Transcript
James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from imperial War museums.
Clip: The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning. Huge, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our Nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed.
Suruthi Bala: Hello, uh, I'm Suruthi Bala, one half of True Crime Podcast. Red handed, uh, here with my cohost.
Hannah Maguire: I'm Hannah Maguire. I'm the other one.
Amanda Mason: I'm Amanda. I'm a senior curator here at the museum in the contemporary conflict team, and I specialize in Afghanistan.
James Taylor: Hannah and Suruthi have joined Curator Amanda Mason at the Imperial War Museum, London for this special episode of Conflict of Interest, to try to understand one of the most significant events of the 21st century.
Clip: Not see a plane go in that that just exploded. I just saw another plane coming in from the side. And I give you, on behalf of our country, our solidarity, our sympathy, and our support.
James Taylor: On our way, we'll go behind the scenes to explore iconic items through the museum's archives and meet someone with an in-depth knowledge of this significant event so that we can all for at least one moment in time understand what happened when, and crucially, why all this in one episode. I'm James Taylor, chief curator at IWM, and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin in the Imperial War Museum's Cafe, where Amanda is about to find out what Suruthi and Hannah already know about that fateful day 20 years ago. Most people have a memory about where they were at the time of the attacks, including Suruthi and Hannah.
Hannah Maguire: I must have definitely been at school and probably in year six
Suruthi Bala: mm-Hmm.
Hannah Maguire: So you were probably at secondary school?
Suruthi Bala: Yeah, I was 11 when it happened. So I think year seven. Um, I think they let us go home early that day as if that was like a treat. God that sound awful. They, they were like, go home early.
Hannah Maguire: I don't think I remotely comprehended what happened. I remember going home. My dad, uh, worked very, he worked for an American company, so he was on the phone all the time past midday and he rang one of his colleagues being like, we had a call at two. Where were you? And his colleague just said, turn on the TV.
Suruthi Bala: Yeah. My dad actually used to work for Lehman Brothers and he was in the London office and he was on the phone to the New York office the time that the planes actually hit and there was just a bang and the phones went dead and they turned on the news. They realized why. It was just unbelievable. And I think the reason they sent us home was because they thought maybe something would happen in London. So everyone was just go home.
James Taylor: Amanda escorts her guests through the museum in search of the first object as they begin their journey of discovery.
Amanda Mason: You know, people talk about 9/11, what does it mean to you? You know, what, what does it make you think about it?
Hannah Maguire: I, I always just think about phones and like, how many, how many phone calls would've been made in the two minutes. Um, and then obviously the really famous voicemails from, from the planes in the buildings.
Suruthi Bala: I guess the word that jumps to mind is, is a strange one, but dust. I just remember watching the pictures and the news coverage of when the attack happened and just how much dust and smoke was pouring out of these buildings and just the people covered in blood and covered in dust and I think that was like such a, a strange word that did come to mind actually when we were started talking about this.
Hannah Maguire: I also think about shoes. I think about the people jumping from the buildings who were recognized by their shoes and that thing, like the falling man, you've seen that.
Suruthi Bala: Mm-Hmm.
Hannah Maguire: And people trying to identify him by his trainers. I think about that a lot.
Suruthi Bala: So we're at our first exhibit here. It looks to me like, well, it's twisted metal.
Hannah Maguire: I think it's something. I think it's a part of a plane. That's what it looks like to me.
Amanda Mason: So this is actually a fragment of what remains of the World Trade Center.
Hannah Maguire: Oh wow.
Amanda Mason: It's a section of the external walls. Uh, we think possibly from near one of the impact zones. So one of the, sort of the external sections, one of those beams. So, I mean, the fact it's so twisted
Suruthi Bala: Wow
Amanda Mason: and rusted and just like, I think just looking at it gives a sense of sort of the enormous violence and destruction
Hannah Maguire: of what goes back. Oh my God. God.
James Taylor: As Suruthi and Hannah survey the scene, our expert on the events of 9/11 and its aftermath appears before them.
Dr Shiraz Maher: Hi, I'm, uh, Dr. Shiraz Maher. I'm a lecturer at King's College London in the Department of War Studies where I study jihadist movements.
Suruthi Bala: So Shiraz, we obviously talked to you a little bit about where we were on 9/11 and what we remember of it. How about you?
Mohsin Hamid: I'm a bit older than you both. So I, I had just finished, uh, my first year at uni. I was back home. I remember I'd gone to see a mate in Birmingham City Center and we were having coffee and he got a text message saying from like his sister or someone saying, uh, a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Really didn't think any more of it either of us. And I was on the bus on the way home, my mom phoned saying, pick up some milk and stuff. I said to her, just flick on the news, um, has a plane hit the World Trade Center? And she said, no, it's nothing about that, but there's a fire at the Pentagon. I was like, oh. And again, not connecting any of those dots. Obviously by the time I got home it was pretty clear what had happened and that this was part of a coordinated attack. And uh, and I think just like everyone else has just sort of sat on the edge of the sofa glued to the TV for the rest of the day.
Dr Shiraz Maher: Absolutely there, there's no question. I, uh, grew up as a child in Saudi Arabia and obviously once 15 of the 19 hijackers emerged, you know, to, to be from Saudi, you have to remember that's a country a lot of people have a lot of opinions about now, and people know a lot about it. But in 2001, people really didn't know much about this place. I remember people asking me really weird questions when I moved here to go to school, like, you know, did you go to school by camel? And that kind of thing. You know, it was like,
Hannah Maguire: like the Aladdin...
Dr Shiraz Maher: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, my flying carpet instead. So, um, you know, so yeah, I was really interested after that in, in, in all of these events and, and you know, that became, uh, that part of the world and that region and, you know, it just became center of the universe really for someone who was young and interested in politics.
James Taylor: To understand the events of 9/11, we should first look at the origins of the group that planned and executed the attack Al-Qaeda which stretches back as far as the Cold War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Dr Shiraz Maher: Al-Qaeda is really a, a, a movement that emerges off the back of the war in Afghanistan in, in the 1980s. You have to bear in mind that these were, uh, the, the sort of Arab contingent, that sort of first foreign fighter as it were. We've, you know, seen that really in, in lots of depth in the Syrian context. But this was the first kind of irregular mobilization of people going to another country to fight in a, in a cause like this, uh, in, in the modern age,
Clip: despite supporting fire from the main base on the valley floor. The outpost was finally overrun late that night with the loss of to Mujahideen killed as they advanced through the...
Dr Shiraz Maher: Afterwards, they're kind of intoxicated by this unlikely victory, right? You've defeated the Soviet Union, and these guys are going home to Egypt or Libya, and they're not being treated as heroes. They're being treated as national security threats being thrown into jail, but also the world around them is changing, right? Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, which is, uh, a hugely important moment in the development of radicalism. These guys say, look, we just defeat Soviet Union. We can do this too. And so there's a sense of how do you keep the project going?
James Taylor: In Arabic, the name Al-Qaeda means the base, according to Osama Bin Laden, the name referred to the bases in Afghanistan that the mujahideen used to fight off the Soviets. But for Shiraz, what's more interesting than Al-Qaeda's name is the idea underpinning it, a leftover collection of fighters thinking. How do we change the world?
Dr Shiraz Maher: What they really, ultimately wanted, and I think where all of this begins, is a sense of they want the west to not be present or what they would call interfere in the Arab and Muslim world. So there's a sense that after 1990, the Saudi royal family invites the United States to come and to push Saddam out, to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy. And that creates a sort of intellectual moment of discussion. That discussion is, is it allowed for Saudi Arabia to have a military relationship with a Western non-Muslim power? And overwhelmingly, these guys conclude, no. Right? That's the, that's the decision that it's not allowed. Therefore, the Saudi government in their eyes, has committed a gross mistake. And they start to say, right, actually, it's not just Saudi. They're supporting regimes in Egypt, hang on, they're supporting regime.... and so they're saying, right, all these governments are corrupt. And the only way they're able to maintain and sustain their grip on power is because the West underwrites them. And that starts the process of them. So, so, you know, in terms of what do they want, that's the sort of baseline what they want, they wanted the west to get out of the region. For a lot of people, terrorism became an issue with 9/11. Right? That's when it pops up onto most people's radar. But there was a sort of buildup to this moment, Al-Qaeda itself, Osama Bin Laden, they'd all been talking about this sense of hostility to America, pushing the Americans out, declaring war in the United States. They issued two declarations of war in 1996 and then again in 1998.
James Taylor: Amanda leads Hannah and Suruthi through the gallery, past some of the objects from our Afghanistan and Iraq episodes to a door mart, museum staff only. Once through the group weaved their way along the back corridors of IWM before arriving at a room full of paintings by war artist William Orpen. On a table in the corner are some objects carefully wrapped up, which have been brought in from our archives for Hannah and Suruthi. Amanda starts to unwrap the first object.
Hannah Maguire: Oh my God. Okay. It's absolutely not what I was expecting to see.
Suruthi Bala: It's like a, a young terrifying Santa Claus mask.
Hannah Maguire: Yeah. I expect it's probably not for the Christmas. Is it a Osama Bin Laden Halloween costume? Uh,
Amanda Mason: yeah, pretty much. It's a mask of Osama bin Laden. Yes, you're right. And it was, uh, used, worn at the Rio Carnival in 2002.
Suruthi Bala: Wow.
Amanda Mason: So apparently, um, Osama masks were very popular that year, as were George Bush masks. I think it probably gives an impression that maybe around the world he was sort of seen, recognized at this point as a, you know big sort of public enemy number one, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's a really grotesque looking mask, you know. It is sort of molded plastic and there's this horrible, fake beard. It is, it is really quite horrible.
Hannah Maguire: I don't want to look at it, but I can't stop.
Suruthi Bala: Yeah. The, the bit that's particularly troubling, I think is the eyes.
Hannah Maguire: Oh, I'm having a hard time with the two, like gray wisps in the beard.
Suruthi Bala: Yeah. There's also that,
Hannah Maguire: that makes it look like a bit like a almost too human, a bit uncanny valley. I don't like it sweating.
Suruthi Bala: Yeah. But it's the, uh, it's the cutout little circles for the eyes in the, in the plastic mask.
Hannah Maguire: I can't imagine it's particularly comfortable to wear.
Suruthi Bala: No, but you've gotta be, you know, committed. If you're gonna wear this costume
Hannah Maguire: if you're gonna show up to Rio Carnival dresses on Bin Laden, then yeah. I would not imagine. commitment is something you need.
Suruthi Bala: Yes. So Shiraz, we've obviously talked about, um, 9/11 briefly, but I think probably time to introduce the key, can we call him the protagonist, the bad actor in this? Uh, could you tell us a little bit about Osama Bin Laden?
Dr Shiraz Maher: Osama Bin Laden comes from a, a very wealthy Saudi family, which originally has its roots in, uh, in Yemen. It's in the construction business. So it made its, uh, millions through, uh, contracts in the Saudi state, developed a lot of the infrastructure of the country. And so he's got this amazing access to not just to to wealth, but to equipment as well, which makes him very important when he goes to Afghanistan. But what's really interesting about him is that firstly, when he goes to Afghanistan, he's still very much playing by the rules. He sought the permission of the Saudi King prior to traveling to become a fighter. Then refers to the Saudi King, uh, in Arabic as Wali al-Amar and that's really, um. Um, kind of like recognition of, of like a guardian of a sort of authority kind of father figure. It shows you that he was going to do something quite unique, right, to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but it was still sort of seeking to play within the rules of his country and his society. And he'd, he'd been deeply influenced by a man called, uh, Abdullah Azzam, who was leading the Arab fighters in Afghanistan at the time. And so, Bin Laden is a follower. He's not a leader. And when Abdullah Azzam is killed at the end, uh, of that conflict, and, and Bin Laden goes to Sudan, he's part of that group who doesn't return home because he's already a little worried that he might get detained. He's part of the group that sits in Sudan. He's lost his mentor. He's looking for new mentors. He doesn't emerge as as one himself. And the guys who he looks up to are clerics, who are still in Saudi Arabia, who are leading this campaign against the government to say the government has made, uh, a huge religious error in entering into a military alliance with the United States. He writes a letter to King Fahad in 1994, and the letter is addressing the king with all the sort of royal honorifics and Islamic greetings and. Within 15 months, he declares the Saudi government apostates. So that movement, that intellectual shift of this guy going from being a follower to a leader happens fairly quickly once he decides to get involved in, in challenging the government and thereafter, you know, he becomes the central figure.
Suruthi Bala: Wow. I think that's actually one of the misunderstandings I think people often have of Bin Laden, that he came from a wealthy family and also that he was very educated. So, Shiraz, we've talked, um, briefly so far about the, the ideology and what these groups are trying to achieve. But could you talk to us a little bit about the key ideological beliefs or the tenants at the heart of Al-Qaeda? What do they, what do they actually believe? What do they want?
James Taylor: It's a really interesting question. And a complex area. Luckily, Shiraz is perfectly placed to answer.
Dr Shiraz Maher: I took the view in my research that there's probably two things to, to acknowledge. First is that this is a wartime theology. It's driven by events on the battlefield, so it's not completely coherently thought out and mapped out in advance, right? These guys pull off 9/11 and suddenly they are fighting in Afghanistan, they're fighting in Iraq, and they're needing to justify and understand and explain all kinds of things, right? If you are launching and initiating a sectarian war against the Shia in southern Iraq, you need to communicate why you're doing that and what you understand your religious, uh, uh, justifications to be for that. If you are bombing a marketplace in the middle of downtown Baghdad where you're killing lots of ordinary, innocent civilians. You need to start to find a way to rationalize that to people and to say, there is a reason behind this. It's not nihilism for its own sake.
Dr Shiraz Maher: So my, my argument is really, it's not a cohesive thing that's crystallized even on 9/11, but I, I can identify five things I talk about um, in my research, which is to, I say that these are the five things you have to believe in in order to be, uh, a salafi jihadi who sort of subscribes to this. And it's important to say that these five things all exist within normative Islam and so ordinary Muslims believe these things. What's interesting about this movement is that it constructs each one of those ideas in a unique way, right? It's a construction, it's a political ideology. They're taking these ideas and doing something distinct with them. So obviously the first principle is that they believe in jihad. They believe in jihad, is armed struggles, military conflict, and they believe it as an act of worship, right? Which is akin to, you know, other ritualistic acts, praying, going on, pilgrimage. And so there's a sense of, you know, you must normalize your hand as a violent struggle and that's, and, and, and an act of worship to God. The second point that they believe in is stuck fear is the process of excommunication, excommunicating, other Muslims, uh, say, right, you're not Muslim enough because maybe you're a Shia, you are not Muslim because you don't pray and to use that as a tool to fight other Muslims. The third principle is, is a principle called Al-Wala' wal-Bara', which is, it doesn't translate neatly into English, but essentially means loyalty and disavow or love and hate essentially for the sake of God. This gets used, uh, and politicized as a tool of international relations. Should the Saudi government enter into a military alliance with, uh, a non-Muslim, Western power, i.e. The United States? Well, the principle of love and hate loyalty in this of our says no. Our loyalty must be with other Muslims and against, uh, non-Muslims. Therefore, you know, you, it's, it's forbidden to enter into a military alliance in this way. And then there's a principle of monotheism. Muslims believe that the, you know, the time you are set to die is the time circumstances can shift. So Abdullah Azzam, who I mentioned was, was Bin Laden's mentor said, look, some parts of faith just require an intellectual affirmation, right? Death is fixed by God. How can you demonstrate You really believe it? The only way you can demonstrate you believe it is to put your life in God's hands. The only way to do that is to come and fight Jihad. If you really believe that your death is written, then you're just as likely to die on the streets of Bradford as you are on the streets of Baghdad so come here and join us. And then the final point is about hacking me. It's about Islamic governance, right? You have to believe in an Islamic state and a, and a political authority for, for that state. Interestingly, Al-Qaeda talks about that the least. Of all of those four concepts, it talks about that one the least. And I think it's because for them, that's the abstract end goal, which they haven't in their minds really got to yet. As I say, 2003 becomes the moment. I think this five point sort of ideology becomes crystallizes and emerges as a, as an identifiable thing.
Suruthi Bala: So you talked her, um, Shiraz, obviously about 2003, really becoming this cauldron of everything happening in Iraq, and that was obviously after 9/11 had happened. What do you think were some of the warning signs that 9/11 was going to happen? Because obviously there were attacks on foreign bases, US bases, but were there warning signs that a home attack was going to happen like it did?
Dr Shiraz Maher: These guys did do a press conference, like I said, in 96 and 98, declaring war in the United States. Now how seriously are you supposed to take that in 1996 or in 1998? It's, you know, a bunch of guys in a cave, the other side of the world, in a country most Americans probably couldn't identify on the map then or now. So I often think, what if the United States had broken that plot? They'd captured these guys and you know, you imagine the director of the FBI coming out and saying there was a plot by 19 Arab men to fly four planes into, you know, to targets all around the United States, people wouldn't have believed it. They'd have said, this is Hollywood, right? Like, I don't imagine public reaction would've been like, oh my God, people would've just said, well, firstly, it would've been a lot of disbelief. And secondly, the, the gravity of what actually transpired, you know, wouldn't have registered. So I think, you know, we have to be very careful when we say. Did, was this foresee, could it have been stopped or any of that? I think it's, it's very, very, uh, hard to, to make that case.
James Taylor: The events of September the 11th are etched into many people's memories. Shiraz recalls how it all started to unfold.
Dr Shiraz Maher: So the events of 9/11, the day itself is that you have four separate planes that, that are hijacked simultaneously, uh, in the air. These are domestic flights, so it's all flights within, uh, the United States.
James Taylor: At 8:46 AM on September the 11th, 2001, hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash a plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing everyone on board, and several hundred inside the building.
Clip: It does not appear that there's any kind of a, an effort up there yet.
Now remember, oh my God, my god, that looks like a second plane. I did not see a plane go in that, that just exploded. I, we just saw another plane coming in from the side.
Suruthi Bala: Wow. I mean, obviously that footage is 20 years old, but still watching it, knowing what was about to happen, that the second plane was gonna hit while they were filming live, my hand still went to my mouth.
Hannah Maguire: Yeah, me too. I saw that. I've seen it from so many different angles, and I think what I had never considered before until just now hearing that commentary was that until the second plane flies, everyone thinks it's an accident, and then that is the moment where, where it's like, oh no, it's, it's two. It has to be a concerted attack on the World Trade Center. My hands already swaying.
James Taylor: But these weren't the only two planes deployed by Al-Qaeda. As millions watched events unfolding in New York, American Airlines, flight 77, crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, military headquarters in Washington DC killing 125 star and everyone on board.
Dr Shiraz Maher: There's this fourth plane that's in the sky. It's over at Pennsylvania, and it's headed, looping back towards DC And people know by this point what is happening. There is obviously, uh, a sense of mass panic, the unprecedented step of grounding all aircraft over American airspace takes place. So all these planes are, are, are brought down, but there is this one plane and what has happened is that people have seen it on the news what is happening, but the guys on the plane have phoned in to family members, loved ones to say our plane has been hijacked and they've been informed of what has happening of course, um, uh. Uh, on the ground. And so they take this decision to try and, uh, overpower the, the cockpit and to, to reclaim the plane basically. And, uh, that flight crashes into the ground. So of course, everyone aboard is killed, but it never reaches its intended target. It crashes in the fields, uh, of Pennsylvania.
James Taylor: At this point, Amanda hands two large photographs to Hannah and Suruthi.
Amanda Mason: So what you're looking at are two panorama photographs, uh, taken by the German filmmaker and photographer, Wim Wenders. Um, he was given access to Ground Zero, the site of Ground zero on the 8th of November, 2001. He went along, along with the official photographer, Joel Meyerowitz. Um, and he, he was given special access to the site to, to sort of photograph what's basically the recovery work at this stage. He talks about it being very, a very sort of quiet, uh, site. Obviously they're still recovering human remains at this point. When he was there, um, he talks about how it was, uh, all of a sudden there was this light that was, you can just see on this particular photograph, you can see it shining off that building. So the site was very dark and somber, but all of a sudden a light from the sun reflected off one of the nearby skyscrapers and sort of bathed the whole site in this sort of very eerie and very bright light. Um, and he sort of, obviously. Talks about being really struck by this and it made the site feel very much different. Um, he's written a really moving essay, and there's an article, I think it's just appeared in The Guardian one where he's talking, he talks a lot about, um, what, what it was like to be there and how he had sort of hopes that it might actually become a sort of a site of, of peace and reconciliation.
Suruthi Bala: The thing that really stands out is, as we were talking about earlier, is that dust and that destruction. I think we're so used to even at that point, especially now looking at images like this in Syria or overseas, somewhere else that's far away. And of course New York was, but it feels more like it could have happened anywhere if it happened there.
Hannah Maguire: I mean, certainly I think I lose a lot of comparison of like just how big the towers were because we're just looking at
Suruthi Bala: Mm-Hmm.
Hannah Maguire: a building site with teeny tiny people.
Suruthi Bala: And it's that destruction in the foreground of everything is just. Uh, brown and gray and destroyed, completely juxtaposed with the background of still a modern city with high rise and skyscrapers.
Hannah Maguire: Yeah. Shiny New York.
Suruthi Bala: Yeah. Standing right behind it.
James Taylor: For any of you who would like to see these and more photographs of the aftermath of the September the 11th attacks taken by Oscar nominee Wim Wenders.There is a new exhibition, Wim Wenders photographing Ground zero is at IWM London from September the 10th. During the September the 11th attacks, 2,977 people were killed by the 19 hijackers, and more than 6,000 were injured. Immediate deaths included 265 on the four planes, including the terrorists, 2,606 in the World Trade Center and in the surrounding area. And 125 at the Pentagon. Over 401st responders were killed. And that number has increased over the years due to 9/11 related illnesses caused by the inhalation of toxic dust and other debris.
Dr Shiraz Maher: Really, the, the attack on the US homeland, if you look at it in a chain of continuity from the attacks on US assets and targets in the Middle East beforehand, was really, it's not a step change, it's just a shift in the center of gravity, I should say, in terms of how you're going to fight the United States and, um, you're essentially delivering it to, uh, the homeland because, you know, terrorism is theater to, to an extent. It's about peacocking, a political demand or grievance to send a message. And so in 1998, because Al-Qaeda and this sort of band of people, again depends, if you call it Al-Qaeda or Nazi, depending on which, which view you take about when this movement starts. But let's say the jihadi movement attacks, uh, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and it showed them that you get the attention of the President of the United States. That's a difficult thing to do. How do you attract this person's, uh, time, uh, and attention, uh, because you're so important. So the way you do it is by, by hitting the US hard. So 9/11 is part of that. Ultimately, these are two very tall buildings. The tallest in Manhattan at the time. They are this icon, right? This emblem of, uh, the city, uh, and, and of a distinct part, right? Manhattan, the same thing with the Pentagon, right? It's, it's the heart of US military planning. And then of course, if you'd got to the White House again, the seat of US power. So these are deliberately picked as, as symbols and symbolism is very, very important, uh, in terrorism generally. But of course, the jihadi movement has demonstrated a great capacity for theater and for uh, at the moment.
James Taylor: With Hannah and Suruthi, deep in thought, we welcome a new voice to the discussion. Who is dialing in from Pakistan and who has his own perspective on September the 11th?
Mohsin Hamid: I'm Mohsin Hamed, I'm a novelist. I live in Lahore, uh, formerly in London. And before that New York, I've written four novels, one of which The Reluctant Fundamentalist deals with, uh, a young man who's living in New York around the time of the September 11 attacks and its aftermath. I moved to London from New York shortly after my 30th birthday at the end of July. I was really just settling in and still very much thought of myself as a New Yorker when in the gym of the office building where I worked, there were people standing and staring at something on a television screen. So I stepped in and, and looked at what they were looking at, and, and that's where I saw the iconic images of one of The World Trade Centers already on fire and then I watched the second, uh, aircraft hit. First of all, I tried to call my former roommate who worked in the World Financial Center next door, uh, and couldn't get through to New York to speak to her because, uh, the phone circuits were overloaded. Then, uh, in New York City, people were, you know, walking away from the attacks. The, the subway was shut and, uh, there was just clouds of smoke.
Dr Shiraz Maher: You know, there was a lot of bewilderment about what had happened. It was, it was a very confusing moment because you could see the United States wa was, was angry. It was this kind of wounded bear moment, right? And, and you know that there's gonna be this reaction. I think that was my overwhelming for what happens next, what will happen to the world. Bush coming out and starting this dichotomous process, you are with us or against us. Just the formulation of that maxim, I think was hugely negative and, uh, very, very problematic. And it crystallized this us versus them, you know, mentality. And, and, and you see that language mimicked everywhere. I mean, bin Laden himself says, right, the world is in two camps, right? Truth versus falsehood. You know, you decide, and, and, and everyone's doing the same thing, right? This is saying that same binary choice.
Suruthi Bala: Absolutely. And I think we've, we've spoken then a little bit about our personal experiences, how we felt watching it in the media aftermath, and you were sort of hypothesizing particularly what was going to happen next. So could we hear from, uh, from both of you actually, about what were the global consequences of the 9/11 attacks
Mohsin Hamid: looking back now, 20 years later, it's, it's hard to, uh, explain or communicate just how enormous, uh, this event was. This occurred at the moment where America was really in a sense at its apex of, um, global supremacy. You know, I, when I moved from New York City to London, um, you know, in many ways it felt like leaving the center of things for a place that was less central. There was this real sense of America's centrality at the nineties with the internet, with this booming stock market, with this, you know, huge economy and, and this enormous military and cultural dominance. And these attacks really were an enormous challenge, uh, to that way of looking at the world. Uh, and the response, uh, from the United States where suddenly flags appeared everywhere. Massive military force was mobilized, a rhetoric of of war, and, you know, people on, in uniform appearing on television the period after the Cold War, the 10 years before September 11th uh, 2001 felt like, uh, sort of this interregnum, this time of relative peace. Although of course there were many wars being fought in the world, and that seemed to end on September 11th. And, and as this enormous armada of ships and of, of military equipment headed towards Afghanistan, my parents were in Islamabad and, uh, you know, they were at a hotel and they saw, uh, I think it was Christiane Amanpour had arrived to, to broadcast from Islamabad. And my parents, you know, said, oh no, you know, when she arrives, um, some big war's about to start and is, you know, is it going to affect us? Is it going to happen here? It was an incredibly unsettling time.
Mohsin Hamid: Yeah, it, it was interesting. I, I had come to the UK on a, on a one year, uh, transfer with my job. I thought I would go back to New York after that one year. Um, I never did go back actually, or, or haven't yet, uh, full time gone back to the states. The UK felt a little bit less caught up in all of this. So, uh, it was possible to write for papers in the United Kingdom, um, and to express some degree of, of skepticism about the idea that the coming wars were a good idea or that, um, that in the necessary, uh, responses to terrorism, that, that we should at the same time be careful of, um, uh, people's civil liberties and, and making sure that we don't catch up all communities in this, in this drag net. In the US there was much more of a, of a kind of nationalistic fervor. And those years, immediately after September 11th, it did feel very much that London was a place where there was more skepticism, but was was about to be called the war on terror, and that there was a, a, even though of course the UK went to participate in the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war. There was a great deal, more internal doubt, and I think self-criticism about some of those moves in the UK, whereas the US felt very much overtaken by a kind of nationalistic fervor.
Hannah Maguire: And you've just said the absolute buzz phrase, the war on tar. Can I pass that over to you, Shiraz? When did that moment happen on the global stage?
Dr Shiraz Maher: The war on terror starts, I think as this, you know, again, as with all of this is very iterative thing, right? It's, it's very clear as, as Mohsin saying that, that, you know, the United States is gonna react. It's calling on countries to pivot. Of course, Pakistan becomes hugely important in that, right? If you're gonna prosecute this war in Afghanistan, you need, uh, Pakistan to, to come to heal. But there, there was a British moment to this in that Blair seized the moment to ride in right behind the United States. A lot of world leaders sought to obviously, you know, use this moment to, to either repair a relationship with the US or to, uh, win favor with the us. But Blair capitalized on Britain's historic relationship with the US to row in pretty unconditionally behind the US administration.
Tony Blaire: And I know that America, Britain, and all our allies will stand united together in that task. And I give you on behalf of our country, our solidarity, our sympathy, and our support. Thank you, sir.
Dr Shiraz Maher: It's amazing how much we forget, but, you know, researching my, my next, uh, book at the moment, I'm sort of going through those early parts of what was happening and, and, and you forget, like Blair turned up at the state of the union, uh, address in, in the us It's a significant thing for a, a world leader, uh, uh, to be there. So it, it was clear that whatever was gonna happen and there's this great moment of uncertainty in the world that Britain's going to be a part of it. And because of the role Britain was taken, that was always gonna have a very acute effect here, because British Islam fundamentally is Pakistani Islam, one in two British Muslims is ethnically from Pakistan. So this debate that happens in Pakistan, what do we do? We ally with the US and go in against the Taliban. What about the historic relations with Taliban? What do we do here? All of that turbulence of the national debate in Pakistan feeds immediately, indirectly into British Muslim communities because ethnically they're length. So, so the, the, the sense of the acute feel of the war on terror, I think hit British mosques pretty quickly.
James Taylor: At this moment, Amanda starts to unwrap one of the larger items on the table. An object that looks deceptively mundane.
Suruthi Bala: It looks like a very ordinary black duffle bag.
Hannah Maguire: with a luggage label on it. That's red. Can you read it? My, it's terrible.
Suruthi Bala: I don't know if that's like a museum one rather than a
Hannah Maguire: Whoops.
Suruthi Bala: An actual luggage label
Hannah Maguire: well done Hannah.
Suruthi Bala: Um,
Hannah Maguire: oh, it's an exhibit number.
Suruthi Bala: I think it might just be an exhibit number.
Hannah Maguire: Okay. Stand down everyone.
Suruthi Bala: I can't read what the little label says, but Yeah like a canvas black duffle bag.
Hannah Maguire: Yeah. As you say, very ordinary.
Suruthi Bala: Mm-Hmm.
Amanda Mason: So you are right. It's a very ordinary looking holdall. Um, it belonged to a guy called Jamie Weaver, and he was one of the first British troops, um, out when sent out to Afghanistan. He was sent out in April, 2002 on, um, Opticana which is with the Marines. And so they were sent out to Bagram Airfield and to sort of carry on any operations to sort of, um, see if there was any Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters still out there um, following on for a big American operation that had just taken place. They were trying to sort of drive out or get rid of any remaining Al-Qaeda that was still in the country. Actually, by the time British troops got out there in, in the spring, there wasn't really a great deal, uh, going on at this point. And, uh, they blew up a huge, uh, cache of weapons and carried out and few other operations, but there wasn't a huge amount of, of fighting at this point. But I just think it's, it is quite significant, these are a very, uh, small number of British soldiers that are out to the ground at this point but obviously for the British, Afghanistan becomes a much bigger deal. And from 2006 onwards, there's a huge, um, contingent out in Helmand and they became, become drawn into what's becomes quite a, you know, a very active and kinetic and, uh, costly war.
Suruthi Bala: Why did the, in, um, invasion of Afghanistan happen? How did it happen? Could you talk to us a little bit about that Mohsin?
Mohsin Hamid: So there was an incredible, overwhelming emotional desire to respond to September 11th, given the scale of the atrocity and just, and just how visible and damaging it was. And Afghanistan was where Osama Bin Laden was based. Osama was the, um, uh, belief perpetrator or, or mastermind of the attacks. Uh, the United States asked, uh, the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan to give Osama up. Uh, the Taliban refused and war commenced. But when you think about, you know, why did it happen? Why did it need to happen like that? I think it probably is worth asking that question because, um, if the objective was simply to get or kill Osama or to eradicate Al Qaeda. It wasn't necessarily the case that a full blown war in Afghanistan was, it was called for. I remember writing an essay, you know, 20 years ago asking exactly this question, which is, you know, is, is a full war in Afghanistan, really what's needed to root out what probably is a small number of, of terrorists. But I think there was this enormous desire for a massive response. And in fact that desire catalyzed not only, uh, the war in Afghanistan, but, but subsequent, uh, military action in other places as well. And there's an account of a conversation between Richard Armitage who I think was a deputy secretary of State of the United States with, um, some Pakistani generals who were trying to explain the background of the Civil War in Afghanistan and where Taliban came from and what the situation was, and said, look, this is the history. And Armitage is, is quoted as saying, no, the history starts today. And I think in that moment, the idea that the United States could rewrite, uh, anything it chose, it could start from a blank slate of history and impose its will on the world was, was not really questioned. Everybody knew that Afghanistan was this place where disastrous British and Soviet military interventions had failed in the past, but somehow there was the feeling that America was different, that America, you know, could successfully do what needed to be done in Afghanistan. And, and the results were a year war that dragged on for 20 years.
Dr Shiraz Maher: But it's also that that Armitage, uh, moment, right? If you think about the 20 years that that has proceeded. In, in recent years would say, you know, since, particularly since about 2016, we've seen more and more governments departing from what's been called the International Rules Based Order, right? And, uh, this sort of greater sense of disorder in the world. Well, that moment of kind of blithe departure from acceptable norms in the modern era, it starts with America in this post 9/11 environment. The United States tortures people. It starts rendering people, it throws out concepts of habeas corpus, detention without trial, and all these kinds of things, sets up Guantanamo Bay, and it caresses it in this nomenclature of sort of legalese enemy competent, enhanced interrogation. On the one hand, when you're talking about projecting your values, you actually engaged in not just undermining them, but signaling to the rest of the world that if you can dress something up as a national security concern, the national security trumps all else. Then you can depart from these norms and standards and, and it's set a very bad precedent.
James Taylor: Some of the practices carried out by the USA and its allies were highly controversial. The practice of extraordinary rendition involved the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of suspected terrorists. It effectively allowed a detainee to be moved from one country to another so that they could be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques akin to torture and perhaps most notoriously, the Bush administration set up Guantanamo Bay. A detention facility where suspected Alqaeda members were held without trial and subjected to harsh interrogation methods including water boarding, beatings, stress positions, and sexual humiliation.
George Bush: Well, the tribunals are just an option for us, and we'll be using the tribunals. Uh, if, uh, in the course of, um, bringing somebody to justice, it would jeopardize or compromise national security interests.
James Taylor: Back at the museum, Hannah and Suruthi are struggling with an important and commonly asked question, how did the Iraq war follow from September the 11th and the invasion of Afghanistan?
Mohsin Hamid: So, um, the reason why it's difficult to understand the connection is because there isn't really a connection.
Hannah Maguire: I'm glad it's not just me being stupid.
Mohsin Hamid: I think what happened was, and this is why understanding the impulse for vengeance is for me, a very important part of understanding this narrative. It's up until Afghanistan, you can disagree about whether a full scale invasion was called for whether the Taliban peace software should have been engaged with whether a different, uh, solution should have been found after that initial burst of fighting, but certainly there's a, there's a very straightforward argument for why a military intervention in Afghanistan, you know, was called for. There was no equivalent reason to invade Iraq. Uh, Saddam Hussien, the, you know, quite horrific dictator of Iraq, uh, was not, uh, engaged in supporting the terrorist attacks of September 11th. And then it was said that, well, you know, uh, he poses a threat because of his weapons of mass destruction. Um, but of the many countries that have weapons of mass destruction in the world or that had them at that time, Saddam appeared to be one of the very few leaders who had actually dismantled his weapons of mass destruction and done so under a, a quite rigorously enforced UN inspections regime.
James Taylor: If you'd like to learn more about what really happened in the Iraq War, it's there waiting for you in episode three of this series, we return to the topic at hand.
Suruthi Bala: We've talked about the immediate response or the reaction, the reason we went into Afghanistan could be for revenge, but then it turned into this, um, maybe nation building. It turned into we're gonna have to change the way of life fundamentally there to make the west safe. Mohsin could you tell us, do you think the invasion of Afghanistan, then everything that's happened since, has that made us quote unquote safer or less safe? If that was the aim.
James Taylor: Back on the ground in Afghanistan and later Pakistan, the hunt continued for the perpetrator of the September the 11th attacks, Osama Bin Laden, who had seemingly disappeared into thin air.
Dr Shiraz Maher: We've talked about terrorism being theater and about there being a symbolic importance to, to certain things, targets or, or, or individuals who are, who are targeted as a result of it. And so for the United States, obviously the capture of,uh, or, or the killing of Bin Laden is an important target and obviously a huge effort goes into, uh, trying to, to find him. And through the interrogations that the United States is conducting both in places like Bagram and Guantanamo Bay, they begin to identify the courier network around Bin Laden. And what actually begins to tip them off about, uh, the significance of these couriers is just the, the extent to which their importance is being downplayed by people in the interrogations. So you realize that there's an attempt to cover these guys. And through a process then of tracking those individuals, obviously this compound just outside of s Islamabad becomes identified, it's surveilled, obviously very, very heavily and then an ultimate decision is taken to go there and to, to see who's there.
Obama: Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
James Taylor: Osama bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces on May the second, 2011. Nearly 10 years after the date of the attacks in the United States, his body was thrown into the sea.
Dr Shiraz Maher: The decision to invade Iraq as the single most consequential decision of, of the War on Terror. And of course you have Al-Qaeda in in Iraq, but Al-Qaeda is not the only group fighting in Iraq. That's really important to, to understand. There are various other Sunni groups, and we're concerned about Sunni groups because of course there are Shia groups fighting as well, but they're not part of the Salafi Jihadi movement. And so. It's important because what happens is once the US begins to try a counter surgency strategy on the ground in Iraq, working with so tribes to say, look, you know, Al-Qaeda and these groups are not your friends, those groups start to try and work together a bit more broadly to say, let's all, uh, uh, unite because, uh, the counterinsurgency tactic is working. During that time, however, the United States ends up capturing a lot of these individuals and bringing them all together in a place called Camp Bucca, which is a detention center near the Kuwaiti border. And these guys, uh, spent several years there and they said, look, it was the best thing in the world because we could never get together like that on the outside for fear of a drone strike, wiping out the leadership. But now they had an ability to come together and to to unite, but in essence, it grows out of Al-Qaeda as a sort of, you could say a, a more determined, more, uh, petulant and defiant movement, which doesn't have, uh, strong connections back to Al-Qaeda. It's sort of branched out on its own and it just waits for its opportunity. So it calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq, but really it's a letterhead. It has nothing more than that, right? It, it may control a few little towns here and there, unofficially no one's taking it too seriously. But how do you movements need disorder, they need a power vacuum. They need that sense of chaos, and that's the environment in which they can thrive. And one of the ways it grows. It's power based so quickly is that it fights the other rebel groups and takes their, uh, territory. Uh, and it's very good absorbing others into, uh, uh, its movement. So it grows like a hydra. And once it builds momentum, it's able to sustain that momentum because it's seen as the winning team, uh, uh, on the ground. So it has both history on its side. It has ideology on its side, it has the independence on its side, but ultimately what it really has is that ability to manifest something practically on the ground that the other groups didn't. I mentioned before. ISIS said we are a state. The other group said, we're fighting vanguards and that difference in approach and mindset gave ISIS this ability to, to attract more people to its course.
James Taylor: ISIS was previously known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. They were originally led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist feared for his particularly extreme tactics who was later assassinated by the USA. They cut ties with Al-Qaeda in 2014 under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after which they famously declared the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate. It's a topic Hannah and Suruthi have dealt with on their own show, Red-handed. We would encourage you to listen to their three part series on Shamima Begum and the Bethnal Green 3. We are coming to the end of our time in the museum, but before Suruthi and Hannah make their way home, Amanda reveals the final two objects, a pair of photos, which hint at how day-to-day life has changed as a result of September the 11th.
Suruthi Bala: Okay. It looks like,
Hannah Maguire: it looks like Heathrow wrote to me.
Suruthi Bala: It looks like Heathrow Airport,
Hannah Maguire: wherever Qantas flies from. Yeah.
Suruthi Bala: With some pretty serious tanks rolling down.
Hannah Maguire: Yeah. Something on Red-handed we talk a lot, talk about a lot is the difference in in gun laws between the UK and the US. And I always say on the show that to see anyone in uniform carrying an assault weapon like the one we're looking at, and we're looking at a British soldier carrying a really, really, really large gun and we don't see that. And when you do see it in a train station, usually. It kind of makes you catch your breath because it is so out of the ordinary of what we are used to.
Amanda Mason: Okay, so you're right, it is Heathrow report. These are photographs from February, 2003. So, um, they're showing British Armed Forces providing additional security to Met police, um, because there's been a, a terrorist alert. I think there was some intelligence that there might be an anti-aircraft. Um, weapons had been smuggled into the UK so I think this is probably relevant of this period where there was so much concern about terrorism and the threats of terrorism. Airport security was stepped up and I think everybody was just to so that much more aware of the risks of terrorism and threat of terrorism, whether, what extent that was com overstated, I think, you know, is certainly a matter of a debate and discussion.
Suruthi Bala: Mohsin, it feels like everything we've talked about, a lot of the actions that were taken by the West, um, over the past 20 years, immediately after 9/11, feels like they've created the opposite effect to what the West claimed were the reasons that they were doing well-intentioned or not uh, it seems to have created the opposite reaction. So I guess we could say, um, that we, that the West failed in what they were attempting to do. Do you think that Al-Qaeda, although we can argue and debate over their motivations for why they did what they did, do you think that they succeeded?
Mohsin Hamid: I, I think it's, it's, it's hard to imagine how they could have succeeded more. I mean, you know, the, the, there's, so there were so few of them and, uh, it, it seems they got, you know, uh, in, in a horrific way, incredibly lucky. I. Um, you know, they'd been trying to hijack plays and do these things for a very long time, and somehow, and they had this spectacular in their, in their, you know, uh, way of looking at it, success, uh, uh, I, I would imagine they, they were, they were quite shocked by, you know, by, by all these successful hijackings and all this stuff, and the destruction that took place on 9/11. And while I doubt, you know, as they were individually hunted down and killed, many of them, they would've, you know, relished the personal outcome. I think the idea of setting in motion a conflict of cultures and civilizations and, and world views, um, uh, was very much achieved. Uh, and, and I think we, we have to, uh, consider that in this endeavor you know, their allies were very often precise people who claim to be their enemies. In other words, those who were most nationalistic and militaristic in their response to terrorism were precisely the right opponent, you know, for Al-Qaeda to have, because they wound up creating exactly the kind of backlash that in countries like Pakistan, for example, have, have utterly marginalized liberal, progressive voices, right. It wasn't that, you know, the world was divided between Al-Qaeda type people and sort of Western people. The, the real, the real threat, of course was, you know, the rise of, um, civil society, democratic culture, civil liberties in places like Pakistan. And now in the new security paradigm that we find ourselves in, all of that has been set back enormously. You know, it's very hard to now advocate for, um, you know, democracy and liberal democracy and these sorts of things in a society which has become deeply suspicious of, of the weaponization of these concepts in the service of, of Western military objectives. So in, in that sense, I think that, uh, you know, Al-Qaeda was, was phenomenally successful, you know, tragically, uh, successful. The idea that a terrorist is seeking to win a military victory, I think is completely misguided. What, what the terrorist is seeking to do is, is, is a provocation. Um, and the greater the overreaction to that provocation, the more successful the terrorist is. But I also don't think that that, um, that the story is over. I, I think from the beginning, the story has been one of competing narratives and the narratives that we had of the clash of two, you know, supremely aggressive forces, the terrorists on one hand, and the utterly militarized indiscriminate response that they, that they engendered from the West. Um, those are not the only two stories to tell. And in the present moment, 20 years later, when we find ourselves confronting a, a global pandemic that doesn't care what religion we are, what country we come from. And we find ourself confronted with global warming, which is this, you know, the great challenge of our, of our, of our century and the centuries to come probably, um, the idea that we can craft new narratives that are not about this group versus group security, terror, uh, conflict. Um, but a sort of shared human narrative does present itself because there was a kind of shared narrative that America was putting out into the world in the late 1990s of economic success and shared prosperity. And it may, it may not have been true, but it was certainly very appealing. Um, and in some senses it was true for many people. So I think, I think now, uh, rather than in a way asking ourselves who won, can we try to remove this sense of conflict itself and reorient ourselves in a human dimension towards conflicts that actually unite us, which are conflicts against the virus and conflicts against um, our own, uh, emissions that are destroying the climate that we all, uh, need to survive.
James Taylor: Sadly, it's time to leave this Conflict of Interest, but before they go, Amanda asks Hannah and Suruthi to consider what they have learned today.
Hannah Maguire: I feel like my brain is so heavy, I might not be able to ever use it again.
Suruthi Bala: It's been, uh, like drinking from the fire hose, you know, to reflect on something that happened 20 years ago, but that has so eloquently been put to us by, um, Mohsin and Shiraz over the past, however many hours we've been talking. It's hard to see what's happening in Afghanistan right now and not feel like what was the point of everything that happened? And it just, it feels like such a, a, a sad thing. And it's also this interesting idea of when 9/11 happened, was it, it was an attempt by, you know, the Taliban by Osama Bin Laden to directly attack our, the West's way of life. And then what we did is we tried to take those values and impose 'em on that part of the world and the, the toxicity that was born out of that everywhere, I think is, it's something that if it happened today, 9/11, we would do exactly the same thing. And that's quite sad. But yeah, I didn't end very optimistically.
Hannah Maguire: I don't think I can say it better than that.
James Taylor: And with that rather gloomy but thoughtful insight from Suruthi. Our time at the museum must come to an end. It has been said that 9/11 was the defining moment of our time with current history divided into two periods before 9/11 and after 9/11. And with that in mind, we would love to hear your own story. IWM is inviting listeners to share their experiences of how 9/11 and the events that followed have impacted your life. More information can be found in our show notes. Thanks again to our guests. Hannah Maguire, Suruthi Bala, Shiraz Maher, and Mohsin Hamid, as well as our curator for this episode. Amanda Mason. My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Martin Swick, Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums. Thank you for listening and goodbye.
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James Graham © IWM
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