While there is an attempt by Left-Liberals to forget 9/11 and focus on more mundane issues, the US is again playing with fire and hopefully won't be burned.

Published on: Sep 1, 2026, 11:29:26 IST

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Hindsight is best insight into foresight. Twenty five years after 9/11 attacks in New York, there are persistent moves to declare it as a mere black swan event orchestrated by Saudi, UAE, Egyptian and Lebanese extremists and their Pakistani logistical planners without addressing the Wahabbi Islamic ideology, which was used by Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to inspire such a dastardly attack. The suicide plane bombing killed 2,977 innocents apart from 19 Islamists.

At that time, the US was a supreme global power after defeating and dismantling Soviet Union. This was the time when the western media and American legislators hailed Osama bin Laden as a freedom fighter and was toasted of western commentators alike. Pakistan was a trusted ally of US but betrayed Washington as it was subsequently revealed that the 9/11 attacks were planned on both sides of the Durand Line by Laden and Pakistan born Khalid Mohammed Sheikh. Sheikh is still in US custody, Laden was exterminated in Pakistan military stronghold of Abbotabad in Khyber Paktunkhwa on May 2, 2011 by American forces.

US first helped install the ultra-conservative Taliban regime under Mullah Omar in 1996, they evicted the Deobandi regime after they discovered that Osama bin Laden was harbored by the Afghan regime post 9/11 attacks. The US occupied Afghanistan for two decades and were forced to withdraw from Kabul on August 15, 2021 by the Taliban which was ideological and military sustained by Pakistan. But rather than taking action against terror groups supported by Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s de-facto military ruler Field Marshal Asim Muni is a close friend of President Donald Trump. Locked in a stalemate with Iran for the past six months, US is looking towards Asim Munir to drive home some settlement with the Shia nation. One must remember that despite being on opposite pole of Islam, Iran gave safe passage to top Al Qaeda terrorists to cross over to Iraq as the larger cause was the US. It is the same Al Qaeda terrorists who metamorphized into ISIS and butchered innocents in Iraq and Syria post 2014. Today, the same affiliates of Al Qaeda and ISI are murdering innocent women and children in Africa in the name of political Islam without any retaliation from the global community.

This leads us to the fundamental question that has anything changed 25 years after 9/11 terror attacks. Pan-Islamic jihadist groups still operate with impunity in Pakistan, South East Asia, Middle-East tacitly supported by states like Pakistan and Iran and covertly funded by those based in Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The extremist ideologies—Wahabbi, Salafi Ahl al-Hadidth–still exist and the de-radicalization program does not seem to work.

While US still believes in its invincibility and hence goes around disrupting regimes without any promise of subsequent good governance, it is countries like India that have to be on top of the counter-terror game with Pakistan as its neighbour and its terror proxies operating from Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. While there is an attempt by Left-Liberals to forget 9/11 and focus on more mundane issues, the US is yet again playing with fire and hopefully will not be burned by it.

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