Atentado 11-S

Shiite Huthi rebels man a checkpoint at the southern entrance to the city of Sanaa 15 November 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

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In early 2014, I found myself in the sparsely furnished front room of a nondescript breezeblock villa in Aden, a city in southern Yemen that was once one of the busiest ports in the world. My host was a man who once fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and later helped what would become the local al-Qaeda franchise gain a foothold in Yemen.

He was recounting how, in 1993, a distant relative had arrived at his hideout in the mountains of Abyan, to Aden’s east. The visitor, a senior military official who like my host hailed from Abyan, had come from Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, with a message from President Ali Abdullah Saleh.…  Seguir leyendo »

U.S. Air Force ground crew secure weapons and other components of an MQ-9 Reaper drone after it returned from a mission, at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, 9 March 2016. REUTERS/Josh Smith

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What’s new? The U.S. government is conducting a formal review of its counter-terrorism direct action operations – ie, those that involve kill or capture. But it is not clear that the review will shed light on key questions about the effectiveness of militarised counter-terrorism efforts or recommend major changes.

Why does it matter? The so-called global war on terror deserves greater oversight. Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the U.S. has waged war upon numerous jihadist groups in a dozen or more countries. Decisions to change the conflict’s scope are often taken unilaterally and in secret by the executive branch.

What should be done?…  Seguir leyendo »

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boards a plane at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 20 February 2020. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS

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Of the nineteen hijackers on the four planes that crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, all but two were from the Gulf states: fifteen from Saudi Arabia and two from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The attacks and their aftermath upset a status quo of smooth political, economic and security relations between the U.S. and its Gulf Arab partners. As the U.S. turned its overly ambitious gaze toward removing Saddam Hussein and advancing George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda”, it upended finely balanced regional dynamics, increased Gulf states’ sense of insecurity and spurred the slow erosion of their confidence in Washington’s steady support.…  Seguir leyendo »

A picture taken on 25 November 25 2017, shows the Rawda mosque, roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish, after a gun and bombing attack. STR / AFP

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In the sweep of events following the 11 September 2001 attacks, the low-level, intermittent jihadist insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is understandably outside the spotlight. While posing a persistent threat to Egypt, Sinai militants have only occasionally attracted significant notice outside the country, usually following spectacular attacks on tourist or other civilian sites. To a degree, the scant attention is a function of isolation: the Egyptian state has made the northern Sinai, the primary theatre of violence, off limits to journalists and researchers.

Though lack of access has hindered understanding of Sinai events, Egypt’s experiences with Islamist militancy, the broad contours of which remain visible from a distance, can still offer insight into how the 9/11 attacks shaped U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cómo la ciudad de Nueva York puede recuperarse de nuevo

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El futuro de la ciudad de Nueva York está en duda. Los barrios perdieron habitantes que se han mudado a los suburbios. Se han cerrado negocios. La gente está preocupada por la seguridad pública. Las familias lloran la pérdida de sus seres queridos.

Ese era el panorama en el otoño de 2001, después de que los terroristas destruyeron el World Trade Center y pusieron a la ciudad de rodillas. Y es el mismo panorama actual, con una pandemia que ha causado estragos y millones de personas que se preguntan una vez más si los días de gloria de esta ciudad son cosa del pasado.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Nigerian soldier patrols on the outskirts of the town of Damask in North East Nigeria on 25 April 2017. Florian PLAUCHEUR / AFP

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Since mid-July, when the Taliban march toward the Afghan capital accelerated at an astonishing pace, the Somalia-based jihadist group Al-Shabaab’s media channels have covered little else. Not without reason. One of al-Qaeda’s wealthiest and most tenacious affiliates, Al-Shabaab doubtless hopes that it, too, can outwait the large international troop deployment that props up Somalia’s government and one day capture power throughout the country. Al-Shabaab’s enduring influence – it retains a capacity to levy taxes essentially unchallenged in as much as 80 per cent of the country – sums up a key lesson from two decades of the U.S.-led “war on terror” in Africa: the investment in military efforts to contain jihadism, in places where governments enjoy dismal levels of public credibility, and in situations where elites in distant capitals deliver few services to the people, has hardly helped row back the threat of jihadist militancy.…  Seguir leyendo »

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«Tenemos varios aviones. Estén tranquilos y todo irá bien». Cuando a las 8.24.38 un técnico del centro de control aéreo de Boston escuchó esas palabras no pudo imaginar que el vuelo del que procedía la transmisión (American Airlines 11), acababa de ser secuestrado por cinco terroristas. Tampoco podía saber que en los próximos minutos otros tres aviones correrían igual suerte. Los responsables de la seguridad aérea no advirtieron a tiempo que los problemas de comunicación con las aeronaves se debían a su captura, y aún tardaron más en averiguar que los secuestradores no pretendían exigir rescate alguno por los rehenes. El plan para lanzar los aviones contra varios edificios representativos del poder económico, militar y político de los Estados Unidos se cumplió casi a la perfección, impactando dos aviones contra las torres del World Trade Center de Nueva York, que terminarían desplomándose, empotrando el tercero contra el Pentágono y fallando únicamente el intento de atravesar el Capitolio o la Casa Blanca con la cuarta aeronave, que terminó estrellándose a las afueras de Shanskville (Pensilvania) tras rebelarse los pasajeros.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman who lost a relative stands next to the plaque bearing the names of those killed in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo by TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images.

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Osama Bin-Laden’s masterminding of the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998 saw more than 200 people killed – including a friend of mine – in nearly simultaneous truck bomb explosions linked to local supporters of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda.

Living in Nairobi at the time, I had been in the embassy to collect a US visa a couple of days before the attack but my Kenyan friend was not so lucky and was killed. Both US embassies were badly damaged – in Nairobi, a memorial park was constructed on the site with a new embassy built elsewhere while Dar es Salaam got a new highly fortified embassy with a monument to the victims in its grounds.…  Seguir leyendo »

I Wrote the Lead Times Article on 9/11. Here’s What Still Grips Me

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Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, an English teacher in central Washington State assigned her eighth and ninth graders to write poems based on the lead article in The Times. The teacher, Tammy Grubb, said her intention was to give the students a way to process their feelings. The poems were posted in the school hallway and then, since my byline was on the article, Ms. Grubb sent them to me, 77 of them.

With the 20th anniversary of the attacks approaching, I dug up the thick folder with the poems. The format was “found poetry,” which basically means rearranging phrases from another text, and the words were painfully familiar: the “hellish storm of ash,” the planes “gorged with fuel,” the victims leaping from the inferno, the talk of war, the bravado of the moment, with President George W.…  Seguir leyendo »

To ‘Never Forget’ 9/11, We Must Remember Everything

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The boy clings to the undercarriage of an evacuation plane leaving Kabul. He is a teenage athlete, a soccer player of some renown in Afghanistan, yet sees no future for himself in a homeland now ruled by the Taliban. His only hope is to leave. But as the American C-17 takes off, the boy falls to his death, a dot in the gray sky. The disturbing footage of his fall, which circulated online last month, echoed the iconic image of the “falling man”, who jumped or fell from the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The boy and the man may be separated by time, place and circumstance, but they are connected by a chain of events that began 20 years ago.…  Seguir leyendo »

Los dos 11-S

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El 11 de septiembre de 2001 me encontraba trabajando en mi estudio. Hacia las 15 horas sonó el teléfono: era el director de EL MUNDO que me pedía con urgencia que escribiera un artículo sobre "Los enemigos de Estados Unidos". No entendí la urgencia del encargo. Pedro J. Ramírez simplemente me dijo: pon la televisión Así hice. Conecté hacia las 15:05. Un minuto después, 15:06 (9:06 en Nueva York), contemplé asombrado cómo un avión comercial se estrellaba contra una de las Torres Gemelas, situadas en el sur de la isla de Manhattan y que albergaban el Word Trade Center. La otra estaba ya ardiendo.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian president Vladimir Putin meets US president George W. Bush in the Oval Office at the White House on November 13, 2001. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

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On 12 September 2001, Russian president Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush to express his condolences – and to offer him support.

Just the previous year, Putin had said Russia joining NATO was a possibility and it suited Russia to draw parallels between the terrorist attacks on the US and its own ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign in Chechnya at the time.

Even though much of the Russian commentary about 9/11 professed empathy rather than sympathy, in their eyes the US was both a victim – as Russia likes to see itself – and ‘had it coming’ while Russia was blameless.…  Seguir leyendo »

Flowers at the monument in New York for victims of the 9/11 attacks. Photo by Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

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In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, analysts said everything was going to change and they were proved right. Just as the decades following the two world wars were heavily influenced by their outcomes and atrocities, the ‘war on terror’ has been the backdrop and set the tone for most international interactions for the past 20 years.

And yet just weeks before the attacks, two international arms control measures were coming to a head at the United Nations (UN) which – without the impact of 9/11 – could have changed the future history of arms control for the better. But as the world changed course, both measures ended up creating major repercussions still being played out now.…  Seguir leyendo »

A car burns outside the UN headquarters at the Canal Hotel after a huge suicide truck bomb explosion rocked the building. Baghdad, Iraq, September 2003. AFP PHOTO/Sabah ARAR

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My friend Arthur telephoned me one summer morning in 2003, when I had just returned from Iraq, which had fallen into U.S. hands that April. Arthur was head of the refugee program at the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights. A decade earlier, he and I had travelled together to Iraq, Iran and Turkey to investigate the refugee crisis in the wake of the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Now, he said, he wanted to go to Baghdad for meetings about addressing the new war’s human cost. He asked me if he should bring a bulletproof vest. We at Crisis Group had raised the alarm about an incipient insurgency in Iraq, based on my observations during two visits since the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

Visiting the 9/11 Memorial on Tuesday, the day before the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

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There is something almost magical about New York as summer turns to fall. The changing of the seasons brings a spirit of renewal. People hurry to school and work, propelled by dreams and ambitions. The leaves shift from green to orange. But this beauty is transient. In the evening, when I go on my walks, I look at the two blue lights beaming into the heavens from just south of the old World Trade Center and I try to hold my gaze there. I never last long.

When the Sept. 11 attacks happened, I was an 11-year-old Muslim boy suddenly confused about the world and unsure of my place in it.…  Seguir leyendo »

An image of Jake Campbell above his mother’s name on the south fountain of the 9/11 Memorial in New York. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

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When I was growing up, the only time I noticed that I was different from other kids at school was when their parents were around. One of my earliest memories is my first day of kindergarten: Among a sea of young parents, my grandparents and I stood out. I was too nervous to let go of my grandmother’s hand.

The rest of the time, though, I felt pretty normal. My thoughts revolved around driveway baseball games with the neighbors and making sure I had my homework done in time to play some video games.

But early September always felt different. I could sense a change in the mood in my home.…  Seguir leyendo »

El presidente Donald Trump junto a su esposa, Melania, durante una ceremonia celebrada en la Casa Blanca en conmemoración de las víctimas del ataque terrorista del 11 de septiembre de 2001. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Vi a mi presidente en su perorata en el Pentágono y todo lo que pude pensar mientras no paraba de hablar de heroísmo en la décimo sexta conmemoración del 11 de Septiembre (11-S) fue cómo acabamos con Humpty Dumpty.

Obviamente fue Humpty Dumpty quien declaró: “Cuando uso una palabra, significa solo lo que yo elijo que signifique, ni más ni menos”. Al menos Humpty Dumpty lo dijo sin el gesto de nuestro estimado líder de unir su regordete dedo anular y su pulgar una y otra vez.

Las palabras salieron a borbotones de esa boca contraída que no decía nada, porque cuando un hombre con un vacío moral trata de exhortar a una nación a la grandeza moral, lo único que comunica es su hipocresía patética y casi cómica.…  Seguir leyendo »

The National 9/11 Flag is unfurled during a ceremony on May 15, 2014, marking the opening of the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City. (Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

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In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — 16 years ago on Monday — President George W. Bush declared a war on terrorism that he pledged would not end until every terrorist group of global reach was defeated. Bush drew a line in the sand, telling every nation, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”. The Bush administration was more flexible than this rhetoric suggested, but it still evinced a strong willingness to act unilaterally.

President Barack Obama sought to make U.S. counterterrorism efforts more sustainable, and thereby enable the United States to focus more on other challenges.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Years ago, at the height of the Arab Spring, I asked Zbigniew Brzezinski about prospects for democracy in Saudi Arabia. The grand old man of muscular American foreign policy — national security adviser to Jimmy Carter and a believer that the US had become “the first truly global power” — looked decidedly unimpressed.

“Democracy, in Saudi Arabia?” he rasped. “How do you know they wouldn’t elect Osama bin Laden?”

We moved on to other topics. America generally does move on to other topics when the subject of Saudi Arabia is raised. Those self-styled “grown-ups” who run US foreign policy regard any serious questioning of the relationship with the desert kingdom as a sign of weakness, pottiness, or childishness.…  Seguir leyendo »

Release More 911 Records

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In July, after approval from the Obama administration, Congress released a 28-page chapter of previously classified material from the final report of a joint congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said that the document had ruled out any Saudi involvement in the attack. “The matter is now finished,” he declared.

But it is not finished. Questions about whether the Saudi government assisted the terrorists remain unanswered. Now, as we approach the 15th anniversary of the most heinous attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, it is time for our government to release more documents from other investigations into Sept.…  Seguir leyendo »