Remembering a catastrophe
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Exactly 10 years ago, as most of us in Nepal were preparing to have our dinner on September 11, a plane took off from Boston, Massachusetts, in the USA. The plane, an American Airlines flight, with 92 persons on board was headed for Los Angeles in California. The plane which took off at about eight in the morning (US time) on that fateful day never reached its destination. 47 minutes after takeoff the plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre in New York.
The crash was the forerunner of an unprecedented catastrophe in US history. Four aircraft with a total of 215 persons on board were involved in the 9/11 attacks and they took off from three different airports in the US within a span of 43 minutes. Two of them (American Airlines and United Airlines) crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and another American Airlines plane plunged into the Pentagon, the US defence headquarters, in Washington D.C. The other plane—a United Airlines with 44 people on board—crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The nightmare on the morning of September 11 2001 claimed almost 3000 lives, almost all of them innocent people. The events also changed the lives of thousands of people and governments around the world took more drastic measures to curtail what are now called terrorist attacks.
On the eve of the completion of 10 years of the 9/11 attacks, the Mayor of New York organised a press meet to declare that there was a “credible” threat from the “terrorists” to revenge the death of the al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden who was gunned down by the crack US Navy Seals team in Pakistan in May this year. Al Qaida had vowed to “take revenge” for the killing. The threat though credible, is not a confirmed one, according to the Mayor as well as other federal officials. The NY Mayor warned the city residents not to take the threat lightly.
In a televised interview, a former senior US official said that al Qaida was “structurally weak” today and that the number of diehard adherents had diminished significantly. He added, “But how many does it take to carry out operations like the ones in 9/11?” The threat as perceived and publicised by the authorities in the US is centred mainly in New York and Washington DC where there is presently a visible presence of security personnel in uniform making random checks. But there are, one can safely assume, many more unseen vigilance surveillance devices at work as are security personnel in plain clothes. Apart from the two cities, similar preventive measures were in effect in most US cities and other sensitive areas. And lest the people forget, free exhibitions are being organised both in New York and in the federal capital displaying many of
the remnants of the destroyed World Trade Centre buildings. Media reports indicate that security personnel in many other parts of the world are equally vigilant to prevent any attacks similar to 9/11 from being staged in their own countries.
The 9/11 attacks in the US took place when George Bush had been president of the US for just over eight months. Bush promised swift action against the perpetrators of the mass killing. He told the US in night of 9/11, “”We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them.”
Many of the US misadventures after 2001 followed from the 9/11 events. One of the main such misadventure was the naked invasion of Iraq and the resultant loss of life in Iraq. The US invaded Iraq despite lack of UN authorisation for such an invasion. The weapons of mass destruction that were the main excuse for the invasion were never found in Iraq. Over 125,000 civilians are reported to have been killed in Iraq after the US invasion of March 2003. The cost of the Iraq war and the stationing of US troops is reported to have run into billions of dollars. One estimate put the cost at over one trillion dollars in taxpayers’ money, apart from the traumatic effects on the US and other foreign troops stationed in Iraq and on the affected population of Iraq. Such traumas that leave life-long scars on the people cannot be quantified in monetary terms.
One of the remarks often heard in the US these days is why is the fuss over the 9/11 anniversary when hundreds of thousands of people were killed as a reprisal for the terrorist attacks. Was it because of the terrorist involvement in the attacks? There are those who marvel at the evil minds that carried out the attacks in such a precise way. There are also those who question the official version of what happened on that fateful day on September 11, 2001. There are groups within the United States who talk of “conspiracy” theories on the World Trade Center attacks alleging that the government was hiding details and that there were many aspects of the attacks that are unexplained including the identical collapse of the two towers (Is it any wonder that, when people can see “unexplained” factors in an event that took place in the open, there should be skepticism about the official version of the Royal Palace massacre that took place in June of 2001 within the closely guarded palace compound?) And there are those who say that the definition of terrorism is too broad and needs to be narrowed down. But that may not be possible as there are vast differences on how terrorism is defined.
After all, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. And as the US and the world marks the first decade of the attacks on the World Trade Center, it is a pity that the world still has to live in constant fear of similar attacks which could come anywhere and unheralded. The remembrance this year of the 9/11 catastrophe would have meant nothing if the world cannot unite to prevent such attacks, in greater or lesser degree, from taking place anywhere in the world, especially in less powerful countries that neither have the technical know-how or other necessary means to prevent them.
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