It has been 20 years since the world saw a major terrorist attack on the United States that would become known as September 11, or simply 9/11. Highjacked aeroplanes targeted the symbols of American democracy: the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, and potentially the White House or the Capitol. One autumn day changed the United States forever, as well as how the rest of the world see security and safety. The 9/11 attack triggered the Global War on Terror, a massive initiative launched by the United States to fight terrorism in retaliation to the attack. Now, 20 years later, I want to reflect on what we have learned about terrorism and the major developments that have influenced our understanding of terrorism.
One significant development over the last 20 years is that we have gained greater access to information. Often this access is immediate (for example, an attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021 was streamed in real-time by both news broadcasting companies and ordinary citizens). When re-watching documentaries about 9/11 as one do for the 20th anniversary of an event (for example, Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore or 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room by BBC), it is possible to see the limitations of communication and broadcasting technologies greatly affected emergency responses. Failing telephone calls, the absence of access to any footage but watching the events unravel on the TV, the time lost in the attempts to coordinate response and stay safe – all these obstacles are greatly aided with technological advances now.
However, despite impressive technological progress over the last 20 years that undeniably helped to detect and fight terrorism, one cannot deny that the Global War on Terror, successful at times, failed to eradicate the threat of terrorism. Terrorism is here to stay; thus, it might be the time to start seeing it as a type of violence rather than one-off events caused by the lost people who do not understand what they are doing. The danger of the narrative that terrorism is somewhat illogical lies in its ability to lull us into a false sense of security, potentially overlooking homegrown terrorism and ideological propaganda. Terrorist techniques are used worldwide by organisations with different goals, and there is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue.
In addition, we can see that terrorism is going online. Activities such as recruiting, ideology dissemination, planning, hacker attacks are moving online. In response, researchers and practitioners need to understand both terrorism ideologies and how they are used and expand online, which calls for an analysis of how technologies are used for growing terrorist groups’ online presence and where they can be intercepted. This is not to say that terrorism would move exclusively online, but the image of a terrorist as someone in a remote location not knowing how to use the Internet is obsolete.
Liberal values vs political pragmatism
We can also see that the battle between liberal values and the pragmatism of realpolitik is far from over. 2021 marks another significant anniversary of 20 years of international engagement in Afghanistan, which came to an end on 1 September 2021. In August 2021 Taliban was accepted as the de facto ruler of Afghanistan in days. Although major Western players voiced their concerns, no one had the political will or the resources to prioritise the Global War on Terror over their political agenda of withdrawing from Afghanistan. Thus, we can see that the perception of the terrorist threat continues to be significantly influenced by geopolitics, political alliances, and the everchanging political agendas, even more than 20 years ago.
The last point is that in 20 years, counterterrorism has not become any more transparent. Counterterrorism is still a highly elite topic, with only a small number of people being allowed in on it. At the same time, the public receives no to minimal proper information about the threat of terrorism or how it has been dealt with. Sensationalising of the terrorism topic and fearmongering by the media added to the public not having a chance to understand what terrorism is and why it is happening. Unfortunately, with more terrorist activities successfully transferring to online spaces, counterterrorism research becomes less accessible and even more elitists. This dangerous trend has been developing out of the assumption that secrecy and intelligence sharing on a need-to-know basis are fundamental for successful counterterrorism operations. While counterterrorism might require a certain degree of clandestine work, the general public should not be disregarded and left in the information vacuum. Educating people on terrorist threats should become a priority.
To conclude, in 20 years after 9/11, we have seen major conflicts started under the flag of fighting terrorism, regimes falling, massive casualties, and various political decisions being made. In hindsight, many political decisions regarding the threat of terrorism have been wrong or ill-advised over the years, adding to the pool of knowledge on terrorism that we have now. I would like to believe that as a global society, we would do better to counteract terrorism from now on, bringing more transparency and evidence-based research to the table.
My latest article “A pivotal event narrative in critical terrorism studies: COVID-19 and the threat of terrorism” for a special issue “Reflections on Remembering: 9/11 Twenty Years On” by Critical Terrorism Studies is available here