DISCLAIMER: Arjun Writes does not endorse any political ideology whatsoever. Whatever is written herein are outcomes of my research work. Arjun Writes does not believe in any political ideology. Reader discretion to assess and form opinions is advised. Arjun Writes shall not take any responsibility for the reader forming their own perceptions.
September 11, 2001 began as usual for all New Yorkers. People rushing to their offices to begin work; the usual hustle and bustle of any Tuesday.But at 8:46AM, out of no where, a Boeing 767, flying low, was speeding above the skies of New York. Spectators below were baffled for a minute, seeing the aircraft approaching unusually low, and what happened next would shape the world order from then on.
The day is remembered as one of the most memorable in world history.4 passenger aircraft, loaded with fuel, were deliberately crashed into buildings of importance in the U.S.A. 3,000 people perished in that deadly attack on the World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon, while the fourth aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The whole world was in a state of shock and awe.
Apart from the heavy outburst of emotions from the masses, things were heading towards a different angle within the White House. But if you read my previous blog, the war in Afghanistan and America’s funding of mujahideen ended in 1989 itself, so why did such a terrorist attack occur in the very first place?
I was very perplexed when I went through the timeline mentioned by famed war historian and author Tom Cooper, for which I eventually figured out the answer by conversing with him and another veteran author and historian, Ravi Rikhye. For now, let us withhold this point and re-examine the Afghan war timeline.
Back to 1989, Afghanistan:
The war in Afghanistan has come to an end. The Soviet armed forces are on a retreat, and as it happens, a power vacuum has been created in the nation. Now the next instinctual question would be: who would fill this power gap? Here starts the bigger problem. The various factions and groups of mujahideen created by the tripartite financing (by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.A.) have started to in-fight amongst themselves, as to who would resume control of the “free” Afghanistan. Of all these groups, our focus would be on two of them: Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The infighting that began in 1991 continued on for another decade, but first, who are the Al-Qaeda and Taliban groups?
Al-Qaeda
When the 9/11 attacks happened, one name prominently stood out as the mastermind of the attack (at least for layman’s sake), and that was Osama Bin-Laden. Who is he? And what has he got to do with Al-Qaeda and 9/11? As most might have guessed, he was a dreaded terrorist who was behind the 9/11 terrorist attack.
A Brief History of Bin Laden: He was born to a wealthy Saudi family with Yemeni ancestry. His family had close ties with the Saudi royal family (which you’ll figure out is an important factor later on). Sometime in 1979, he joined the volunteer fighters on their way to Afghanistan. He acted as a liaison between local mujahideen fighters and the Pakistani ISI. Although having little combat experience, he did support the ‘jihad’ by providing funds (approximately 15-20 million dollars) from his family conglomerate, as well as setting up training camps for fighters inside Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunwa.
Contrary to popular opinion, Osama was never directly associated with the Americans. After the war in Afghanistan, Osama returned to Saudi Arabia to pursue his family’s construction business. He grew highly critical of the Saudi government’s decision to host American forces in Dhahran during Operation Desert Shield. He tried to convince the Saudi government and the Royal family to reconsider this and often became very critical overtly, causing Saudi Arabia to expel him. Having contacts with the royal family, he had the choice to move to a country of his choice, and hence, he moved to Sudan.
In Sudan, he continued to run his construction business, but his involvement in terrorism was still there. He funded the Algerian terrorism movement (which was subsequently repelled by the government), as well as joined hands with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). The CIA, around that time (in 1992-93), put him on the watch list.
As for Al Qaeda, it was founded by Osama bin Laden as early as 1988. Before that, he founded Makhtab al-Khidamat, an organisation set up to channel funds for the war effort in Afghanistan. The founding of Al Qaeda was a closely guarded secret until he officially split from al-Khidamat in 1988. Not many know this, but Al-Qaeda was funded by individuals from Saudi Arabia and the EIJ.
So why 9/11?
By 1998, Osama became very agitated with the Saudi government’s hosting of American forces in the Arabian peninsula, and to sort this out, he took things into his own hands. Sometime in 1994, Osama and Al-Qaeda shifted their base from Sudan to Afghanistan. In 1998, Osama issued a fatwa (a religious order) against the USA and vowed to attack the Americans right at their home… and that’s how the intent was set.
But who gave them the plans to hijack planes?
CIA intelligence suggests that plans to strike major cities in the USA were being drawn up as early as 1992. In 1993, intelligence gathered suggested that the World Trade Centre in Manhattan was a sure-shot target for an attack, and needless to say, the same year, on February 26th, 1993, a massive truck bomb exploded in the basement of the North Tower. The attack did not’send the tower crashing down’ as it intended to, but killed 6 and injured over a thousand.
Other targets included the Pentagon (which was eventually hit on 9/11), Capitol Hill, the White House, and the Bank of America in Los Angeles, to name a few.Unfortunately, the first two (the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) were hit, with the former destroyed completely. The Pentagon was hit by American Airlines Flight 77, killing 150 on the ground. The repairs were completed within a year’s time. The fourth aircraft crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The idea of hijacking a plane goes back to 1993, under what was known as the “Bojinka Plot”, wherein terrorists Remzi Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed (both Pakistani nationals) planned a grand terror attack in the Philippines in January 1995, which included multiple bomb blasts in the Philippines, the assassination of then Pope John Paul II, blowing up 11 airliners heading towards the USA in mid air, and even crashing an aircraft into the CIA headquarters in Fairfax. The three-pronged plan was abandoned when one of the perpetrators was arrested following a fire in a hotel in Manila. Khalid Sheik Mohammad, who would later on mastermind 9/11, modified this idea to use entire aeroplanes as a weapon rather than planting explosives in them (which seemed dangerous after the failed Bojinka plot).
If so much evidence was present, what was the US government doing to prevent the attack?
Since the Clinton presidency, various sources have hinted that a terrorist attack on the mainland US could occur at any time, but successive governments have done little to nothing to prevent it.From the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to 9/11, inputs were either ignored or could not be acted upon due to legal constraints.
Inputs suggesting a massive terror attack in the near future were being sent to the White House as early as June 29th, 2001. The big miscalculation by the US intelligence was that the attack could probably take place somewhere in Israel or Saudi Arabia, and not within the US itself. The usage of aircraft as a weapon was also a noticeable trait when a brief to the White House on July 10, 2001 stated that suspicious movements were taking place in flight schools across the USA. The presidential daily brief for August 6th, 2001, too, hinted at the same. Additionally, that same summer, intelligence inputs from the MI6 and Algerian intelligence also hinted at something similar, but the inputs were not acted upon.
Apart from ignoring intelligence, the legal framework for cooperation between the various law enforcement agencies prevented them from acting upon such inputs with autonomy. Another possible factor could have been the controversial 2000 US presidential election, when ended in a close call for George Bush’s victory. The issue with elections as a national security concern is that the results of elections may influence the national security policies of the leadership, which we shall look upon in Part 3 of this series.
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Arjun Writes 
