tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/9-11-1414/articles9/11 – The Conversation2023-10-16T12:33:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2155782023-10-16T12:33:13Z2023-10-16T12:33:13ZA reflexive act of military revenge burdened the US − and may do the same for Israel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553706/original/file-20231013-15-slni2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C35%2C5982%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Israeli tanks gather near the border with the Gaza Strip on Oct. 13, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/graphic-content-israeli-army-merkava-battle-tanks-deploy-news-photo/1722767899">Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of the shocking invasion of southern Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-gantz-agree-form-emergency-israel-government-statement-2023-10-11/">vowed to destroy Hamas</a>. </p>
<p>“We are fighting a cruel enemy, worse than ISIS,” Netanyahu proclaimed four days after the invasion, comparing Hamas with the Islamic State group, which was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/21/isis-caliphate-islamic-state-raqqa-iraq-islamist">largely defeated</a> by U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish forces in 2017. </p>
<p>On that same day, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant went further, stating, “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-gantz-agree-form-emergency-israel-government-statement-2023-10-11/">We will wipe this thing called Hamas</a>, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the earth. It will cease to exist.” They were strong words, issued in the wake of the horrific terrorist attack that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip/card/latest-death-toll-in-israel-and-gaza-eoVPFI8WcXN0mzIR73pY">killed more than 1,300 Israelis</a> and culminated in the kidnapping of more than 150 people, including several Americans. </p>
<p>And in a telling comparison, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan compared the attack with the toppling of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon in 2001, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/08/1204579022/u-s-calls-on-countries-with-influence-over-hamas-to-condemn-its-assault-on-israe">declaring</a>, “This is Israel’s 9/11.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://history.osu.edu/people/mansoor.1">scholar of military history</a>, I believe the comparison is interesting and revealing. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaida on the United States, President George W. Bush made a <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html">similar expansive pledge</a>, declaring, “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” </p>
<p>The U.S. response to 9/11 included the American invasion of Afghanistan in league with the Afghan United Front, the so-called Northern Alliance. The immediate goals were to force the Taliban from power and destroy al-Qaida. Very little thought or resources were put into what happened after those goals were attained. In his 2010 memoir, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/200372/decision-points-by-george-w-bush/">Decision Points</a>,” former President Bush recalled a meeting of the war cabinet in late September 2001, when he asked the assemblage, “‘So who’s going to run the country (Afghanistan)?’ There was silence.”</p>
<p>Wars that are based on revenge can be effective in punishing an enemy, but they can also create a power vacuum that sparks a long, deadly conflict that fails to deliver sustainable stability. That’s what happened in Afghanistan, and that is what could happen in Gaza.</p>
<h2>A war of weak results</h2>
<p>The U.S. invasion toppled the Taliban from power by the end of 2001, but the war did not end. An interim administration headed by Hamid Karzai took power as an Afghan council of leaders, called a <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-loya-jirga-explainer/25174483.html">loya jirga</a>, fashioned a new constitution for the country. </p>
<p>Nongovernmental and international relief organizations began to deliver humanitarian aid and reconstruction support, but their efforts were uncoordinated. U.S. trainers began <a href="https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/Mar-Apr-2019/74-Afghanistan-Army/">creating a new Afghan National Army</a>, but <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PW115-Afghanistan-National-Defense-and-Security-Forces-Mission-Challenges-and-Sustainability.pdf">lack of funding, insufficient volunteers and inadequate facilities</a> hampered the effort.</p>
<p>The period between 2002 and 2006 was the best opportunity to create a resilient Afghan state with enough security forces to hold its own against a resurgent Taliban. Because of a <a href="https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/easier-get-war-get-out-case-afghanistan">lack of focus, inadequate resources and poor strategy</a>, however, the United States and its allies squandered that opportunity.</p>
<p>As a result, the Taliban was able to <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan">reconstitute its forces</a> and return to the fight. As the insurgency gained momentum, the United States and its NATO allies <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24910832">increased their troop levels</a>, but they could not overcome the weakness of the Kabul government and the lack of adequate numbers of trained Afghan security forces.</p>
<p>Despite a surge of forces to Afghanistan during the first two years of the Obama administration and the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban remained undefeated. As Western forces largely departed the country by the end of 2014, Afghan forces took the lead in security operations, but their numbers and competence proved insufficient to stem the Taliban tide. </p>
<p>Negotiations between the United States and the Taliban went nowhere, as Taliban leaders realized they could seize by force what they could not gain at the bargaining table. The <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-afghanistan">Taliban entry into Kabul in August 2021</a> merely put an exclamation point on a campaign the United States had lost many years before.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. exit from Afghanistan in July and August 2021 was chaotic and dangerous, and it left the Afghan state at the mercy of the Taliban.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>A goal that’s hard to achieve</h2>
<p>As Israel pursues its response to the Hamas attack, the Israeli government would be well advised to remember the past two decades of often indecisive warfare conducted by both the United States and Israel against insurgent and terrorist groups. </p>
<p>The invasion of Afghanistan ultimately failed because U.S. policymakers did not think through the end state of the campaign as they exacted revenge for the 9/11 attacks. An Israeli invasion of Gaza could well lead to an indecisive quagmire if the political goal is not considered ahead of time.</p>
<p>Israel has invaded Gaza twice, in 2009 and 2014, but quickly withdrew its ground forces once Israeli leaders calculated they had reestablished deterrence. This strategy – called by Israeli leaders “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/14/israel-gaza-history/">mowing the grass</a>,” with periodic punitive strikes against Hamas – has proven to be a failure. The newly declared goal of destroying Hamas as a military force is far more difficult than that.</p>
<p>As four U.S. presidential administrations discovered in Afghanistan, <a href="https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/easier-get-war-get-out-case-afghanistan">creating stability in the aftermath of conflict</a> is far more difficult than toppling a weak regime in the first place.</p>
<p>The only successful conflict against a terrorist group in the past two decades, against the Islamic State group between 2014 and 2017, ended with both Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq <a href="https://time.com/longform/mosul-raqqa-ruins-after-the-war-of-annihilation/">reduced to rubble</a> and thousands of men, women and children <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/05/iraq-syria-al-hol-return/">consigned to detention camps</a>.</p>
<p>Israel has the capacity to level Gaza and round up segments of the population, but that may not be wise. Doing so might serve the immediate impulse of exacting revenge on its enemies, but Israel would likely receive massive international condemnation from <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/monsgraupius/calgacus.html">creating a desert in Gaza and calling it peace</a>, and thus forgo the moral high ground it claims in the wake of the Hamas attacks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Mansoor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US response to 9/11 included a declaration that America would destroy its enemies. The effort took decades, and thousands of lives on both sides, and never really succeeded.Peter Mansoor, Professor of History, General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair in Military History, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114262023-09-13T20:06:09Z2023-09-13T20:06:09Z‘I just find it very hard to talk about it without getting emotional’: top journalists reveal their trade secrets to Leigh Sales<p>Journalist Samantha Maiden <a href="https://www.walkleys.com/66th-walkley-award-winners-announced/">won Australia’s top award in journalism</a>, the Gold Walkley, in 2022 for her coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/man-to-face-court-over-alleged-rape-of-brittany-higgins-165763">the Brittany Higgins case</a>. When talking to Leigh Sales about the experience of covering this story, for Sales’ new book, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Storytellers/Leigh-Sales/9781761106965">Storytellers</a>, she found herself in tears. </p>
<p>“Brittany Higgins was obviously a massive story and maybe it is the most important story I will ever write,” she says. “I just find it very hard to talk about it without getting emotional. I don’t have any complaints, but it has dominated my life for nearly two years.”</p>
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<p><em>Review: Storytellers – Leigh Sales (Scribner)</em></p>
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<p>Higgins came to her with the story, Maiden explains, because she’d pointed out on the ABC’s Insiders that political staffers don’t have the same access to unfair dismissal laws as other workers. Higgins felt this demonstrated an understanding of their “fragile” working conditions.</p>
<p>“She also felt that I would not be cowed by the government; she was very concerned about how the government would react so she wanted someone who was going to be fearless and not intimidated easily.”</p>
<p>“If you break enough stories,” says Maiden, “it becomes a bit of a self-saucing pudding, because people seek you out.”</p>
<p>Journalists can have a reputation for being cynical and tough, but many of those featured in Storytellers talk about the emotional impact of the job.</p>
<p>Tracy Grimshaw, for instance, who has interviewed thousands of people, including international celebrities and world leaders, tells Sales her most memorable interview was with a policewoman from regional Australia.</p>
<p>Shelly Walsh had left her two children with her parents overnight while she worked a night shift. When she returned to collect them, she discovered her father had killed her mother and the children. He then attacked her with an axe.</p>
<p>“First of all, she found her mother,” Grimshaw recounts. </p>
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<p>Then she had to use her wits […] her father’s saying, “Do you want a cup of tea?” And she’s thinking at a hundred miles an hour, “Where are the kids? Where are the kids?” I get chills up my spine as I talk about it […] I’ll never forget Shelly telling the story. God, it was traumatic. She was so honest, so unvarnished and so brave to tell her story. That is the interview that will always stay with me. Always.</p>
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<p>Grimshaw’s anecdote, like Maiden’s reflections, are among many that highlight the privilege – and responsibility – that come with the distinctive job of journalism.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tracy Grimshaw will always remember her ‘traumatic’ interview with ‘unvarnished’ Shelly Walsh.</span></figcaption>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-leigh-sales-ordinary-days-and-crafting-empathy-between-the-lines-107890">Inside the story: Leigh Sales, ordinary days and crafting empathy ‘between the lines’</a>
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<p>Storytellers is a series of conversations between Sales and more than 30 experienced Australian journalists about “questions, answers and the craft of journalism”.</p>
<p>Sales herself has had a diverse career as a journalist, starting in 1993 in local news for Channel 9 Brisbane, before moving to the ABC in 1994. She was the ABC’s Washington correspondent in the early 2000s, and has anchored Lateline and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/730">7.30</a>. </p>
<p>She says she’s fascinated by new ways of thinking about and practising journalism, but the basics of the craft are unchanged. She’s also committed to the ideal of objective journalism, as she made clear in recent public comments.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Leigh Sales was at 7.30 for 12 years.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Last weekend, she told a Women in Media conference in Sydney she was worried about the blurring of activism and journalism, and the loss of “independent journalism”.</p>
<p>“I’m so big on things like setting aside your own opinion and trying to go into things with an open minded mindset,” she said.</p>
<p>In her introduction to the new book, Sales argues an extraordinary amount of experience and knowledge has been drained from newsrooms in recent years, due to staffing cuts. Storytellers is an attempt to fill that gap. </p>
<h2>Where do story ideas come from?</h2>
<p>The focus is “entirely on the practicalities of the craft”, aiming to answer questions such as: Where do story ideas come from? How do you make contacts? What does a good voiceover sound like? How do you make a one-minute video story compelling? How do you know when to interrupt a politician during an interview?</p>
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<p>Sales is not convinced university journalism courses are covering this sort of content. My own experience of working in journalism education is that tertiary courses are highly practical. But Storytellers contains plenty of valuable insights and lessons, to complement and confirm what is taught to aspiring journalists. </p>
<p>Whether the book will interest a wider readership is harder to predict. While emphasis is on storytelling, there’s a lot about process, particularly in regard to broadcast journalism. It might be too much detail for some. The question-and-answer format can be a bit clunky at times, but the idea is for the reader to see how Sales formulates her questions and “learn from her approach”.</p>
<p>The line-up of top journalists featured is testament to Sales’ own reputation and extensive experience. With talent as smart and articulate as novelist and feature writer <a href="https://theconversation.com/boy-swallows-universe-theatrical-adaptation-of-hit-novel-blends-pain-with-nostalgia-to-astonishing-effect-166748">Trent Dalton</a>, investigative reporter Kate McClymont, Teachers’ Pet podcast creator <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-clear-victory-for-dogged-investigative-journalism-chris-dawson-found-guilty-of-murdering-wife-lynette-in-1982-189625">Hedley Thomas</a> and SBS Insight host <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/may/25/three-things-with-kumi-taguchi-it-truly-hurts-my-heart-that-i-didnt-look-after-piglet-well-enough">Kumi Taguchi</a>, Sales could not really go wrong.</p>
<p>Storytellers is divided into ten sections, including news reporting, foreign correspondence, interviewing, anchoring, and commentary and analysis. Some of the most engaging parts of the book relate to interviewing. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kate McClymont talks to Barrie Cassidy about her journalism career.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The art of the interview</h2>
<p>It’s fascinating to see how these professionals approach and interact with the people they interview. </p>
<p>Grimshaw is included in the chapter dedicated to interviewing, as are <a href="https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/laurie-oakes">Laurie Oakes</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/people/richard-fidler/7689816">Richard Fidler</a>. They’re all veteran interviewers with quite different styles. But almost all the journalists in the book discuss their interviewing approaches and practices.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/interested-curious-and-empathetic-michael-parkinson-helped-bridge-the-gap-between-australia-and-england-211824">Interested, curious and empathetic, Michael Parkinson helped bridge the gap between Australia and England</a>
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<p>Feature writer and novelist Trent Dalton adds some humour with his unorthodox techniques for getting interview subjects to talk about sensitive topics. Sales put it to him that a journalist can “pretty much ask anything if you preface it with ‘I hope I don’t seem insensitive, and you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to’”. To which Dalton replies: </p>
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<p>Oh Leigh, that is powerful. I phrase that sentence in so many different ways. Sometimes I’ll say that like, “Mate, please tell me to fuck off” or “Listen, I know this is so hard to talk about. But if you don’t mind, I think we might be able to go to places that mean a lot to people.”</p>
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<p>Several of the journalists say they’re often surprised by people’s willingness to be interviewed. This aligns with <a href="https://theconversation.com/interviews-with-journalists-can-seem-daunting-but-new-research-shows-80-of-subjects-report-a-positive-experience-200821">research</a> that’s found most people are receptive to giving a news interview and that the benefits of the experience tend to outweigh the negatives.</p>
<p>Award-winning Sydney Morning Herald investigative reporter <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/by/kate-mcclymont-hvede">Kate McClymont</a>, who has exposed corruption in politics, unions and sport, has been able to persuade many reluctant sources, including criminals, to be interviewed over the years.</p>
<p>While she acknowledges she’s “gonna piss people off” and that’s part of her job, she says it’s crucial to treat everyone with respect. “People are very skeptical about journalists and feel that we just use and abuse them,” she says. “If you try to make people feel as though you value and appreciate even the smallest things they have done for you, it helps.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-plagued-journalists-have-traded-their-independence-for-access-resulting-in-a-kind-of-political-pornography-189124">In Plagued, journalists have traded their independence for access, resulting in a kind of political pornography</a>
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<p>Storytellers demonstrates how diverse and exciting the job of journalism can be. Many of the journalists recount being at history-making events such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/9-11-conspiracy-theories-debunked-20-years-later-engineering-experts-explain-how-the-twin-towers-collapsed-167353">September 11 terrorist attacks</a> in the United States, or the <a href="https://theconversation.com/boxing-day-tsunami-balancing-social-and-physical-recovery-35155">Boxing Day tsunami</a> of 2004.</p>
<p>Journalism can be demanding and challenging. And it requires a lot of courage. Former Four Corners executive producer <a href="https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/marian-wilkinson">Marian Wilkinson</a> talks about the knot she feels in her stomach before a big story breaks – and the repercussions that follow. </p>
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<p>The person who’s the subject of the story will come back at you […] powerful people almost always fight – a lawsuit, defamation threats, it goes on and on – and often quite viciously.</p>
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<p>While acknowledging the demands of the job and the <a href="https://dartcenter.org/">trauma that can be associated with it</a>, Storytellers’ overriding message is that to be a journalist is a privilege. </p>
<p>“There’s no job like journalism,” veteran Channel Seven reporter <a href="https://www.walkleys.com/award-winners/chris-reason-lindt-cafe-siege/">Chris Reason</a> tells Sales. “There’s no job that gives you the passport to get to the sorts of places, incidents, moments in our community and our history that journalism provides.”</p>
<p>For many of Sales’ subjects, the best part of being a journalist is the interactions with people. And often the most profound conversations and exchanges are with “ordinary” people. </p>
<p>As Grimshaw says: </p>
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<p>They’re always the interviews that are far more revelatory to me than celebrities or politicians. It’s how ordinary people navigate the extraordinary that keeps me doing the job.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Shine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leigh Sales’ new book shares the insights of more than 30 prominent and experienced Australian journalists, including Laurie Oakes, Samantha Maiden and Trent Dalton, about their craft.Kathryn Shine, Associate Professor, Journalism, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2087582023-07-28T15:38:08Z2023-07-28T15:38:08ZTerrorists are using fraud to fund their activities – the UK government needs to act urgently<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539487/original/file-20230726-17-fgwvcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C0%2C5472%2C3604&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The link between fraud and terrorism financing in the UK has been overlooked by successive governments.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/concept-credit-card-theft-hackers-cards-1107463670">JARIRIYAWAT/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fraud is one of the most popular methods now used to fund terrorist activities. But the connection between fraud and terrorism financing in the UK has been overlooked by successive governments, despite <a href="https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/publications/an-inspection-of-the-police-response-to-fraud/">an acknowledgement</a> of that link. </p>
<p>Worryingly, the UK government’s new <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1154660/Fraud_Strategy_2023.pdf">fraud</a> and <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1171084/CONTEST_2023.pdf">counter-terrorism</a> strategies offer no policies to tackle the problem.</p>
<p>Until the terrorist attacks in the US in September 2001, the international community had focused its financial crime efforts on tackling money laundering. As a result of 9/11, governments instigated a “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Financial-War-on-Terrorism-A-Review-of-Counter-Terrorist-Financing/Ryder/p/book/9781138708310">financial war</a>” on terrorism which has limited the sources available to terrorist groups. Now similar work is needed to tackle the acts of terror funded through fraud.</p>
<p><a href="https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/160123/">My research</a> focuses on the numerous terrorist attacks which have been financed by fraud. This work has identified a terrorism financing dossier, which includes passport fraud, immigration fraud, identify theft, financial fraud and tax fraud. </p>
<p>Benefit fraud is one of the most common methods used to fund terrorism in Europe, especially in Belgium, Scandinavia and the UK. Credit card, personal loan and bank fraud is prevalent in terrorism networks in the US and the UK. And not-for-profit organisation fraud and tax fraud are also prevalent in the US, UK and Spain.</p>
<p>The UK government has introduced a series of measures to try to tackle these issues. These include the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/10/contents/enacted">Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022</a> and the <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3339">economic crime and corporate transparency bill (2022)</a>, which is still going through parliament. Both are intended to extend the UK’s sanctions regime and improve the use of <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9098/#:%7E:text=Unexplained%20Wealth%20Orders%20allow%20for,reversing%20the%20burden%20of%20proof.">unexplained wealth orders</a> (which allow for the confiscation of property without proving criminality).</p>
<p>However, there are no specific measures to tackle the association between fraud and the financing of terrorism. This means there are still a number of loopholes that terrorists could exploit. And organisations are under no obligation to report fraud to the security services. But terrorists have used fraud to help finance attacks in the UK over the past two decades.</p>
<h2>UK terror attacks</h2>
<p>In July 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured more than 770 others after detonating four improvised explosive devices in London. The financing of this terrorist attack and its association with fraud stretch back to 1995. </p>
<p>That is when HMRC connected several suspected frauds with <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12621383">Shehzad Tanweer</a>, one of the terrorists. Yet this information <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/48886/documents/2575">was not disclosed</a> to either the UK’s Financial Intelligence Unit or the security and intelligence services by HMRC.</p>
<p>In May 2017, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/26/everything-know-manchester-suicide-bomber-salman-abedi/">Salman Abedi</a> detonated an improvised explosive device in the Manchester Arena, killing 22 people and injuring more than 800 others. Abedi had fraudulently used student loans and his maintenance grant to fund the attack. </p>
<p>He received £7,000 from the Student Loans Company after securing a place at university in October 2015. Higher education institutions are under <a href="https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/160289/3/Criminal%20Law%20Review%20%281%29.pdf">no legal obligation</a> to report any suspicions of fraud or terrorism financing to the National Crime Agency (NCA).</p>
<p>In June 2017, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48580750">Khuram Butt</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40173157#:%7E:text=Rachid%20Redouane%2C%2030%2C%20claimed%20to,by%20the%20name%20Rachid%20Elkhdar.">Rachid Redouane</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/06/london-bridge-attack-third-attacker-named-in-italy-as-youssef-zaghba">Youssef Zaghba</a> used a van to knock down several pedestrians on London Bridge before continuing their terrorist attack on foot. In total, eight people were killed and 48 others were injured.</p>
<p>Butt had been <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/london-bridge-attack-mi5-accused-of-damning-list-of-failures-11750204">investigated and arrested</a> by Scotland Yard on suspicion of falsely reporting fraudulent activity on three separate bank accounts in October 2016. After his arrest, Butt was granted bail and the fraud charges were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence. But the banks had been under no legal obligation to submit a report to the NCA.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dubious-partnerships-new-plans-to-curb-wrongdoing-by-uk-registered-firms-are-riddled-with-loopholes-206010">Dubious partnerships: new plans to curb wrongdoing by UK-registered firms are riddled with loopholes</a>
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<p>What these examples demonstrate is that the current reporting obligations are unable to prevent such terrorism financing threats. In light of these cases, the reporting of fraud should become mandatory for organisations. It would place fraud on the same legislative footing as money laundering, for example, which is already recognised as an important source of terror finance. </p>
<p>The UK government also needs to reconsider its current fraud and counter terrorism strategies. They should include measures that focus on using fraud investigation as a disruptive mechanism to prevent future acts of terrorism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Ryder receives funding from InnovateUK. </span></em></p>Numerous terrorist attacks in the UK and abroad have been financed by fraud and the government needs to close financial loopholes to prevent future tragedies.Nicholas Ryder, Professor of Law, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1990662023-02-15T19:14:50Z2023-02-15T19:14:50ZEmergencies Act inquiry report should tackle the racist origins of national security<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509899/original/file-20230213-23-ie0u3v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8640%2C5742&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Justice Paul Rouleau, who headed the Public Order Emergency Commission last year, tables his report on Monday about the inquiry's findings into national security issues and the so-called Freedom Convoy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/about/commission-mandate/">Public Order Emergency Commission</a> investigated the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act in response to blockades by the so-called Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, Windsor and western Canada in February 2022.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/emergencies-act-commission-report-to-be-delivered-feb-20-1.6263314">Justice Paul Rouleau will soon release a report on the inquiry’s findings</a>. He will no doubt focus on whether the blockades were sufficiently serious to justify emergency measures.</p>
<p>However, any discussions of national security demand consideration of a much broader set of questions. What is national security? Whose national security matters? What counts as a national security threat? And should national security policing powers be expanded? </p>
<p>These questions need to be considered in all conversations on national security policy alternatives. Yet, such sustained conversations have yet to happen. </p>
<h2>What is national security?</h2>
<p>In September 2022, we organized a conference in Windsor, Ont., that was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Entitled <a href="https://www.criticalreflectionsonsecurity.com/">“Critical Reflections on Security, 9/11 and the Canadian Settler Colony</a>,” the conference brought together scholars, lawyers, community activists and students. </p>
<p>Participants reminded us of a fundamental tenet of critical security studies: defining security <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066198004002004">is not objective</a>. State security officials testifying before the Emergencies Act inquiry themselves acknowledged that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/convoy-protest-emergencies-act-ottawa-1.6648413">definitions and understandings of security can vary.</a> </p>
<p>Canada has a long history of invoking national security or public order to <a href="https://www.nfb.ca/film/nipawistamasowin-we-will-stand-up/">disenfranchise Indigenous peoples, take their lands</a> and subject them to surveillance and criminalization.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/intense-police-surveillance-for-indigenous-land-defenders-contrasts-with-a-laissez-faire-stance-for-anti-vax-protesters-169589">Intense police surveillance for Indigenous land defenders contrasts with a laissez-faire stance for anti-vax protesters</a>
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<p>Canada’s history also illustrates that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512109102435">“outsiders” are often viewed as threats</a>. Those <a href="https://genderandsecurity.org/projects-resources/research/rethinking-homonationalism">who aren’t white, settler, able-bodied, heterosexual and male</a> risk being regarded as outsiders. </p>
<p>The outsider label fuelled racism against <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442664302/cartographies-of-violence/">Japanese-Canadians</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/abs/recognition-redistribution-and-redress-the-case-of-the-chinese-head-tax/EE46E524F7CBC95045FB8B6DF9781EDE">Chinese-Canadian</a> communities. They were denied citizenship rights and labelled threats to the nation. </p>
<p>Throughout Canadian history, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-white-people-wake-up-canada-is-racist-83124">racialized ideas of nation and belonging have framed key components of Canadian identity</a>. They’ve also tainted national security practices. We have not escaped this reality in the 21st century. </p>
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<img alt="A demonstrator holds a sign with a caricature of an RCMP officer" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509903/original/file-20230213-22-qm8f5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A demonstrator holds a sign with a caricature of an RCMP officer during a protest blocking access to the Port of Vancouver in November 2020 by land defenders who support sovereignty of Indigenous lands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
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<h2>Whose national security?</h2>
<p>The events of Sept. 11, 2001 deepened the view held by some that <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/3bjew8/an-interview-with-arun-kundnani">Islam is incompatible with western values</a>. <a href="https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1413&context=ohlj">Arabs and Muslims in Canada</a> were viewed as national security threats.</p>
<p>Racist assumptions that Arabs and Muslims are violent, untrustworthy and barbaric have played a major role in <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-toronto-18-case-still-skews-our-views-on-radicalization-and">post-9/11 security policing</a>. </p>
<p>Such stereotypes have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23326492231151587">had wide-ranging consequences</a> for racialized people. They also reinforce pre-existing social stigmas. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-family-killed-in-terror-attack-in-london-ontario-islamophobic-violence-surfaces-once-again-in-canada-162400">Muslim family killed in terror attack in London, Ontario: Islamophobic violence surfaces once again in Canada</a>
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<p>Our conference heard that Somali Muslims are subjected to both anti-Black racism and Islamophobia. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2016.06.001">Muslim women wearing the hijab</a>, in particular, have become highly visible targets. </p>
<p>The social stigmas, in turn, contribute to tolerance for abuses in the name of national security. </p>
<p>The government of Canada’s actions have contributed to the dehumanization of Muslim life. <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8781337/ex-guantanamo-detainee-sues-canada-torture/">Canadian officials were complicit</a> in the abuse of hundreds of Muslim men detained without charge in Guantanamo Bay. </p>
<p>More recently, Canadian citizens — mostly women and children — accused of having links to ISIS <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-to-repatriate-6-women-13-children-detained-in-syria-sources-1.6237687">were abandoned</a> under deplorable conditions in Syria before finally being considered for repatriation. They were not even thought worthy to stand trial in Canada.</p>
<p>This list of examples highlight how national security labels applied to Muslims corrode rights and dignity, subjecting them to feelings of not belonging anywhere.</p>
<p>A surge in <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/05/17/preventing-racial-hate-crimes-means-tackling-white-supremacist-ideology/">white supremacist violence</a> has also sparked attacks on Muslim, trans, Black, Indigenous, Asian and other vulnerable groups. </p>
<h2>What’s a threat?</h2>
<p>National security agencies have been paying closer attention to far-right movements over the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/2021/CSIS-Public-Report-2020.pdf">last few years</a>. Some right-wing groups <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2021/02/government-of-canada-lists-13-new-groups-as-terrorist-entities-and-completes-review-of-seven-others.html">have even been listed</a> as terrorist organizations. </p>
<p>The call to <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/national-policy-blueprint-end-white-supremacist-violence/">curb right-wing violence</a> is urgent and compelling. But how should we approach it?</p>
<p>The possibility of further <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/csis-mandate-threats-1.6677393">expanding national security measures</a> was raised in testimony to the Emergencies Act commission. The commission has provided a new platform for <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/csis-canada-national-security-threats">these calls</a>, according to what security officials see as emerging threats. Among these threats is right-wing extremism.</p>
<p>This partial shift of resources towards policing the far right has helped security agencies quell criticism about their own Islamophobia and racism. But can we trust police to truly address right-wing violence and white supremacy? Our answer to this question is unambiguous: No, we cannot.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thin-skinned-blue-line-police-fight-against-defunding-showing-their-true-colours-183784">Thin-skinned blue line: Police fight against defunding, showing their true colours</a>
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<h2>Resisting security expansion</h2>
<p>The discussions at the “Critical Reflections on Security” conference suggest that a national security policing approach has harmed racialized and minority groups, and it would be short-sighted to ignore this in any security expansion.</p>
<p>Maintaining order as the baseline response to violent right-wing groups does not help us meet the challenges presented by them. </p>
<p>Simply put, maintaining order does not address the authoritarian and racially charged sentiments that drive right-wing movements. Social and community-oriented approaches are required to address systemic racism and transform deep-seated settler colonial institutions and values. </p>
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<img alt="Protesters in orange T-shirts wave a Canadian flag with red handprints of children. The Peace Tower is in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509906/original/file-20230213-14-2mzt1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Protesters wave a flag on Parliament Hill in Ottawa at a ‘Cancel Canada Day’ protest in 2021 in response to the discovery of unmarked Indigenous graves at residential schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>It’s also unrealistic to expect security agencies to transform so quickly. Their roots have been firmly grounded in Indigenous disenfranchisement and other forms of racism. Security agencies will not be redirected easily simply due to new mandates. </p>
<p>It’s also worth recalling that racialized and Indigenous peoples have rarely benefited from calls for greater public order or safety. At best, public safety and security have been selectively made available to these communities.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/raid-of-wetsuweten-part-of-canadas-ongoing-police-violence-against-indigenous-peoples-131118">Raid of Wet’suwet’en part of Canada’s ongoing police violence against Indigenous Peoples</a>
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<p>The conference provided a record of Canadian history. </p>
<p>It also encouraged a much-needed public conversation about Canadian settler colonialism and racism as we continue to grapple with vexing questions about public order and security. </p>
<p>One thing is clear. Approaches to contemporary security issues need to be informed by the dire histories of what happens under the banner of national security.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reem Bahdi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fahad Ahmad receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Monaghan receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yasmeen Abu-Laban receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Research Chairs Program and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research where she is a Fellow. She is President of the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association. </span></em></p>Approaches to security issues in Canada today need to learn from the dire histories of what happens under the banner of national security.Reem Bahdi, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of WindsorFahad Ahmad, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityJeffrey Monaghan, Associate Professor, Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Carleton UniversityYasmeen Abu-Laban, Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1974322023-01-17T12:31:09Z2023-01-17T12:31:09ZUnderwater noise is a threat to marine life<p>Oceans are full of sound. Waves, earthquakes and calving icebergs all contribute to the underwater soundscape. But so do human activities, and this can be a problem for marine life as it can seriously affect their physiology, behaviour, reproduction and even survival.</p>
<p>Being able to produce and detect sound in an environment where light penetrates only a few hundred metres is crucial for animals to communicate, feed, avoid predators and navigate vast underwater habitats. Large whales generate low frequency communication calls that can travel <a href="https://www.bbcearth.com/news/the-loudest-voice-in-the-animal-kingdom">thousands of kilometres</a>. While the <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.289.5487.2114">snapping shrimp</a>, native to the western Atlantic, can produce a loud snapping sound capable of stunning and killing its prey.</p>
<p>The noise generated by humans <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba4658">changes the natural acoustic environment</a> of our oceans and our capacity to produce it is increasing. Noise is often the unintentional byproduct of transport, infrastructure development and industry. </p>
<p>Yet noise can also be produced deliberately. Many navies use sonar to detect ships and submarines, while geologists survey the seabed for oil and gas using <a href="https://dosits.org/animals/effects-of-sound/anthropogenic-sources/seismic-airguns/">seismic airguns</a>. The noise produced by an airgun can exceed 200 decibels (louder than a gunshot at a range of one metre).</p>
<p>Sound travels further and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound">four times faster</a> in water than in air (at a speed of almost 1,500 metres per second). The noise produced by humans can therefore spread considerable distances underwater. These sounds can be relatively constant, such as the noise produced by a ship’s engine and propeller, or sudden and acute in the case of naval sonar and seismic airguns. </p>
<h2>Can noise kill?</h2>
<p>The sound produced by a seismic airgun can cause permanent hearing loss, tissue damage and even death in nearby animals. </p>
<p>Evidence for the lethal effects of noise can be hard to document in the open ocean. But seismic surveys have been linked to the mass mortality of <a href="https://tethys.pnnl.gov/publications/review-records-giant-squid-north-eastern-atlantic-severe-injuries-architeuthis-dux">squid</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/68/12/1024/5160052">zooplankton</a>. In 2017, research revealed that a single air gun caused the death rate of zooplankton to increase from 18% to 40–60% over a 1.2 kilometre stretch of the ocean off the coast of southern Tasmania.</p>
<p>The use of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X08002221">naval sonar</a> has also been associated with the mass stranding of several whale species in the Caribbean, Europe and East Asia. Mass stranding events involve entire pods of animals simultaneously beaching themselves. </p>
<p>Examination of the dead whales revealed they had suffered trauma similar to decompression sickness. This was believed to have been caused by sudden changes in their deep diving behaviour following exposure to sonar. </p>
<h2>Arrested development</h2>
<p>Over the past two decades, research has also revealed the widespread impact of chronic noise exposure on <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12207">animal behaviour and physiology</a>. These impacts can extend well beyond the noise source and affect vast areas of the ocean. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep05891?origin=ppub">Laboratory studies</a> on the <a href="https://oceaninfo.com/animals/sea-hare/">sea hare</a> – a marine slug – revealed that exposure to boat noise led to a 21% reduction in successful embryo development. Individuals that hatched also suffered a 22% higher death rate than sea hares that were not exposed to boat noise. </p>
<p>These findings demonstrate the negative effects that a common source of underwater noise can have on animal development and survival. If these laboratory results can be applied to natural environments then such impacts could threaten entire populations of marine species in particular areas.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sea hare attached to a rock underwater." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504284/original/file-20230112-14-f24d9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Embryonic development in sea hares was reduced when exposed to boat noise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/underwater-shot-on-large-sea-hare-1807396141">Vojce/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Disrupted behaviour</h2>
<p>Observing the movements, feeding, communication, resting and social interactions of animals provides scientists with a method for exploring the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-noise-pollution-is-changing-animal-behaviour-52339">effects of noise</a>. </p>
<p>The behavioural impacts of noise on marine mammals are particularly well studied due to conservation concerns and their reliance on sound for communication, foraging and navigation. Many of these species move large distances and long-range communication is crucial for coordinating social interactions and reproduction. </p>
<p>But the sounds produced by large marine mammals are of a similar low frequency range to much of the noise produced by humans. The noise produced by ships tends to be <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X20300667">below 2 kHz</a> which overlaps with the vocal frequencies produced by many large mammals. <a href="https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.1593066">Blue whales</a>, for example, produce frequency vocalisations of less than 100 Hz meaning their calls can be lost in the background din.</p>
<p>Shipping noise has led to marine mammals altering their vocalisation patterns. This includes making calls longer and more repetitive or waiting until noise levels drop before calling. Research has shown that shipping noise made within 1,200 metres of <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204112">humpback whales</a> has caused the whales to either reduce or stop their calling in the waters surrounding the remote <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1362/">Ogasawara Islands</a> in Japan.</p>
<p>Despite these vocal adaptations, noise can negatively affect animals’ feeding behaviour and increase physiological stress. <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.2429">Research</a> found that a reduction in shipping following the 9/11 terrorist attacks led to a six decibel drop in noise levels in the Bay of Fundy on Canada’s Atlantic coast. This coincided with lower levels of physiological stress detected in <a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/north-atlantic-right-whale">North Atlantic right whales</a> when researchers measured stress hormones from floating whale faeces.</p>
<p>The COVID-19 lockdowns also led to previously busy waterways being used more frequently by large marine animals. For example, dolphin numbers – including the endangered <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-hongkong-dolphins-idINKBN2650B0">pink dolphin</a> – increased in the waters around Hong Kong following temporary restrictions on ferry traffic.</p>
<p>Noisy oceans are having a profound negative impact on marine life. Taking action to protect and restore natural soundscapes is a key priority for conservation. </p>
<p>The good news is that noise is removed from the environment as soon as the sound source is switched off or turned down. Technological developments in ship design, such as <a href="https://www.rivieramm.com/opinion/opinion/a-quiet-revolution-in-underwater-noise-54783">reduced propellor cavitation</a> (the formation of air bubbles on the surface of a propeller), have already <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003682X18300021">lowered</a> the noise produced by ships. </p>
<p>Small adjustments in speed can also substantially lower engine and propeller noise. <a href="https://web.p.ebscohost.com/abstract?site=ehost&scope=site&jrnl=17183200&AN=95846538&h=HnGgvltyT4fzxuRUwoAFioh3Q8aXl41naC8CF7n6px%2bSTWTrT9CpM2Tv6UJlU393O3pCtkmBJVmdLpkHgB0NsQ%3d%3d&crl=c&resultLocal=ErrCrlNoResults&resultNs=Ehost&crlhashurl=login.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26profile%3dehost%26scope%3dsite%26authtype%3dcrawler%26jrnl%3d17183200%26AN%3d95846538">Research</a> has found that a 15.6 to 13.8 knot reduction in the average speed of commercial ships can reduce underwater noise pollution by more than 50%. </p>
<p>But global awareness of the impact of noise on ocean health needs improving and policies aimed at managing sound and implementing technological solutions must be more rigorous. These are readily available solutions that promise a brighter – and quieter – future for our oceans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graeme Shannon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Noisy oceans are having a significant impact on marine life.Graeme Shannon, Lecturer in Zoology, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1880562022-08-02T13:16:52Z2022-08-02T13:16:52ZWho was Ayman al-Zawahri? Where does his death leave al-Qaida and what does it say about US counterterrorism?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477165/original/file-20220802-19-5lqhr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C85%2C2986%2C2250&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who will replace the man who replaced bin Laden?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/osama-bin-laden-sits-with-his-adviser-ayman-al-zawahiri-an-news-photo/681898?adppopup=true">Visual News/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Ayman al-Zawahri, leader of al-Qaida and a plotter of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ayman-al-zawahri-al-qaida-terrorism-biden-36e5f10256c9bc9972b252849eda91f2">has been killed in a drone strike</a> in the Afghan city of Kabul, according to the U.S. government.</em></p>
<p><em>Al-Zawahri was the the successor to Osama bin Laden and his death marked “one more measure of closure” to the families of those killed in the 2001 atrocities, U.S. President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/08/01/remarks-by-president-biden-on-a-successful-counterterrorism-operation-in-afghanistan/">said during televised remarks</a> on Aug. 1, 2022.</em></p>
<p><em>The operation came almost a year after <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/politics/us-military-withdraws-afghanistan/index.html">American troops exited Afghanistan</a> after decades of fighting there. The Conversation asked <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/team/dr-daniel-milton/">Daniel Milton</a>, a terrorism expert at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and <a href="https://extremism.gwu.edu/dr-haroro-ingram">Haroro J. Ingram</a> and <a href="https://extremism.gwu.edu/andrew-mines">Andrew Mines</a>, research fellows at the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, to explain the significance of the strike on al-Zawahri and what it says about U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan under the Taliban.</em></p>
<h2>Who was Ayman al-Zawahri?</h2>
<p>Ayman al-Zawahri was an Egyptian-born jihadist who became al-Qaida’s top leader in 2011 after his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, was <a href="https://www.npr.org/series/135908383/osama-bin-laden-dead">killed by a U.S. operation</a>. Al-Zawahri’s ascent followed years in which al-Qaida’s leadership had been devastated by <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-abstract/43/2/45/12208/What-Explains-Counterterrorism-Effectiveness?redirectedFrom=fulltext">U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan</a>. Bin Laden had himself been <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined/">struggling</a> in the years leading up to his death to exert control and unity across al-Qaida’s global network of affiliates. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A laptop screen shows Ayman al-Zawahri speaking with the English translation below reading 'Bush do you know where I am. I am in the midst.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C11%2C1982%2C1341&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477151/original/file-20220802-14-ulv6x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ayman al-Zawahri challenging then-president George W. Bush.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenAfghanistan/32481436d03047e8892fd3cef111ea9b/photo?Query=Zawahri&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=67&currentItemNo=23">AP Photo/B.K.Bangash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Al-Zawahri succeeded bin Laden despite a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/01/al-qaeda-leader-ayman-al-zawahiri-killed-drone-strike-afghanistan/">mixed reputation</a>. While he had a long history of involvement in the jihadist struggle, he was viewed by many <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/08/opinions/where-is-bin-ladens-partner-in-crime-ayman-al-zawahiri">observers</a> and even jihadists as a languid orator without formal religious credentials or battlefield reputation.</p>
<p>Lacking the charisma of his predecessor, al-Zawahri’s <a href="https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/binaries/content/assets/customsites/perspectives-on-terrorism/2017/issue-1/0620171-deciphering-ayman-al-zawahiri-and-al-qaeda%E2%80%99s-strategic-and-ideological-imperatives-by-sajjan-m.-gohel.pdf">image</a> as a leader was not helped by a tendency to embark on long, meandering and often outdated speeches. Al-Zawahri also struggled to shake rumors that he was a <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/lawrence-wright">prison informer</a> while detained in Egypt and, as author and journalist Lawrence Wright <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/lawrence-wright">detailed</a>, acted as a wedge between the young bin Laden and his mentor, Abdullah Azzam.</p>
<p>Al-Zawahri’s influence further waned during a series of popular uprisings known as the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/17/what-is-the-arab-spring-and-how-did-it-start">Arab Spring swept across North Africa and the Middle East</a>, when it seemed that al-Qaida had been sidelined and unable to effectively exploit the outbreak of war in Syria and Iraq. To analysts and supporters alike, al-Zawahiri appeared symbolic of an al-Qaida that was outdated and rapidly being eclipsed by other groups that it had <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/isis-origins-anbari-zarqawi/577030/">once helped onto the global stage</a>, most notably the Islamic State.</p>
<p>But with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/23/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-isis-caliphate">collapse of the Islamic State group’s caliphate</a> in 2019, the return to power in Afghanistan of al-Qaida ally the Taliban and the persistence of al-Qaida affiliates <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/islamic-state-and-al-qaeda-linked-african-insurgencies">especially in Africa</a>, some experts <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2022/05/how-strong-is-al-qaeda-a-debate/">argue</a> that al-Zawahri guided al-Qaida through its most challenging period and that the group remains a potent threat. Indeed, one senior Biden administration official <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ayman-al-zawahri-al-qaida-terrorism-biden-36e5f10256c9bc9972b252849eda91f2">told the Associated Press</a> that at the time of his death, al-Zawahri continued to provide “strategic direction” and was considered a dangerous figure.</p>
<h2>Where does his death leave al-Qaida?</h2>
<p>Killing or capturing top terrorist leaders has been a key counterterrorism tool for decades. Such operations remove terrorist leaders from the battlefield and force <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/terror-in-transition/9780231192255">succession struggles</a> that disrupt group cohesion and can expose security vulnerabilities. Unlike the Islamic State, which has clear <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-leader-killed-in-us-raid-where-does-this-leave-the-terrorist-group-176410">leadership succession practices</a> that it has showcased four times since the 2006 death of its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida’s are less clear. Al-Zawahri’s successor will only be the movement’s third leader <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/al-qaeda-international">since forming</a> in 1988.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/S%202022%20547.pdf">top contender</a> is another Egyptian. A former colonel in the Egyptian army and, like al-Zawahri, a member of the al-Qaida affiliate Egyptian Islamic Jihad, <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/saif-al-adel">Saif al-Adel is connected to</a> the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that launched al-Qaida as a global jihadist threat. His reputation as an explosives expert and military strategist has won him strong standing within the al-Qaida movement. A number of other possibilities are behind al-Adel, with a recent <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/S%202022%20547.pdf">U.N. Security Council report</a> identifying several possible successors. </p>
<p>Either way, we’d argue that al-Qaida is at a crossroads. If al-Zawahri’s successor is broadly recognized as legitimate by both al-Qaida’s core and its affiliates, it could help to stabilize the movement. But any ambiguity surrounding al-Qaida’s succession plan could see the new leader’s authority challenged, which in turn could fracture the movement further.</p>
<p>Evidence suggests al-Qaida’s presence as a global movement will survive al-Zawahri’s death, just as it did bin Laden’s. The network has seen <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2022/05/how-strong-is-al-qaeda-a-debate/">a number of recent successes</a>. Longtime allies the Taliban successfully took control of Afghanistan with help from <a href="https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/al-qaeda-indian-subcontinent-aqis">al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent</a> – an affiliate which is now <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2022/05/how-strong-is-al-qaeda-a-debate/">expanding its operations in Pakistan and India</a>. Meanwhile, affiliates across the African continent – from Mali and the Lake Chad region to Somalia – remain a threat, with some <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/S%202022%20547.pdf">expanding beyond their traditional areas of operation</a>.</p>
<p>Other affiliates, like the group’s Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, remain loyal to the core and, according to the U.N. monitoring team, <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/S%202022%20547.pdf">are keen to revive</a> overseas attacks against the U.S. and its allies.</p>
<p>Now, al-Zawahri’s successor will be looking to retain the allegiance of al-Qaida’s affiliates as it strives to remain a potent threat.</p>
<h2>What does this tell us about US operations in Afghanistan under the Taliban?</h2>
<p>The American withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 prompted questions over whether the U.S. could keep pressure on al-Qaida, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-isis-k-two-terrorism-experts-on-the-group-behind-the-deadly-kabul-airport-attack-and-its-rivalry-with-the-taliban-166873">ISIS-K</a> and other militants in the country.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/11/20/sof-leader-calls-over-the-horizon-ops-in-afghanistan-hard-but-doable">U.S. officials explained</a> that an “over-the-horizon” strategy – launching surgical strikes and special operations raids from outside any given state – would allow the U.S. to deal with problems that emerged, such as terrorist attacks and the resurgence of groups.</p>
<p>But many experts <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/05/over-the-horizon-biden-afghanistan-counter-terrorism/">disagreed</a>. And when an <a href="https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-strikes-islamic-state-group-b8bd9b0c805c610758bd1d3e20090c2c">errant U.S. drone strike</a> killed seven children, a U.S.-employed humanitarian worker and other civilians last fall, that strategy came under sharp scrutiny.</p>
<p>But for those who doubted whether the U.S. still had the desire to go after key terrorists in Afghanistan, the killing of al-Zawahri gives a clear answer. This strike <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ayman-al-zawahri-al-qaida-terrorism-biden-36e5f10256c9bc9972b252849eda91f2">reportedly involved</a> long-term surveillance of Zawahri and his family and robust discussion within the U.S. government before receiving presidential approval. Biden claims it was carried out without civilian casualties.</p>
<p>At the same time, it took the U.S. 11 months to strike its first high-value target in Afghanistan under the Taliban. This contrasts with the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-military-significantly-reduced-global-airstrikes-in-2021-/6392771.html">hundreds of airstrikes</a> executed in the years before the U.S. withdrawal.</p>
<p>The strike occurred in a Kabul neighborhood populated by senior Taliban figures. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ayman-al-zawahri-al-qaida-terrorism-biden-36e5f10256c9bc9972b252849eda91f2">The safehouse itself belonged</a> to a senior aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a terrorist <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorinfo/sirajuddin-haqqani">wanted by the U.S.</a> and a top Taliban leader. </p>
<p>Aiding and abetting al-Zawahri was a violation of the <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf">Doha agreement</a>, under which the Taliban agreed “not to cooperate with groups or individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies.” The circumstances of the strike suggest that if the U.S. wants to do effective over-the-horizon operations in Afghanistan, it cannot <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/26/how-to-partner-with-the-taliban/">count on</a> the Taliban for support. </p>
<p>The strike on al-Zawahri also tells us little about whether the U.S. strategy post-pullout can contain other jihadist groups in the region like <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-isis-k-two-terrorism-experts-on-the-group-behind-the-deadly-kabul-airport-attack-and-its-rivalry-with-the-taliban-166873">ISIS-K</a>, which is vehemently opposed to the Taliban and <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/the-islamic-state-threat-in-taliban-afghanistan-tracing-the-resurgence-of-islamic-state-khorasan/">expanding in Afghanistan</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, we believe that if more jihadists perceive the Taliban to be too weak to protect the top leaders of al-Qaida and its affiliates, while at the same time unable to govern Afghanistan without U.S. aid, many may consider <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2021/10/the-taliban-cant-take-on-the-islamic-state-alone/">ISIS-K to be the best choice</a>.</p>
<p>These and other dynamics speak to the many challenges of pursuing an over-the-horizon counterterrorism in Afghanistan today, ones that are unlikely to be solved by occasional high-profile drone strikes and assassinations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The views expressed by Dr. Milton are his own and not of the U.S. Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. Government</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Mines and Haroro J. Ingram do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US strike against al-Zawahri leaves the future of al-Qaida at a crossroads as the terrorist movement looks for a new leader.Haroro J. Ingram, Senior Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism, George Washington UniversityAndrew Mines, Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism, George Washington UniversityDaniel Milton, Director of Research, United States Military Academy West PointLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1822162022-06-16T17:24:58Z2022-06-16T17:24:58ZYour past is my present – how Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467252/original/file-20220606-20-pr3x7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5963%2C3963&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the U.S. Congress on March 16, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraineWarCryptocurrencyDonations/3b2b9f7943c94d3498a8775c31a65ebe/photo">Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since Russia’s war against his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has directly addressed the elected representatives of multiple countries in his quest for international support. These speeches have made explicit references to parallels between his country’s current plight and the particular historical experiences of these nations. </p>
<p>This strategy is one of many that Zelenskyy has employed to successfully build international support for Ukraine. As scholars of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=RHXgn2sAAAAJ">post-Soviet politics</a> and the use of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LvQBbVcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">historical memory</a>, we think Zelenskyy’s addresses help garner global support in three key ways: He evokes popular empathy for the Ukrainian people, enables foreign governments to assess their people’s interest in supporting Ukraine, and highlights the importance of territorial sovereignty to world peace.</p>
<h2>References to historical parallels</h2>
<p>Each of Zelenskyy’s speeches included historical references deliberately tailored to resonate with the people of the nation he was addressing at the time.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtDifMeMC68&t=1s">his speech to the German Bundestag</a>, for instance, he referred to the German people as standing behind a wall “between freedom and slavery.” That powerfully evoked the Berlin Wall’s division of post-World War II Germany into two countries, one aligned with the democratic West, and the other with the communist East.</p>
<p>He also reached farther back, referring to the “historical responsibility” of the German people, and making repeated references to the suffering endured by millions of Europeans during World War II because of the Nazi regime’s aggressive territorial expansion and genocidal atrocities. These references might have been particularly potent given Zelenskyy’s own Jewish heritage. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt_CPMYawQs&t=1s">speaking to the Israeli Knesset</a>, Zelenskyy compared the current suffering and forced migration of his people to the experiences of the European Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s, including fleeing the Holocaust. Specifically he said the Ukrainian “people are now scattered around the world. They are looking for security. They are looking for a way to stay in peace. As you once searched.” </p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6viGEEi7JjU">addressing the U.S. Congress</a>, Zelenskyy referred to the horrors of unprovoked aggression from hostile foreign forces at Pearl Harbor and on 9/11. He highlighted how these sudden and unanticipated attacks wreaked havoc on the lives of “innocent people.”</p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/zvernennya-prezidenta-ukrayini-volodimira-zelenskogo-do-parl-73441">speaking to the British Parliament</a>, he quoted one of <a href="https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches.html">Winston Churchill’s most memorable speeches</a>, delivered at a time when Britain was threatened by, and successfully resisted, an expansionist power – Nazi Germany. Zelenskyy then added his own twist, saying “<a href="https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches.html">We shall fight in the seas</a>, we shall fight in the air, we shall defend our land, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the woods, in the fields, on the beaches, in the cities and villages, in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/zvernennya-prezidenta-ukrayini-volodimira-zelenskogo-do-parl-73441">And I want to add</a>: we shall fight on the spoil tips, on the banks of the Kalmius and the Dnieper! And we shall not surrender!”</p>
<h2>Appeal to emotions</h2>
<p>These historical parallels were intended to appeal to his audiences’ emotions, with the intent of inspiring popular empathy abroad. While <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-04-25-op-27057-story.html">politicians have long evoked history in their rhetoric</a>, Zelenskyy’s use of history is distinct given its variety and intended audience. His goal was not to rally his own people, but to build an international coalition of support.</p>
<p>His historical references tapped into different sentiments in different countries – trauma in the United States and Israel, shame and guilt in Germany, pride in the United Kingdom. But the underlying goal in each instance was to compel the people of these countries to recall their own pasts so that they could sympathize with the pain and suffering of the Ukrainian people today.</p>
<p>In addition, his appeals prompted broader conversations in the media and among the public, revealing popular sentiment toward the conflict and allowing leaders to gauge reactions to the possibility of their country’s increased involvement. Where people were more receptive to Zelenskyy’s historical parallels, leaders could feel more confident that their policies supporting Ukraine would receive broad popular support. </p>
<p>The appeal of his message in Germany seemed clear when the Bundestag’s <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/zelenskyy-speech-sparks-soul-search-germany/">immediate transition to other matters of state following Zelenskyy’s speech drew public outrage</a>. Since then, Germany has <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-germany-supplying-howitzers-antiaircraft/31837562.html">continued to increase its assistance</a>.</p>
<p>Zelenskyy’s address to the U.S. Congress evoked concern and empathy for the Ukrainian people among both <a href="https://time.com/6157965/zelensky-congress-speech-aid/">elected representatives</a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/pain-frustration-hope-americans-react-zelenskyy-plea-83488052">the public</a>. Within hours of this speech, <a href="https://time.com/6157965/zelensky-congress-speech-aid/">President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million package of military support for Ukraine</a>.</p>
<p>There was <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/polling-ukraine-support-for-sanctions-and-governments-handling-grows">popular support for Ukraine among the U.K. public even prior to Zelenskyy’s speech</a>. Leading up to the speech, the government <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-11/britain-johnson-response-ukraine-war-refugees-sanctions">was criticized for not doing enough to help Ukrainian refugees</a>. Two days after the speech, the U.K. government <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-on-britain-s-ukraine-response-we-ll-help-but-please-stay-away-1.4823686">announced an overhaul of the visa application process for Ukrainian refugees</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on a video screen addresses a room full of people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the British Parliament on March 8, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-addresses-mps-in-the-news-photo/1239027760">House of Commons/PA Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast, Zelenskyy’s attempts to draw connections between the current situation in Ukraine and the Holocaust <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjn3nxbf5">drew criticism</a> from <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-sparks-indignation-israel-infuriating-holocaust-comparison-1689850">across the political spectrum in Israel</a>. Israel’s support for Ukraine has been relatively <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/israels-support-of-ukraine-alliance-isrisky-but-unavoidable/2022/05/03/759e8378-caaf-11ec-b7ee-74f09d827ca6_story.html">muted and cautious</a>. The poor reception of this historical analogy played into <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/report-russia-middle-east-national-security-challenges-united-states-and-israel-biden">Israel’s reluctance to support Ukraine</a>. </p>
<h2>A key shared ideal</h2>
<p>Perhaps Zelenskyy’s best rhetorical tactic was his appeal to the liberal ideals of the post-World War II order. By threatening Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty, Russia has also threatened a foundational principle of the largely peaceful era since 1945 – a country’s sovereignty. </p>
<p>He used this shared value in different ways. For example, he reminded Americans when their <a href="https://www.nps.gov/perl/index.htm">territorial security was compromised</a> and the British when theirs was <a href="https://worldwar2.org.uk/the-battle-of-britain">preserved through resistance</a>. But the goal was the same – to unite and mobilize international support behind his nation in an otherwise fractured global environment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182216/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History brought Ukraine’s plight home to people around the world, and helped mobilize political and military support against the Russian invasion.Anil Menon, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, University of MichiganPauline Jones, Professor of Political Science, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1782972022-03-21T17:21:40Z2022-03-21T17:21:40ZUkraine war shows it’s time to do away with the racist ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452550/original/file-20220316-7987-s3bzgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2995%2C1881&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People hold signs during a demonstration against Islamophobia in Montréal in March 2017. The antiquated and erroneous Clash of Civilizations theory has harmed Muslims for almost 30 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/ukraine-war-shows-it-s-time-to-do-away-with-the-racist--clash-of-civilizations--theory" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>“The clash of civilizations,” wrote the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington in a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/system/files/c0007.pdf">famous 1993</a> article, “will dominate global politics.” He predicted: “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”</p>
<p>Picked apart by critics <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/clash-ignorance/">for conceptual</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/abs/ethnic-minorities-and-the-clash-of-civilizations-a-quantitative-analysis-of-huntingtons-thesis/85A9699D564116ED2EC38FB0E4385B64">empirical errors</a>, the tragedy of 9/11 breathed new life into his theory of international relations. Huntington was regarded as prophetic.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Smoke rises from burning skyscrapers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Smoke rises from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes crashed into the towers on 9/11.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His vision of an “Islam with bloody borders” that would confront the West, fuelled by Muslim extremists, put wind in the sails of the so-called <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/8/20-years-after-9-11-did-the-us-win-its-war-on">War on Terror</a>, turning western Muslims into suspects, not citizens, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/20-years-911-islamophobia-continues-haunt-muslims/story?id=79732049">and transforming them into societal outcasts</a>.</p>
<p>But Huntington also predicted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If civilization is what counts … the likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low. They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships with each other for centuries.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has proved him spectacularly wrong, it’s time to throw out his whole outlook, which has traumatized Muslims the world over.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-actions-in-post-soviet-wars-provide-clues-to-its-brutal-ukraine-invasion-177952">Russia's actions in post-Soviet wars provide clues to its brutal Ukraine invasion</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What was Huntington’s theory about?</h2>
<p>Some might argue that a theory is made of parts, and Huntington may have been wrong on the Russian element of his beliefs, but on Islam, he was right — so there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. </p>
<p>However, the Clash of Civilizations theory has devastated Muslims for years <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/07/18/samuel-huntington-a-prophet-for-the-trump-era/">because it formed the basis</a> <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/80021">of post-9/11 security policies</a>
that targeted the supposed enemy of the West — Muslims. We need to shatter the Huntington lens completely, not just remove the portion on Russia and Ukraine.</p>
<p>First, a brief recap of the theory. </p>
<p>Many analysts are reluctant to predict what politics will look like in the future. Huntington didn’t hesitate, and was happy to provide editors at the magazine <em>Foreign Affairs</em>, Jim Hoge and Fareed Zakaria, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/system/files/c0007.pdf">the “big and controversial” article</a> they wanted for their launch.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover of the clash of civilizations" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452573/original/file-20220316-7879-tzliyz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Huntington’s book.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(GoodReads)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His piece, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1993-06-01/clash-civilizations">“The Clash of Civilizations?”</a> — the question mark was removed <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Clash-of-Civilizations-and-the-Remaking-of-World-Order/Samuel-P-Huntington/9781451628975">for the book version</a> — argued that wars had evolved from fights between princes to conflicts among nations and then to ideological clashes. </p>
<p>Huntington opined that the future conflicts that would dominate the globe would be wars between civilizations. The most likely culprit would be Islam which, he said, had “bloody borders.”</p>
<h2>Sept. 11 elevated the theory</h2>
<p>Without 9/11, Huntington’s theory would have likely been relegated to academia. </p>
<p>Even on the “Islam versus the West” count, it failed. It did not account for:</p>
<p>• A stable alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia</p>
<p>• <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-middle-east-and-the-politics-of-sectarianism/11613338">Sectarian or ethnic divisions</a> within civilizations
(Protestant/Catholic; Sunni/Shia; Germany/France; Turks/Arabs/Persians/Malays, etc.)</p>
<p>• Inter-ethnic and inter-religious pluralism in Muslim history (700 odd years of <a href="https://fountainmagazine.com/2013/issue-94-july-august-2013/the-convivencia-july-2013">the Convivencia in Al Andalus, Muslim Spain</a>)</p>
<p>• <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/22634008/us-troops-afghanistan-cold-war-bush-bin-laden">Alliances between Islamists and the CIA in the 1979 Afghan war to oust the Soviet Union</a></p>
<p>• Millions of Muslims eager and happy to live in western countries.</p>
<p>That’s a brief list. </p>
<p>Muslim leaders pushed for alternative world views, <a href="https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/dialogue-among-civilizations-contexts-and-perspectives">such as former Iranian president Seyed Mohammad Khatami in his <em>Dialogue of Civilizations</em></a> and via organizations like the <a href="https://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-alliance-of-civilizations-initiative.en.mfa">Alliance of Civilizations</a> and the <a href="https://www.acommonword.com/">Common Word Initiative</a> that evolved into <a href="https://worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/">World Interfaith Harmony Week</a>. They countered that politics was never inevitable, but shaped by choices we make.</p>
<p>Sherene Razack, a Canadian women’s studies and critical race academic, argues that niqab bans are illogical because none of the stated reasons, such as inability to communicate or integrate, <a href="https://utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/cjwl.30.1.169">stand up to comparative scrutiny, so we must turn to psychoanalysis to understand</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quebecs-push-to-ban-the-hijab-is-sexularism-105967">Québec's push to ban the hijab is 'sexularism'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The same applies to Huntington’s theory. Why does the theory still appeal, despite evidence that it’s wrong?</p>
<p>The Clash of Civilizations still has traction because of its emotive, tribal appeal, setting up an us-versus-them scenario that’s helped create anti-Muslim westerners and anti-westerner Muslims.</p>
<h2>Harm to Muslim westerners</h2>
<p>Muslim youth growing up in the West since 9/11 have experienced a “collective trauma,” as one of my students put it recently. </p>
<p>Their weekly reflection notes written in response to class discussions roil with themes of despair at being scapegoated for violent actions that happened before they were born and that they had nothing to do with. </p>
<p>They’re resentful that their beloved faith has been singled out for being violent, while they know and experience western violence in the name of democracy. They watched as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-bombed-iraq-syria-pakistan-afghanistan-libya-yemen-somalia-n704636">U.S. dropped more than 26,000 bombs</a> on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan in 2016 alone. </p>
<p>Some feel anxiety and depression at not being able to fit in and be accepted for who they are.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a black cap and wearing glasses carries an anti-Muslim sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452571/original/file-20220316-7542-1y77gq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An anti-Islamic protester is pursued by a group of protesters with opposing views during a demonstration in Toronto in March 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15564900802487634">scant literature</a> on the psychological fallout from being treated as a terror suspect highlights mental health issues of despair, anxiety, depression — a chronic trauma embracing the entire Muslim community, young to old. </p>
<p>The West and Islam share many values that can form the foundation of good relations. There’s no need to outcast those who share ideals of standing up for justice, service to the poor, aiding neighbours, being kind to the elderly and children and the importance of hard work and self-sufficiency. </p>
<p>Next year, the Clash of Civilizations theory will have done a terrible job at explaining geopolitical forces for the past 30 years. Let’s throw it a retirement party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178297/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Bullock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Next year, the Clash of Civilizations theory will have done a terrible job explaining geopolitical forces for the past 30 years. Let’s throw it a retirement party.Katherine Bullock, Lecturer in Islamic Politics, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792412022-03-18T14:32:46Z2022-03-18T14:32:46ZWar sent America off the rails 19 years ago. Could another one bring it back?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452585/original/file-20220316-8547-2xk8tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C26%2C2000%2C1233&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this March 2003 photo, Iraqi soldiers surrender to U.S. Marines following a gunfight. The war has loomed over geopolitical events for the past 19 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/war-sent-america-off-the-rails-19-years-ago--could-another-one-bring-it-back" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>At the start of 2022, the right to vote, the rule of law and even the existence of facts seemed to be in grave peril in the United States. </p>
<p>Explanations for this crisis ranged from the <a href="https://usceconreview.com/2021/03/28/the-implications-of-american-wage-stagnation/">decades-long decline</a> of the American middle class to the more recent rise of social media and its <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/22/18177076/social-media-facebook-far-right-authoritarian-populism">unique capacity</a> to spread lies. </p>
<p>In truth, many factors were at play, but the most direct cause of America’s harrowing descent — the one event that arguably set the others in motion — began 19 years ago.</p>
<h2>War by choice</h2>
<p>On March 19, 2003, George W. Bush and his neoconservative brain trust launched the Iraq war because of the alleged threat of Saddam Hussein’s mothballed weapons. Bush and his advisers <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070814183407/http:/www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm">believed in using military force</a> to spread American political and economic might around the globe. </p>
<p>It was an ideology both foolish and fanatical, the <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2020/02/01/new-american-century-1997-2006-and-the-post-cold-war-neoconservative-moment/">pet project</a> of a tiny circle of well-connected warmongers. Bush himself had lost the popular vote in 2000 and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2008/12/18/bush-and-public-opinion/">was slumping</a> in the polls before Sept. 11, 2001. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Smoke rises from burning skyscrapers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452559/original/file-20220316-7987-hz6v7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Smoke rises from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes crashed into the towers on 9/11.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But no one wanted to look weak after the terrorist attacks, and so, in one of the last bipartisan gestures of the past two decades, U.S. senators from Hillary Clinton to Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2002/s237">voted for war in the Middle East</a>. </p>
<p>Having sold the invasion with bad faith and bluster, the neocons planned it with hubris and incompetence. Against the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/20/downfall">professional advice</a> of the U.S. military, they sought to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime with minimal ground forces, whereupon they would dismantle the Iraqi state and invite private contractors to somehow rebuild the place.</p>
<p>At first, their fantasies swept to victory. But by 2004, the country they had shattered began to lash out at both the invaders and itself, and by 2006 the singular disaster of our times began to spread.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A grey-haired man speaks at a podium with a banner over his head reading mission accomplished" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452588/original/file-20220316-8391-1qfsjjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mission accomplished? Not quite. In this May 2003 photo, George W. Bush declares the end of major combat in Iraq as he speaks aboard an aircraft carrier off the California coast. The war dragged on for many years after that.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)CP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Butterfly effects</h2>
<p>Some <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/mideast/RL33936.pdf">two million</a> Iraqis decamped to Syria and Jordan and even more fled to places within Iraq, where the ghoulish seeds of ISIS began to grow. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838034">When ISIS spread</a> following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, a second wave of refugees sought shelter in Europe. This <a href="https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/731/">stoked nationalism</a> and <a href="https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/09/09/the-refugee-crisis-brexit-and-the-reframing-of-immigration-in-britain/">helped propel</a> Brexit to a stunning win in the United Kingdom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man and children lie under blue-grey blankets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452591/original/file-20220316-7542-1p7himo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Men and children rest in a large tent set up by UNHCR to shelter civilians displaced by heavy fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants in 2016 east of Mosul, Iraq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alice Martins)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In America, the war caused a two-part reaction, first on the left and then on the right. </p>
<p>After their <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttts43x">anti-war movement</a> fell short, progressives <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/12/anti-war-protesters-iraq-invasion-bloody-chaos">nearly despaired</a> before embracing Barack Obama. Of all the factors that made his election possible in 2008, his opposition to the Iraq war did the most to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23044817?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">set him apart</a> from his more established rivals.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A Black man in a tuxedo dances with a black woman in a white gown." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452593/original/file-20220316-8368-1b7ccsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this January 2009 photo, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama dance at an inaugural ball.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The election of a Black man with a Muslim name quickly spawned the Tea Party, which rejected traditional conservatism (and neoconservatism) in favour of semi-organized rage at the government Obama embodied. By 2011, elements of the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691163611/change-they-cant-believe-in">Tea Party</a> had morphed into the risible birther movement, according to which Obama was a Kenyan-born radical intent on destroying America. </p>
<h2>The rise of Trump</h2>
<p>When Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate">released his birth certificate</a> to quell the nonsense, the spiritual leader of the birthers, Donald Trump, refused to apologize. Instead, Trump <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-kept-birther-beliefs-going-long-after-obama-s-birth-n649346">kept telling</a> the same lie, and the Tea Party adherents <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/05/16/trumps-staunch-gop-supporters-have-roots-in-the-tea-party/">morphed into his Make America Great Again base.</a></p>
<p>Who could imagine such a man in the White House? He had <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/trumps-almost-run-for-president-in-2000-an-oral-history.html">toyed with the idea in 2000</a>, and no one had cared. Evidently, his strong appeal to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/">white nationalists</a> didn’t always make him a serious contender for the presidency. </p>
<p>Sixteen years later, however, Trump combined his brash bigotry with repeated attacks on the Iraq war and related appeals to America First isolationism. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man with orange-blond hair in a dark suit and red tie smiles sitting next to a Black man in a dark suit and patterned blue tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452596/original/file-20220316-8368-cdkwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Obama meets with Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House a few days after Trump’s election win in November 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/02/18/trump-is-right-bush-lied-a-little-known-part-of-the-bogus-case-for-war/">“They lied,”</a> he noted of the neocons. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction; there were none. And they knew there were none.” That resonated far beyond his alt-right base.</p>
<p>Put simply, Trump’s rise is impossible to imagine without the chain reaction that began over the skies of Baghdad and ended in toxic fallout over Washington. He was the Obama of the right, the man who drew the disillusioned masses into an electoral force that broke all the pre-2003 rules — except the anti-majority rules of the Electoral College, <a href="https://time.com/5579161/presidents-elected-electoral-college/">to which he owed his victory even more than Bush.</a></p>
<h2>The spell is broken</h2>
<p>In 2019, one year <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812">after grovelling</a> to Vladimir Putin at a summit in Finland, Trump tried to bully the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, into making up dirt on Joe Biden.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a man with blond-grey hair smiles as a bald man next him gives a thumb's up. both stand in front of podiums that say helsinki 2018." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452609/original/file-20220316-7761-1ciulxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Trump give a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, in July 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/foreign-aid/481871-trump-administration-delaying-arms-transfers-worth-30m-to">This delayed</a> U.S. weapons transfers to Ukraine and undercut Zelensky’s authority.</p>
<p>As always, Trump saw nothing wrong in smashing democratic norms or siding with dictators. He’s a nihilist as well as a bigot. He assumes the world belongs to those who take the most from it, and therefore that Putin, a fellow alpha dog, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/trump-putin-genius-russia-ukraine-crisis">is a “genius”</a> for invading Ukraine while lesser men run the U.S. and other democracies.</p>
<p>Trump’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/05/putin-ukraine-invasion-white-nationalists-far-right?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other">hard-core base agrees</a>.</p>
<p>But the horrifying spectacle of aggressive war seems to have broken his dark spell over everyone else, including <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/596402-gop-senators-push-back-hard-on-trumps-praise-of-putin">most Republican leaders</a> in the Senate. It’s as if Americans now see what they were in danger of becoming — and suddenly remember that they do believe in something other than brute force and endless lies. </p>
<p>The world can only hope it’s not too late.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Opal receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He was a volunteer for The List Project, which helps Iraqi allies resettle in the US, from 2008-9. </span></em></p>The most direct cause of America’s ongoing harrowing descent, including the rise of Donald Trump and his alliance with Vladimir Putin, began 19 years ago with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.Jason Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1780542022-03-01T14:17:56Z2022-03-01T14:17:56ZUkraine invasion: why eight Nato members triggered article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty<p>In the 73 years since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was founded, member nations have activated <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49187.htm">article 4</a> of its founding treaty only half a dozen times. The latest instance was on <a href="https://time.com/6151115/nato-russia-ukraine-article-4/">February 24</a>, the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Eight <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/nato-786">Nato</a> members – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – immediately invoked the article, thereby convening a consultation of Nato’s principal decision-making body, the North Atlantic Council. </p>
<p>Article 4 can be triggered when one or more Nato members deem the “territorial integrity, political independence or security” of any of the member states to be threatened. The North Atlantic Council meets regularly to discuss all items on its agenda, from military capability development to operations. When article 4 is triggered, however, the council prioritises the raised issue and discusses it instantly. </p>
<p>Although under article 4, member states do not have any other obligation than to consult, they usually agree on a joint decision or action. By contrast, article 5, which is about the collective defence of the member states specifically, stipulates that “an armed attack against one or more of” the allies “shall be considered an attack against them all”. </p>
<p>Since Ukraine is not a Nato member, article 5 was not relevant: article 4 was the only option. The fact that eight nations triggered it demonstrates the gravity of the situation. </p>
<h2>Legal processes</h2>
<p>When the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington in 1949, the founders of Nato created these mechanisms to deal with a <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_67656.htm">potential Soviet invasion</a> of western Europe. During the cold war, however, neither article was activated. </p>
<p>Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, article 5 has been invoked only once, immediately following the terrorist attacks of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/us/after-attacks-alliance-for-first-time-nato-invokes-joint-defense-pact-with-us.html">September 11 2001</a>. This was done by Nato allies the day after Al-Qaeda hijacked several aircraft and crashed them into the Pentagon building in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York, killing almost 3,000 people, to show solidarity with the US and implement a package of security measures.</p>
<p>While article 4 has been invoked more frequently in the past three decades, the current situation remains unique in several ways. Previously, a single member state <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49187.htm">has triggered</a> it: Turkey did so five times between 2003 and 2020, in relation to the Iraq and Syrian wars. Poland triggered it once, in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. What we have not seen before is eight members invoking the article simultaneously. </p>
<p>Second, previous events leading to article 4 consultations were, for the most part, unexpected: the Syrian air defence shooting down a Turkish fighter jet in June 2012; the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014. By contrast, the US and the UK have been warning their Nato allies and Ukraine about the high probability of a large-scale Russian invasion for months. </p>
<p>Thus, although watching the actual Russian military operations unfold in Ukraine has been shocking, it has not been completely surprising. Weeks before the war started, the US and the UK deployed <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-troops-head-to-eastern-europe-4-essential-reads-on-the-ukraine-crisis-175412">thousands of troops</a> to eastern Nato members, including Poland and Estonia, as a precautionary measure. Kyiv could not get this kind of support because Ukraine is <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-nato-and-why-does-ukraine-want-to-join-175821">not part of Nato</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, previous article 4 consultations have seen Nato often implement measures. Nato countries deployed Patriot missile systems to protect Turkey against Syrian attacks in 2012. And in <a href="https://www.nato.int/docu/update/2003/05-may/e0503a.htm">2003</a>, early warning aircrafts, missile systems and over a 1,000 troops were sent to Turkey during the US-led Iraq war. </p>
<p>In this instance, however, Nato has not made any decisions directly linked to the triggering of article 4. This does not mean, of course, that Nato has not responded to the Russian invasion. Quite the contrary. </p>
<p>Nato leaders held an extraordinary virtual summit on Friday, February 25, the second day of the Russian invasion. The Nato Response Force, which comprises 40,000 troops from member countries, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/nato-ukraine-russia/index.html">has been activated</a> for the first time since its 2003 establishment. In addition, the alliance has also activated defence plans: new US reinforcements have arrived in Europe, and many Nato countries have increased the readiness of their forces.</p>
<p>However, these measures were implemented based on established mechanisms. They probably would have occurred even if article 4 had not been triggered. The relevance of doing so here, though, is that article 4 pushes the war in Ukraine to the top of Nato’s agenda, with immediate effect. Further, the fact that almost one third of Nato members activated the article demonstrates the extent to which many European countries perceive the situation in Ukraine as a severe threat to their security.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178054/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bence Nemeth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses a security threat to member states of Nato.Bence Nemeth, Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies Education, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1778792022-02-24T22:48:41Z2022-02-24T22:48:41ZWhat are false flag attacks – and did Russia stage any to claim justification for invading Ukraine?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448405/original/file-20220224-13-1ii1q5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5166%2C3441&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A military vehicle destroyed on Feb. 18, 2022, by an explosion in Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian separatists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/car-blown-up-on-a-parking-lot-outside-a-government-building-news-photo/1238595237">Nikolai Trishin\TASS via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Russian assault on Ukraine, which began in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022, was launched after weeks of Russian disinformation that included false claims about Ukrainian terrorist attacks, assaults on civilians and military aggression against the self-proclaimed breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Observers have been on the lookout for a Russian “false flag” attack, a highly visible event that Russia could use as justification for taking military action. False flag attacks are attacks by a government on its own forces to create the appearance of hostile action by an opponent, allowing the government to broadcast images to the world of its opponent’s supposed actions.</p>
<p>The Kremlin and pro-government propagandists on television and social media have put out a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-media-cites-videos-maybe-pretext-invade-ukraine-2022-2">variety of claims</a> accusing Ukraine of carrying out bombings, blaming Ukraine for nonexistent attacks and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/business/russia-has-been-laying-groundwork-online-for-a-false-flag-operation-misinformation-researchers-say.html">warning</a> of nefarious future Ukrainian and Western plots, including false flag operations. The claims include a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-official-accused-russia-car-bombing-rebel-held-ukraine-2022-2">car bombing</a> and an <a href="https://tass.com/emergencies/1405995">alleged attempt by Ukrainian saboteurs</a> to blow up a chemical storage facility, both in separatist eastern Ukraine. The messaging is meant to create an impression of a Ukrainian onslaught and impending humanitarian crisis.</p>
<p>If Russia attempted actual false flag attacks, they were one element of a larger campaign to build a narrative about Ukrainian “provocations” – unwarranted actions that require a defensive and retaliatory response. Putin invoked this logic in his memorable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/23/fact-checking-putins-speech-ukraine/">speech that delivered his justifications for an invasion</a>.</p>
<p>Yet even in that speech, which was laden with dubious historical claims, pent-up grievances and false accusations about the Ukrainian government, the recent upsurge in fighting in the Donbas region registered almost as an afterthought. This is in contrast to Russia’s invasion in the <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/the-august-war-ten-years-on-a-retrospective-on-the-russo-georgian-war/">2008 war with Georgia</a>, which the Kremlin justified in terms of protecting “its” citizens from Georgian attacks. Given the lack of the pretense of a plausible rationale, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Kremlin is unconcerned about how the world views its invasion.</p>
<h2>Capturing the (false) flag</h2>
<p>In the past few weeks, U.S. officials have warned <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-belarus-jens-stoltenberg-43c9151532de706a2edec5684dfcf07d">several</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/13/ukraine-invasion-false-flag-00008470">times</a> that Russia planned a false flag attack. Such an operation, they alleged, would give Russia the pretext to invade Ukraine by provoking shock and outrage.</p>
<p>By exposing this plan, the Biden administration sought to undermine its emotional power and stop the Kremlin from manufacturing a casus belli, or justification for war.</p>
<p>But false flag attacks aren’t what they used to be. With satellite photos and live video on the ground <a href="https://theconversation.com/technology-is-revolutionizing-how-intelligence-is-gathered-and-analyzed-and-opening-a-window-onto-russian-military-activity-around-ukraine-176446">shared widely and instantly on the internet</a> – and with journalists and armchair sleuths joining intelligence professionals in analyzing the information – it’s difficult to get away with false flag attacks today. And with the prevalence of disinformation campaigns, manufacturing a justification for war doesn’t require the expense or risk of a false flag – let alone an actual attack.</p>
<h2>The long history of false flag attacks</h2>
<p>Both false flag attacks and allegations that states engage in them have a long history. The term originated to describe pirates’ wielding of friendly (and false) flags to lure merchant ships close enough to attack. It was later used as a label for any attack – real or simulated – that the instigators inflict against “friendly” forces to incriminate an adversary and create the basis for retaliation. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a large open-frame tower in a field" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Gleiwitz incident involved Nazi operatives staging an attack on a radio station near the Polish border in 1939 and blaming the attack on the Polish government as an excuse to invade Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler#/media/File:Sender_gliwice.jpg">Grimmi59 rade/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 20th century, there were several prominent episodes involving false flag operations. In 1939, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120314190818/http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html">agents from Nazi Germany</a> broadcast anti-German messages from a German radio station near the Polish border. They also murdered several civilians whom they dressed in Polish military uniforms to create a pretext for Germany’s planned invasion of Poland. </p>
<p>That same year, the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Frozen_Hell/yXsLNVaDfcoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Mainila">detonated shells</a> in Soviet territory near the Finnish border and blamed Finland, which it then proceeded to invade. </p>
<p>The U.S. has also been implicated in similar plots. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1">Operation Northwoods</a> was a proposal to kill Americans and blame the attack on Castro, thereby granting the military the pretext to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration ultimately rejected the plan.</p>
<p>In addition to these actual plots, there have been numerous alleged false flag attacks involving the U.S. government. The sinking of the <a href="http://www.nhgallery.org/uss-maine/">USS Maine</a> in 1898 and the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-50-years-ago">Gulf of Tonkin incident</a> in 1964 – each of which was a critical part of a casus belli – have been claimed as possible false flag attacks, though the evidence supporting these allegations is weak.</p>
<h2>Global visibility, disinformation and cynicism</h2>
<p>More recent and even less fact-based is the “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/9-11-and-the-rise-of-the-new-conspiracy-theorists-11599768458">9/11 Truth</a>” movement, which alleged that the Bush administration engineered the destruction of the twin towers to justify restrictions on civil liberties and lay the foundation for invading Iraq. <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/22/17036018/parkland-conspiracy-theories">Right-wing pundits and politicians</a> have promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats have staged mass shootings, such as the one at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, in order to push for gun control laws. </p>
<p>If people believe that false flag operations happen, it is <a href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/what-is-a-false-flag/">not because they are common</a>. Instead, they gain plausibility from the <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/news/low-political-integrity-throughout-the-european-union-gcb-eu-2021">widespread perception that politicians are unscrupulous</a> and take advantage of crises. </p>
<p>Furthermore, governments operate in relative secrecy and have recourse to tools of coercion such as intelligence, well-trained agents and weapons to implement their agenda. It is not a huge leap to imagine that leaders deliberately cause the high-impact events that they later exploit for political gain, notwithstanding the logistical complexities, large number of people who would have to be involved and moral qualms leaders might have about murdering their own citizens. </p>
<p>For example, it is not controversial to note that the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks to build support for its <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/07/22/why-did-we-invade-iraq/">invasion of Iraq</a>. Yet this led some people to conclude that, since the Bush administration benefited politically from 9/11, it therefore must have caused the attacks, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/seven-resources-debunking-911-conspiracy-theories">despite all evidence to the contrary</a>.</p>
<h2>The challenge of credibility</h2>
<p>The willingness to believe that leaders are capable of such atrocities reflects a broader trend of <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2021/07/trust-public-institutions/">rising distrust</a> toward governments worldwide, which, incidentally, complicates matters for leaders who intend to carry out false flag attacks. If the impact of such attacks has historically come from their ability to rally citizens around their leader, false flag attacks staged today may not only fail to provoke outrage against the purported aggressor, but they can also backfire by casting suspicion on the leaders who stand to benefit. </p>
<p>Furthermore, investigators using open source intelligence, such as the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-bellingcat-unmasked-putins-assassins">Bellingcat collective</a> of citizen internet sleuths, make it more difficult for governments to get away with egregious violations of laws and international norms.</p>
<p>Even as the Biden administration attempts to blunt Russia’s ability to seize the initiative, it too faces credibility challenges. Reporters were justifiably <a href="https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-russia-ukraine-health-europe-national-security-5c4182d83dd8b7585ac49fdbb5f91c45">skeptical of State Department spokesman</a> Ned Price’s warning about Russia’s false flag plans, especially since he did not provide evidence for the claim. </p>
<p>Skeptics pointed to the August 2021 drone strike during the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, which the military initially asserted was a “righteous strike” to kill a suicide bomber but that later turned out to be a mistaken attack on an innocent man and his family. It took <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/politics/afghanistan-drone-strike-video.html">overwhelming and undeniable evidence</a> from media investigations before the U.S. government admitted the mistake.</p>
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<p>Insofar as the Kremlin might expect to benefit from executing a false flag attack, it would be to manufacture a casus belli among Russian citizens rather than to persuade audiences abroad. Surveys have shown that the vast majority of Russians are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/11/russia-may-be-about-invade-ukraine-russians-dont-want-it/">opposed to invading Ukraine</a>, yet they also harbor negative attitudes toward NATO. </p>
<p>The spectacle of a provocation aimed against Russia on state-run television might provide a jolt of support for an invasion, at least initially. At the same time, Russians are <a href="https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/civil-society-russia-its-role-under-authoritarian-regime-part-ii-russian-society-today-life-opinions-nostalgia/">cynical about their own leaders</a> and might harbor the suspicion that a purported attack was manufactured for political gain.</p>
<h2>False flag alternatives</h2>
<p>In any event, Russia had other options to facilitate the invasion. At the start of its incursion into Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin used “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/russian-active-measures/9783838215297">active measures</a>,” including disinformation and deception, to prevent Ukrainian resistance and secure domestic approval. Russia and other post-Soviet states are also prone to claim a “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Revealing_Schemes/ezkqEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=provocation">provocation</a>,” which frames any military action as a justified response rather than a first move. </p>
<p>By contrast, false flag operations are complex and perhaps overly theatrical in a way that invites unwanted scrutiny. Governments seeking to sway public opinion face far greater challenges today than they did in the 20th century. False flag attacks are risky, while leaders seeking to manufacture a casus belli can select from a range of subtler and less costly alternatives.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-false-flag-attacks-and-could-russia-make-one-work-in-the-information-age-177128">article</a> originally published on Feb. 17, 2022.</em></p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-important">Get The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter</a>.</em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177879/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Radnitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Attacking your own side and blaming your foe has a long history and a firm grip on the popular imagination. But the internet makes it difficult to pull off – and less desirable.Scott Radnitz, Associate Professor of International Studies, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1771282022-02-17T21:12:33Z2022-02-17T21:12:33ZWhat are false flag attacks – and could Russia make one work in the information age?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447107/original/file-20220217-1111-q3f2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Russian and Ukrainian governments both blamed forces aligned with the other for mortar fire in eastern Ukraine and for using the accusations as justification for increased aggression.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/UkraineTensions/12cfaa5995ae41b492b6d37f87f25be1/photo">AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>An updated version of this article was published on Feb. 24, 2022. <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-false-flag-attacks-and-did-russia-stage-any-to-claim-justification-for-invading-ukraine-177879">Read it here</a>.</em></p>
<p>In the past few weeks, U.S. officials have warned <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-belarus-jens-stoltenberg-43c9151532de706a2edec5684dfcf07d">several</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/13/ukraine-invasion-false-flag-00008470">times</a> that Russia plans to create the appearance of an attack on its own forces and broadcast those images to the world. Such a “false flag” operation, they alleged, would give Russia the pretext to invade Ukraine by provoking shock and outrage. </p>
<p>By exposing this plan, the Biden administration sought to undermine its emotional power and stop the Kremlin from manufacturing a casus belli, or justification for war.</p>
<p>But false flag attacks aren’t what they used to be. With satellite photos and live video on the ground <a href="https://theconversation.com/technology-is-revolutionizing-how-intelligence-is-gathered-and-analyzed-and-opening-a-window-onto-russian-military-activity-around-ukraine-176446">shared widely and instantly on the internet</a> – and with journalists and armchair sleuths joining intelligence professionals in analyzing the information – it’s difficult to get away with false flag attacks today. And with the prevalence of disinformation campaigns, manufacturing a justification for war doesn’t require the expense or risk of a false flag – let alone an actual attack.</p>
<h2>The long history of false flag attacks</h2>
<p>Both false flag attacks and allegations that states engage in them have a long history. The term originated to describe pirates’ wielding of friendly (and false) flags to lure merchant ships close enough to attack. It was later used as a label for any attack – real or simulated – that the instigators inflict against “friendly” forces to incriminate an adversary and create the basis for retaliation. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a large open-frame tower in a field" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447119/original/file-20220217-23-mu8o6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Gleiwitz incident involved Nazi operatives staging an attack on a radio station near the Polish border in 1939 and blaming the attack on the Polish government as an excuse to invade Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler#/media/File:Sender_gliwice.jpg">Grimmi59 rade/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 20th century, there were several prominent episodes involving false flag operations. In 1939, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120314190818/http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html">agents from Nazi Germany</a> broadcast anti-German messages from a German radio station near the Polish border. They also murdered several civilians whom they dressed in Polish military uniforms to create a pretext for Germany’s planned invasion of Poland. </p>
<p>That same year, the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Frozen_Hell/yXsLNVaDfcoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Mainila">detonated shells</a> in Soviet territory near the Finnish border and blamed Finland, which it then proceeded to invade. </p>
<p>The U.S. has also been implicated in similar plots. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1">Operation Northwoods</a> was a proposal to kill Americans and blame the attack on Castro, thereby granting the military the pretext to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration ultimately rejected the plan.</p>
<p>In addition to these actual plots, there have been numerous alleged false flag attacks involving the U.S. government. The sinking of the <a href="http://www.nhgallery.org/uss-maine/">USS Maine</a> in 1898 and the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-50-years-ago">Gulf of Tonkin incident</a> in 1964 – each of which was a critical part of a casus belli – have been claimed as possible false flag attacks, though the evidence supporting these allegations is weak.</p>
<h2>Global visibility, disinformation and cynicism</h2>
<p>More recent and even less fact-based is the “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/9-11-and-the-rise-of-the-new-conspiracy-theorists-11599768458">9/11 Truth</a>” movement, which alleged that the Bush administration engineered the destruction of the twin towers to justify restrictions on civil liberties and lay the foundation for invading Iraq. <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/22/17036018/parkland-conspiracy-theories">Right-wing pundits and politicians</a> have promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats have staged mass shootings, such as the one at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, in order to push for gun control laws. </p>
<p>If people believe that false flag operations happen, it is <a href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/what-is-a-false-flag/">not because they are common</a>. Instead, they gain plausibility from the <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/news/low-political-integrity-throughout-the-european-union-gcb-eu-2021">widespread perception that politicians are unscrupulous</a> and take advantage of crises. </p>
<p>Furthermore, governments operate in relative secrecy and have recourse to tools of coercion such as intelligence, well-trained agents and weapons to implement their agenda. It is not a huge leap to imagine that leaders deliberately cause the high-impact events that they later exploit for political gain, notwithstanding the logistical complexities, large number of people who would have to be involved and moral qualms leaders might have about murdering their own citizens. </p>
<p>For example, it is not controversial to note that the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks to build support for its <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/07/22/why-did-we-invade-iraq/">invasion of Iraq</a>. Yet this led some people to conclude that, since the Bush administration benefited politically from 9/11, it therefore must have caused the attacks, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/seven-resources-debunking-911-conspiracy-theories">despite all evidence to the contrary</a>.</p>
<h2>The challenge of credibility</h2>
<p>The willingness to believe that leaders are capable of such atrocities reflects a broader trend of <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2021/07/trust-public-institutions/">rising distrust</a> toward governments worldwide, which, incidentally, complicates matters for leaders who intend to carry out false flag attacks. If the impact of such attacks has historically come from their ability to rally citizens around their leader, false flag attacks staged today may not only fail to provoke outrage against the purported aggressor, but they can also backfire by casting suspicion on the leaders who stand to benefit. </p>
<p>Furthermore, investigators using open source intelligence, such as the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-bellingcat-unmasked-putins-assassins">Bellingcat collective</a> of citizen internet sleuths, make it more difficult for governments to get away with egregious violations of laws and international norms.</p>
<p>Even as the Biden administration attempts to blunt Russia’s ability to seize the initiative, it too faces credibility challenges. Reporters were justifiably <a href="https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-russia-ukraine-health-europe-national-security-5c4182d83dd8b7585ac49fdbb5f91c45">skeptical of State Department spokesman</a> Ned Price’s warning about Russia’s false flag plans, especially since he did not provide evidence for the claim. </p>
<p>Skeptics pointed to the August 2021 drone strike during the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, which the military initially asserted was a “righteous strike” to kill a suicide bomber but that later turned out to be a mistaken attack on an innocent man and his family. It took <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/politics/afghanistan-drone-strike-video.html">overwhelming and undeniable evidence</a> from media investigations before the U.S. government admitted the mistake.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Insofar as the Kremlin might expect to benefit from executing a false flag attack, it would be to manufacture a casus belli among Russian citizens rather than to persuade audiences abroad. Surveys have shown that the vast majority of Russians are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/11/russia-may-be-about-invade-ukraine-russians-dont-want-it/">opposed to invading Ukraine</a>, yet they also harbor negative attitudes toward NATO. </p>
<p>The spectacle of a provocation aimed against Russia on state-run television might provide a jolt of support for an invasion, at least initially. At the same time, Russians are <a href="https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/civil-society-russia-its-role-under-authoritarian-regime-part-ii-russian-society-today-life-opinions-nostalgia/">cynical about their own leaders</a> and might harbor the suspicion that a purported attack was manufactured for political gain.</p>
<h2>False flag alternatives</h2>
<p>In any event, Russia has other options to facilitate an invasion. At the start of its incursion into Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin used “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/russian-active-measures/9783838215297">active measures</a>,” including disinformation and deception, to prevent Ukrainian resistance and secure domestic approval. Russia and other post-Soviet states are also prone to claim a “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Revealing_Schemes/ezkqEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=provocation">provocation</a>,” which frames any military action as a justified response rather than a first move. </p>
<p>By contrast, false flag operations are complex and perhaps overly theatrical in a way that invites unwanted scrutiny. Governments seeking to sway public opinion face far greater challenges today than they did in the 20th century. False flag attacks are risky, while leaders seeking to manufacture a casus belli can select from a range of subtler and less costly alternatives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Radnitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Attacking your own side and blaming your foe has a long history and a firm grip on the popular imagination. But the internet makes it difficult to pull off – and less desirable.Scott Radnitz, Associate Professor of International Studies, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1699372021-11-29T22:29:58Z2021-11-29T22:29:58ZSchools need to step up to address Islamophobia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433528/original/file-20211123-21-300cu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=445%2C50%2C4724%2C2959&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are many ongoing silences and erasures around anti-Muslim hate and violence in education systems. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The inspiration for this article was born of frustration and heartache. It follows the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-vigil-london-muslim-family-attack-1.6058519">murders of four intergenerational members</a> of the Afzaal/Salman family that left a nine-year-old child injured and orphaned in London, Ont., on June 6, 2021. </p>
<p>It also follows ongoing injustice related to <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/bill-21-resulted-in-racism-towards-student-teachers-mcgill-research-finds">state-sanctioned racism of Bill 21 in Québec</a> and a rash of hate attacks in Alberta, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/07/04/they-only-call-it-a-hate-crime-after-you-get-killed-as-muslim-women-are-attacked-in-alberta-a-community-asks-can-canada-face-its-islamophobia-problem.html">most of them targeting Black Muslim women in hijab</a>. </p>
<p>This year <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/a-string-of-hate-motivated-attacks-muslim-women-in-edmonton-reveals-a-complicated-history">at least nine attacks in Edmonton were reported to police, seven of which resulted in criminal charges</a>.</p>
<p>There is ongoing silence and erasure when it comes to anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia in the education systems we and our loved ones inhabit. </p>
<h2>Islamophobia: A form of racism</h2>
<p>Although there is no one static understanding or definition of Islamophobia, we recognize it as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920514531606">form of racism, structural and individual, that is rooted in long histories of empire and colonization</a>. </p>
<p>The events of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States have had deep, long-lasting reverberations for Muslims globally. While western narratives have framed Islam through the lens <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4740907M/Orientalism">of orientalism</a> for centuries, 9/11 triggered renewed forms of Islamophobia across sectors.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person holds a sign that says 'standing with Muslims against Islamophobia and racism'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People hold signs during a demonstration in Montréal in March 2017 in support of Parliament’s motion to condemn Islamophobia, systemic racism and religious discrimination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We should examine multiple dimensions of Islamophobia that build and shape <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-International-Handbook-of-Islamophobia/Zempi-Awan/p/book/9780367783914">realities of Muslim people through policy, social and economic structures and public representations</a> across institutions and around the world. These manifestations shape the representations of Muslims, and their embodied experience of “Muslimness” in Canada.</p>
<p>It’s important to consider Islamophobia not only in daily hate crimes but also in daily indignities, silencing and injuries to Muslims’ sense of self and well-being. </p>
<p>There are common ways that educators, boards, senior leadership and the policies and curricula they support maintain the reality of Islamophobia in schools. These “evasions” are ways of escaping or avoiding addressing Islamophobia that allow us to maintain a sense of innocence and goodness, while denying complicity in perpetuating harms against Muslims.</p>
<h2>Evasion 1: Excluding Islamophobia from discussions of racism</h2>
<p>One way schools avoid addressing Islamophobia is by <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/2/14452388/muslim-ban-immigration-order-islamophobia-racism-muslims-hate">neglecting to explicitly name and address it in larger discussions of racism</a>, xenophobia and oppression.</p>
<p>Common understandings of racism maintain narrow definitions of race as solely related to biology. But as sociologist Saher Selod explains, “racialization” is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920513516022">process and act</a>. It is articulated and enforced through cultural, political or legal narratives. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920514531606">Islamophobia is an outcome of the racialization of Muslims</a> as an “other.” </p>
<p>While Islamophobia is a form of racism, it must also be understood that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2001.32.4.399">Muslim students hold multiple identities</a>, including their socio-economic status, ethnicity and linguistic identity, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680600788503">as well as their</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220932156">gender</a> and sexuality, along with other forms of <a href="http://tessellateinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Black-Muslims-in-Canada-Systematic-Review-FatimahJacksonBest.pdf">racialization</a>. As such, the specific way a Muslim student may experience Islamophobia is through the interaction of their multiple identities. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrating-diversity-isnt-enough-schools-need-anti-racist-curriculum-140424">Celebrating diversity isn't enough: Schools need anti-racist curriculum</a>
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<p>Such interconnected aspects of identity are related to broader systems of oppression, and as education researcher George J. Sefa Dei notes, <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/anti-racism-education">anti-racist education should seek to respond to complex oppressions</a> through <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later">intersectional</a> analysis.</p>
<h2>Evasion 2: Asserting we have a ‘secular’ society</h2>
<p>The implicit belief that Canadians <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1220008">exist in a secular society with secular public institutions</a> is widespread. But the institutions of Canadian society, including our schools, were built and now operate as if being Christian is the norm. Mainstream educational institutions continue to marginalize <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/04/19/why-calls-for-secularism-in-education-is-a-facade-opinion.html">students (and their families) who are non-Christian as outside of national identity</a>. </p>
<p>Public school curricula occasionally teaches <em>about</em> a religion, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29546">largely avoids discussion rooted in faith and spirituality as part of identity and lived experience</a>. Countering Islamophobia requires a critical examination <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/islam-in-the-hinterlands">of white supremacy, its Christian hegemony and racial power hierarchies</a>.</p>
<p>Educating about Islam can be valuable in countering misinformation, but is insufficient to challenge Islamophobia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large crowd of people is seen marching on the street, next to a line of cars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of people march through the streets of London, Ont., on June 11, 2021, in a Multi-Faith March to End Hatred after four members of a Muslim family were killed in a hate crime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Robins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evasion 3: ‘We don’t have any Muslim students’</h2>
<p>Naming, addressing and dismantling Islamophobia does not require the presence of Muslims. The assumption of “no Muslims here” should also be held lightly, as some families choose not to disclose their faith identity for a myriad of reasons, including protecting their children from anticipated racial targeting. </p>
<p>While the presence of self-identified and identifiable Muslim students and staff may mean there is an increase in instances of explicit Islamophobia, their visible presence in a school isn’t a precondition for the commitment to recognize and address this form of racism.</p>
<h2>Evasion 4: ‘We have faith accommodations’</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-based-creed/9-duty-accommodate">Faith accommodations</a> can be viewed as an improvement from the explicit <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2013.765681">exclusion of Muslims from public spaces through claims of secularism</a>. But “accommodating” within existing structures won’t address the Islamophobia in curriculum, policy or institutional culture.</p>
<p>Faith accommodations are often approached as a procedure (at best) or sometimes as a nuisance to “integrate” minority students. Rarely are they viewed as <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/beyond-accommodation">an opportunity to build relationships, to learn together</a> or to transform schooling. </p>
<h2>Evasion 5: ‘We don’t know enough’</h2>
<p>Author and education scholar <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622408/we-want-to-do-more-than-survive-by-bettina-love/">Bettina Love</a> writes that if people believe that teaching against racism is important, they will commit to doing the work — including unlearning, learning and not waiting to be taught by people within communities who experience different forms of intersecting violence. </p>
<p>Too often, Muslim students and colleagues are forced to become “ambassadors” of their faith tradition because the adults around them assert that they don’t know enough about Islam and Islamophobia.</p>
<h2>Evasion 6: Excusing Islamophobia as ‘free speech’</h2>
<p>Muslim scholars, feminists, theorists and clergy have long engaged in study, analysis, debate and critique in understanding Islamic scripture, practices and histories. As in all faith communities and traditions, there has always been and continues to be vibrant dialogue and reflection within Islam. Muslim communities hold a plethora of understandings and modes of religious practice. Insisting that Muslims homogeneously subscribe to a fictional singular (medieval) understanding of Islam is a cornerstone to Islamophobia. </p>
<p>Too often an invitation to debate “about Islam” and “Muslim life” in classrooms is informed by sources promoting this perspective. This results is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1757743818790276">Islamophobic targeting</a> and harassment — <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/29/515451746/muslim-schoolchildren-bullied-by-fellow-students-and-teachers">sometimes even led by or in the presence of teachers</a> — that is dismissed as “free speech.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People are 'standing against Islamophobia' signs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People gather for a vigil in Toronto held for victims of the New Zealand terror attack in March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New stories urgently needed</h2>
<p>These evasions are just some of the ways Islamophobia is perpetuated through silences and omissions in school systems. Potential ways of living out different stories in school systems include:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Recognizing how Islamophobia is present, even when Muslim students and staff aren’t. Like other forms of racism, <a href="http://tessellateinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Examining-Islamophobia-in-Ontario-Public-Schools-1.pdf">Islamophobia is always operating in various structures, curricula, language and beliefs</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Addressing and removing barriers to meaningful inclusion. Go beyond accommodating and move towards designing spaces and systems in ways <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622408/we-want-to-do-more-than-survive-by-bettina-love">where every student feels they belong and matter</a>. This necessarily entails co-creating life-giving and sustaining spaces that affirm spirituality and faith, even when schools claim to be secular.</p></li>
<li><p>Teaching against Islamophobia needs to be explicit, purposeful and integrated in anti-racist work. We believe all educators have an ethical responsibility to work towards becoming co-conspirators and disrupt anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic and ableist systems. School systems cannot wait for this to happen organically. Anti-racist and anti-oppressive education must become a guiding ethic and expectation in all educational institutions.</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>Commit to doing the work</h2>
<p>In planning this article, we asked, “What will it take for education systems (and the people leading and within them) to finally take Islamophobia seriously?”</p>
<p>Too often, being Muslim is seen as being incompatible with public life in Canada. We want better for ourselves, our children and all children, youth, families, caregivers and educators who live and work within these systems.</p>
<p>Educators and school systems cannot continue to evade facing, interrupting and dismantling Islamophobia. They must step up and commit to doing the work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tackling Islamophobia as a form of racism even when Muslims aren’t visible is key.Nada Aoudeh, PhD Candidate, Education, York University, CanadaMuna Saleh, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Concordia University of EdmontonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1678992021-09-26T20:05:46Z2021-09-26T20:05:46Z‘It is a big relief for me’: how the welfare provided by madrassas holds a key to fighting the Taliban<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421793/original/file-20210917-19-umhkvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Muhammed Muheisen/AP/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The swift reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan after a failed 20-year war means we need to look beyond military solutions to extremism. One area policymakers should focus on are madrassas — the religious schools that have existed in many Muslim countries for centuries.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/afghans-lives-and-livelihoods-upended-even-more-as-us-occupation-ends-165059">Afghans' lives and livelihoods upended even more as US occupation ends</a>
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<p>Our research in Pakistan shows the importance of these institutions not just in terms of education and religious fundamentalism, but welfare support, too. </p>
<p>This provides critical lessons for Afghanistan. </p>
<h2>Madrassas and the Taliban connection</h2>
<p>The exact number of madrassas in Afghanistan is not documented, but many Taliban have studied in them. There are an estimated <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-moving-bring-madrassas-under-state-control/4896232.html">30,000-plus madrassas</a> in Pakistan, where there is also a strong connection to the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230106581_6">Taliban</a>. For example, the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in north west Pakistan has been <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/madrasa-jihadi-pakistan-taliban-b1920669.html">described</a> as the “university of jihad”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a madrassa reading the Koran." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421794/original/file-20210917-21-19xorhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">There are tens of thousands of madrassas in Pakistan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Waqqar Hussnain/EPA/AAP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The 9/11 Commission’s report found madrassas provided a narrow education, supporting religious fundamentalism, that may <a href="https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">lead to terrorism</a>. It specifically recommended supporting improved education in Pakistan. </p>
<p>But reforms have only met with limited success. In part, this is because madrassas help meet the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11036-020-01696-z">welfare needs</a> of large, marginalised segments of the population. </p>
<h2>Poverty in Afghanistan and Pakistan</h2>
<p>Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have very high poverty levels, although the problems are more intense in Afghanistan. In 2016, more than half (51.7%) <a href="https://ophi.org.uk/afghanistan-multidimensional-poverty-index-2016-2017/?preview=true">of the Afghan population</a> and 39% <a href="https://www.undp.org/content/dam/pakistan/docs/MPI/Multidimensional%20Poverty%20in%20Pakistan.pdf">of Pakistan’s population</a> were considered poor due to the serious health, education and living standard deprivations they faced, using the poverty line of US$1.90 (A$2.60) per day. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/talibans-religious-ideology-deobandi-islam-has-roots-in-colonial-india-166323">Taliban's religious ideology – Deobandi Islam – has roots in colonial India</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>More than 70% <a href="https://www.ilo.org/islamabad/areasofwork/informal-economy/lang--en/index.htm">of Pakistan’s workforce</a> are in informal jobs, such as street vending and more than 80% in Afghanistan <a href="https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/economy-development-environment/eat-and-dont-die-daily-wage-labour-as-a-window-into-afghan-society/">are in similarly vulnerable</a> employment. </p>
<p>Despite the high level of need in these countries, <a href="https://www.adb.org/publications/social-protection-indicator-asia-assessing-progress">spending on social protection</a> is only 2% of GDP, a figure less than 1/10th the average <a href="https://www.oecd.org/social/expenditure.htm">in high-income countries</a>. In Australia social spending (including health) makes up <a href="https://www.oecd.org/social/expenditure.htm">close to 17%</a> of GDP. </p>
<h2>Research in Pakistan</h2>
<p>Between November 2019 and February 2020, the lead author travelled to Pakistan to conduct field research. Almost 600 families who sent children to madrassas were surveyed, with 90 of this group further interviewed in depth. An additional 40 madrassa heads were also interviewed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Boys study in a Madrassa in 2016" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421795/original/file-20210917-21-y7n3cq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many students at madrassas come from deeply impoverished families.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mohammad Sajjad/AP/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1440719">132 districts in Pakistan</a>, but these can include several towns and villages, and the fringes can include significant rural populations. Out of these 132 districts, 14 were randomly selected for survey. About 35-45 families from each district were then randomly selected. The selected cities had high, middle and low poverty index scores and included Lahore, Faisalabad, Bajor (a conflict-affected tribal area bordering Afghanistan), Upper Dir (a conflict-affected area in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Multan. </p>
<p>The families were asked about their jobs, assets, the risks they faced, and the support they received from the government and family, friends, and religious institutions. </p>
<h2>Living on 20 cents a day</h2>
<p>The study found most families sending their children to madrassas were deeply impoverished. Remembering that the international poverty line is only US$1.90 per day, it is notable that of the 570 households studied, more than 400 were earning between 14 and 28 US cents per person per day (20 to 40 Australian cents per day). </p>
<p>Of the group, almost 12% were unemployed, while 60% had precarious jobs such as street vending, and 1.75% had no male adult — so child labour was their primary income source.</p>
<p>Of those surveyed, 15% suffered from infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and polio. Forced migration because of conflict (13%) and natural disasters (13%) were also common.</p>
<p>One of the participants described the lack of services: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My wife and I suffer from hepatitis […] A sizeable portion of my income is spent on treating this disease […] The water in my area is salty and undrinkable. Therefore, we must travel long distances to collect water. The hospital is hours drive from our village, and in emergency cases, we usually resort to traditional treatments.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another talked about the ongoing risk of violence: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are faced with a tribal conflict ongoing for forty years. Several members of our family have been killed in this conflict. We cannot move out of our homes during the day […].</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Madrassas fill the vacuum</h2>
<p>In the absence of hospitals and essential services, madrassas step in to help fill these needs. They are a significant source of welfare for these families, in addition to the education they provide. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women and children in Afghanistan seeking food donations." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421797/original/file-20210917-23-ns5oxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan has plunged the country into crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bernat Armangue/AP/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This can include cash assistance to families in times of need, assistance with health costs and helping with marriage and burial services. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am a brick kiln worker, and we are a family of eight […] I have sent two of my kids to a madrassa in another city, where they are fed, provided shelter, and given a monthly stipend. So, it is a big relief for me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A madrassa education, including education in Arabic, also makes children employable, potentially leading to jobs in other countries, or as Islamic teachers in schools, re-employment in the same madrassas or running their own madrassas. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I got a degree in Islamic education and got re-employed in the same madrassa. Although my income is less, I am happy that I have a job to feed my family.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Lessons for aid agencies and governments</h2>
<p>International development agencies and financial organisations <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22101">now highlight</a> the role of social safety nets in poverty reduction in developing countries. </p>
<p>Despite this growing interest, Pakistan and Afghanistan face severe economic and financial problems, assistance through formal government programs is only marginally helpful in meeting household needs. </p>
<p>As one participant explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am a widow, and I get approximately 4500 PKR (approximately A$42) on a quarterly basis from [the government social welfare program]. I have to feed four kids, and the amount I receive is so little that I can use it only for buying basic consumption items [wheat flour, lentils, oil, rice, milk, and vegetables] of a week.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our research suggests vulnerable and marginalised populations will continue to depend on madrassas for welfare support so long as governments do not have the adequate financial resources to fund effective social protection programmes. </p>
<p>In turn, a breeding ground for fundamentalism and extremism may continue to welcome new recruits. International donor agencies and countries such as Australia should direct their efforts to strengthen formal welfare strategies, so impoverished families are not forced to turn to madrassas for help.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zahid Mumtaz receives funding from Australian National University for his PhD. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Whiteford has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Social Services. He is a Policy Advisor to the Australian Council of Social Service and a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.</span></em></p>Madrassas don’t just provide an education that may lead to terrorism. They provide critical financial support to impoverished people.Zahid Mumtaz, PHD candidate and casual sessional academic, Australian National UniversityPeter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1684222021-09-23T12:30:01Z2021-09-23T12:30:01Z20 years after 9/11, the men charged with responsibility are still waiting for trial – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422743/original/file-20210922-24-1gbobmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C3000%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and co-defendants return to court in November.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Sept11WhereAreTheyNow/6c9f5ca01f284537ab17763897a37847/photo?Query=trial%20AND%20guantanamo&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=170&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Janet Hamlin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.911memorial.org/connect/commemoration/20th-anniversary-commemoration">20th anniversary of 9/11</a> passed, the five men accused of responsibility for the attacks were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/september-11-trial-guantanamo-bay.html">still awaiting trial</a> in the Guantanamo <a href="https://www.mc.mil/">military commission</a>.</p>
<p>This case is the largest criminal prosecution in U.S. history in terms of number of victims. The charge sheet <a href="https://www.mc.mil/Portals/0/pdfs/KSM2/KSM%20II%20(Sworn%20Charges).pdf">lists the names of 2,976 people </a> who were direct casualties of two hijacked commercial airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center and caused the twin towers to collapse, another that crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth, probably aiming for the U.S. Capitol building, that was brought down in a field in western Pennsylvania when several passengers overpowered their hijackers. </p>
<p>Yet two decades after the U.S.’s worst terrorist attack, the 9/11 case remains mired in the pretrial phase with no start date for the trial. The hearings, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/07/911-attacks-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-pre-trial-resumes">resumed September 7, 2021</a> after a 17-month COVID-19 related suspension, were the first for the case’s new judge – the fourth officer to fill that role.</p>
<p>As someone who has visited Guantanamo on 11 occasions since 2013 to observe legal proceedings in the 9/11 case, I have come to understand that the delays are the inevitable result of an irreconcilable conflict: The U.S. government’s objective is to convict and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/8/31/death-penalty-trial-date-set-for-alleged-september-11-attackers">execute the accused men</a> as a way to provide justice for the thousands of victims. But those goals are stymied by the fact that the defendants are also <a href="https://law.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/extraordinaryrenditionandNC.pdf">victims of CIA torture</a>.</p>
<h2>No martyrdom-by-military commission</h2>
<p>The 9/11 case involves five defendants. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-torture-report/rectal-hydration-inside-cias-interrogation-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-n265016">Khalid Sheikh Mohammad</a>, whom the government refers to as KSM, is accused of being the “mastermind” behind the attacks. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/legacy/photos/2008/guantanamo/Mubarek-Bin-Attash.html">Walid bin Attash</a> is accused of training two of the hijackers how to fight in close quarters using box cutters to take over the planes. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/legacy/photos/2008/guantanamo/Ramzi-Binakshibh.html">Ramzi bin al-Shibh</a> is accused of recruiting some of the hijackers who formed a cell in Hamburg, Germany, and serving as an intermediary between lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and al-Qaeda leaders. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Press%20Releases/2006%20Press%20Releases/DetaineeBiographies.pdf">Ammar al-Baluchi</a>, whom the government refers to as Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/legacy/photos/2008/guantanamo/Mustafa-Al-Hawsawi.html">Mustafa al-Hawsawi</a> are accused of making money transfers to some of the hijackers.</p>
<p>The men were charged in 2007 and arraigned in June 2008. The Bush administration hoped that the trial could be concluded before President George W. Bush left office. But that hope was dashed in December 2008 when Mohammad and the other defendants <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/us/09gitmo.html">offered to plead guilty</a> on the condition that they would be executed immediately. This <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article1929229.html">attempt to martyr themselves</a> was not an option – the Military Commission Act does not have a provision for executions without trials.</p>
<p>The Obama administration, after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/us/05gitmo.html">abandoning its plan to try the men in federal court</a> in New York, recharged them in the military commissions on April 4, 2012. In official filings, the abbreviated name for the case is KSM II to denote that this is a second attempt to pull this trial off.</p>
<h2>Demands for full disclosure</h2>
<p>For most of the 9/11 hearings I have attended, there have been fewer than 10 journalists in the media delegations. Procedural battles over complex and arcane points of law are seemingly not the stuff of headline news. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://soc.ucsb.edu/people/lisa-hajjar">scholar of law and torture</a>, they are fascinating to me. In trying to understand how torture does or should matter to the legal process in a case in which the defendants face the death penalty, I realized that the 9/11 case is caught between conflicting interests that play out in battles between defense teams and prosecutors over the <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_network/how_courts_work/discovery/#:%7E:text=This%20is%20the%20formal%20process,what%20evidence%20may%20be%20presented.&text=Depositions%20enable%20a%20party%20to,will%20say%20at%20the%20trial.">discovery of information</a> about what happened to the defendants during the years they were detained at CIA “black sites” – secret overseas prisons in which U.S. agents interrogated suspects.</p>
<p>The defense lawyers want access to all information the government possesses about their clients’ abusive treatment by the CIA, including granular details about their torture. They insist it is necessary to provide effective legal counsel.</p>
<p>The demand is especially pertinent in a capital case, but information about a defendant’s treatment in pretrial custody is legally relevant in any criminal case. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Chairs line an empty courtoom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422749/original/file-20210922-23-11tu9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Long spells of inactivity inside the U.S. military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-united-states-military-courtroom-is-seen-at-camp-news-photo/171665926?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The prosecution argues that documents containing the full details about the CIA’s now-defunct Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program are too sensitive to share, even with lawyers with top-secret security clearances. The CIA’s secrets, as <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/government-secrecy-torture-stymied-9-11-terror-prosecution/">one prosecutor explained</a>, are “the most highly classified information that the government has … It’s extremely important that we protect that information.” </p>
<p>Instead of original CIA materials, prosecutors have provided about 21,000 pages of summaries and substitutions that obscure specific dates and locations and mask the identities of agents and contractors. </p>
<p>The CIA, which controls information about its operations and dictates what prosecutors can provide to the defense in discovery, has <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/77835/nuremberg-prosecutor-says-guantanamo-military-commissions-dont-measure-up/">no institutional interest in due process or fair trials</a>, only in maintaining its secrets. </p>
<p>The prosecution, meanwhile, counters defense demands for more information by insisting that this trial is about the defendants’ roles in the crime of 9/11, and what happened to them afterward is unrelated to their involvement in these events.</p>
<p>“The CIA is not on trial,” said <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/us/politics/guantanamo-trials-torture.html">prosecutor Jeffrey Groharing</a>.</p>
<h2>No ‘after torture’</h2>
<p>Since September 2019, many of the hearings have been devoted to defense efforts to persuade the judge to exclude evidence the government wants to use at trial, namely statements the defendants gave to FBI agents who interrogated them in 2007, five months after they were transferred from the black sites. The government referred to the agents as “clean teams” because they had no hand in the CIA’s torture program.</p>
<p>The prosecution maintains that because the FBI interrogators used lawful methods rather than coercion when questioning the defendants, these statements should be admissible in court. The defense has called witnesses, including the two architects of the CIA torture program, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/17/544183178/psychologists-behind-cia-enhanced-interrogation-program-settle-detainees-lawsuit">James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen</a>, who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/us/politics/911-trial-psychologists.html">testified in January 2020</a>. The Defense teams are making the case that there is no “after torture” for victims, and therefore the FBI statements are tainted by their past torture and should be dismissed – in legal terms – as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” </p>
<p>From my perspective, the pretrial logjam could largely be resolved if the government made a choice: If the priority is to protect
the CIA’s secrets, the death penalty should be taken off the table and plea bargain negotiations for life sentences should begin. If the death penalty remains a priority, the defense should be given access to all the information they seek, including, for example, the full <a href="https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/43339/Connections-Episode-15-The-Lasting-Legacies-of-US-Torture">Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report about the CIA’s rendition program</a>.</p>
<p>Although this case garners sporadic media attention, it deserves greater public interest because the stakes are so high. No one can predict when the 9/11 trial will finally begin, let alone how this case will end, but one thing should be clear: an important chapter in the history of the U.S. in the 21st century is being written in the high-security courtroom in Guantanamo.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Hajjar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar who has visited Guantanamo 11 times to observe legal proceedings in the 9/11 terrorism case explains why the conflict continues to delay the case going to trial.Lisa Hajjar, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676082021-09-21T12:33:19Z2021-09-21T12:33:19ZAfghanistan’s war rug industry distorts the reality of everyday trauma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421444/original/file-20210915-24-43pjvq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=127%2C6%2C4013%2C2070&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The rug designs tend to contain symbols – AK-47s, 9/11 and drones – that reflect an outsider’s understanding of war.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin Sudeith, courtesy of WarRug.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/31/biden-addresses-the-end-of-the-us-war-in-afghanistan.html">The end of the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan</a> resulted in the withdrawal of most foreign aid workers and contractors. </p>
<p>It may well also spell the demise of the country’s <a href="https://warrug.com/index.html">war rug industry</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://rels.sas.upenn.edu/people/jamal-elias">As a specialist in the visual and material culture of the Islamic world</a>, I first became aware of war rugs when I was working on a book on <a href="https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/library/on-wings-of-diesel-trucks-identity-and-culture-in-pakistan">truck decoration</a> in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990s. </p>
<p>Since that time, I’ve followed changes in this industry and cultivated relationships with Pakistani and Afghan rug sellers. </p>
<p>War rugs – with symbols of war – are distinctive and dynamic in their styles. But they’re often misunderstood by buyers, journalists and curators. </p>
<h2>The growth of the war rug market</h2>
<p>There is no evidence of the existence of Afghan war rugs prior to the late-20th century.</p>
<p>The earliest rugs seem to have emerged shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 from refugee camps in Pakistan, where millions of Afghans had relocated. Featuring guns, helicopters and tanks, they were small and shoddily made with coarse wool. Rug sellers and souvenir shops pitched them to workers for non-government organizations and Western government officials.</p>
<p>The designs have become more sophisticated over the years. </p>
<p>English words were added, intentionally or accidentally garbled with <a href="https://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/reference/cyrillic.html">Cyrillic words and letters</a> to evoke a Soviet connection. After 9/11, fixed patterns started to emerge – a sign that weavers were adhering to templates provided by rug merchants. The images made it clear that they were hoping to primarily appeal to an American souvenir market. </p>
<p>One popular design <a href="https://warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?ids=37">commemorates the 9/11 attacks</a>, pointing out that it was not Afghans who were responsible, but terrorists from other countries.</p>
<p>Another depicts a map of Afghanistan, professing Afghanistan’s friendship with the U.S. with text and images. It has the misspelled word “terrarism” written on the region of the country associated with the Taliban. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rug featuring bomber planes and an outline of Afghanistan." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422029/original/file-20210920-19-ij0cn5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After 9/11, merchants started trying to appeal to an American souvenir market.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin Sudeith, courtesy of WarRug.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The writing on some rugs declares that they’re made in Sheberghan, a city in northern Afghanistan <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/weaving-project-afghan-turkmen">famous for its Turkmen weavers</a>.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely that they’re all made there. However, whether they’re made in northern Afghanistan or in <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2003/1/3e3a3e8ba/feature-eager-weavers-positive-spin-refugee-life-pakistan.html">Afghan settlements in Pakistan</a>, the word “Shebergan,” written in English, is supposed to signal that these rugs are authentically Afghan.</p>
<p>Such rugs are readily available on eBay and were – until recently – sold by souvenir sellers in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan’s cities with the largest number of foreign workers and tourists. With the Taliban’s return to power, it remains unclear what the future of rug making and its market will be.</p>
<p>Over the years, war motifs have found their way into higher-quality, larger carpets, <a href="https://warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?ids=7">with small tanks appearing where rows of medallions</a> might traditionally have been. Other rugs feature a more comprehensive <a href="https://warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?ids=36">integration of modern and traditional patterns</a>.</p>
<p>While these larger carpets take substantially more time to make and cost more money than the far more common smaller, coarser rugs, they nevertheless don’t meet the standards of fine carpets, which suggests they’re geared more to souvenir collectors than those seeking luxury home furnishings.</p>
<h2>Misreading the meaning of the rugs</h2>
<p>Over the past 20 years, Afghan war rugs have garnered considerable attention.</p>
<p>Books in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1179076">German</a> and <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/war-rugs-the-nightmare-of-modernism/oclc/290472030">English</a> describe, <a href="https://www.warrug.com/pages/book.php">catalog and contextualize</a> them. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/drones-are-appearing-on-afghan-rugs/385025/">Magazines</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/nyregion/rugs-depict-terror-attack-but-new-york-isn-t-ready-for-9-11-kitsch.html">major newspapers</a> have run features on them, and <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/2011-04-21/features/war-rugs-offer-glimpse-changing-art-afghanistan">university art galleries</a> have exhibited them.</p>
<p>Within the coverage, there’s a tendency to see war rugs as a reflection of the emotional lives of the weavers, who, wracked by war and violence, felt compelled to incorporate these motifs into their designs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rug featuring a tank pattern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422030/original/file-20210920-31825-1fdrk1r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some rugs incorporate war motifs, like tanks, into traditional designs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin Sudeith, courtesy of WarRug.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Articles and exhibits often ignore the reality that rug brokers and dealers – not weavers – are the ones who are attuned to fickle market tastes. <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---ipec/documents/instructionalmaterial/wcms_667934.pdf">Studies on labor in the rug industry</a> note that they’re normally the ones who supply weavers with new patterns, color schemes and yarn. I’ve seen the same dynamic in my own long-term observations.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Afghan war rugs are produced for the market. It’s that simple. </p>
<p>Yet you’ll still see exhibit curators <a href="https://temple-news.com/voicing-global-conflict-survival/">describe war rugs</a> as combining “ancient practice with the latest in the daily lives of the weavers,” or as windows into the perspectives of everyday Afghans – the “underdogs” in a country subsumed by strife. </p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/nyregion/afghan-visual-scene-is-focus-of-exhibition-in-ewing.html?searchResultPosition=1">The New York Times reported that weavers had incorporated</a> “the grim realities of life in a war zone into their traditional craft.” Six years earlier, Smithsonian Magazine buried a brief acknowledgment that the rugs are for tourists under claims – with scant evidence – <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/rug-of-war-19377583/">that the earliest war rugs were intended for Afghan buyers who resented the Soviet invasion</a>. Later, the writer notes that female weavers drew from their own lives when they incorporated symbols of violence.</p>
<h2>The appeal of the trauma market</h2>
<p>With so much evidence showing that Afghan war rugs are produced in response to market demand, why do claims that they’re based on the weavers’ experiences of war persist? </p>
<p>Part of the answer lies in the global market for handicrafts. Buyers want to feel like they’re purchasing artisanal products when, in reality, they’re sold by the thousands in chain stores and through online storefronts such as Ten Thousand Villages or Etsy.</p>
<p>Implying that rugs are a source of income for traumatized and destitute Afghan women ignores the reality that the overwhelming majority of profits go to middlemen and dealers. A work-from-home model encourages workers to devote all available time to rug production. <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---ipec/documents/instructionalmaterial/wcms_667934.pdf">It also encourages child labor</a>: Children are either tasked with making the crude rugs or are forced to take up the responsibilities of adults. </p>
<p>The appeal of war rugs – and the insistence that their designs represent a victim’s experience of war – seems to reflect a vicarious desire to peer into the emotional experience of Afghan civilians. </p>
<p>In reality, though, this gives primacy not to the actual experiences of Afghans, but to the viewers’ and customers’ ideas of victimhood. The granular realities of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/world/asia/14afghan.html">the loss of home and animals</a>, <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan">family deaths</a> or <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210820-one-in-three-afghans-at-risk-of-severe-or-acute-hunger-wfp">food insecurity</a> aren’t represented in the rugs. Nor should we assume weavers would wish to put their own traumas on display for the world.</p>
<p>Modern rugs are not venues for self-expression, and the designs tend to contain an index of symbols that reflect an outsider’s understanding of war: AK-47s, 9/11, security politics and drones.</p>
<p>Nowhere in the rugs do we see the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/07/afghanistan-little-help-conflict-linked-trauma#">well-documented psychological and health impacts</a> on Afghanistan’s population caused by decades of deprivation and violence. </p>
<p>Real trauma is not only hard to turn into a commodity, it is also hard to live with – even in souvenirs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamal J. Elias does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>War rugs are more reflections of market forces than memorials to suffering.Jamal J. Elias, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1677332021-09-10T15:17:29Z2021-09-10T15:17:29Z9/11: how politicians and the media turned terrorism into an Islamic issue<p>As we mark the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is important to reflect on the legacy that event – and the “war on terror” more broadly – has had for the way news media cover terrorism. Though we should be clear that terrorism as we define it now predates the attacks by well over a century, what is significant about the events of 9/11 is the way they turned terrorism into a near-constant feature of the daily news cycle.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Inside_Terrorism/_ayrAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Inside+Terrorism&printsec=frontcover">Scholars</a> have long-argued that there is a symbiotic relationship between the news media and terrorism. For journalists, terrorist violence fulfils core <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781135592011/chapters/10.4324%2F9780203877685-21">news values</a> that help attract and secure large audiences. For terrorists, news coverage provides a sense of legitimacy and the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vf2qh">oxygen of publicity</a> vital to their cause. No event illustrates this relationship more than 9/11.</p>
<p>Timed to coincide with morning news schedules across America, the attacks on the World Trade Center factored in a 17-minute delay between the two aircraft hitting the buildings to help maximise drama and ensure that network camera crews had time to focus on events. In some cases, news networks reported non-stop for nearly <a href="https://archive.org/details/911">100 hours</a> to millions around the world.</p>
<p>In interviews for my book on the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319766072">BBC’s portrayal of the al-Qaida threat</a> during this time, one journalist recalls how monumental that day was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s hard to emphasise now the way it made the world stop. And it did that in a way that hardly any other event had ever done before in my lifetime. It was staggering … watching the horror of what had happened, the number of people killed, and then watching the collapse of those iconic towers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the years since, the number of newspaper articles featuring the words “terrorism” or “terrorist”, both in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-decades-of-reporting-terrorism-has-there-been-too-little-or-too-much-coverage-73882">United States</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539150903306113">Britain</a>, have increased exponentially. This was despite the fact that terrorist attacks in <a href="https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015">Europe</a> and <a href="https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp255a.html">North America</a> were much more common during the 1970s and 1980s. These were typically carried out by left- or right-wing nationalist organisations.</p>
<h2>Whose views make the news?</h2>
<p>Aside from the drama and newsworthiness of the 9/11 attacks, a major reason why terrorism dominated headlines was because politicians and other “elite” figures began talking about terrorism. A lot.</p>
<p><a href="https://chomsky.info/consent01/">Political communications scholarship</a> has long noted the influence of powerful sources over the news agenda. Yet <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17539153.2020.1810987?casa_token=GshdVx4cH4oAAAAA:BmjBV5zaznYtxYaGH8lCvjrJWhC-_TRjrUFAqTvRZaKKb5aLyB0dNm_0ks-dwfru-U6dxd9sK8SS">studies</a> reveal how, in the days, weeks and months after 9/11, politicians and security sources (often anonymous and unnamed) dominated the news of the terror threat during this period and helped encourage an atmosphere of patriotic fervour. It <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719071218/">has also been claimed</a> that politicians adopt more emotive language when talking about terror threats, further increasing the news value of such information.</p>
<p>As the “war on terror” expanded, terrorists themselves emerged as a key source of news. The rise of the internet and the emergence of social media, meant that terrorist groups had far greater access to the news media than ever before. Over time, grainy, homespun propaganda images transformed into spectacular, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/fighting-has-just-begin-says-video-issued-by-islamic-state-linked-group-1410958509">Hollywood-style</a> exercises in terror PR which could be instantly shared with a global audience of supporters.</p>
<p>But despite the presence of such imagery in western news coverage, media reports often failed to include detailed explanations for why terrorists sought to adopt violent tactics. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884910388592?casa_token=iK5Kxnak6NwAAAAA:FwbHJE30fKtOKnKyO8fxs67gZtEy3uvbHlGH2-ZKHKx6yyDnZV5ekZS61hzNihF-uj_14obGcn-q">Findings</a> indicate that western media typically omit the political dimension of terrorist propaganda videos, but retain the more threatening, often exotic, aspects.</p>
<h2>The Islamisation of terrorism</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most damaging legacy of 9/11, however, has been the homogenisation and Islamisation of the terror threat. This has resulted in <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-stop-conflating-islam-with-terrorism-114073">the conflation of Islam and Muslims with terrorism</a> in much news coverage.</p>
<p>In the UK, for instance, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/reporting-islam-9780857716323/#:%7E:text=Reporting%20Islam%20is%20a%20timely,comes%20to%20some%20illuminating%20conclusions.">research shows</a> that news audiences saw a dramatic increase in news about Islam and Muslims in the years after the 9/11 attacks, with <a href="https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/1750/1/GlobalMedia_poole.pdf">peaks in 2001 and 2006</a>. While not always negative in tone, media reports indicate a thematic focus on <a href="https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/53005/1/08channel4-dispatches.pdf">terrorism, violent extremism and the cultural difference of Muslims</a>.</p>
<p>In America, moreover, scholars have shown how terrorist attacks involving Muslim perpetrators tend to receive around <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07418825.2018.1524507?casa_token=XV2WaA5vAJgAAAAA%3AD0jGURnGlMbNMrS5t96EKIOIYiGrXDpqj0eCqHBmkgYnY3CZm_FmgnO6K1xe63dIlO_9CKEwQCNy">375% more attention</a> than when the culprit is a non-Muslim. </p>
<p>But despite a fascination with Islamic terrorism, the <a href="https://visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GTI-2020-web-1.pdf">Global Terrorism Index</a> reminds us that only 2.6% of attacks and 0.51% of deaths by terrorism occur in western nations. The vast majority of such attacks tend to be motivated by ethno-nationalist causes, rather than Islamist. What is more, the five countries most affected by terrorist violence (Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and Somalia) are countries which are predominantly made up of people who identify as “Muslim”.</p>
<h2>Lessons learned?</h2>
<p>The 9/11 attacks ushered in a new age of terrorism. Those events, and the resulting “war on terror”, profoundly increased the value of terrorism as a newsworthy topic. The attacks also made sure that the groups who have a vested interest in exaggerating terror threat levels, such as politicians or members of the security services, remain the major voices shaping news coverage. And, for those groups, only one type of “terrorism” was deemed important.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://rusi.org/events/members-events/911-attacks-two-decades">comments</a> by the former UK prime minister Tony Blair about the existential threat posed by what he refers to as “Islamism” to western nations shows that reductive rhetoric about “good” and “bad” Muslims still captures the attention of news media. This is the case even when <a href="https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/state-hate-2020-an-evolving-threat/">campaigners</a> warn of more localised dangers.</p>
<p>If the media are to learn anything from two decades of the “war on terror”, therefore, it is to better understand the lessons that where so powerfully demonstrated on 9/11. That means finding ways of reporting terrorist events that do not sensationalise or overstate terrorist violence. It means challenging the simplistic way politicians tend to frame the issue and contextualising events as they happen. And, finally, it involves recognising and combating the entrenched stereotypes that demarcate “us” from “them”. </p>
<p>If not, the news media will continue to be “hijacked” by terrorism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jared Ahmad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, yet thanks to 9/11 politicians and the media, that’s the way it is presented to the public.Jared Ahmad, Lecturer in Journalism, Politics and Communication , University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1659052021-09-10T14:29:32Z2021-09-10T14:29:32Z9/11 twenty years on: al-Qaida is defeated – but jihadism is here to stay<p>Twenty years ago, the terrorist group al-Qaida carried out the deadliest attack on US soil the world had ever seen. Overnight, al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden became the most notorious terrorist to date. </p>
<p>Inspired by pan-Islamist ambitions and outraged by US foreign presence and intervention in the Middle East, this was the highlight of al-Qaida’s campaign to shatter the notion of US hegemony and invincibility. Their ultimate aim was to bring back the <em>umma</em>, the community of all Muslims once united by a political authority. </p>
<p>Al-Qaida first appeared on the terrorism radar in 1998 when it carried out <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/east-african-embassy-bombings">simultaneous bombings</a> on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and wounding more than 4,000. In October 2000, al-Qaida rammed a small boat filled with explosives into the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/uss-cole-bombing">killing 17</a> US navy personnel.</p>
<p>Following the strike on 9/11, so they reckoned, the US would withdraw their military forces from Muslim lands and end their support for its autocratic rulers, ushering in a modern day caliphate.</p>
<p>“I have only a few words for America and its people,” <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-08-13/osama-bin-ladens-911-catastrophic-success">bin Laden declared</a> in the aftermath of the attack. “Neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine and before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed.” </p>
<p>Bin Laden’s expectations turned out to be a serious miscalculation. Instead of withdrawing military forces, the then US president, George W. Bush, moved swiftly to declare a global “war on terror”, calling on world leaders to join the US in its response. </p>
<p>In October 2001, when a US-led coalition went into Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaida and oust the Taliban, who had allowed the organisation to operate in the country since 1996, bin Laden was caught off-guard. There was no strategy in place to ensure al-Qaida’s survival.</p>
<h2>Evolution of al-Qaida</h2>
<p>The 9/11 attacks turned out to be a short-lived victory for al-Qaida. Within weeks of the Taliban’s collapse, the majority of its leaders and fighters were captured or killed. Those who managed to escape, including bin Laden, went into hiding in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, an autonomous area bordering Afghanistan. </p>
<p>For ten years, until he was killed by US special forces on May 2, 2011, bin Laden tried but failed to revive al-Qaida and influence its legacy. </p>
<p>The next phase (and arguably the biggest mistake) of the “war on terror” was the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The ousting of the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, who had viewed jihadist activity with disdain, led to a political vacuum allowing al-Qaida to rise under terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Upon his death in a US bomb strike in June 2006, al-Qaida in Iraq would become the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and ultimately merge into the Islamic State (IS).</p>
<p>The highly publicised creation of al-Qaida “franchises” in Iraq and elsewhere including Egypt, North Africa and Yemen, among others, seemed to indicate the revival of al-Qaida. </p>
<p>These franchise leaders, all deeply involved in their respective local disputes, had much to gain from acquiring the infamous brand of al-Qaida. The appearance of the black al-Qaida flag in diverse corners of the world sent shockwaves to Washington. Terrorism experts in the west speculated about the <a href="http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/26305/">reemergence of the group</a> and the severity of its threat with precious little agreement amongst them. </p>
<p>Hidden away, bin Laden and the senior leaders of al-Qaida had little influence over the running of the new franchises. This is evident in terrorism researcher Nelly Lahoud’s careful reading of the “Abottabad letters”, files of internal communications recovered by US special operations forces during their raid on bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. In the letters, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-08-13/osama-bin-ladens-911-catastrophic-success">bin Laden lamented</a> his “brothers” had become a “liability” for global jihad during the last year of his life. The new generation of jihadis, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-08-13/osama-bin-ladens-911-catastrophic-success">he concluded</a>, had lost their way.</p>
<p>Upon bin Laden’s death in 2011, senior members of al-Qaida vowed to continue the global jihad, promising the <a href="http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/24701/">worst attacks</a> the world had ever seen.</p>
<p>While the vocal threats put al-Qaida back on the international terrorism radar, action never followed. The group formally continued to operate under the command of its new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. However, it it had no influence over IS, which was beginning to operate with impunity in areas across Iraq and Syria, and orchestrate suicide attacks in Europe.</p>
<p>By 2014, IS – under the lead of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – had replaced al-Qaida as the terrorist group most worrying to the west. Within five years, on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-50224939">October 27 2019</a> al-Baghdadi was also killed in a US military operation. IS was assumed to be, at least temporarily, defeated. It reemerged spectacularly on 26 August 2021 when IS-K, a local affiliate, claimed responsibility for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58333533">the Kabul airport attack</a> that claimed the lives of up to 170 people including 13 US service members – the deadliest incident for US troops in Afghanistan in a decade.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-58279900">On August 30 2021</a> the US completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, marking the end of America’s longest war. Less than a week later, the Taliban announced a new government and declared it an “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-58279900">Islamic emirate</a>”. Sarajuddin Haqqani, a US “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-58279900">most wanted terrorist</a>” is the new acting interior minister.</p>
<p>On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks al-Qaida might be defeated, but it is clear that jihadism and the ambition to (re)create a caliphate are here to stay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Hellmich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks has been replaced by other jihadist threats.Christina Hellmich, Associate Professor in International Relations and Middle East Studies, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1675792021-09-10T13:15:31Z2021-09-10T13:15:31Z9/11 inspired an outpouring of classical music – too much of it thoughtless and emotionless<p>From natural disasters to war, classical composers have long responded to traumatic events with their music, especially in the 20th century. The Danish composer Carl Nielsen composed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjd0kHn4qjQ">Paraphrase on Nearer My God to Thee</a> (1912) following the sinking of the Titanic. Two years later, a range of composers including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9qsJKvwG3g">Claude Debussy</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYxb2Cu6BB4">Edward Elgar</a> contributed to <a href="https://archive.org/details/kingalbert00teleuoft">King Albert’s Book</a>, a collection assembled by the Daily Telegraph in tribute to Albert I of Belgium, and the invasion of his country. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCxVvrEyLJw">Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11</a> (1957) depicts vividly the massacre of protestors during the failed 1905 Russian revolution.</p>
<p>But the attacks of September 11 in New York have probably generated the largest number of such works, which are undoubtedly varied in nature. A whole body of classical music has emerged that attempts in various ways to respond to the tragedy.</p>
<p>Musical responses to such events might seem worthy and reasonable endeavours. Some demonstrate the composers’ engagement with a wider world. Others give a musical voice to collective trauma and suffering or serve as a moving memorial to the victims of the tragedy. </p>
<p>However, there are those pieces that can be seen as a morbid form of musical “ambulance chasing”. Here, 9/11 has the potential to artificially lend a sense of importance to music whose wider merits become hitched to this horrible event, placing it beyond criticism.</p>
<h2>A mixed bag of responses</h2>
<p>On the Transmigration of Souls (2002) by the composer John Adams features the spoken names of victims, as well as repeated iterations, either spoken or sung, of the words or phrases including “missing”, “remember”, “We all love you” and “It was a beautiful day.” The musical content here is even more distinctive, foregrounding several simultaneous layers of music which convey a sense of the multiple dimensions of activity in New York City. </p>
<p>This type of perspective was earlier explored in a different manner by the composer Charles Ives, whose music conveyed the sense of heat in Central Park together with sounds of ragtime and other music from nearby venues in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCoOqsxLxSo">Central Park in the Dark (1906) - YouTube</a>. </p>
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<p>Adams does create a real tribute to a city beset by tragedy, presenting a deeply personalised response. This, however, sits in contrast to the rather hackneyed types of expression, evoking well-worn emotional tropes, in Eric Ewazen’s Hymn for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_D3zkAkjL0">Lost and Livin (2001)</a> or the exaggerated and somewhat banal sounds and gestures of Michael Gordon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af7Ta03Hgmk">The Sad Park</a> (2006), which can be reminiscent of a B-movie soundtrack. </p>
<p>Gordon’s work bears some relation to Steve Reich’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e49h2zUKEts">WTC 9/11</a> (2009-10) for string quartet and tape. Reich had earlier written a related piece, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajJYZKDhHfo">Different Trains</a> also for string quartet and tape, which combined music with recordings of individuals speaking of a train journey - including those in Europe to concentration camps. </p>
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<p>WTC 9/11 features recordings of those who were in Manhattan on the day, as well as of individuals from the North American Aerospace Defence Command and New York Fire Department. The musical component resembles other pieces of Reich’s work of the period – repetitive, with driving momentum and characteristically stylised harmonies. However, this piece features a degree of interaction between the instruments and the spoken material, as had been the case in Different Trains. </p>
<p>There is little doubt that the piece communicates a sense of urgency (though this could be said of many other Reich works). But I find it difficult to see what the work reveals about 9/11 which is not already obvious to anyone who watched the events on TV. Nor does it embody any particularly striking emotional reaction. </p>
<h2>Proper motivations</h2>
<p>I have questioned <a href="https://theconversation.com/music-and-trauma-why-the-two-have-a-fraught-relationship-142611">before</a> whether certain works explicitly thematising traumatic events amount to a meaningful response. They could be criticised for rendering the trauma aesthetic. This has the potential, as cultural theorist <a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/i87/articles/theodor-adorno-commitment">Theodor Adorno warned in response to art after the Holocaust</a>, of enabling people to derive pleasure from it, and that can be heinous. </p>
<p>I would not wish to argue that composers, or other artists, should refrain from engaging with such events, nor that there have not been immensely successful works of this type. </p>
<p>Debussy, Shostakovich, Adams and others succeed in creating music that embodies both a very personal response and an individual perspective, which could be said to contribute to knowledge and understanding. But some composers might ask themselves questions about their motivations. </p>
<p>Are they simply jumping on a “bandwagon”, exploiting a very real and horrible event for personal gain and success? Are they engaging in a sort of musical virtue-signalling which is a convenient alternative to the messy business of real political activism? </p>
<p>Is composing a piece of music linked to 9/11 a straightforward means of evoking a type of uncomplicated emotional reaction? Is this disaster a safe “hook” to hang any vaguely sad or lamenting music that actually has nothing to do with the event? </p>
<p>If so, one might ask whether the merits of some such works are as clear-cut as might often be assumed. Art must be thoughtful and sadly many of the classical music responses to 9/11 have not been.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Pace does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is a lot of classical music written in response to the terrible events of 9/11, however, not all of it should have been written.Ian Pace, Professor of Music, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1665372021-09-10T12:28:29Z2021-09-10T12:28:29Z9/11 survivors’ exposure to toxic dust and the chronic health conditions that followed offer lessons that are still too often unheeded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420128/original/file-20210908-22-728gm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C125%2C2775%2C1859&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Toxic dust hung in the air around ground zero for more than three months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-unidentified-new-york-city-firefighter-walks-away-from-news-photo/1372804?adppopup=true">Anthony Correia/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York resulted in the loss of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/index.html">2,753 people in the Twin Towers and surrounding area</a>. After the attack, more than 100,000 responders and recovery workers from every U.S. state – along with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/history.html">some 400,000 residents</a> and other workers around ground zero – were exposed to a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/september-11-toxic-world-trade-center-dust-cloud/story?id=14466933">toxic cloud of dust</a> that fell as a ghostly, thick layer of ash and then hung in the air for more than three months. </p>
<p>The World Trade Center dust plume, or <a href="https://doi.org/10.3109/10408444.2015.1044601">WTC dust</a>, consisted of a dangerous mixture of cement dust and particles, asbestos and a class of chemicals called <a href="https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/persistent-organic-pollutants-global-issue-global-response">persistent organic pollutants</a>. These include <a href="https://www.epa.gov/dioxin/learn-about-dioxin">cancer-causing dioxins</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/PAHs_FactSheet.html">polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs</a>, which are byproducts of fuel combustion. </p>
<p>The dust also contained heavy metals that are known <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health">to be poisonous to the human body and brain</a>, such as lead – used in the manufacturing of flexible electrical cables – and mercury, which is found in float valves, switches and fluorescent lamps. The dust also contained cadmium, a carcinogen <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10534-010-9328-y">toxic to the kidneys</a> that is used in the manufacturing of electric batteries and pigments for paints.</p>
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<img alt="Smoke pours from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420341/original/file-20210909-27-p4t2aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">One of the haunting images from 9/11: Smoke pours from the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York after they were hit by two hijacked airliners.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/smoke-pours-from-the-twin-towers-of-the-world-trade-center-news-photo/1339505?adppopup=true">Robert Giroux via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/factsheets/polychlorinatedbiphenyls.htm#:%7E:text=Polychlorinated%20biphenyls%20(PCBs)%20are%20a,equipment%20like%20capacitors%20and%20transformers.">Polychlorinated biphenyls</a>, human-made chemicals used in electrical transformers, were also part of the toxic stew. PCBs are <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pcbs/learn-about-polychlorinated-biphenyls-pcbs#healtheffects">known to be carcinogenic</a>, toxic to the nervous system and disruptive to the reproductive system. But they became even more harmful when incinerated at high heat from the jets’ fuel combustion and then carried by very fine particles. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3109/10408444.2015.1044601">WTC dust</a> was made up of both “large” particulate matter and very small, fine and ultrafine ones. These particularly small particles are known to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35398-0">highly toxic</a>, especially to the nervous system since they can travel directly through the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2011.12.001">nasal cavity to the brain</a>. </p>
<p>Many first responders and others who were directly exposed to the dust developed a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3109/10408444.2015.1044601">severe and persistent cough</a> that lasted for a month, on average. They were treated at Mount Sinai Hospital and received care at the Clinic of Occupational Medicine, a well-known center for work-related diseases.</p>
<p>I am a physician specializing in occupational medicine who began working directly with 9/11 survivors in my role as director of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/">WTC Health Program</a> <a href="https://icahn.mssm.edu/about/departments/environmental-public-health/research/wtc-data-center">Data Center</a> at Mount Sinai beginning in 2012. That program collects data, as well as monitors and oversees the public health of WTC rescue and recovery workers. After eight years in that role, I <a href="https://stempel.fiu.edu/faculty/roberto-lucchini/">moved to Florida International University</a> in Miami, where I am planning to continue working with 9/11 responders who are moving to Florida as they reach retirement age.</p>
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<img alt="In lower Manhattan near Ground Zero, people run away as the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420343/original/file-20210909-23-1bc9fnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Remembering 9/11: As the north tower of the World Trade Center collapses, a cloud of toxic gas chases terrified residents and tourists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-run-away-as-the-north-tower-of-world-trade-center-news-photo/1339533?adppopup=true">Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>From acute to chronic conditions</h2>
<p>After the initial “acute” health problems that 9/11 responders faced, they soon began experiencing a wave of chronic diseases that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126383">continue to affect them</a> 20 years later. The persistent cough gave way to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/dmp.2011.58">respiratory diseases</a> such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and upper airway diseases such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2015-103094">chronic rhinosinusitis</a>, laryngitis and nasopharyngitis. </p>
<p>The litany of respiratory diseases also put many of them at risk for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/ajg.2011.357">gastroesophageal reflux disease</a> (GERD), which occurs at a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0b013e3181845f9b">higher rate in WTC survivors</a> than in the general population. This condition occurs when stomach acids reenter the esophagus, or food pipe, that connects the stomach to the throat. As a consequence of either the airway or the digestive disorders, many of these survivors also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0b013e3182305282">struggle with sleep apnea</a>, which requires additional treatments.</p>
<p>Further compounding the tragedy, about eight years after the attacks, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jncics/pkz090">cancers began to turn up</a> in 9/11 survivors. These include tumors of the blood and lymphoid tissues such as lymphoma, myeloma and leukemia, which are well known to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/1745-6673-8-14">affect workers exposed to carcinogens</a> in the workplace. But survivors also suffer from other cancers, including breast, head and neck, prostate, lung and thyroid cancers. </p>
<p>Some have also developed mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer related to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2013-204161">exposure to asbestos</a>. <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/9stories/september-11-death-toll-from-terror-attack-could-rise-by-millions-due-to-toxic-asbestos-dust/8bc90677-0032-42a2-82f9-4b9baad753d9">Asbestos</a> was used in the early construction of the north tower until public advocacy and broader awareness of its health dangers <a href="https://www.mesothelioma.com/states/new-york/world-trade-center/">brought its use to a halt</a>.</p>
<p>And the psychological trauma that 9/11 survivors experienced has left many suffering from persistent mental health challenges. One <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-019-00998-z">study</a> published in 2020 found that of more than 16,000 WTC responders for whom data was collected, nearly half reported a need for mental health care, and 20% of those who were directly affected developed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dadm.2016.08.001">post-traumatic stress disorder</a>. </p>
<p>Many have told me that the contact they had with parts of human bodies or with the deadly scene and the tragic days afterward left a permanent mark on their lives. They are unable to forget the images, and many of them suffer from mood disorders as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-019-0449-7">cognitive impairments and other behavioral issues</a>, including substance use disorder. </p>
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<img alt="On 9/11, shortly after the terrorist attack in New York City, a distraught survivor sits outside the World Trade Center." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420347/original/file-20210909-23-do7s5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Remembering 9/11: A distraught survivor sits outside the World Trade Center after the terrorist attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/survivor-sits-outside-the-world-trade-center-after-two-news-photo/50833029?adppopup=true">Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>An aging generation of survivors</h2>
<p>Now, 20 years on, these survivors face a new challenge as they age and move toward retirement – a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w12123">difficult life transition</a> that can sometimes lead to mental health decline. Prior to retirement, the daily drumbeat of work activity and a steady schedule often helps keep the mind busy. But retirement can sometimes leave a void – one that for 9/11 survivors is too often filled with unwanted memories of the noises, smells, fear and despair of that terrible day and the days that followed. Many survivors have told me they do not want to return to Manhattan and certainly not to the WTC. </p>
<p>Aging can also bring with it forgetfulness and other cognitive challenges. But studies show that these natural processes are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-019-0449-7">accelerated and more severe</a> in 9/11 survivors, similar to the experience of veterans from war zones. This is a concerning trend, but all the more so because a growing body of research, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-846359/v1">our own preliminary study</a>, is finding links between <a href="https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.105.014779">cognitive impairment in 9/11 responders and dementia</a>. A recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/08/30/911-first-responders-dementia/">Washington Post piece detailed</a> how 9/11 survivors are experiencing these dementia-like conditions in their 50s – far earlier than is typical. </p>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic, too, has taken a toll on those who have already suffered from 9/11. People with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100515">preexisting conditions</a> have been at far higher risk during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, a recent study found a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254713">higher incidence of COVID-19</a> in WTC responders from January through August 2020.</p>
<h2>Honoring the 9/11 survivors</h2>
<p>The health risks posed by direct exposure to the acrid dust was underestimated at the time, and poorly understood. Appropriate personal protective equipment, such as P100 half-face respirators, was not available at that time. </p>
<p>But now, over 20 years on, we know much more about the risks – and we have much greater access to protective equipment that can keep responders and recovery workers safe following disasters. Yet, too often, I see that we have not learned and applied these lessons. </p>
<p>For instance, in the immediate aftermath of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/06/us/miami-building-collapse-updates">condominium collapse</a> near Miami Beach last June, it took days before P100 half-face respirators were fully available and made mandatory for the responders. Other examples around the world are even worse: One year after the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/08/04/1024275186/a-year-after-the-beirut-explosion-victims-families-continue-to-push-for-justice">Beirut explosion</a> in August 2020, very little action had been taken to investigate and manage the physical and <a href="https://timep.org/commentary/analysis/the-beirut-explosions-impact-on-mental-health/">mental health consequences </a> among responders and the impacted community.</p>
<p>Applying the lessons learned from 9/11 is a critically important way to honor the victims and the brave men and women who took part in the desperate rescue and recovery efforts back on those terrible days.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166537/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roberto Lucchini receives funding from CDC/NIOSH to study the cognitive impacts associated to the WTC exposure to neurotoxins and to intense psychological trauma. </span></em></p>Those directly exposed to toxic dust and trauma on and after 9/11 carry with them a generation of chronic health conditions, which are placing them at higher risk during the pandemic and as they age.Roberto Lucchini, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1670342021-09-10T12:28:08Z2021-09-10T12:28:08ZAmerican Muslims are at high risk of suicide – 20 years post-9/11, the links between Islamophobia and suicide remain unexplored<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419891/original/file-20210907-14-y57odp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2121%2C1412&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">American Muslims are two times as likely to attempt suicide compared to other major faith groups.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/indian-woman-royalty-free-image/854681654">MmeEmil/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year, 9/11 holds a dual significance for Americans across the country. It not only marked the 20th anniversary of the tragic events and lives lost since Sept. 11, 2001, but also <a href="https://afsp.org/national-suicide-prevention-week">National Suicide Prevention Awareness Week</a>. For American Muslims who are both victims of <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/157082/islamophobia-understanding-anti-muslim-sentiment-west.aspx">increased rates of Islamophobic violence</a> and survivors of suicide attempts, this juxtaposition is especially stark. </p>
<p>In the field of <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2105%2FAJPH.2016.303374">public health</a>, Islamophobia is recognized as akin to racism in how it leads to <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2105%2FAJPH.2018.304402">negative physical and psychological health outcomes</a>. But this definition misses the crucial elements of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119240716.ch7">structural violence</a> and social stigma that underlie the <a href="https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-releases-2021-mid-year-snapshot-report-on-anti-muslim-bias-incidents/">hate crimes and microaggressions</a> American Muslims face. These elements are not only the key ingredients in such acts of social violence, but also the same risk factors for individual <a href="https://www.mirecc.va.gov/visn19/docs/SDVCS.pdf">self-directed violence, which is the definition of suicide</a>.</p>
<p>I am the first self-identifying Muslim American to <a href="https://reporter.nih.gov/search/aPO5qRI4RUO2eEzUQ0BbWA/project-details/10156678">receive federal funding</a> from the National Institutes of Health to conduct grassroots mental health research within the American Muslim community. I identify as a victim of Islamophobic violence and a <a href="https://www.amelianooroshiro.com">survivor of a suicide attempt</a>. The hypothesis of my research is that the past two decades of anti-Muslim stigma in the sociopolitical climate of post-9/11 America have created the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304419">necessary conditions</a> for young Muslims in America to internalize self-hatred and ultimately attempt suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people wearing headscarves looking at another person out of frame standing on a blurred out street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419887/original/file-20210907-14-qjwnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">American Muslims constitute a diverse group of racial minorities and immigrants with unique life experiences.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/muslim-women-in-discussion-after-run-after-work-royalty-free-image/1204464585">Thomas Barwick/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Suicide disparities and risk factors in American Muslims</h2>
<p>Suicide is a <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide">major public health concern</a> worldwide. It is a top 10 leading cause of death in this country and the No. 1 leading cause of death in <a href="https://theconversation.com/asian-american-young-adults-are-the-only-racial-group-with-suicide-as-their-leading-cause-of-death-so-why-is-no-one-talking-about-this-158030">certain populations</a>. A July 2021 study revealed that American Muslims report <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.1813">two times the odds of a suicide attempt</a> in their life compared to other faith groups. These findings suggest a disparity and indicate that there is a unique set of factors that increases American Muslims’ risk of suicide. </p>
<p>In general, there are many elements that contribute to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/factors/index.html">suicide risk</a>. Some of these include a past history of mental illness, knowing someone who previously attempted suicide and having access to lethal means like guns. Research studies on suicide risk in American Muslims, however, must specifically account for our distinct experience of being <a href="https://libguides.uwinnipeg.ca/c.php?g=370387&p=2502732">racialized</a>, stigmatized and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-the-sinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them">“othered”</a> in post-9/11 America. Given the unique <a href="https://www.ispu.org/thought-leadership/muslim-american-experience-bibliography/">experience of Islamophobia</a> that Muslims in America face, a scientific focus on these social factors is essential for studies on American Muslims. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2019/07/23/feelings-toward-religious-groups/">2019 Pew Research Center survey</a> measuring the level of warmth or coldness that U.S. adults felt toward certain religious groups found that Muslims were placed toward the extremes of the cold end of the scale. A 2017 survey from Pew found that <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/how-the-u-s-general-public-views-muslims-and-islam/">half of U.S. adults</a> said Islam is not a part of mainstream society and perceived at least some Muslims as anti-American. </p>
<p>These attitudes point to how being a Muslim has been stigmatized in America. There is abundant evidence that <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.301069">stigma is a fundamental cause of health disparities</a>, especially as it relates to <a href="https://www.apa.org/career-development/structural-stigma.pdf">suicide among people with minority identities</a>. I argue that the stigma of being Muslim in America results in exposure to Islamophobic violence that can lead to increased suicide risk and disparity. </p>
<h2>The intersectionality of Muslim American identity</h2>
<p>But being Muslim is not the only form of stigma and structural violence that American Muslims face. American Muslims are a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/31/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-you-might-think/">very heterogenous group</a> with <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslims-arrived-in-america-400-years-ago-as-part-of-the-slave-trade-and-today-are-vastly-diverse-113168">diverse</a> backgrounds as <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/black-muslims-account-for-a-fifth-of-all-u-s-muslims-and-about-half-are-converts-to-islam/">racial minorities</a> and <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/voluntary-migration-definition-1435455">forced and voluntary migrants</a>. Coming from over 77 countries, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/08/30/section-1-a-demographic-portrait-of-muslim-americans/">nearly 80%</a> of us are first- or second-generation immigrants, and the majority are racial and ethnic minorities. It is the combined identities of being a Muslim, a racial or ethnic minority and of immigrant-origin that results in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1246-9">intersectional stigma</a>– these identities converge and interact with each other in ways that can negatively affect health. </p>
<p>Therefore, a more scientifically accurate understanding of Islamophobia endorses the intersectionality of our stigma as a key variable contributing to suicide risk. Research on American Muslims addresses the dearth of scientific knowledge on culturally specific social factors of suicide. Yet for American Muslims, what factors contribute to our risk for suicide and what protective factors build our resilience are still to be uncovered.</p>
<h2>Challenges in American Muslim mental health research</h2>
<p>Prior to 2006, the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=(muslim)%20AND%20(%22mental%20health%22)&sort=">PubMed</a> research database returned fewer than 70 search results on “Muslim” and “mental health.” Major grants for funding research on this topic were nonexistent. The launch of the <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1080/15564900600980517">Journal of Muslim Mental Health</a> that year attempted to fill this crucial research gap. Today, the over 700 search results with the terms “Muslim” and “mental health” still represent less than one-thousandth of a percent of over 320,000 results on <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22mental+health%22+">mental health overall</a>. Evidently, the study of suicide in American Muslims itself faces disparities.</p>
<p>A major barrier to expanding research on American Muslim mental health is access to federal funding. The <a href="https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/about/overview/">National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities</a> designates certain groups as disparity populations, which does not include faith groups. While Muslims <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/06/a-new-estimate-of-the-u-s-muslim-population/">constitute only 1%</a> of the U.S. population, we are projected to become the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/">world’s largest faith group</a> by the second half of this century. Even so, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2019.305285">data on American Muslim health is missing</a> due to a lack of research resources and scientific interest. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Close-up profile of person with beard on a dark background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419888/original/file-20210907-19-ied5r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Because of how American Muslims are demographically defined in research, health data about this community is lacking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/portrait-of-a-man-in-dark-background-royalty-free-image/1221419415">Jasmin Merdan/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Research on American Muslims relies on select elements of our identities as racial minorities and immigrants to qualify for research funding. But these qualities alone do not fully capture American Muslim lived experiences with Islamophobia and faith-based stigma, prejudice and discrimination. Without data and research on our community, American Muslims may not be considered a disparity group under current classifications and therefore miss critical funding opportunities.</p>
<h2>Suicide research on American Muslims may advance insights across diverse communities</h2>
<p>What will America look like by the time we mark the 50th anniversary of 9/11? </p>
<p>By 2051, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/12/census-data-race-ethnicity-neighborhoods/">diversification of the American population</a> will reveal a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/opinion/us-census-majority-minority.html">majority minority</a> racial and ethnic demographic. Already, the majority of youth under 18 are people of color. Forty years from now, first- and second-generation immigrants will encompass <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/02/07/second-generation-americans/">over a third of the population</a>. </p>
<p>Alarmingly, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fijerph15071438">second-generation immigrants</a> worldwide are considered an at-risk group for suicide. The diverse new generations in America are born into adverse conditions that expose them to <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/publications/rq_docs/V32N1.pdf">race-based trauma</a> and <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/aids/resources/exchange/2012/04/minority-stress">minority stress</a>, or the cumulative negative health effects caused by racism and by being a part of a stigmatized minority group, respectively.</p>
<p>The intersectional discrimination that American Muslims already experience today makes a strong case that we are a crucial reference group when it comes to future mental health research on diverse and marginalized communities. The immense value of culturally relevant research on suicide among American Muslims is evident from its substantial potential to apply across different racial, ethnic and immigrant groups. </p>
<p>Insights from the American Muslim lived experience may provide science with the tools to make sure suicide in minority communities becomes a thing of the past.</p>
<p><em>If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the suicide helpline now at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or visit the <a href="https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/">National Suicide Prevention Lifeline</a> website. You are not alone and there is hope.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia Noor-Oshiro receives funding from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.</span></em></p>Islamophobia increased post-9/11. Twenty years later, American Muslims are still dealing with the mental health effects – and research barriers limit what is known about what puts them at risk.Amelia Noor-Oshiro, PhD Candidate in Public Health, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1673882021-09-10T10:47:03Z2021-09-10T10:47:03Z9/11 did not change the world – it was already on the path to decades of conflict<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420281/original/file-20210909-27-1jala06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5614%2C3740&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/9-11-1414">September 11 attacks</a> in New York and Washington were visceral in their impact. In less than three hours, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were reduced to a mountain of twisted metal and rubble, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/index.html">killing more than 2,700 people</a>, while hundreds more were killed at the Pentagon. All three were destroyed by men armed with nothing more than parcel knives hijacking fuel-laden passenger aircraft.</p>
<p>America was under attack. It came not long after after George W. Bush had formed his new administration with highly influential neoconservatives and assertive realists at the Pentagon and State Department, as well as in the White House itself. All were determined to see the vision of a “<a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2020/02/01/new-american-century-1997-2006-and-the-post-cold-war-neoconservative-moment/">new American century</a>” fulfilled – a neoliberal free market world rooted in US experience and guided by its post-cold war progress as the world’s sole economic and military superpower.</p>
<p>At the time, commentators <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/44242/pdf">compared the attack to Pearl Harbor</a>, but the effect of 9/11 was much greater. Pearl Harbor had been an attack by the naval forces of a state already in great tension with the United States. It was against a military base in the pre-television age and away from the continental United States. The 9/11 attack was a much greater shock, and if war with Japan was a consequence of Pearl Harbor, then there would be war after 9/11 even if the perpetrators and those behind them were scarcely known to the American public. </p>
<p>The vision of the new American century had to be secured and force of arms was the way to do it, initially against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>A few people <a href="https://files.ethz.ch/isn/22208/0109%20sept11briefing.pdf">argued against war at the time</a>, seeing it as a trap to suck the US into an Afghanistan occupation instead of treating 9/11 as an act of appalling mass criminality, but their voices did not count. </p>
<p>The first “war on terror” – against al-Qaida and the Taliban – started within a month, lasted barely two months and seemed an immediate success. It was followed by Bush’s <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html">State of the Union address</a> in January 2002 declaring an extended war against what Bush referred to as an “<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/bush-axis-of-evil-2002-1127725">axis of evil</a>” of rogue states intent on supporting terror and developing weapons of mass destruction. </p>
<p>Iraq was the priority, with Iran and North Korea in the frame. The Iraq War started in March 2003 and was apparently over by May 1, when Bush gave his “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviatemin/2021/07/20/its-not-over-until-its-over-the-perils-of-declaring-victory-in-crisis-too-soon/?sh=76675210513c">mission accomplished</a>” speech from the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. </p>
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<p>That was the high point of the entire US-led “war on terror”. Afghanistan was the first disaster, with the Taliban moving back into rural areas within two to three years and going on to fight the US and its allies for 20 years before taking back control last month.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/afghan-government-collapses-taliban-seize-control-5-essential-reads-166131">Afghan government collapses, Taliban seize control: 5 essential reads</a>
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<p>In Iraq, even though the insurgents appeared defeated by 2009 and the US could withdraw its forces two years later, <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/timeline-the-rise-spread-and-fall-the-islamic-state">Islamic State (IS) rose</a> phoenix-like from the ashes. That led to the third conflict, the intense <a href="https://www.inherentresolve.mil/About-CJTF-OIR/">2014-18 air war</a> across northern Iraq and Syria, fought by the US, the UK, France and others, <a href="https://airwars.org/conflict/coalition-in-iraq-and-syria/">killing</a> tens of thousands of IS supporters and several thousand civilians.</p>
<p>Even after the collapse of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, IS arose once again like the proverbial phoenix, spreading its influence as far afield as the Saharan Sahel, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, southern Thailand, the Philippines, back in Iraq and Syria once more and even Afghanistan. The spread across the Sahel was aided by the collapse of security in Libya, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24585876">the 2011 NATO-led intervention</a> being the fourth of the west’s failed wars in barely 20 years.</p>
<p>In the face of these bitter failures, we have two linked questions: was 9/11 the beginning of decades of a new world disorder? And where do we go from here?</p>
<h2>9/11 in context</h2>
<p>It is natural to see the single event of 9/11 as turning traditional military postures on their heads, but that is misleading. There were already changes afoot, as two very different events in February 1993, eight years before the attacks, had shown all too well.</p>
<p>First, incoming US president, Bill Clinton, had <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/103296.pdf">appointed James Woolsey</a> as the new director of the CIA. Asked at his Senate confirmation hearing how he would characterise the end of the cold war, he replied that the US had slain the dragon (the Soviet Union) but now faced a jungle full of poisonous snakes.</p>
<p>During the 1990s, and very much in line with Woolsey’s phrase, the US military moved from a cold war posture to preparing for small wars in far-off places. There was more emphasis on long-range air strike systems, amphibious forces, carrier battle groups and special forces. By the time Bush was elected in November 2000, the US was far more prepared to tame the jungle.</p>
<p>Second, the US military and most analysts around the world missed the significance of a new phenomenon, the rapidly improving ability of the weak to take up arms against the strong. Yet the signs were already there. On February 26 1993, not long after Woolsey had talked of a jungle full of snakes, an Islamist paramilitary group attempted to <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/world-trade-center-bombing-1993">destroy the World Trade Center</a> with a massive truck bomb placed in the underground car park of the North Tower. The plan was to collapse it over the adjoining Vista Hotel and the South Tower, destroying the entire complex and killing upwards of 30,000 people.</p>
<p>The attack failed – though six people died – and the significance of the attack was largely missed even though there were many other indicators of weakness in the 1990s. In December 1994, an Algerian paramilitary group tried to <a href="https://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/terrorism/air-france-flight-8969-hijacking-gign-raid/1222870300001">crash an Airbus passenger jet on Paris</a>, an attack foiled by French special forces during a refuelling stop at Marseilles. A month later a bombing by the LTTE of the <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6ab608.html">Central Bank in Colombo</a>, Sri Lanka devastated much of the central business district of Colombo, killing over 80 and injuring more than 1,400 people.</p>
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<p>A decade before the first World Trade Center attacks, 241 Marines <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-embassy-in-beirut-hit-by-massive-car-bomb">had been killed</a> in a single bombing in Beirut (another 58 French paratroopers were killed by a second bomb in their barrack) and between 1993 and 2001 there were attacks in the Middle East and East Africa including the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/06/21/remembering-the-khobar-towers-bombing/">Khobar Towers</a> bombing in Saudi Arabia, an attack on the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/uss-cole-bombing">USS Cole</a> in Aden Harbour and the bombing of <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/east-african-embassy-bombings">US diplomatic missions</a> in Tanzania and Kenya.</p>
<p>The 9/11 attacks did not change the world. They were further steps along a well-signed path leading to two decades of conflict, four failed wars and no clear end in sight.</p>
<h2>What now?</h2>
<p>That long path, though, has from the start had within it one fundamental flaw. If we are to make sense of wider global trends in insecurity, we have to recognise that in all the analysis around the 9/11 anniversary there lies the belief that the main security concern must be with an extreme version of Islam. It may seem a reasonable mistake, given the impact of the wars, but it still misses the point. The war on terror is better seen as one part of a global trend which goes well beyond a single religious tradition – a slow but steady move towards revolts from the margins.</p>
<p>In writing my book, <a href="https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/paul-rogers/losing-control/9780745316796?gclid=Cj0KCQjw-NaJBhDsARIsAAja6dP0sLsR_GV30zO4uOHN8A9a2H90wa9XetReSuP9H6CWsER-oJghb7EaAqbeEALw_wcB">Losing Control</a>, in the late 1990s – a couple of years before 9/11 – I put it this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What should be expected is that new social movements will develop that are essentially anti-elite in nature and will draw their support from people, especially men, on the margins. In different contexts and circumstances, they may have their roots in political ideologies, religious beliefs, ethnic, nationalist or cultural identities, or a complex combination of several of these. </p>
<p>They may be focused on individuals or groups, but the most common feature is an opposition to existing centres of power … What can be said is that, on present trends, anti-elite action will be a core feature of the next 30 years – not so much a clash of civilisations, more an age of insurgencies. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This stemmed from the view that the primary factors in global insecurity were a combination of increasing socioeconomic divisions and environmental limits to growth coupled with a security strategy rooted in preserving the status quo. Woolsey’s “jungle full of snakes” could be seen as a consequence of this, but there would be military responses available to keep the lid on problems – “<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-liddism-towards-real-global-security/">liddism</a>” in short. </p>
<p>More than two decades down the road, socioeconomic divisions have worsened, the concentration of wealth has reached levels best <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ab30d301-351b-4387-b212-12fed904324b">described as obscene</a> and has even increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, itself leading to food shortages and increased poverty.</p>
<p>Meanwhile climate change is now with us, is accelerating towards climate breakdown with, once again, the <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/10/report-inequalities-exacerbate-climate-impacts-on-poor/">greatest impact on marginalised societies</a>. It therefore makes sense to see 9/11 primarily as an early and grievous manifestation of the weak taking up arms against the strong, and that military response in the current global security environment woefully misses the point. </p>
<p>At the very least there is an urgent need to rethink what we mean by security, and time is getting short to do that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Rogers is a Council member of Rethinking Security and a sponsor of the Peace and Justice Project. The fourth edition of his book, "Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century", has just been published. </span></em></p>It was the day the US realised it was fighting a different kind of war.Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1673232021-09-10T09:59:37Z2021-09-10T09:59:37ZHow 9/11 changed cinema<p>One of the most common responses to the events of September 11 2001, both among witnesses on the scene and more distant commentators, was that the destruction of the World Trade Center was like something only seen in the movies. This famously prompted veteran director <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/oct/18/news2">Robert Altman</a> to declare that 9/11 was an instance of life imitating art: “The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies.”</p>
<p>If the terrorist attacks had appeared like a movie, then the immediate response of Hollywood was that films released in the aftermath of the event should not be too much like 9/11. Representations of the World Trade Center became taboo. The original teaser <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lko8OP9_AjQ">trailer for Spider-Man</a> (2001) showing the Twin Towers was withdrawn, while the climactic final scene of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NJHqoojOU">Men in Black II</a> (2002) had to be reshot. For various other releases, the Twin Towers were erased in post-production.</p>
<p>Later on, the towers would be digitally restored for the 2006 US docudrama disaster film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469641/">World Trade Center</a>, directed by Oliver Stone. The film reconstructs events from the point of view of policemen getting caught in the North Tower when the South Tower collapses. Like Paul Greengrass’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475276/">United 93</a>, released the same year, Stone’s film celebrates resilience in the face of terrorism while giving viewers access to events previously unseen. </p>
<p>Other cinematic forms offered more oblique evocations of the terrorist attacks. Steven Spielberg’s 2005 adaptation of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407304/">War of the Worlds</a> transplants H.G. Wells’s late-Victorian story to post-9/11 New Jersey and Boston. The tagline of the film, “they’re already here”, echoes fears of sleeper cells, suggesting that the enemy is already in the US – undetectable and waiting to be activated. After the alien tripods have emerged from below the ground to wreak havoc on innocent bystanders, the protagonist’s daughter asks her ash-covered father: “Is it the terrorists?”</p>
<p>Imagery reminiscent of 9/11 also abounds in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/">The Dark Knight</a> (2008), the second instalment of Christopher Nolan’s celebrated Batman trilogy. Casting Joker as a terrorist, the film sheds an ambivalent light on Batman’s pursuit of counter-terrorist justice.</p>
<p>The Dark Knight played a crucial part in the boom of superhero films that continues to dominate mainstream cinema. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this ongoing boom roughly coincides with the so-called “war on terror”, and particularly the ill-fated invasion of Iraq.</p>
<h2>Moral ambiguity</h2>
<p>In a time of increasingly complex geopolitical entanglements and moral failings, these films articulate a yearning for unsullied heroism, effective leadership and appropriate responses to crises.</p>
<p>The invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 initially found widespread support in the US. In October 2001, a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/5083/overwhelming-support-war-continues.aspx">poll</a> found that 88% of those in the US backed a military response to the terrorist attacks. Yet as the wars continued, support declined significantly. The realist dramas of Kathryn Bigelow, in both <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/">The Hurt Locker</a> (2008) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/">Zero Dark Thirty</a> (2012), reflect the moral ambiguity of the US position in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Films like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2057392/">Eye in the Sky</a> (2015), meanwhile, capture the impersonal nature of long-range drone warfare. On TV, the hugely popular series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1796960/">Homeland</a> (2011-2020) tracks the entanglements of Americans and Iraqis in the sphere of counter-terrorism and radicalisation.</p>
<p>Many of these narratives centre on the figure of the white Western woman, perhaps as a way to “soften” the US image abroad. This movement away from blockbuster thrillers to more personal dramas is in line with Obama’s stated shift towards a form of “humane warfare”, a move some have called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/31/how-the-us-created-a-world-of-endless-war">the humanisation of interminable conflict</a>”.</p>
<h2>The terrorist and the hero</h2>
<p>The figure of the terrorist has also evolved in post-9/11 cinema. In the 1980s and 1990s, terrorists that were coded as Muslim or Arabic in films like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111503/">True Lies</a> existed alongside the Germanic villains of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/">Die Hard</a> or the IRA man found in films like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Own">The Devil’s Own</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104036/">The Crying Game</a>. Yet after 9/11, terrorism is mainly equated with jihadism in Hollywood films, where terrorists are often denied any deep characterisation and contrasted with US heroes. </p>
<p>Clint Eastwood’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/">American Sniper</a> (2014) is a prime example of this. Telling the story of Chris Kyle, one of the most lethal snipers in US military history, the film split critics, with the left-wing press describing it as <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2014/12/movie-review-american-sniper.html">Republican propaganda</a>, while the right-leaning <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/">National Review</a> praising the movie for capturing “<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/american-sniper-has-created-cultural-moment-heres-why-david-french/">the true nature of the enemy</a>” – the Iraqis that the central character calls “savages”. </p>
<p>But filmmakers from around the world have also sought to capture the ongoing ramifications of the event and the subsequent “war on terror”. Indian-American director Mira Nair’s film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2032557/">The Reluctant Fundamentalist</a> (2012), based on Mohsin Hamid’s Booker-nominated novel of the same title, takes on the racial and ethnic stereotyping found in films like American Sniper. Riz Ahmed plays Changez, a young Pakistani in the US who goes from ruthless corporate climber to disillusioned and excluded immigrant throughout the film. </p>
<h2>Freedom and victory?</h2>
<p>The attack on the World Trade Center is one of the most significant events of the 21st century. So much so that it is used as a generational marker, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-vs-gen-z-divided-by-911-different-money-habits-2019-4?r=US&IR=T">distinguishing millennials from Generation Z</a> in terms of whether or not one remembers the event directly. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that even the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its predominantly youthful viewership, has allegorically hinted at the failures of the “war on terror”. Its most recent television spin-off, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9140554/">Loki</a> (2021), appears to question the validity of some of the language that surrounded 9/11 and what started out as “Operation Enduring Freedom”. On the afternoon of 9/11, George W. Bush stated that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/11/september11.usa19">freedom itself was attacked this morning</a>” – Loki challenges the very notion of liberation, saying “the first and most oppressive lie ever uttered was the song of freedom”.</p>
<p>And now as the world witnesses <a href="https://theconversation.com/afghanistan-the-warlords-who-will-decide-whether-civil-war-is-likely-167380">the takeover of Afghanistan</a> by the Taliban within days of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/out-of-afghanistan-joe-biden-and-the-future-of-americas-foreign-policy-166914">US and British troop withdrawal</a>, it remains to be seen how Hollywood will treat not only 9/11, but its ongoing ramifications – which even the Hollywood dream machine may struggle to spin into a spectacle of freedom and victory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a time of increasingly complex geopolitical entanglements and moral failings, these films articulate a yearning for unsullied heroism, effective leadership and appropriate responses to crises.Maria Flood, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of LiverpoolMichael C. Frank, Professor of English Literature, University of ZurichLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676982021-09-10T05:54:20Z2021-09-10T05:54:20ZHow the terrifying evacuations from the twin towers on 9/11 helped make today’s skyscrapers safer<p>The 2001 World Trade Center disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times, and the harrowing experiences of the thousands of survivors who successfully escaped the twin towers have had a significant influence on building codes and standards. One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graphic showing layout of elevators in the World Trade Center towers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420419/original/file-20210910-28-1qqreiu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The twin towers’ elevator layouts meant getting to ground level was more complicated on some floors than on others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US NIST</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 110-storey twin towers, constructed from 1966 to 1973, both had open-plan floor designs, with stairs and elevators located in the buildings’ core. Each tower had three staircases which, barring a few twists and turns, ran all the way from the top of the building down to the mezzanine level just above the ground floor. One of the stairways had steps 142 centimetres wide, but the other two measured just 112cm, which would not be permitted by today’s skyscraper building codes.</p>
<p>As a result of the twin towers’ system of “<a href="https://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/03/explainer-sky-lobby">sky lobbies</a>”, which was innovative for its time, the number of available elevators varied depending on the floor. The system was not designed to be used in an emergency, and today, many towers above a certain height are required to be fitted with dedicated emergency elevators or an additional staircase. </p>
<p>When the planes hit on the morning of September 11 2001, the twin towers were at less than half their full occupancy, with <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/occupant-behavior-egress-and-emergency-communication-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">about 9,000 people in each tower</a>. Many people who worked there had not yet arrived, partly because of a New York mayoral election scheduled for that day.</p>
<p>At 8:46am, American Airlines flight 11 slammed into the north face of the north tower, rendering all three staircases impassable for anyone above the 91st floor. Sixteen minutes later, and after one-third of its occupants had already evacuated, the south tower was hit by United Airlines flight 175, leaving only one staircase available for evacuees above the 78th floor.</p>
<p>Besides the problems posed by fires and damage on floors, and debris inside the stairways, people in both towers also faced issues with communication. The north tower’s public address system, which would have been used to make emergency announcements to the building’s occupants, was disabled by the crash. </p>
<p>In the south tower, three minutes before the impact, occupants were told via the public address system to stay in place and wait for further information. Two minutes later they were told they could evacuate if they wanted. This may have meant more people from higher floors were waiting at the sky lobby on floor 78 when the plane crashed into that floor.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/9-11-conspiracy-theories-debunked-20-years-later-engineering-experts-explain-how-the-twin-towers-collapsed-167353">9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In both towers, people had only limited information on which to base their decisions. For those closest to the impacts, the seriousness of the situation and the need to evacuate was clear. But for those further away, who may have witnessed only the lights flicker, the uncertainty was palpable. Many people delayed their evacuation to seek out extra information, whether by speaking with colleagues, making phone calls, sending emails or searching online for news updates. </p>
<p>Many lives were saved by the brave leadership of people who took control of the situation, urging others to evacuate and helping those who needed assistance. My <a href="https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6t053g11g">PhD research</a> revealed these were typically people who were used to taking charge: high-level managers, fire wardens and people with military experience.</p>
<h2>Hazardous exit</h2>
<p>Evacuees faced a dangerous and claustrophobic journey down to ground level. A <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/final-reports-nist-world-trade-center-disaster-investigation">subsequent US government investigation</a> found 70% of evacuees encountered crowding on the stairs. Some people recalled having to leave the stairwell either because of overcrowding, being told to do so by fire or building officials, or because they needed a rest. Other problems included poor lighting, not knowing which direction to go, and finding the route unavoidably blocked by people with permanent or temporary disabilities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="World Trade Center stairwell" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420423/original/file-20210910-17-5o1ihp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the narrow staircases in the north tower, taken during the evacuation on September 11 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NIST</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While people are typically told not to use elevators in an emergency, 16% of those who escaped the south tower used the elevators to evacuate during the 16 minutes between the two impacts. <a href="https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/article/10.1007/s10694-011-0240-y">Simulations</a> of a hypothetical 9/11 in which elevators were unavailable showed that occupants’ use of elevators saved 3,000 lives in the south tower.</p>
<p>Not everyone was so lucky. The <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/occupant-behavior-egress-and-emergency-communication-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigation</a> (on which I was an author) estimated that between 2,146 and 2,163 people were killed in the towers, and that more people died in the north tower, which was struck first. Most of those who died on 9/11 were on or above the floors hit by the planes. </p>
<p>Roughly 99% of people on floors below the impacts managed to evacuate successfully. For those who didn’t, the factors linked to their deaths included delaying their evacuation, performing emergency response duties, or being unable to leave their particular floor because of damage or debris. Had the buildings been fully occupied, the consequences would undoubtedly have been even worse.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/20-years-on-9-11-responders-are-still-sick-and-dying-166033">20 years on, 9/11 responders are still sick and dying</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Building better</h2>
<p>The stories of those who experienced the terrifying evacuations have helped to shape important and life-saving changes in high-rise buildings. The <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/occupant-behavior-egress-and-emergency-communication-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">NIST report</a> made several recommendations that were eventually implemented in a range of building codes and standards around the world, notably the <a href="https://www.iccsafe.org/products-and-services/i-codes/2018-i-codes/ibc/">International Building Code</a>.</p>
<p>Emergency stairs in skyscrapers must now be at least 137cm wide, and feature glow-in-the-dark markings on the stair treads that are visible even if the power fails. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Stairwell in building in Taiwan" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420416/original/file-20210910-8898-4a51dt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stairwells in large buildings are now wider and have better signage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rico Shen/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What’s more, while elevator use is not typically encouraged during building fires, the International Building Code now requires a new “occupant-safe” elevator system or an additional staircase in buildings over 128 metres tall. These new elevator systems are designed to be safely used during fires, offering a vital escape route for people unable to use stairs.</p>
<p>The tragic events of 9/11 changed the world in all sorts of ways. But hopefully, when it comes to the design of today’s skyscrapers, it has changed things for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erica Kuligowski currently receives funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Measurement Science and Engineering Grants Program (as a subcontractor). She is affiliated with the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) as a Section Editor for their Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering (Human Behaviour Section) and as a member of the Board of Governors for the SFPE Foundation. Also, from 2002 to 2020, Erica worked as a research engineer and social scientist in the Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While at NIST, Erica worked on NIST's Technical Investigation of the 2001 WTC Disaster as a team member of Project 7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications. Finally, Erica gratefully acknowledges the UK WTC project HEED, funded by the UK EPSRC (grant EP/D507790/1) for providing access to the HEED database, which was used in her PhD thesis.</span></em></p>99% of people below the floors where the planes struck the twin towers evacuated successfully, although their journey was fraught with danger. Their stories have influenced today’s skyscraper designs.Erica Kuligowski, Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676022021-09-09T12:05:23Z2021-09-09T12:05:23ZI was on a frenzied trading floor when 9/11 broke – here’s what I witnessed<p>On the morning of September 11 2001, I was on the trading floor in London. The US market had just opened when, one by one, my colleagues began to stand and stare at the TV screens above the foreign-exchange trading desk. Something had hit the World Trade Center. It looked like a small private plane making a terrible flight error.</p>
<p>Soon after, it became clear that a commercial airliner had hit the first tower, and another aircraft had just hit the other one. I called home, and around me I could hear my colleagues talking to their family members, telling them to switch on the TV. </p>
<p>Others were frantically trying to get through to their Wall Street brokers – especially those at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-14870543">Cantor Fitzgerald</a>, which occupied four floors in the twin towers; and <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-09-20-0109200217-story.html">Carr Futures</a>, the derivatives broking arm of our employer, Crédit Agricole Indosuez, which was on the 92nd floor of the north tower. </p>
<p>At the time, nobody had any idea who or what was under attack, let alone who or what the attacker was. But I remember feeling an acute sense of threat, wondering about essential things that would be required if the financial system collapsed. Cash and water, I remember thinking. </p>
<p>The New York Stock Exchange did not open that day, but that was irrelevant for us in the foreign exchange and interest-rate derivatives markets. Since the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37751599">financial deregulation</a> and <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240083742/The-evolution-of-stock-market-technology">technological changes</a> in the 1980s, our markets had exploded in turnover and size. Banks took an increasing amount of risk, but these markets had little regulatory oversight and no <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/circuitbreaker.asp">circuit breaks</a> (a system for temporarily halting trading during a panic). So regardless of what was happening, the show had to go on.</p>
<h2>Panicked trading</h2>
<p>Over the following hours, trading became like a game of musical chairs where traders were either afraid and desperate to eliminate risk, blood-hungry to take advantage of an extraordinary situation or a combination thereof. Quite a few were trying to put bets on an imminent interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve – a textbook move in times of crisis because it’s a way of stimulating the economy. </p>
<p>Soon, however, traders realised that this strategy was doomed to fail. If people were hoarding bottles of water or cans of food in New York or London, nobody would be prepared to lend short-term cash. So the herd moved the other way.</p>
<p>The frenzied trading went on unabated until a senior manager stood up and announced that it had to stop. I was relieved as our job had become uncomfortably inappropriate considering the events that were unfolding. I had been turning over billions of dollars during those hours. I think I made money for the bank that day, but in honesty it is a bit of a blur.</p>
<p>One by one, banks took a unilateral and hitherto unheard-of decision to withdraw from trading. We were simply told to go home. I switched off my computer screens and <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/squawkbox.asp">squawk boxes</a> (the intercom systems used on trading floors), noting that they were still flashing like Christmas trees. Not all traders in the market had received the same instructions, and they were more eager than ever to buy or sell. I left the trading floor amid a noise of unanswered telephone calls.</p>
<p>The war on terror was launched within days, but normal trading routines had more or less resumed by then. Initially, however, not a day went by without a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/barometer-of-fear-9781783609291/">rumour flying around</a> that a suspect package had been found at London’s Liverpool Street station, that a plane had gone missing or that George W. Bush had been assassinated. Terror attacks became “events” that could be incorporated into spreadsheets, and trades were put on that would pay off in case of an attack, particularly on Fridays. In theory, there was a higher probability of an attack during any given weekend than, say, on any randomly chosen Tuesday. </p>
<h2>What it taught us</h2>
<p>Looking back at this tragic event, most of us remained relatively calm and controlled throughout the chaos that unfolded. Nobody walked out in tears, which probably would have been a normal emotional reaction given how many of the victims were work colleagues, competitors or otherwise closely connected to the industry. </p>
<p>Sure, there have been many disasters, crises and events before and after 9/11 that have triggered chaos in the financial markets: Black Monday, Y2K, Lehman Brothers, the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, COVID-19, to name just a few. More often than not, traders have been forced to put their emotions aside to focus on the job at hand. </p>
<p>However, I think 9/11 was more than that. It was a day when it became possible to bet on or against human lives, and financial markets instinctively embraced terror as just another market-moving event. It offered a glimpse into the kind of society we could have if traders were encouraged to ignore their moral compass in the search for profits. On the trading floor, it was a day when rationality was at war with humanity, and humanity lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexis Stenfors does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some traders were panicking to lose positions that now looked hopelessly exposed, while others were trying to make the most of the opportunity.Alexis Stenfors, Reader in Economics and Finance, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.