killed up to one million Iraqis.
Iran, no matter how problematic and brutally suppressive the state may be -- which must be condemned as a separate topic -- at least it is also seen as semi-functional democracy, albeit a controlled democracy but nevertheless its government of the day is not an unelected one unlike the neighbouring non-democratic Arab dictatorial states; and unlike the settler apartheid state Israel, Iran in modern post-war post-colonial era never expanded, invaded, or annexed other nation’s or people’s territories; it has never set up heavily-armed naval bases sprawled across the backyard of the west unlike the US, UK, France, Russia, etc.
Any condemnable misadventures by Iran, eg in Syria, Yemen, or Iraq, has been as a direct reactionary result of the external foreign powers’ intervention in the geo-politics of the neighbouring region surrounding Iran ie Iraq, Persian Gulf, etc. Of course, Iran’s brutal internal suppression or doing business with despotic regimes involved in war crimes eg Assad of Syria must be condemned but such condemnation need not hinder to see it through the bigger picture of the fact that Iran’s behaviour is greatly (if not always) shaped by seeing herself intimidated and surrounded by the foreign powers establishing military bases in support of the vassal state proxies in her very own backyard.
Like it or not, as much as problematic and headache-causing Iran’s theocratic democracy may be, Iran, including its Persian people and even the religious clergy establishment, has always been part of the continuing great Persian civilization legacy, where even the religious Iranian Mullahs fiercely -- rightly or wrongly -- protect or proudly display their current and ancient Persian civilization heritage. This means the country comprising its Persian people and Persian civilization, be it in its current hybrid theocratic-democratic shape or its past secular liberal shape, like the Turkish or Indian sub-continent civilizations, will never accept to be intimidated or dictated by external powers or be treated as a vassal state (and if it has been a vassal state in the past, that usually didn’t last longer than few decades as Iran’s Pahlavi Shah history proved).
In other words, America’s major chunk of foreign policy in the Middle East is held hostage to preserving the status quo of illegally occupying apartheid state of Israel under the influence of key Israel lobby at the expense of the interests of its American people having the right to live without feeling to be hated and without having to fear the consequences of ill foreign policies drawn up by the close-knit ruling evangelical white supremacist neocons with the White Zionist neo-cons bent on protecting a Eurocentric settler-supremacist apartheid state of Israel at all costs -- a state that is founded upon crushing and terrorizing the native Palestinians ever since Nakba (meaning catastrophe for the indigenous Palestinians since 1948). As if 929,000 murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians during Anglo-American wars inflicted on the Middle East and South Asia as retribution for 9/11 weren’t enough, American servicemen and women’s lives also deserve better.
As much as China has issues that the West (and many in the Muslim world) can never agree with -- among them China’s communist establishment brutally suppressing its people which can never be condoned, and of course its brutal incarceration of Uighurs in the troubled Xinjiang region which must be condemned and addressed as a separate issue -- at least China’s foreign policy beyond the borders, despite its flaws and often cynical transactional self-interested drive, is more or less consistent.
China doesn’t generally invade others’ territories with military force and neither does it directly support military intervention or illegal occupation and invasion or worse, help prop up settler colonialism or apartheid projects in the lands of others.
China’s major foreign policy in the region doesn’t revolve around protecting protégé illegal occupying settler colonial states as part of its foreign imperial outpost unlike the US, which the latter sees the settler apartheid state of Israel more as an outsourced aircraft carrier (metaphorically speaking) projecting imperial power in the region, all of which explains why a major power China faces much less terrorist attacks than other west-led or west-allied world powers.
Even the US-allied Scandinavian Nordic countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark face less terrorist attacks precisely because they follow a non-interventionist and “non-support of occupying settler colonial states” foreign policy; in fact, the Nordic countries go to great lengths in not being seen as closely aligned with US foreign policy, particularly in areas where double standards become obvious.
Since time immemorial, history taught one consistent formula: Interference, intervention, and occupation, or supporting those involved in exploiting or taking over the rights of other communities and their affairs ultimately results in revolt, pushback, resistance, war, and militancy, inevitably leading to the loss of lives -- all of which are often defined in today’s politically charged term, as terrorism.
On the anniversary of 9/11, the best way to pay respects to those who died -- both Americans and the innocent civilians killed in the war on terror -- would be to dig deep and look at the root underlying causes that continue to serve as fodders for the terrorists’ and insurgents’ wider causes, and the resentment and hatred it helps to fuel across the region; and to have the willpower to deal with such root underlying causes , not by focusing on Muslims’ faith through the security prism -- as notoriously advocated by the discredited political war criminal, former British prime minister Tony Blair, who is still unrepentant in his interventionist approach focusing on “radical Islam” -- but by focusing on ultimate events that give birth to or help drive retributive insurgent ideology forward. That is by actively removing the “inconsistencies” and “double standards” in foreign policy that serves as a fodder for both terrorists’ causes and wider grievances felt in affected regions as a result of ill , and often destructive, foreign policy of double standards.
A common example cited by Middle Easterners is the fact that much as Arabs in the Middle East may have loathed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain whose occupation of Kuwait was swiftly -- and rightly so -- pushed back by US-led coalition forces in the first Gulf War yet are enraged by the fact that the US-led West continues to support Israel in its illegal occupation over Palestinian territories to date.
Continuing to obsess over the Muslim world under the pretext of tackling “radical Islam” and “ideology” instead of looking at one’s own terrorizing and interventionist double standard behaviour in foreign lands is nothing more than evangelical white supremacy and white saviour complex-driven temporary (and often futile) defensive measures, which is more of an elusive “damage limitation” exercise to shield both misadventures and foreign policies of the white-dominated West, aka values of the so-called “Free World” from the devastating consequences they would entail; worse, it would only further fuel anti-Muslim hostilities and Islamophobia that already exists in the West, with the establishments and the media involved in constant “otherization” of Muslims and their Islamic heritage.
Extremism and radicalism don’t form and thrive in a vacuum. It is almost always an outcome of, and a reactionary measure to, imperialist foreign policies and exploitative interferences in the affected region(s). So long as causality factors exist, the ideological and material factors for militancy and resistance (aka terrorism) will continue to exist.
The extremism ideology and militancy/insurgency/terrorism/resistance/jihadism/freedom fighting resistance -- call it what you want -- hailing from the non-Western regions, particularly the Middle East and the wider Arab and Muslim world, has to be seen within the bigger colonial and anti-colonial picture that is part of the ongoing struggle of decolonization, which like any other radical anticolonial movement and movements for democracies throughout the twentieth century, regrettably had elements of extremism, radicalism, and terrorism.
British and French colonial authorities regularly prescribed anti-colonial anti-white supremacist resistant movements as terrorist groups while painting the white colonizers’ terror against the natives as defensive measures. These former white colonial powers apply the same strategy to its 21st century protégé settler colonial apartheid project Israel, presumably out of guilt for the early twentieth century murderous crimes committed against fellow white European Jews on mainland Europe, which the oppressed occupied Palestinians in the Middle East had nothing to do with.
If no ideological radicalism or religious-ethno-political extremist thought process existed, such extremism and radicalism would regrettably still be naturally born as a by-product of foreign imperialism and interventions -- be it in the extreme form of ethno-nationalism, or religious-nationalism, or pan-linguistic nationalism, or whatever appropriate to the circumstances, in serving as a “push back” to the consequences of ill-formed foreign policies and regional interference by external powers when interests of the native communities and local citizens in the impacted region(s) are threatened.
The West’s imperialist protégé Eurocentric settler colonial apartheid state, Israel’s expansionism and economic, political, and military interventionism in the Middle East predated 9/11 events, or as Dr Usaama al-Azami eloquently puts it: “Unless memorializing 9/11 is accompanied by memorializing the exponentially greater numbers killed by the American Empire (including due to blowback) both before and after 9/11, we are simply caressing and soothing the warmongering imperial colonizer and not the victims of 9/11.”
Not changing the current course by carrying on with “business as usual” as it has been over the last 20 years since 9/11, and focusing on the symptomatic grievance-driven reactionary radicalization of terrorists and insurgents instead of tackling the root underlying causative circumstances that serve as fodder for terrorists’ causes (and therefore the US-led west playing the role of a midwife helping to give birth of the radical ideologies shaped by the anti-interventionist causes), is nothing more than a stopgap measure to no avail.
Not addressing the injustices and dark ongoing legacies of white Eurocentric colonialism, settler colonialism (Israel), and white supremacy-led interference in other nations’ regions, not to mention the foreign policy of double standards, means delegating the task to the extremists to hijack those causes (or in the absence of extremism, to let such misdeeds by white colonialism and modern neo-colonial injustices in non-white lands, give birth to radicalism and extremism so as to serve the extremists in fighting their causes on their own accord).
That has always been part of the natural human phenomena, save for a few exceptions. Worse, it means no lessons have been learned despite the 22 years passed since the tragic September 11 event, and shows the great disservice to all those who died in both the tragic event and the aftermath -- be the millions of innocent civilians dead or the fallen soldiers in the war on terror.
Withdrawing troops from Afghanistan following the humiliating defeat was the first step, but changing the course of the entire strategy through doing away with direct or indirect imperialist neo-colonial foreign policy once and for all is the next step. Otherwise, rest assured, we will be back to the square one that led to these tragic events and subsequent invasions and deaths in the first place.
Digging a bit deeper into the Arab society, more so the Emirati, Moroccan, and Saudi societies at the local level outside the affluent bourgeoise bubble, it wouldn’t be difficult to see them saying that Abraham Accords have only added more fury to their internal grievances against further legitimization of the undemocratic autocracies and kleptocracies imposed on them, that so with the crushing of any hopes of their fellow colonized Palestinian brethren under illegal occupation and apartheid.
One Emirati from an influential Al Zahiri tribe, who is studying at a UK university before he returns back to resume UAE military service, quipped (in Arabic) that God forbid, if there is another 9/11 style tragedy (thankfully it is extremely unlikely), then rest assured that the dictatorial tyrannical Arab monarchs-shielding the Abraham Accords and legitimizing the Western settler colonial apartheid state of Israel over the indigenous Palestinians in the name of the Arab citizens without their consent, would be responsible for fuelling even more radical extremist anti-colonial ideology-led terrorism.
The question is would the Anglo-American-led white-dominated West be courageous enough to take the bold steps and set right its past of often ill-conceived imperialist foreign policies of double standards, and cease viewing foreigners and non-whites in faraway lands as subhuman, so as to secure itself a legacy in anti-colonial self-liberating history and change the world in unison with the Global South for the better?
The Author is a research scholar in Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern studies and operates a strategic advisory consultancy from London, UK; a contributor columnist for Asian newspapers. The author can be followed on Twitter @IsmailYSyed . The author’s latest writings can also be accessed on ismailysyed.substack.com.
