9/11 Side Effects for 20 years

Figure 1. Kelly Guenther for The New York Times

The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were a series of attacks orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden, the then leader of Al Qaeda. On that day, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group Al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes flew into the World Trade Center, one of them landed in a field in Pennsylvania, and one hit the Pentagon just outside Washington D.C.

2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 people at Pentagon, and 40 people in Pennsylvania, and several were injured. These attacks are considered to be the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history. All of the 19 hijackers died during the attacks. The police and fire departments in New York suffered many losses as hundreds had rushed to the scene of the attacks, and more than 400 police officers and firefighters were killed.

A critical operational planner of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was sent to Guantanamo Bay. He had previously intended to blow up some planes in Asia in the mid-1990s but failed due to lack of planning. Bin Laden weaved the assaults on New York and Washington into a broader strategic framework of fighting the "distant enemy"—the United States—from bringing about regime change across the Middle East, and Al-Qaeda provided the troops, money, and logistical support for the operation.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed conceived the tactical innovation of using hijacked planes to strike the United States in various places. This plan of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed evolved from a previous project called Operation Bojinka, which aimed to destroy 12 commercial airline flying routes between United States, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. However, the authorities got to know of this plan during a test run of the bomb as it resulted in a casualty. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was indicted on terrorism charges for his involvement in Operation Bojinka. This is also marked as the first time Khalid Sheikh Mohammed took part in planning a terrorist operation.

Figure 2. 20 years since the 9/11 attacks

With the support of the Taliban, the country's dominant Islamist party, the Al Qaeda established training camps and lived freely in the country. The hijackers, most of whom were Saudi Arabia nationals, had already established themselves in the United States several months before the attacks. They traveled in small groups and used commercial flights to fly.

There was no difference between a state that harbored terrorists and the individuals they thought of as terrorists. The U.S. administration demanded that the Taliban give up the terrorists and dismantle the training sites immediately or face a U.S. strike. When they refused, on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, "Operation Enduring Freedom" was launched. Twenty years later, Afghanistan and its people are still paying the price for the attacks despite not having any direct involvement. This baseless war destroyed homes, shattered families, and caused the loss of a lot of lives. President George W. Bush signed a bipartisan resolution authorising force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. As a result of this resolution, Bush adopted extensive steps to combat terrorism in Afghanistan, including spying on American people without a valid court order and establishing a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 1988, the United States captured Guantanamo Bay and constructed a naval facility there. The United States and Cuba negotiated a lease in 1903 that allowed them to utilize the property as a coaling and naval base. Guantanamo Bay was being used as an asylum facility and a camp for HIV-positive immigrants in the 1990s. Refugee status was granted to Haitians, who were accommodated in a tent city on a repurposed airfield. Those migrants posed a security and discipline risk were detained on-site at Camp Xray, the first Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Since 2002, the facility has housed a detention center for those deemed a threat to the United States national security.

Figure 3. 9/11 Memorial in New York City.

The U.S. launched search expeditions in various countries, including the U.S., and detained suspects they believed they could know about Al Qaeda and the Taliban. These inmates were taken to Guantanamo Bay and subjected to enhanced interrogation, often known as torture, where detainees were exposed to the sun, heat, bugs, and extreme conditions to receive a confession. Farmers and impoverished people made up the majority of the prisoners. Following the invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. needed a place to house the hundreds of prisoners captured by American forces from dozens of countries, many of whom were handed over in exchange for bounties, regardless of whether they had ties to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Guantanamo became a cause of worldwide anger as stories of torture emerged, undermining the compassion and support the U.S. had received in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The United States would wind up keeping 779 detainees at Guantanamo, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate what today resembles a tiny state jail, ringed by barbed wire and guard posts on the edge of the glistening Caribbean Sea.

At the quiet Navy outpost on the rocky southern coast of Cuba, the then-President George W. Bush proclaimed the "worst of the worst," asserting that the men may be held overseas without trial as illegal enemy combatants, not entitled to the full rights of prisoners of war. The population has progressively decreased over time as the U.S. concluded that certain men no longer represented a danger and were not worth detaining despite legal challenges. It has also been rocked by hunger strikes and confrontations between detainees and guards, prompted primarily by dissatisfaction at being detained indefinitely without trial under what the United States said was its authority under international war rules.

In 2009, President Barack Obama gave orders to close the prison camp by January 22, 2010. Due to the fact the Congress has refused to fund its shutdown, it remains fully functioning in 2021. When Obama declared that the military tribunals would be moved to federal courts, he faced political resistance. He signed an executive order immediately after taking office, mandating that Guantanamo be shuttered within a year. Congress finally included language in the yearly Pentagon authorization bill barring the administration from bringing Guantanamo detainees into the country for any reason.

Biden confronts a difficult challenge in closing Guantanamo, just as he did in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama famously committed but then failed to keep it. President Donald Trump once promised to "load it up with some bad men" but mainly ignored the facility and abandoned closure as a goal entirely.

Figure 4. "Today, our nation saw evil" - Orlando Sentinel newspaper.

There are various reasons why terrorists have not been able to carry out more big assaults after 9/11. The U.S. assault destroyed Al-safe Qaeda's haven in Afghanistan. Almost every country in the world has implemented new screening measures to make it harder for future terrorists to enter airports and flights. Nonetheless, 9/11 was a watershed moment in history, with far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy in the two decades following. Even though the attacks did not usher in a new era of global terrorism, they did usher in the so-called Global War on Terrorism, which had a significant impact on what the United States did in the world, how the rest of the world saw the United States, and how many Americans viewed their country's foreign policy. The U.S. launched a war in Iraq as part of the Global War on Terrorism.

There was never any proof that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks. US's image was further tarnished when the claimed reason for going to war without U.N. approval – to remove Saddam's weapons of mass destruction – turned out to be unfounded. After completing many missions and undercover operations, they tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. It was regarded as an early success in Afghanistan as the Taliban began to solidify power since there was no overall plan. The killing of America's main target in a war that started ten years ago has reignited the long-running debate about whether or not to keep fighting in Afghanistan.

The Taliban were deposed from power in Afghanistan twenty years ago, and they have reclaimed it in recent weeks. It's too early to tell if the Taliban will return to their old methods and allow terrorism once more or whether their win over the U.S. and its allies would give terrorists everywhere a boost. Terrorism, on the other hand, will continue to exist in the world. It will not determine the future, but it will continue to be a visible element of the globalisation that has already occurred. All U.S. forces will depart Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, according to President Joe Biden.