While on, a day later, the deadliest memory for the United States in history hits its 20th anniversary of shredding the twin towers in New York City. 19 militants associated with the militant group Al-Qaeda, hijacked 4 commercial local flights and carried out suicide attacks on the nip of the United States. Two of them targeted the World Trade Center, one in the fields of Pennsylvania and 4th on Pentagon-right after Washington DC.
Fifer, an FDNY battalion chief at the time of the attack, recalls after 2 decades in an interview, that the planes were at so low altitude that I could read, “Fuselage”, an American word-were flying along the Hudson River.
The attack came just when ISI chief General Mehmood was on the road of the United States after the unsuccessful meetings with American officials related to Talibans providing safe haven to Al-Qaeda Chief Osama Bin Laden.
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The attack had shaken the world. Here in the region, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin had extended full support to G.W Bush and expressed condolence over the attack.
The terrorist militant Organization Al-Qaeda had taken triumphant credit for the attack.
As CIA station chief in Islamabad, Robert L. Griene claimed in his book “88 days to Kandahar”, ‘their agent in Arabs confirmed Bin-laden hosted 100 of Arabs in a meeting, exulted it as an imminent US imvasi2of Afghanistan, which would at last draw the Americans into open combat and surely leads to their defeat’.
The United States first warned-latter invaded in Afghanistan, toppled Taliban regime-implanted Hamid Karzai, finding Bin-Laden in Arab and Taliban sanctuaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal districts.
Toradora, famously known as White mountain or ‘Safavid Koh’ in Pakistan’s ex-Fata region, remained a hideout for Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bil Laden.
An assassination team that already conducted multiple missions in Pakistan and Afghanistan allegedly killed Bli-Laden in 2011 in Abbottabad Pakistan-a city where Pakistan’s military academy lies.
In a documentary by NBC News on Youtube, witnesses of 9/11 were still feeling the pain of the attacks as one noted, ‘I saw some people, they started jumping off the towers’ yelling “Help please Help”.
20 years after the incident of Manhattan tragedy has passed, and the world has been witnessing the dynamic geopolitics. Taliban 2.0 has been on the rise again in Afghanistan with the latest trends and transformations.
In 2020, a study of ‘Watson Institute for International and PublicAffairs’ estimated the war on terror has lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and around 38 million war refugees and displaced people.
A Sky News documentary explores the growing anti-muslim sentiments across America and beyond after the Manhattan attacks. Muslims find it difficult to stay in the United States since the attacks.
The United State’s longer-called war on terror comes to an end after 2 decades of unguided war where the loss was all of humanity. Afghanistan, land of brave Pashtuns, faced 20 years of devastation.
The endless fear of terrorism has its threatening clouds looming over the world. IS and its multiple factions still drumbeats the security vacuum in the war-torn Afghanistan.
Author: Usman Zulfiqar Ali
