The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York that fateful Tuesday morning in 2001 was one of those events that most people who were adults at the time can remember where they were when they happened.
Even if it’s not clear at that moment, those observing such events immediately know that the ramifications are going to be significant.
SA has had such moments. There was the murder in April 1993 of SACP leader Chris Hani, one of the potential successors to Nelson Mandela. Would the atrocity derail the negotiations towards a peaceful settlement and plunge the country into civil war? As it turned out, just over a year later the country held its first all-race elections.
One could not help but be filled with dread on September 11 2001. It’s not surprising that the passing of the 20th anniversary was marked across the world over the weekend. It is sometimes asserted that the media wrongly give primacy to events in the US when more deadly attacks happen elsewhere regularly, as if this fascination is illogical.
But given its outsize impact on the rest of the world, there can be no other choice. In the aftermath of the attacks in which 3,000 were killed on US soil, then president George W Bush vowed to launch a “global war on terror”, giving an ominous warning that it would not end with the capture of the presumed Al-Qaeda instigators led by Osama bin Laden.
“It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” he said. Anyone familiar with the US “war on drugs” and the trillions of dollars and thousands of lives squandered for no little benefit could have seen the end coming already.
The new president had up to this point been floundering with low ratings and known more for his gaffes. As candidate, he famously failed in an interview to identify the leaders of nuclear powers India and Pakistan. But as the White House website notes, the attacks transformed him into a “wartime president” and his ratings shot up.
It wasn’t long before that the US had invaded Afghanistan, and later Iraq, conflicts that would kill tens of thousands of people and cost an estimated $2-trillion. In its wake, it would reduce the latter into a failed state, opening the space for an even more vile heir to Al-Qaeda — Isis — to take a chunk of the nation’s territory.
Africa wasn’t spared and the events of 2001 can be linked to a proliferation of violence attributed to Jihadists groups over the past two decades, most recently the attacks on our doorstop, in northern Mozambique. Boko Haram emerged in Nigeria and gained global infamy with the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in 2014, spawning the “BringBackOurGirls” Twitter campaign, with then US first lady Michelle Obama perhaps the most prominent participant.
From Kenya to Mali, groups loosely linked to either Al-Qaeda and Isis have inflicted misery and destabilisation with varying degrees of success. This Africa link makes it even more odd that SA, a supposed gateway to Africa and most recently chair of the AU, has had little to say about recent events in Afghanistan.
The US’s entry into Afghanistan wasn’t universally welcomed and President Joe Biden might perhaps be puzzled by the total condemnation of the pull-out, which ensured that the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks has been marked with the Taliban back in control of the country, something the US scandalously failed to foresee.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Bush’s decision 20 years ago, the fact is that the invasion did happen and international forces provided a degree of security and over time, hope, as some things changed for the better, including young girls being able to get educated.
The failure to build a resilient state and army — despite the sacrifice in human life and money — has taken the country, and the world, back to square one. An Afghanistan with a weak state may once again become a breeding ground and refuge for extremists.
The US’s “forever wars” might be far from finished, with dire consequences for the rest of the world.
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