11/09/2026
🥁🥁|| FREEDOM; AMELIORATION IN & FROM THE AFRICAN ANATOMY || 🥁🥁
🪘🪘25 YEARS AFTER 9/11.🪘🪘
On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda militants hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners in a coordinated attack that killed 2,977 people. Two planes struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York causing both towers to collapse, a third hit the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth, United Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought the hijackers. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in history.
The attacks were masterminded by al-Qaeda, the Islamist network led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The tactical leader on the ground was Mohamed Atta, who piloted the first plane into the North Tower. The 19 hijackers, mostly Saudi nationals, were trained in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban regime that had given al-Qaeda sanctuary since 1996.
In response, President George W. Bush launched the Global War on Terror. The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to topple the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda camps, an operation backed by NATO which invoked its collective defense clause for the first time. In 2003, Washington expanded the war to Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein on claims of weapons of mass destruction that were later disproven.
The wars marked the peak of America as a unipolar superpower, with the declaration that "either you are with us or with the terrorists." But the 20-year conflicts that followed cost over $8 trillion and thousands of lives, straining American power and credibility. The prolonged focus on the Middle East created a strategic opening for rival powers to rise.
While the U.S. killed bin Laden in 2011 and ended its Afghanistan mission in 2021, the geopolitical legacy of 9/11 is clear. The world has shifted from U.S. unipolar dominance to renewed superpower competition. China used the period to become the world's second-largest economy, and Russia rebuilt its military influence in Syria, Ukraine and beyond, moving global politics from counter-terrorism to great-power rivalry.
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AFRICAN VOICES INTERNATIONAL, FREEDOM IN AFRICA
