Most Americans can recall the precise moment they heard about the September 11, 2001 terrorist destruction of the World Trade Centre and attacks on the Pentagon. I was being driven back from Ibadan in the afternoon of 9-11 when I learnt that terrorists had flown two airplanes into each of the two WTC Towers. I had gone to Ibadan as a member of the Bankers Committee Sub-Committee on the Small and Medium Industries Equity Investment Scheme (SMIEIS) leading a sensitization effort to brief relevant business associations and other stakeholders on the programme. As the chauffeur drove back on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, I thought to check how things were at work. The shocking information I received was of planes flying into tall buildings in Manhattan, New York! My informant claimed to have seen television images of a terrorist plane flown into the second tower!!!
Once I was convinced the fellow was not drunk, clowning or temporarily insane, I knew, like most citizens of the world, that we had entered into a new phase of global terror! And then some panic!!! My senior brother was a Captain in the New York City Police and often worked in the Manhattan area; my niece (my sister’s daughter) schooled there too. My family and I were regular visitors. My first trip outside Nigeria, years earlier was NOT to London like most Nigerians, but to New York and I had visited the Twin Towers and had course to carry out financial transactions therein. Beyond outrage, I could connect with the tragedy on a human level and as its scale and consequences became clearer, the sense of loss grew-children had lost parents for reasons they did not understand; fire fighters and first responders had perished as they rushed in to save lives; people had jumped out of the building to certain death in desperation or panic; spouses had spoken with their loved ones minutes before or during the collapse of the towers.
And then we learnt, by their claim of responsibility that this was Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden at work! How did this son of a rich Saudi construction magnate and friend of the Saudi monarchy evolve into the world’s number 1 terrorist? A veteran of the Mujahedin resistance of Soviet rule in Afghanistan, he had publicly declared war and threatened to attack Americans on the sea, land and air, and even though his affiliate “armies” had bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, Osama and the multinational terror organisation he served as CEO had not fully entered into American and global consciousness. 9-11 changed all that! Osama Bin Laden became one of the most infamous human beings who ever lived. He was admired by those who overtly or covertly shared his Jihadist agenda and visceral hatred for America and western civilisation. Bin Laden’s touted grudge against the US was its stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab and Muslim lands, and support for Arab rulers whom he despised, but at the root was a Jihadist philosophy.
Americans could not understand what they had done to deserve such wanton murder, not of soldiers in the war front, but men, women and children who were simply attempting to earn a living, wondering in bewilderment, “Why do “they” hate us so much?; What have we done to “them”?” September 11 changed America. An insular President Bush who had hoped to focus on US domestic policy became the war monger who went after Al Qaeda and the Taliban government of Afghanistan which gave them refuge; Bush then made the misjudgement of going to war in Iraq which had no role in 9-11 and no “weapons of mass destruction”. 9-11 changed the structure of the US government. A massive Department of Homeland Security was created and huge resources deployed to fight global terror. The huge cost of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was one underlying reason for the US’ compromised financial and economic immunity and contributed to its inability to withstand the shock of the 2008 financial crisis. Inspired by Bin Laden, fundamentalists purporting to act in the name of Islam, struck in London, Spain, Iraq, Indonesia and across the world. On September 11, some rejoiced in Palestine and in Kano, Nigeria!
Bin Laden changed the way the world travelled; obtain visas; transferred funds; he changed airport procedures and made the world paranoid about security in public places; he changed the structure of global defence, security, policing, communication and diplomatic policy; in many ways he slowed down the march of global civilisation! But then that was his objective! Osama Bin Laden believed that America and western civilisation would crumble under the weight of terror. He was wrong. In killing Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011, America proved its resilience. President Obama dispelled right wing doubts about his national security credentials and silenced those who question his nationality and faith, though irrationalism can endure in spite of the evidence. On 5-1, Osama Bin Laden received a bullet in the chest and head from US Navy SEALS, in his mansion in Abbottabad, near Islamabad, Pakistan and was buried in the Arabian Sea the next day.
Like President Obama said, “Osama Bin Laden will not walk this earth again”. Will the ideas he espoused survive him, or will they be interred with his bones?
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