25 years of September 11th – 25 years of war and terror

25 years ago, al-Qaeda attackers in the United States hijacked four passenger planes and flew two of them into New York's World Trade Center. The US government used the attack as an opportunity to launch the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The consequences of this still affect West Asia today. – A comment from Thomas Stark.

The president was reading from a children's book when the news came: On the morning of September 11, 2001, two passenger planes crashed into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York. The buildings collapsed shortly afterwards. Half an hour later, another plane flew near the US capital Washington D.C. to the Pentagon, the Ministry of Defense building. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th killed 2,977 people. The FBI identified the self-proclaimed jihadist network al-Qaeda, which was founded and led by former Saudi Arabian entrepreneur Osama bin Laden, as the mastermind of the attacks. Bin Laden came from one of the most powerful families in Saudi Arabia, which was close to the local royal family. The Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is considered to be the organizer of September 11th.

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War and surveillance

After the attack, US President George W. Bush declared a global “War on Terror”. On September 12th, NATO declared an alliance for the first time in its history. The then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD)called the attacksa “declaration of war against the entire civilized world” and assured the USA of the “unrestricted solidarity” of the Federal Republic of Germany. On October 7, 2001, the United States and Britain attacked Afghanistan on the grounds that the Taliban government there was harboring al-Qaeda. In the following months, Germany and other NATO countries also took part in the invasion and occupation of the country.

Internally, the USA expanded the surveillance and investigative powers of the FBI and NSA with the “Patriot Act”. They also set up an extrajudicial prison camp at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. Germany also expanded the powers of the secret services with two anti-terror packages, carried out dragnet searches against Muslim men and tightened immigration and residence laws. The “War on Terror” was the starting point for years of racist incitement and general suspicion against Arab and Muslim migrants.

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The Greater Middle East Project

However, the US government did not stop at the Afghan war. In March 2003 it attacked Iraq and overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The official explanation that the Iraqi government had ties to al-Qaeda and possessed weapons of mass destruction later turned out to be a lie. The Bush administration delivered the actual strategy behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at the G8 summit in June 2004 with the “Greater Middle East InitiativeAccording to: Their goal was the political reorganization of West Asia and North Africa.

The consequences of this strategy can still be seen today: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aloneAccording to estimatesCost 500,000 lives. The USA occupied Iraq until 2011. The occupation of Afghanistan, including by German troops, lasted for twenty years. After the withdrawal, the Taliban overran the country in August 2021 and took power again. In Iraq, the dissolution of the army and state structures by the US occupation created a power vacuum that led to a civil war between Shiite and Sunni forces from 2006 and to a strengthening of Iranian influence. In the chaos of war-torn Iraq and later in Libya, Syria and Yemen, regional branches of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) gained strengthformer officersthe Iraqi army and secret services. In Syria, an al-Qaeda offshoot, the HTS, is now in power.

While Osama bin Laden was killed by the USA in Pakistan in 2011 and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is still in Guantanamo today, their successors are still active and some are partners with the West again. Because today the USA and Germany are no longer pursuing their interests in West Asia in opposition to, but are once again in alliance with the self-proclaimed holy warriors.

This text appeared in the September 2026 print edition no. 114 of our newspaper. The edition is in its entiretyhereto find.

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