tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/september-11-1384/articlesSeptember 11 – The Conversation2023-07-28T15:38:08Ztag: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/1957062022-12-29T20:55:25Z2022-12-29T20:55:25ZIs the terrorism threat over?<p>Eight years after <a href="https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/national-threat-level/threat-advisory-system">raising the national terrorism threat level</a>, Australia recently <a href="https://www.asio.gov.au/resources/speeches-and-statements/national-terrorism-threat-level">lowered it</a> again – from mid-range (probable) to low-range (possible). </p>
<p>Does this mean the threat from terrorism is over?</p>
<p>Few are better placed to answer this than Mike Burgess, Director-General of Security and head of ASIO, Australia’s domestic intelligence agency. </p>
<p>Burgess is one of the handful of people who can talk openly about his agency’s work. And when he speaks, his words are carefully calibrated and warrant close attention.</p>
<p>In a rare public address in November he told the Australian public that, for the time being at least, they could stop worrying about the threat of a terrorist attack in Australia. He said:</p>
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<p>When ISIL formed its caliphate in the Middle East, significant numbers of Australians were seduced by slick propaganda and false narratives, and that led ASIO to raise the terrorism threat level to PROBABLE. Our decision was tragically justified.</p>
<p>Since 2014, there have been 11 terrorist attacks on Australian soil, while 21 significant plots have been detected and disrupted.</p>
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<p>Decades of hard work by police, communities and government agencies have ultimately reduced the capacity of terrorist groups (al-Qaeda and the Islamic State movement in particular) to significantly threaten stable, democratic states.</p>
<p>But in <a href="https://eeradicalization.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Taliban-Report-by-Ajmal-Souhail-final.pdf">weak or failing states</a> (including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia) al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates continue to represent an existential threat. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/GTI-2022-web-04112022.pdf">Global Terrorism Index</a>, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for almost half of all terrorist deaths, and <a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/global-terrorism-index/#/">the Sahel</a> (a region of North Africa that includes countries such as Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso) is home to some of the most potent terrorist networks on the planet.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/jihadists-and-bandits-are-cooperating-why-this-is-bad-news-for-nigeria-195619">Jihadists and bandits are cooperating. Why this is bad news for Nigeria</a>
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<h2>How have stable democracies minimised the terror threat?</h2>
<p>Established democracies have developed police-led counterterrorism intelligence capacity to the point where ambitious, large-scale, terrorist plots are largely detected and disrupted, and terrorist social networks are effectively pinned down.</p>
<p>And this is not just the case with Western democracies. In our region, for example, Indonesia, <a href="https://stratsea.com/deradicalization-programs-in-malaysian-prisons-amidst-covid-19-pandemic-limitations-challenges/">Malaysia</a> and the <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/philippines/un-philippines-peacebuilding-programme-scores-gains-achieving-peace-bangsamoro">Philippines</a> have made impressive progress in constraining a resilient and pernicious terrorist threat.</p>
<p>For Indonesia, and Australia, the bomb attacks in Bali 20 years ago were transformative. In the wake the bombings, successful forensic investigations by the Indonesian National Police, in partnership with the Australian Federal Police (AFP), profoundly reshaped the police forces of both nations.</p>
<p>The AFP was established in 1979 and tasked with leading counterterrorism, in response to the <a href="https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/criminal-hilton-hotel-bombing-nsw-1978/">Sydney Hilton bombing of 1978</a>. This was an unprecedented attack that killed three and injured 11. By the turn of the century, however, the modest resources of the AFP were being reorientated towards more pressing threats, such as counternarcotics and port security. </p>
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<p>The September 11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on America in 2001, however, forced an abrupt pivot, returning the AFP to its original focus on counterterrorism. A year later, in October 2002, AFP agents Mick Keelty and Graham Ashton were forced to draw on their relationships of trust with Indonesia National Police officers to figure out who was responsible for the Bali bombings, and to limit their capacity to launch further attacks.</p>
<p>Their successful cooperation led to the arrest of members of a breakaway bombing cell of an Indonesian al-Qaeda affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah. Formed in 1993 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by so-called mujahideen, or holy fighters, this group supported the resistance to Soviet occupation in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The Bali attacks resulted in the establishment of a specialist counterterrorism unit of the Indonesia police called Densus 88. In the 18 years since its establishment Densus 88 has arrested, and contributed to the successful prosecution of, more than 2,000 terrorists (this is my estimate based on the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48687392.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A105e01db6bb2055a5ab2cee590c10073&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1">hundreds of arrests reported year on year</a>).</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indonesias-counter-terrorism-force-has-become-a-model-for-the-region-97368">How Indonesia's counter-terrorism force has become a model for the region</a>
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<p>The challenge now for Indonesian police is breaking the cycle of radicalisation. The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-63883431">recent release</a> of Bali bomb-maker Umar Patek, on closely supervised parole, is confronting. But it’s also an encouraging indication of the success of Indonesian police in rehabilitating former terrorists.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/violent-extremism-could-beckon-in-north-western-nigeria-if-local-dynamics-are-ignored-195044">Violent extremism could beckon in north-western Nigeria if local dynamics are ignored</a>
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<p>The rise of the Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq in mid-2014 marked a disturbing setback in counterterrorism in Australia and Southeast Asia. It was, in large part, a product of an unwise, and unwarranted, military intervention in Iraq a decade earlier. This toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein and opened the door to insurgent forces, including Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later became Islamic State in Iraq, and then Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).</p>
<p>The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein proved deeply destabilising, with cascading perverse outcomes. The international military operation, in which Australia played a significant role, contributed both to the rise of ISIS and to its ultimate defeat.</p>
<p>A similar, though strikingly incomplete, cycle of events played out in Afghanistan. Initially, the US-led military operation that began in October 2001 <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan">constrained al-Qaeda</a>, almost to the point of defeat. But <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/interactive-reports/what-we-need-to-learn/index.html">ultimately</a>, the military intervention led to the reconquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban, and the opening of the door to al-Qaeda and its rival Islamic State. </p>
<p>Not only does al-Qaeda now enjoy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/al-qaida-enjoying-a-haven-in-afghanistan-under-taliban-un-warns">safe haven in Afghanistan</a>, Islamic State continues to launch <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/is-recruits-multiethnic-fighters-in-afghanistan-threatening-regional-security-us-says/6878397.html">devastating attacks</a> across Afghanistan.</p>
<p>For the time being, however, police counterterrorism intelligence has constrained the capacity of both al-Qaeda and ISIS to project a threat into Australia.</p>
<h2>What about far-right terror?</h2>
<p>Far-right and related conspiracy extremism has gone from representing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/22/asio-reveals-up-to-40-of-its-counter-terrorism-cases-involve-far-right-violent-extremism">just 10-15%</a> of the counterterrorism caseload of ASIO and the AFP to <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7269257/ideologically-motivated-terror-now-taking-up-half-of-asio-work/">almost 50%</a>. This is a <a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/rising-right-wing-violence-and-its-impact-on-the-fight-against-terrorism/">pattern</a> matched across <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/the-reichsburger-movement-explainer/">North America and Europe</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-almost-like-grooming-how-anti-vaxxers-conspiracy-theorists-and-the-far-right-came-together-over-covid-168383">'It's almost like grooming': how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over COVID</a>
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<p>For the moment, this new threat is mostly likely to manifest in lone-actor attacks that are mostly smaller-scale and less lethal (but not always, as we saw in <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-extremists-still-threaten-new-zealand-a-year-on-from-the-christchurch-attacks-133050">Christchurch in 2019</a>).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-extremists-still-threaten-new-zealand-a-year-on-from-the-christchurch-attacks-133050">Far-right extremists still threaten New Zealand, a year on from the Christchurch attacks</a>
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<p>For Western democracies, and increasingly Asian democracies as well, toxic ultranationalism in the form of ethnic and religious supremacist movements is the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63889792">rising threat</a>. Currently it’s <a href="https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media-releases/extremist-recruitment-reaching-young-australian-gamers">less well organised and coordinated</a> than jihadi terrorism. But that’s <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/extremists-far-right-figures-exploit-recent-changes-twitter">likely to change</a>. </p>
<p>And, as the tragic attacks in <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/devils-and-demons-wieambilla-shooters-film-video-after-killing-police-20221216-p5c6wu.html">Wieambilla</a> have shown, it has all became much more complex and unpredictable. Paranoia fuelled by conspiracy theories, mixed with religious fundamentalism and hatred of governments and police, is generating new forms of violent extremism.</p>
<p>As Mike Burgess reminded us:</p>
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<p>Terrorism is an enduring threat. And terrorism is an evolving threat […] We keep the terrorism threat level under constant review. There can be no ‘set and forget’ in security intelligence.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Barton receives funding from the Australian Research Council. And he is engaged in a range of projects working to understand and counter violent extremism in Australia and in Southeast Asia and Africa that are funded by the Australian government.</span></em></p>For the time being, terrorism is a reduced threat in Australia. But the threat is not going away entirely.Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin UniversityLicensed 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/1660802021-09-09T12:26:15Z2021-09-09T12:26:15ZHow social media – aided by bots – amplifies Islamophobia online<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420100/original/file-20210908-27-1wcubm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C81%2C5398%2C3555&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Islamophobia has changed in the 20 years since Sept. 11. Now, much of it plays out on social media.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-including-muslims-christians-and-jews-take-news-photo/1132685681?adppopup=true">Atilgan Ozdil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In August 2021, a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/12/aipac-accused-of-islamophobia-after-attacks-on-ilhan-omar">Facebook ad campaign</a> criticizing Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the United States’ first Muslim congresswomen, came under intense scrutiny. Critics charged that the ads linked the congresswomen with terrorism, and some faith leaders <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/progressive-us-jewish-groups-condemn-aipac-over-ads-targeting-ilhan-omar/">condemned the campaign</a> as “Islamophobic” – that is, spreading fear of Islam and hatred against Muslims.</p>
<p>This was hardly the first time the pair faced Islamophobic or racist abuse, especially on the internet. As a communications professor who studies <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1748088">the politics of race and identity online</a>, I have seen that Omar is often a target of white nationalist attacks on Twitter. </p>
<p>But online attacks on Muslims are not limited to politicians. Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, stereotypes that associate Muslims with terrorism go far beyond depictions in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512786.2015.1044556">newspapers</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716203588001011">television</a>. Recent research raises the alarm about rampant Islamophobia in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Islamophobia-in-Cyberspace-Hate-Crimes-Go-Viral/Awan/p/book/9780367597030">digital spaces</a>, particularly far-right groups’ use of disinformation and other manipulation tactics to vilify Muslims and their faith.</p>
<h2>Amplifying hate</h2>
<p>In July 2021, for example, a team led by media researcher <a href="https://murrow.wsu.edu/people/lawrence-pintak/">Lawrence Pintak</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211031567">published research on tweets that mentioned Omar during her campaign</a> for Congress. They reported that half <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211031567">the tweets they studied</a> involved “overtly Islamophobic or xenophobic language or other forms of hate speech.”</p>
<p>The majority of offensive posts came from a small number of “provocateurs” – accounts that seed Islamophobic conversations on Twitter. Many of these accounts belonged to conservatives, they found. But the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211031567">researchers reported</a> that such accounts themselves did not generate significant traffic.</p>
<p>Instead, the team found that “amplifiers” were primarily responsible: accounts that collect and circulate agents provocateurs’ ideas through mass retweets and replies.</p>
<p>Their most interesting finding was that only four of the top 20 Islamophobic amplifiers were authentic accounts. Most were either <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2818717">bots</a> – algorithmically generated to mimic human accounts – or “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3038912.3052677">sockpuppets</a>,” which are human accounts that use fake identities to deceive others and manipulate conversations online. </p>
<p>Bots and sockpuppets disseminated Islamophobic tweets originally posted by authentic accounts, creating a “megaphone effect” that scales up Islamophobia across the Twitterverse.</p>
<h2>“Cloaked” accounts</h2>
<p>Twitter has <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-twitter-users-in-selected-countries/">a little over 200 million daily active users</a>. Facebook, meanwhile, has <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebook-global-dau/">nearly 2 billion</a> – and some use similar manipulation strategies on this platform to escalate Islamophobia. </p>
<p>Disinformation researcher <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QLFQNFoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Johan Farkas</a> and his colleagues have studied <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817707759">“cloaked” Facebook pages</a> in Denmark, which are run by individuals or groups who pretend to be radical Islamists in order to provoke antipathy against Muslims. The scholars’ analysis of 11 such pages, identified as fakes, found that organizers posted spiteful claims about ethnic Danes and Danish society and threatened an Islamic takeover of the country.</p>
<p>Facebook removed the pages for violating the platform’s content policy, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817707759">according to the study</a>, but they reemerged under a different guise. Although Farkas’ team couldn’t confirm who was creating the pages, they found patterns indicating “the same individual or group hiding behind the cloak.”</p>
<p>These <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817707759">“cloaked” pages</a> succeeded in prompting thousands of hostile and racist comments toward the radical Islamists that users believed were running the pages. But they also prompted anger toward the wider Muslim community in Denmark, including refugees.</p>
<p>Such comments often fit into a wider view of Muslims as a threat to “Western values” and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816642169">whiteness</a>,” underscoring how Islamophobia goes beyond religious intolerance. </p>
<h2>Dual threats</h2>
<p>This is not to suggest that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1157406">“real” Islamist extremists</a> are absent from the web. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1157403">internet in general</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1157404">social media in particular</a> have long served as a means of Islamist radicalization. </p>
<p>But in recent years, far-right groups have been expanding their online presence much faster than Islamists. Between 2012 and 2016, white nationalists’ Twitter followers grew by more than 600%, according to <a href="https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/downloads/Nazis%20v.%20ISIS.pdf">a study</a> by <a href="https://www.jmberger.com/">extremism expert J.M. Berger</a>. White nationalists “outperform ISIS in nearly every social metric, from follower counts to tweets per day,” he found.</p>
<p>A more recent study of Berger’s, <a href="https://www.voxpol.eu/download/vox-pol_publication/AltRightTwitterCensus.pdf">a 2018 analysis</a> of alt-right content on Twitter, found “a very significant presence of automation, fake profiles and other social media manipulation tactics” among such groups.</p>
<p>Social media companies have emphasized their policies to identify and stamp out content from Islamic terror groups. Big Tech critics, however, argue that the companies are <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/why-tech-platforms-dont-treat-all-terrorism-same/">less willing to police right-wing groups</a> like white supremacists, making it easier to spread Islamophobia online.</p>
<h2>High stakes</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Demonstrators take part in a protest in Times Square, New York, against growing Islamophobia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420104/original/file-20210908-21-1viof8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Violence toward Muslims has been reported extensively over the past 20 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-take-part-in-a-protest-against-growing-news-photo/1132652797?adppopup=true">Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Exposure to Islamophobic messages has grave consequences. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215619214">Experiments show that portrayals of Muslims as terrorists</a> can increase support for civil restrictions on Muslim-Americans, as well as support for military action against Muslim-majority countries.</p>
<p>The same research indicates that being exposed to content that challenges stereotypes of Muslims – such as Muslims volunteering to help fellow Americans during the Christmas season – can have the opposite effect and reduce support for such policies, especially among political conservatives.</p>
<p>Violence toward Muslims, <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/mosques">the vandalization of mosques</a> and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/20/ahmed.quran.burning/index.html">burnings of the Quran</a> have been extensively reported in the U.S. over the past 20 years, and there are indications that Islamophobia <a href="https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/05/03/720057760/study-shows-islamophobia-is-growing-in-the-u-s-some-say-it-s-rising-in-chicago-too">continues to rise</a>. </p>
<p>But studies following the 2016 election indicate Muslims now experience Islamophobia <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819892283">“more frequently online than face-to-face.”</a> Earlier in 2021, a Muslim advocacy group <a href="https://muslimadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/GW_MuslimAdvocates_Facebook_Complaint_FILED_4_8_21-with-addresses-REDACTED.pdf">sued Facebook executives</a>, accusing the company of failing to remove anti-Muslim hate speech. The suit claims that Facebook itself commissioned a civil rights audit that found the website “created an atmosphere where Muslims feel under siege.”</p>
<p>In 2011, around the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a report by the Center for American Progress documented the country’s <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/reports/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc/">extensive Islamophobia network</a>, especially drawing attention to the role of “misinformation experts” from the far-right in spreading anti-Muslim propaganda. </p>
<p>Five years later, the entire country was awash in talk of “misinformation” experts using similar strategies – this time, trying to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190923624.001.0001">influence the presidential election</a>. Ultimately, these evolving strategies don’t just target Muslims, but may be replicated on a grander scale.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166080/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saif Shahin 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>Concern about Islamophobia has been near-constant for years. But how it plays out is changing – especially online.Saif Shahin, Assistant Professor in School of Communication and Faculty Affiliate with Antiracist Research and Policy Center, American 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.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1673532021-09-08T20:12:45Z2021-09-08T20:12:45Z9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419912/original/file-20210908-7120-1nfd6c7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C26%2C4346%2C2900&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roberto Robanne/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The collapse of the World Trade Center has been subject to intense public scrutiny over the 20 years, since the centre’s twin towers were struck by aircraft hijacked by terrorists. Both collapsed within two hours of impact, prompting several investigations and spawning a variety of conspiracy theories. </p>
<p>Construction on the World Trade Center 1 (the North Tower) and World Trade Center 2 (the South Tower) began in the 1960s. They were constructed from steel and concrete, using a design that was groundbreaking at the time. Most high-rise buildings since have used a similar structure.</p>
<p>The investigatory reports into the events of September 11, 2001 were undertaken by the <a href="https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch2.pdf">US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)</a> and the <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/final-reports-nist-world-trade-center-disaster-investigation">National Institute of Standards and Technology</a>. </p>
<p>FEMA’s report was published in 2002. This was followed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s three-year investigation, funded by the US Federal Government and published in 2005.</p>
<p>Some conspiracy theorists seized on the fact the NIST investigation was funded by the federal government — believing the government itself had caused the twin towers’ collapse, or was aware it would happen and deliberately didn’t act.</p>
<p>While there have been critics of both reports (and the investigations behind them weren’t flawless) — their explanation for the buildings’ collapse is widely accepted. They conclude it was not caused by direct impact by the aircraft, or the use of explosives, but by fires that burned inside the buildings after impact.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Fire and rescue workers search through the rubble of the World Trade Centrr" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419934/original/file-20210908-18-1d6m7vf.jpeg?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">Fire and rescue workers search through the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York on 13 September 2001. On 11 September 2001, two aircrafts were flown into the centre’s twin towers, causing both to collapse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BETH A. KEISER/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why did the towers collapse as they did?</h2>
<p>Some have questioned why the buildings did not “topple over” after being struck side-on by aircraft. But the answer becomes clear once you consider the details. </p>
<p>Aircraft are made from lightweight materials, such as aluminium. If you compare the mass of an aircraft with that of a skyscraper more than 400 metres tall and built from steel and concrete, it makes sense the building would not topple over.</p>
<p>The towers would have been more than 1,000 times the mass of the aircraft, and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11837-001-0003-1">designed to resist</a> steady wind loads more than 30 times the aircrafts’ weight.</p>
<p>That said, the aircraft did dislodge fireproofing material within the towers, which was coated on the steel columns and on the steel floor trusses (underneath concrete slabs). The lack of fireproofing left the steel unprotected.</p>
<p>As such, the impact also structurally <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/final-reports-nist-world-trade-center-disaster-investigation">damaged</a> the supporting steel columns. When a few columns become damaged, the load they carry is transferred to other columns. This is why both towers withstood the initial impacts and didn’t collapse immediately.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/9-11-the-controversial-story-of-the-remains-of-the-world-trade-center-167481">9/11: the controversial story of the remains of the World Trade Center</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Progressive collapse</h2>
<p>The fact that the towers withstood initial impacts also spawned one of the most common conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11: that a bomb or explosives must have been detonated somewhere within the buildings. </p>
<p>These theories have developed from video footage showing the towers rapidly collapsing downwards some time after impact, similar to a controlled demolition. But it is possible for them to have collapsed this way without explosives. </p>
<p>It was fire that caused this. And the fire is believed to have come from the burning of remaining aircraft fuel. </p>
<p>According to the FEMA report, fire within the buildings caused thermal expansion of the floors in a horizontal and outwards direction, pushing against the rigid steel columns — which deflected to an extent but resisted further movement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419729/original/file-20210907-17-ceifdd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This figure shows the expansion of floor slabs and framing which likely happened as a result of the fires.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">FEMA / https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch2.pdf</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the columns resisting movement, there was nowhere else for the concrete floors to expand to. This led to an increased buildup of stress in the sagging floors, until the floor framing and connections gave in. </p>
<p>The floors’ failure pulled the columns back inwards, eventually leading to them buckling, and the floors collapsing. The collapsing floors then fell on more floors below, leading to a progressive collapse.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419730/original/file-20210907-15-n8yw7s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The buckling of columns initiated by floor failure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">FEMA / https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch2.pdf</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This explanation, documented in the official reports, is widely accepted by experts as the cause of the twin towers’ collapse. It is <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/final-reports-nist-world-trade-center-disaster-investigation">understood</a> the South Tower collapsed sooner because it suffered more damage from the initial aircraft impact, which also dislodged more fireproofing material. </p>
<p>The debris from the collapse of the North Tower set at least ten floors alight in the nearby World Trade Center 7 building, or “Building 7”, which also <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/final-report-collapse-world-trade-center-building-7-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0">collapsed</a> about seven hours later. </p>
<p>While there are different theories regarding how the progressive collapse of Building 7 was initiated, there is <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_9f81895/P003_UQ9f81895_Paper21.pdf?dsi_version=87e49663794e5734a13be9924e57b0a7&Expires=1631067602&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=BFjdytaaDOoZ4UkNnYkXUS5J5CZrVXDG0C%7E39s6s3ljwVyI8yeiKjFSWIbVMrPxD2J%7EYfBgk8AMGWZ2NfJCyn4EOn2KpKGZ8wY-eJXXLmwU3hRbIBGl9sFTIOwNIAuAgPjMPQtIJS6K9vRxvasOJpXnSWZYNc67UOKSZJ84HPu7es-4DcQPn18AmHVq6oBDaCjeIlWZmx9v05H8CaOi9VaT%7EHPxJR0J46QXyL4w72BoU287X58Z3n6wB5cyeeULUL7zIwQo0HLLofLKfyam5zaKDXghQNVTtwEfaX5l7pj2zVedjbpZiaNQ6KZcR7pO%7EXuCwmaRM0QgrU-GK2q4pCg">consensus among investigators</a> fire was the primary cause of failure.</p>
<p>Both official reports made a range of fire safety recommendations for other high-rise buildings, including to improve evacuation and emergency response. In 2007, the National Institute of Standards and Technology also published a <a href="https://www.nist.gov/publications/best-practices-reducing-potential-progressive-collapse-buildings">best practice guide</a> recommending solutions to reduce risk of progressive collapse.</p>
<h2>What does this mean for high-rise buildings?</h2>
<p>Before 9/11, progressive collapse wasn’t well understood by engineers. The disaster highlighted the importance of having a “global view” of fire safety for a building, as opposed to focusing on individual elements. </p>
<p>There have since been changes to building codes and standards on improving the structural performance of buildings on fire, as well as opportunities to escape (such as added stairwell requirements).</p>
<p>At the same time, the collapse of the twin towers demonstrated the very real dangers of fire in high-rise buildings. In the decades since the World Trade Center was designed, buildings have become taller and more complex, as societies demand sustainable and cost-effective housing in large cities.</p>
<p>Some 86 of the current <a href="https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings">100 tallest</a> buildings in the world were built after 9/11. This has coincided with a significant increase in building façade fires globally, which have <a href="https://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/JAKO201809355933912.page">gone up sevenfold</a> in the past three decades.</p>
<p>This can be partly attributed to the wide use of flammable cladding. It is marketed as an innovative, cost-effective and sustainable material, yet it has shown significant shortcomings in terms of fire safety — as witnessed in the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40301289">2017 Grenfell Disaster</a>. </p>
<p>The Grenfell fire (and similar cladding fires) are proof that fire safety in tall buildings is still a problem. And as structures get taller and more complex, with new and innovative designs and materials, questions around fire safety will only become more difficult to answer.</p>
<p>The events of 9/11 may have been challenging to foresee, but the fires that led to the towers’ collapse could have been better prepared for.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cladding-fire-risks-have-been-known-for-years-lives-depend-on-acting-now-with-no-more-delays-111186">Cladding fire risks have been known for years. Lives depend on acting now, with no more delays</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Oswald has received funding from various organisations including the Association of Researchers in Construction Management and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. He is affiliated with The Institute of Civil Engineers acting as a journal Associate Editor.</span></em></p><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.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Nguyen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other government/industry-funded programs. She is a member of the Society of Fire Safety, Engineers Australia. The view and opinion that she has in this article is her personal view and does not represent her employer's opinion. </span></em></p>The World Trade Center buildings were built to withstand wind loads more than 30 times the aircrafts’ weight.David Oswald, Senior Lecturer in Construction, RMIT UniversityErica Kuligowski, Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow, RMIT UniversityKate Nguyen, Senior Lecturer, ARC DECRA Fellow and Victoria Fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1662732021-09-08T20:12:38Z2021-09-08T20:12:38ZBefore 9/11, Australia had no counter-terrorism laws, now we have 92 — but are we safer?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419216/original/file-20210903-22720-8a8ib6.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">David Mariuz/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia is a long way from New York and Washington DC, but the September 11 terror attacks had a profound impact on our country.</p>
<p>In Afghanistan and Iraq, we became embroiled in decades-long insurgencies. At home, the attacks had enduring impacts on our legal system. Before 9/11 Australia had zero national counter-terrorism laws. Now, we have <a href="https://cdn.getup.org.au/2836-GetUp-Democracy-Dossier.pdf">92 of them</a>, amounting to more than 5,000 pages of rules, powers and offences. </p>
<p>These laws have reshaped ideas about criminal responsibility, set us apart from our closest allies, and strengthened a troubling culture of secrecy. </p>
<p>But have they made us safer? </p>
<h2>Unprecedented powers</h2>
<p>No other nation can match the volume of Australia’s counter-terrorism laws. Their sheer scope is staggering. They include: </p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/australias-counter-terrorism-laws/control-orders">control orders</a>, which allow courts to impose a wide range of restrictions and obligations on people to prevent future wrongdoing. They can mandate curfews, limits on phone or internet usage and electronic monitoring </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/australias-counter-terrorism-laws/preventative-detention-orders">preventative detention orders</a>, which allow police to detain people secretly for up to two weeks, either to prevent an attack or protect evidence relating to a recent one</p></li>
<li><p>mandatory retention of all Australians’ metadata for two years and access by enforcement agencies <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/taaa1979410/s178.html">without a warrant</a></p></li>
<li><p>a power for the home affairs minister to <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/aca2007254/s36b.html">strip</a> dual citizens involved in terrorism of their Australian citizenship.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Many of these schemes are unprecedented in Australian law, outstripping even our historical <a href="https://cdn.getup.org.au/2836-GetUp-Democracy-Dossier.pdf">wartime powers</a>. </p>
<h2>‘Hyper-legislation’</h2>
<p>Toronto University law professor Kent Roach, one of the world’s leading experts on counter-terrorism laws, has labelled Australia’s approach “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/911-effect/8928404A0FEC0B2A22C7E3415272BBB6">hyper-legislation</a>”. This refers not only to the vast scope and number of laws, but also the speed with which they were passed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The data retention bill passed, forcing telecommunications providers to keep records of phone and internet use for two years, passing the lower house in 2014." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419218/original/file-20210903-25-ke8shc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The data retention bill, forcing telecommunications providers to keep records of phone and internet use for two years, passed parliament in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On average, it took around two and half days in the House of Representatives and two days in the Senate for <a href="https://cdn.getup.org.au/2836-GetUp-Democracy-Dossier.pdf">each law to be approved</a>. Those are very generous figures — they count the days bills were introduced into parliament, even if they weren’t debated. The speed was fastest under the Howard government, when a new counter-terrorism law was passed on average <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MelbULawRw/2011/38.html">every 6.7 weeks</a>. But the trend has continued. </p>
<p>At the end of last month, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/tony-abbott-and-kevin-rudd-could-be-spied-on-by-asio-under-new-laws-heres-why">two laws</a> containing extensive and highly controversial surveillance powers <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/police-powers-to-hack-and-disrupt-dark-web-pass-parliament-20210825-p58lsr.html">sailed through federal parliament</a> with minimal scrutiny.</p>
<h2>A ‘pre-crime’ approach</h2>
<p>Counter-terrorism laws in Australia and elsewhere have reoriented the criminal justice system. Under wide-ranging offences, people can be imprisoned for harms they may cause in the future, rather than harms they have caused in the past. </p>
<p>This has been called a “<a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/PrecedentAULA/2011/4.pdf">pre-crime</a>” approach to criminal justice. As Justice Anthony Whealy <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWSC/2010/10.html">said</a> when sentencing five terrorist offenders in 2010:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The legislation is designed to bite early, long before the preparatory acts mature into circumstances of deadly or dangerous consequence for the community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The offence of <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cca1995115/sch1.html">preparing or planning</a> a terrorist act is the clearest example. An equivalent of this <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-04/nz-needs-to-go-beyond-fast-tracking-counter-terrorism-laws/100434754">offence will now be introduced in New Zealand</a> following the recent terror attack in Auckland. </p>
<p>This offence and many others trigger criminal responsibility much earlier than the ordinary criminal law (for example, it has never been a crime to prepare a murder or robbery). </p>
<p>A person convicted of a terrorism offence can even be <a href="https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-2017-068">kept in prison</a> beyond their original sentence, possibly indefinitely, based on the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-10/abdul-benbrika-sentence-upheld-by-high-court-keeping-him-in-jail/13139440">risk they still pose</a> to the community.</p>
<h2>Even tougher than our allies</h2>
<p>Australia looked closely to the United Kingdom when designing our first counter-terrorism laws. On top of our close legal and political ties, this was because the UK had already enacted <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/contents">counter-terrorism laws</a>—based on previous emergency powers for Northern Ireland — before 9/11. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-doesnt-need-more-anti-terror-laws-that-arent-necessary-or-even-used-138827">Australia doesn't need more anti-terror laws that aren't necessary – or even used</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the years since, our laws have become more extreme, setting us apart from the UK and the rest of our “<a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/newly-disclosed-nsa-documents-shed-further-light-five-eyes-alliance">Five Eyes</a>” partners, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Not only have “tough on terror” policies <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0004865819846944?af=R&ai=1gvoi&mi=3ricys">played well with voters</a> here, Australia does not have a bill of rights. This means the government has been able to enact counter-terrorism laws that would not be possible elsewhere.</p>
<p>One example of this is the mandatory retention of all Australians’ telecommunications metadata for <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/taaa1979410/s187c.html">two years</a>. The European Court of Human Rights <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62012CJ0293">held</a> that blanket retention for that time period infringed the basic right to privacy. </p>
<p>Other powers, such as preventative detention orders, would simply not be possible in countries with constitutional protection for human rights. The Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) 2013 <a href="https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/consultations/coag-review-counter-terrorism-legislation">review of counter-terrorism legislation</a> reported preventative detention orders were more likely to be seen in “discredited totalitarian regimes”.</p>
<h2>‘The world’s most secretive democracy’</h2>
<p>Following the 2019 federal police <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-federal-police-press-freedom/11309810">raid</a> on ABC headquarters, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/world/australia/journalist-raids.html">The New York Times suggested</a>: “Australia may well be the world’s most secretive democracy”.</p>
<p>Australia’s counter-terrorism laws enable and entrench these high levels of secrecy. It is a crime to mention basic details about the use of many counter-terrorism powers — or even the <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/asioa1979472/s34gf.html">mere fact they were used</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A police CCTV surveillance centre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419220/original/file-20210903-19-17lwbhj.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Human rights advocates have raised concerns about law enforcement’s surveillance powers in Australia, including the ability to takeover accounts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sweeping espionage laws, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_LEGislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6022">overhauled in 2018</a>, make it a crime to possess or receive national security information where the information would be made available to a foreign government or company (including through publication in the media). The definition of “national security” is exceptionally broad, extending to anything about Australia’s political and economic relations with other countries.</p>
<p>These offences pose a <a href="https://law.uq.edu.au/article/2021/03/untested-espionage-laws-blast-chill-winds-through-news-publishing">serious risk to journalists</a> and whistleblowers who act in the public interest. Criminal trials for these offences can be also <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-quest-for-national-security-is-undermining-the-courts-and-could-lead-to-secretive-trials-122638">held in secret</a>, undermining open justice and the right to a fair trial.</p>
<h2>Are we any safer?</h2>
<p>Undoubtedly, some counter-terrorism laws have enhanced Australia’s national security. But others have little, or no, proven effectiveness, despite their impact on fundamental rights.</p>
<p>For example, in 2012, former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Bret Walker SC, <a href="https://www.inslm.gov.au/sites/default/files/inslm-annual-report-2012.pdf">found</a> control orders were</p>
<blockquote>
<p>not effective, not appropriate and not necessary. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This finding was based on classified submissions by police and security agencies. Despite this, in response to Islamic State, the federal government <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_LEGislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s982">expanded the grounds</a> for issuing control orders, and allowed them to be imposed on children <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/23/australia-expands-control-orders-children">as young as 14</a>. </p>
<p>Both the independent monitor and the 2013 <a href="https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/publications/final-report-coag-review-counter-terrorism-legislation">COAG review</a> recommended the repeal of preventative detention orders. Police had not used them and said normal arrest powers would be <a href="https://www.ag.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-03/Final%20Report.PDF">more useful</a>.</p>
<h2>Undermining cohesion</h2>
<p>These controversial powers might even harm our security over the long-term. </p>
<p>Australia’s Muslim communities have felt targeted by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26338076211030955">“aggressive” counter-terrorism powers</a>. This leads to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26338076211030955">lower levels of trust</a> and makes communities less likely to cooperate with police. It also undermines the community cohesion that <a href="https://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/">countering violent extremism programs</a> are trying to build.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remaining-and-expanding-what-the-talibans-return-will-mean-for-jihadi-terrorism-166488">Remaining and expanding: what the Taliban's return will mean for jihadi terrorism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Undermining human rights to prevent terrorism can also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-11/terrorism-expert-says-death-cult-is-a-misnomer/6539862">fuel the grievances</a> that lead to radicalisation and recruitment. Back in 2004, a United Nations panel <a href="https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/gaA.59.565_En.pdf">reported</a> terrorist recruitment thrives when human rights and democracy are lacking.</p>
<p>Ultimately, to reduce terrorism over the long-term, governments need to support greater investments and research into <a href="https://icct.nl/topic/countering-violent-extremism/">countering violent extremism</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19434472.2018.1495661">deradicalisation</a> programs. This is equally true for Islamist and <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7269257/ideologically-motivated-terror-now-taking-up-half-of-asio-work/">right-wing terrorism</a>. </p>
<h2>Security, but at what cost?</h2>
<p>Over the past two decades, evolving terror threats have exposed gaps in our laws that needed to be filled. But many of the laws we ended up with <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-doesnt-need-more-anti-terror-laws-that-arent-necessary-or-even-used-138827">go beyond what is needed</a> to prevent terrorism effectively. They also undermine core values and principles such as the rights to liberty, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. </p>
<p>These values must not be lost in the pursuit of national security. Indeed, upholding them is an <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/factsheet32en.pdf">essential part</a> of any counter-terrorism strategy. </p>
<p>These lessons have been known for a long time. As then UN secretary-general <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2005-03-10/kofi-annan%E2%80%99s-keynote-address-closing-plenary-international-summit">Kofi Annan</a> said in 2005, when remembering victims of terrorism since 9/11:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>compromising human rights cannot serve the struggle against terrorism. On the contrary, it facilitates achievement of the terrorist’s objective.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Ananian-Welsh receives receives UQ Advancement funding. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keiran Hardy 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>Australia is a long way from New York and Washington DC, but 9/11 was a seismic event for our country. For one thing, it has reshaped our ideas about criminal responsibilityRebecca Ananian-Welsh, Senior Lecturer, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of QueenslandKeiran Hardy, Senior Lecturer, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623042021-09-01T18:55:09Z2021-09-01T18:55:09Z20 years of ‘forever’ wars have left a toll on US veterans returning to the question: ‘Did you kill?’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416537/original/file-20210817-18-1ws6h75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C41%2C3484%2C2284&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Every soldier has a different story.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/soldier-of-charlie-company-2-508-pir-second-platoon-second-news-photo/103229734?adppopup=true">Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Military service members returning from America’s “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/49387/the-forever-war-by-dexter-filkins/">forever</a>” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have often faced deeply personal questions about their experience.</p>
<p>As one veteran explained to me: “I’ve been asked, ‘Have you ever killed anyone in war? Are you messed up at all?’”</p>
<p>“I don’t take offense to any of that because I realize, we went somewhere, we were gone for a couple years, and now we’re back, and now no one knows how to talk to a person.”</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/MR-Book-Reviews/December-2018/Book-Review-006/">sense of estrangement</a> from the rest of the population is, in my experience, common among veterans. I interviewed 30 former military personnel between 2012 and 2018 for “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/potomac-books/9781640120235/">After Combat: True War Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan</a>” – a book I coauthored with retired Army Col. Michael Gibler, who served as an infantry officer for 28 years, including deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>20 years after the 9/11 attacks and the start of the ensuing <a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5902&context=faculty_scholarship">global war on terrorism</a>, I believe that civilians would benefit from hearing veterans’ stories. It can help provide an understanding of the experience of mortality among the men and women who served in America’s name. </p>
<h2>Looking the enemy in the eye</h2>
<p>Neither I nor my co-author asked veterans directly if they had killed, and every person we spoke with had a unique experience of combat. All 30 interviewees, aged between 20 and 55 and from a variety of different backgrounds, were guaranteed anonymity to allow them to talk freely with us about their experiences of killing in combat. Their names have been changed for this article.</p>
<p>Killing in contemporary war rarely has the clarity of combat portrayed in war movies or video games, where the opponent is visible and threatening. In the fictional scenario, it is clear when a life is threatened and how to fight for the survival of oneself or one’s unit. </p>
<p>“People think it’s like ‘Call of Duty,’” one veteran said, referring to the popular video game, or that “it’d be cool to do that.” However, even in a direct engagement, like an ambush, it may not be clear who you are shooting at – it could be a response to a muzzle flash in the distance or laying down covering fire, he explained.</p>
<p>Describing an incident in which three men attacked his unit, one veteran, Beau, recalled the moral clarity he felt while shooting at a visible combatant.</p>
<p>“I know that they’re bad because they’re shooting at me,” he said.</p>
<p>But in other firefights, the situation was less clear, and as Beau explained, “For every innocent person that dies, that’s five more terrorists. I need to get this right.”</p>
<p>Beau said he preferred to look an enemy combatant in the eye, even when his own life was in danger. He indicated that it confirmed his view that these were “bad” people intent on killing him first.</p>
<p>Many recruits like Beau go into combat believing that killing is necessary in conditions of war and believing also that the <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2001/10/05/just-war-tradition-and-the-new-war-on-terrorism/">wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were militarily and politically justified</a>. But they are still <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011000016666156?casa_token=iZT8Z12P0lYAAAAA%3Al6Yg0FPyxhJyqp_h8z-1kONaOo0DWhPWUpS_GkS08VioRRfL8a47n4m4NRN27azKGpJmDiTclA60MQM&">changed by having killed</a>.</p>
<p>One soldier shot back from his guard post when under fire from a nearby house. His unit entered the house to find a dead man with a warm rifle. But the guard was discomfited when congratulated on this kill by fellow soldiers. To his comrades, he had acted in self-defense and protected others from the shooter. But even in this situation of militarily justified killing, he felt he had crossed a line by taking a life.</p>
<p>Others expressed guilt for exposing civilians to danger. One veteran spoke of feeling responsible when a young informant was executed after providing crucial information to Americans.</p>
<p>“We found out that the family that was living there told the Taliban that that little boy ratted them out,” Robin recalled. “I found this out two days later, that they executed the little boy that I chose to bring into that compound.” </p>
<h2>‘No monster’</h2>
<p>While some veterans return from having killed in combat without suffering <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-moral-injury-in-veterans-77669">moral injury</a> or <a href="https://www.brainline.org/article/what-are-differences-between-pts-and-ptsd">post-traumatic stress</a>, others suffer enduring <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10926771.2018.1463582?casa_token=AwZTeLQv0WUAAAAA%3ANvDFFytQU71w7O9eTK55AVDXIRgVzH9n2Bn0zYNZDBeppoXPFQw3pQCPRtobjQGNBc6rPTMCSKGlKOI">impacts of killing</a>. Studies have shown that the act of killing in combat can cause “<a href="https://jmvh.org/article/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-and-killing-in-combat-a-review-of-existing-literature/">significant psychological distress</a>” and is associated with <a href="https://militaryfamilieslearningnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/jclp_22471_Rev2.pdf">elevated risks of PTSD, alcohol abuse</a> and <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/12/405231/killing-war-leaves-veterans-lasting-psychological-scars-study-finds">suicide</a> in veterans.</p>
<p>As former U.S. Army Lt. Col. <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lieutenant-colonel-dave-grossman/on-killing/9780316040938/">David Grossman</a> wrote in his book examining the psychological impact of killing, a “dead soldier takes his misery with him, the man who killed him must forever live and die with him.”</p>
<p>Reuben can attest to that. He fired on a vehicle accelerating into an Iraqi checkpoint. As the vehicle approached the checkpoint, he shot into and stopped the advancing automobile. Approaching it to investigate, the unit saw he had killed the driver. But he had also “splattered his head all over the driver’s child. Six years old. He was sitting in the passenger seat. The fifty caliber does a number on the human body. The man’s head was just gone. It was everywhere.”</p>
<p>Reuben has ruminated over that moment for many years, trying to reconcile how he had followed the standard protocol but with horrific results – and trying to convince himself, as he told us, that he is not a monster.</p>
<p>Most civilians will never <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15229303/">carry the burden of mortality that Reuben bears</a>.</p>
<p>As the 20th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/9-11-to-today-ways-we-have-changed">terrorist attacks of 9/11</a> and the inception of America’s global war on terror approached, the Biden administration withdrew the last remaining troops from Afghanistan. The military members returning from this conflict, and that in Iraq, will not all be traumatized by combat experience, and not all soldiers who deploy have killed. But those who have enter a moral space very few of us share or even particularly understand.</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/162304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marian Eide 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 act of killing in combat is associated with heightened risks of PTSD and suicide. A scholar interviewed 30 veterans about their common experiences.Marian Eide, Professor of English and Women's & Gender Studies, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1645882021-09-01T12:07:44Z2021-09-01T12:07:44ZCalculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars and years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418456/original/file-20210830-15-1wfwsc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C33%2C4493%2C2964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Heading for the exit.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/member-of-the-afghan-police-and-us-soldiers-leave-a-school-news-photo/495500609?adppopup=true">Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 to destroy al-Qaida, remove the Taliban from power and remake the nation. On Aug. 30, 2021, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/rockets-fired-kabul-airport-us-troops-race-complete-evacuation-2021-08-30/">U.S. completed a pullout of troops</a> from Afghanistan, providing an uncertain punctuation mark to two decades of conflict.</p>
<p>For the past 11 years I have closely followed the post-9/11 conflicts for the <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/">Costs of War Project</a>, an initiative that brings together more than 50 scholars, physicians and legal and human rights experts to provide an account of the human, economic, budgetary and political costs and consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.</p>
<p>Of course, by themselves figures can never give a complete picture of what happened and what it means, but they can help put this war in perspective.</p>
<p>The 20 numbers highlighted below, some drawn from figures released on Sept. 1, 2021, by the Costs of War Project, help tell the story of the Afghanistan War.</p>
<h2>From 2001 to 2021</h2>
<p>On Sept. 18, 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives voted <strong><a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2001/h342">420-1</a></strong> and the Senate <strong><a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1&vote=00281">98-0</a></strong> to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf">authorize</a> the United States to go to war, not just in Afghanistan, but in an open-ended commitment against “those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California cast the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/08/17/barbara-lee-afghanistan-vote/">only vote opposed</a> to the war.</p>
<p>In other words, the U.S. Congress took <strong><a href="https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf">7 days</a></strong> after the 9/11 attacks to deliberate on and authorize the war.</p>
<p>At <strong><a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?m1=10&d1=7&y1=2001&m2=08&d2=31&y2=2021">7,262 days</a></strong> from the first attack on Afghanistan to the final troop pullout, Afghanistan is said to be the U.S.’s longest war. But it isn’t – the U.S. has <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/why-korean-war-never-technically-ended">not officially ended the Korean War</a>. And U.S. operations in Vietnam, which began in the mid-1950s and included the declared war from 1965-1975, also rival Afghanistan in longevity.</p>
<p>U.S. President <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html">George W. Bush told</a> members of Congress in a joint session on Sept. 20, 2001 that the war would be global, overt, covert and could last a very long time.</p>
<p>“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. … Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen,” <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html">he said</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="President George W. Bush addressing US troops." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418462/original/file-20210830-13-1wrt01x.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">President George W. Bush speaks to soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-george-w-bush-speaks-to-soliders-from-the-10th-news-photo/525617790?adppopup=true">Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The U.S. started bombing Afghanistan a few weeks later. The Taliban surrendered in Kandahar on Dec. 9, 2001. The U.S. began to fight them again in earnest in March 2002. In April 2002, President Bush promised to help bring “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/18/world/a-nation-challenged-the-president-bush-sets-role-for-us-in-afghan-rebuilding.html">true peace</a>” to Afghanistan: “Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government. Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan train and develop its own national army. And peace will be achieved through an education system for boys and girls which works.” </p>
<p>The global war on terror was not confined to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. now has counterterrorism operations in <strong><a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/USCounterterrorismOperations">85 countries</a></strong>.</p>
<h2>The human cost</h2>
<p>Most Afghans alive today were not born when the U.S. war began. The median age in Afghanistan is just <strong><a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/afghanistan-population">18.4 years old</a></strong>. Including their country’s war with the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989 and civil war in the 1990s, most Afghans have lived under nearly continuous war. </p>
<p>There are, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, <strong><a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/vet.htm#cps_veterans.f.1.">980,000 U.S. Afghanistan war veterans</a></strong>. Of these men and women, <strong><a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/vet.htm#cps_veterans.f.1.">507,000 served in both Afghanistan and Iraq</a></strong>.</p>
<p>As of mid-August 2021, <strong><a href="https://www.defense.gov/casualty.pdf">20,722</a></strong> members of the U.S. military had been wounded in action in Afghanistan, not including the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/26/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/">18 who were injured</a> in the attack by ISIS-K outside the airport in Kabul on Aug. 26, 2021.</p>
<p>Of the veterans who were injured and lost a limb in the post-9/11 wars, many lost <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23192067/">more than one</a>. According to <a href="https://www.health.mil/News/Articles/2021/08/09/Since-Gulf-War-Advanced-Prosthetic-Technology-Saves-Lives-Careers">Dr. Paul Pasquina</a> of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, of these veterans, “About 40% to 60% also sustained a brain injury. Because of some of the lessons learned and the innovations that have taken place on the battlefield … we were taking care of service members who in previous conflicts would have died.”</p>
<p>In fact, because of advances in trauma care, more than <a href="https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2020/july/us-military-has-improved-mortality-since-world-war-ii-but-there-have-been-some-alarming-exceptions"><strong>90%</strong></a> of all soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who were injured in the field survived. Many of the seriously injured <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2729451">survived wounds</a> that in the past might have killed them.</p>
<p>In all, <strong><a href="https://www.defense.gov/casualty.pdf.">2,455 U.S. service members</a></strong> were killed in the Afghanistan War. The figure includes 13 U.S. troops who were killed by ISIS-K in the Kabul airport attack on Aug. 26, 2021.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The casket of a US soldier is seen through a doorway during a full military honors burial ceremony" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418458/original/file-20210830-26-k50cwk.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">A burial for one of 2,455 U.S. troops who died in
Afghanistan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>U.S. deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom also include 130 service members who died in other locations besides Afghanistan, including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen.</p>
<p>The U.S. has paid <strong><a href="https://militarypay.defense.gov/Benefits/Death-Gratuity/#:%7E:text=The%20death%20gratuity%20program%20provides,of%20the%20cause%20of%20death.">US$100,000 in a “death gratuity</a>”</strong> to the survivors of each of the service members killed in the Afghanistan war, totaling <strong>$245.5 million</strong>. </p>
<p><strong>More than <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures">46,000 civilians have been killed</a></strong> by all sides in the Afghanistan conflict. These are the direct deaths from bombs, bullets, blasts and fire. <a href="https://unama.unmissions.org/protection-of-civilians-reports">Thousands more have been injured</a>, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>And while the number of Afghans leaving the country has increased in <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-do-afghanistans-refugees-go-166316">recent weeks</a>, more than <strong><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58283177">2.2 million displaced Afghans</a></strong> were living in Iran and Pakistan at the end of 2020. The United Nations Refugee Agency reported in late August 2021 that since the start of that year, <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/88385">more than 558,000</a> people have been internally displaced, having fled their homes to escape violence. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1095922">United Nations</a>, in 2021 about a third of people remaining in Afghanistan are malnourished. <strong><a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1095922">About half of all children under 5 years old</a></strong> experience malnutrition.</p>
<p>The human toll also includes the hundreds of Pakistani civilians who were killed in <strong><a href="https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/americas-counterterrorism-wars/the-drone-war-in-pakistan">more than 400 U.S. drone strikes</a></strong> since 2004. Those strikes happened as the U.S. sought to kill Taliban and al-Qaida leaders who fled and sheltered there in late 2001 after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistani civilians have also been killed in crossfire during fighting between militants and the Pakistani military.</p>
<h2>The financial cost</h2>
<p>In terms of the federal budget, Congress has allocated a bit over <strong>$1 trillion</strong> to the Department of Defense for the Afghanistan War. But all told, the Afghanistan War has cost much more than that. Including the Department of Defense spending, more than <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/BudgetaryCosts"><strong>$2.3 trillion</strong></a> has been spent so far, including increases to the Pentagon’s base military budget due to the fighting, State Department spending to reconstruct and democratize Afghanistan and train its military, interest on borrowing to pay for the war, and spending for veterans in the Veteran Affairs system.</p>
<p>The total costs so far for all post-9/11 war veterans’ disability and medical care costs are about <strong>$465 billion</strong> through fiscal 2022. And this doesn’t include the future costs of all the post-9/11 veterans’ medical and disability care, which <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/lbilmes/home">Harvard University scholar Linda Bilmes</a> <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/CareforVeterans">estimates</a> will likely add about $2 trillion to the overall cost of care for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between now and 2050.</p>
<p>The war in Afghanistan, like many other wars before it, began with optimistic assessments of a quick victory and the promise to rebuild at war’s end. Despite Bush’s warning of a lengthy campaign, few thought then that would mean decades. But 20 years later, the U.S is still counting the costs. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article was updated on Sept. 1, 2021 to correct the total death gratuity paid to survivors of service members killed in the Afghanistan war to $245.5 million.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neta C. Crawford receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She is co-director of the Costs of War Project based at Brown University.</span></em></p>Following the completion of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Neta Crawford, the co-director of the Costs of War Project, reflects on 7,268 days of American involvement in the conflict.Neta C. Crawford, Professor of Political Science and Department Chair, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1657192021-08-31T12:28:42Z2021-08-31T12:28:42ZLessons about 9/11 often provoke harassment of Muslim students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418438/original/file-20210830-21-1p6zfzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Muslim students report being teased and harassed when schools focus on 9/11.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/muslim-teenage-girl-thinking-for-travel-royalty-free-image/1136157808?adppopup=true">Jasmin Merdan</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Near the start of each school year, many U.S. schools <a href="https://time.com/5672103/9-11-history-curriculum/">wrestle with how to teach about 9/11</a> – the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/deadliest-events-united-states">deadliest foreign attack ever on American soil</a>.</p>
<p>In interviews I conducted recently in the <a href="https://code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/2-1105.html">Washington, D.C., metropolitan area</a> – one of three places <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57698668">where hijacked planes crashed</a> on Sept. 11, 2001 – I found that Muslim students are often subjected to ridicule and blame for the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>“Even if they’re joking around, they’ll say ‘terrorist’ and stuff like that,” one student told me. “That used to trigger me a lot.”</p>
<p>Another student told me: “9/11, every single year, is so awkward. The administrators would be like ‘On this fateful day, this happened’… then the Muslim jokes would come up, like ‘Don’t blow us up.’ When I was younger it bothered me, but now I’m just desensitized to it.”</p>
<p>“There’s so much tension, just being even this color and then being a Muslim, period,” yet another student told me. “It’s really strange, like, you feel it, they’re not saying it … ’You don’t understand this question because you’re Muslim,‘ which is the strangest thing, but it’s definitely the tension that these teachers give off sometimes.”</p>
<p>These students are among the 55 Muslim students, ages 12 to 21, whom I interviewed in the Greater Washington, D.C., area from 2019 through 2021 about their experiences in school during <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2011.585551">classroom lessons</a> about 9/11. Their experience is part of a larger pattern of Muslim students being <a href="https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2020-amid-pandemic-and-protest/#summary">targeted and bullied in U.S. schools</a>.</p>
<h2>Increase in harassment</h2>
<p>A 2020 poll found that <a href="https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2020-amid-pandemic-and-protest/#summary">51% of American Muslim families</a> reported that their children experienced religious-based bullying – insults or physical assaults – in school. That’s nearly twice the rate reported by parents among the general public, the same poll found. Perhaps more disturbingly, <a href="https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2020-amid-pandemic-and-protest/#summary">30%</a> of those incidents reportedly involved a teacher or school official – the same people whom students ought to be able to turn to for support.</p>
<h2>Effects on learning</h2>
<p>When Muslim students experience these kinds of challenges at school, it is associated with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12238">higher levels of psychological distress</a>. Students can <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290495197_Race_and_belonging_in_school_How_anticipated_and_experienced_belonging_affect_choice_persistence_and_performance">learn better</a> when educators foster a sense of emotional safety and belonging.</p>
<p>Observers might conclude that it’s no big deal when students merely <a href="https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-0136/CGP/v28i01/45-57">subject their Muslim classmates to jokes</a> – that the teasing is all in good humor and a normal part of high school.</p>
<p>My research – which is ongoing and unpublished – suggests that this sort of cavalier attitude can be found among teachers and administrators. A few students in my study noticed their teachers would dismiss their concerns or make excuses for students who teased Muslim students about 9/11 by suggesting the other student “didn’t mean it” or “was misunderstood.”</p>
<p>But calling Muslim students “terrorists” or telling them “don’t blow us up” repeats deeply ingrained <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716203588001011">stereotypes that vilify</a> Muslims as prone to extremist violence and should be considered <a href="https://islamophobiaisracism.wordpress.com/">anti-Muslim racism</a>, I believe. </p>
<h2>Opposition from the top</h2>
<p>Beyond having their concerns about harassment dismissed, Muslim students sometimes must deal with school administrators who block their efforts to form identity groups. For instance, a 2018 study found that at a high school where the principal suspended meetings for a Muslim Student Association, Muslim students felt as if their school was “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0009">characterized by exclusion and racialized surveillance</a>.” Muslim students also report that their commitment to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smkkj">democratic values</a> is often called into question.</p>
<p>Despite the animosity that Muslim students face, scholars who specialize in Muslim student issues, such as <a href="https://www.dom.edu/directory/suhad-tabahi">Suhad Tabahi</a> and <a href="https://www.bu.edu/ssw/lecturers-mahlet-meshesha-and-dr-layla-khayr-join-bussw/">Layla Khayr</a>, argue that schools can do more to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/cs/cdaa033">combat anti-Muslim racism</a>.</p>
<p>Much of that work can be done in the classroom – and school-based 9/11 observances and lessons represent a prime opportunity.</p>
<p>As a teacher trainer who partly works in developing <a href="https://www.contemporaryislam.org/9-11-teaching.html">culturally responsive 9/11 teaching resources</a>, I offer three strategies educators can use to reenvision how they deal with the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath.</p>
<h2>1. Teach culturally diverse stories</h2>
<p>Although it’s common for people to recall how “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-attacks">Islamic extremists</a>” carried out the 9/11 attacks, it’s also true that Muslim immigrants, such as Mohammed Salman Hamdani, lost their lives serving as <a href="https://storycorps.org/stories/talat-hamdani-and-armeen-hamdani/">first responders</a>. Those stories can help counterbalance the negative sentiments that arise from Muslim-blaming narratives that sometimes accompany lessons about 9/11.</p>
<h2>2. Examine the social and political effects of 9/11</h2>
<p>Teach students how immigration policies became <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol38_2011/human_rights_winter2011/9-11_transformation_of_us_immigration_law_policy/">linked to national security</a>. Introduce students to how 9/11 gave rise to the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm">USA Patriot Act</a>, which authorized the broad use of federal surveillance to counter violent extremism, led to the formation of the <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/history">Department of Homeland Security</a> and informed the so-called “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/proclamation-ending-discriminatory-bans-on-entry-to-the-united-states/">Muslim ban</a>.”</p>
<p>Discuss how 9/11 led to <a href="https://scholars.org/contribution/targeting-muslim-americans-name-national-security">“no-fly” lists</a> and disproportionately affected the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12136">surveillance</a> of Muslim Americans. Recount how the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/war-on-terror-timeline">wars</a> in Afghanistan and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3689022">Iraq</a> were linked to 9/11.</p>
<p>Show students how Muslims, and <a href="https://storycorps.org/stories/remembering-balbir-singh-sodhi-sikh-man-killed-in-post-911-hate-crime/">people assumed to be Muslim</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-islam-idUSKBN16T1TL">feared for their personal safety</a> because of all the backlash that followed 9/11.</p>
<p>This can help students better understand contemporary events, such as why <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-prepare-to-welcome-thousands-of-afghan-refugees-even-as-political-rhetoric-heats-up/ar-AANxFS6?ocid=uxbndlbing">Afghan refugees</a> are coming to America, or why <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dhs-potential-terrorism-threats-911-anniversary/">airport security</a> increases around Sept. 11 each year.</p>
<h2>3. Keep students safe</h2>
<p>As the United States prepares for <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dhs-potential-terrorism-threats-911-anniversary/">potential terror threats</a> on the anniversary of 9/11, educators bear a responsibility to maintain a safe learning environment. Teachers should pay attention to the conversations between students to ensure that they are not repeating harmful words and actions that target Muslims. </p>
<p>Respond to students who express fear for their personal safety. Educators should consult their state’s <a href="https://www.stopbullying.gov/resources/laws">anti-bullying policies</a> to get up to speed on how to handle harassment.</p>
<p>But by offering a broader perspective of 9/11 and its aftermath, educators can create a safer learning experience for students as they reflect on 9/11 and how it forever changed Americans’ lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amaarah DeCuir 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>Comments made during class discussions about 9/11 often put Muslim students on edge, according to a researcher who interviewed 55 Muslim students in and around the nation’s capital.Amaarah DeCuir, Professorial Lecturer of Education, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459142020-09-10T21:12:41Z2020-09-10T21:12:41Z19 years after 9/11, Americans continue to fear foreign extremists and underplay the dangers of domestic terrorism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357512/original/file-20200910-14-1vqlypw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=67%2C71%2C2847%2C1670&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A visitor looks at the faces of some of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing at the Oklahoma National Memorial museum in Oklahoma City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/visitor-looks-at-the-faces-of-some-of-the-victims-of-the-news-photo/1316440?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were killed as the direct result of attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Thousands more, including many first responders, later lost their lives to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/16/9-11-death-toll-rising-496214.html">health complications</a> from working at or being near Ground Zero.</p>
<p>Nineteen years later, Americans’ ideas of what terrorism is remain tied to that morning.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/911comm.html">9/11 attacks were perpetrated</a> by al-Qaida terrorists. They resulted in nearly 18 times more deaths than America’s second most devastating terrorist attack – <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing">the Oklahoma City bombing</a> that occurred 15 years earlier. That intense loss of life has meant that the 9/11 attacks have come to symbolize terrorism for many Americans. </p>
<p>But focusing solely on Islamist extremism groups like al-Qaida when investigating, researching and developing counterterrorism policies does not necessarily align with what the numbers tell us. Homegrown far-right extremism also poses a persistent and lethal threat to the lives and well-being of Americans. This risk is often underestimated because of the devastating impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. </p>
<h2>By the numbers</h2>
<p>Historically, the United States has been home to adherents of many types of extremist ideologies. Our 15 years of research shows the two current most prominent threats are motivated by Islamist extremism and far-right extremism.</p>
<p>To help assess these threats, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have in the past funded our work with the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2012.713229">Extremist Crime Database</a>, collecting data on crimes committed by ideologically motivated extremists in the U.S. Our analyses of that data are published in peer-viewed journals and on the website for the <a href="http://start.umd.edu/publications?combine=ECDB&year%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=">National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism & Responses to Terrorism</a>. </p>
<p>The ECDB includes data on ideologically motivated homicides committed by both Islamist extremists and far-right extremists going back more than 25 years. </p>
<p><iframe id="rS0Fa" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/rS0Fa/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Between 1990 and 2019, the ECDB identified 47 events in the U.S. motivated by Islamist extremism that killed 154 people. When you include 9/11 as a singular event, those numbers jump dramatically to 48 homicide events and 3,150 people killed. </p>
<p>The database also identified 217 homicide events motivated by far-right extremism, with 345 killed. And when you include the Oklahoma City bombing, it rises to 218 homicide events and 513 killed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=75%2C46%2C3803%2C2460&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=75%2C46%2C3803%2C2460&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357509/original/file-20200910-16-1ltiriy.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">Armed members of the far-right Proud Boys groups on Sept. 5, 2020 in Vancouver, Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/armed-members-of-the-far-right-proud-boys-groups-stand-news-photo/1228364682?adppopup=true">Nathan Howard/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The locations of violent extremist activity also differ by ideology. Our data show that between 1990 and 2019, most Islamist extremist attacks occurred in the American South (51%), and most far-right extremist attacks occurred in the West (36.7%). Both forms of violence were least likely to occur in the Midwest, with no incidents committed by Islamist extremists and 25 events committed by far-right extremists (11.5%).</p>
<p>Our research has also identified violent Islamist extremist plots against 333 targets that were either foiled or failed between 2001 and 2019. Many of the same Islamist extremists are responsible for plotting against multiple targets simultaneously. On average, 18 various sites in the United States are targeted every year, with civilians and military personnel ranking as the most likely to be targeted, and New York City and Washington D.C. ranking as the cities most likely to be targeted. The FBI was responsible for thwarting two-thirds of the Islamist extremist plots identified by the ECDB during this time frame. </p>
<p>We are still in the process of compiling similar data on far-right plots. Although data collection is only about 75% percent complete for failed and foiled extreme far-right plots, we have already identified over 800 violent far-right extremist targets between the same time period, making clear that the absolute numbers are much higher.</p>
<h2>Motives and methods</h2>
<p>There are also differences in demographics, motives and methods for different types of extremists. For instance, guns continue to be the weapon of choice in approximately 74.5% of Islamist extremist homicides and in only 54.6% of far-right extremist homicides. We attribute these differences to far-right extremists using forms of violence that include beating or stabbing victims to death.</p>
<p>We have also found that suicide missions are not unique to Islamist extremists.</p>
<p>From 1990 to 2019, we identified ten suicide missions in which at least one person was killed connected to Islamist extremism, including the 9/11 attacks as one event. In contrast, there were 16 suicide missions committed by far-right extremists.</p>
<p>Our analyses found that compared to Islamist extremists, far-right extremists were significantly more likely to be economically deprived, have served in the military and are more involved in the the extremist movement. Far-right extremists were also significantly more likely to be less educated, single, young and to have participated in training by a group associated with their extremist ideology.</p>
<h2>Threat to law enforcement and military</h2>
<p>Terrorists associated with Islamist extremism and far-right extremist ideologies do not only attack civilians. They also pose a deadly threat to law enforcement and military personnel. During the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 72 law enforcement officers and 55 military personnel were killed by members of Al-Qaida. On April 19, 1995, 13 law enforcement officers and four military personnel were killed when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed by an anti-government far-right extremist in Oklahoma City.</p>
<p><iframe id="LPx0s" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/LPx0s/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Apart from these two events, Islamist extremists are responsible for the murders of 21 military personnel in four incidents, and eight law enforcement officers were killed in six incidents between 1990 and 2019. Far-right extremists have murdered 59 law enforcement officers in 48 incidents, but have never directly targeted military personnel.</p>
<p>Far-right extremists, who typically harbor anti-government sentiments, have a higher likelihood of escalating routine law enforcement contacts into fatal encounters. These homicides pose unique challenges to local law enforcement officers who are disproportionately targeted by the far right.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>The events of 9/11 will continue to skew both our real and perceived risks of violent extremism in the United States. To focus solely on Islamist extremism is to ignore the number of murders perpetrated by the extreme far right and their place in a constantly changing threat environment. At the same time, to focus solely on far-right extremism is to ignore the extraordinary lethality of Islamist extremist attacks. </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>
<p>Some experts have even warned that there is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2010.514698">potential for collaboration</a> between these extremist movements. Our own <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2010.514698">survey research</a> suggests this is a concern of law enforcement.</p>
<p>Focusing on national counterterrorism efforts against both Islamist extremism and far-right extremism acknowledges that there are differences between these two violent movements. Focusing solely on one, while ignoring the other, will increase the risk of domestic terrorism and future acts of violence.</p>
<p>Both ideologies continue to pose real threats to all Americans. Evidence shows far-right violent extremism poses a particular threat to law enforcement and racial, ethnic, religious and other minorities. Islamist violent extremism is a specific danger to military members, law enforcement, certain minorities, and society at large. It remains imperative to support policies, programs and research aimed at countering all forms of violent extremism.</p>
<p><em>This article is based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/threats-of-violent-islamist-and-far-right-extremism-what-does-the-research-say-72781">one that originally ran on Feb. 21, 2017</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Gruenewald receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua D. Freilich receives funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Chermak receives funding from the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Klein receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Parkin 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 Sept. 11 bombings killed almost 3,000 Americans. But if you exclude that unique event for the last two decades of terrorist activity, a different picture of US vulnerability appears.Jeff Gruenewald, Associate Professor and Director of the Terrorism Research Center, University of ArkansasJoshua D. Freilich, Professor of Criminal Justice, City University of New YorkSteven Chermak, Professor of Criminal Justice, Michigan State UniversityWilliam Parkin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Seattle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1300472020-01-22T19:03:41Z2020-01-22T19:03:41ZFrom 9/11 to Christchurch earthquakes: how unis have supported students after a crisis<p>Universities across Australia – <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-05/nsw-fires-blanket-canberra-in-thick-smoke/11841546">including in Canberra</a>, <a href="https://www.uow.edu.au/media/2020/uow-stands-with-community-in-the-face-of-bushfire-emergency.php">Wollongong</a> and <a href="https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/6485409/university-of-newcastle-to-close-most-campuses-on-tuesday-due-to-bushfire-risk/">Newcastle</a> – have had to close their campuses in the past few months as a result of bushfires. </p>
<p>But the <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-costs-approaching-100-billion-the-fires-are-australias-costliest-natural-disaster-129433">deep and long-lasting impacts</a> of the crisis are set to pose a challenge for Australian universities beyond just the immediate response.</p>
<p>Of the more than <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/node/53016">one million university students</a> in Australia, we estimate about 95,000 in 2020 will be from regions directly affected by the bushfires. </p>
<p>Most of these students will attend regional universities, but they will be present in all universities throughout Australia. The sheer magnitude and scale of the bushfires mean the number of students indirectly impacted will be much higher.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/youre-not-the-only-one-feeling-helpless-eco-anxiety-can-reach-far-beyond-bushfire-communities-129453">You're not the only one feeling helpless. Eco-anxiety can reach far beyond bushfire communities</a>
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<p>Tragedies and disasters can have an <a href="https://ct.counseling.org/2012/02/natural-disasters-can-affect-survivors-cognitive-performance/">emotional and cognitive impact</a> on learning. </p>
<p>So, how can universities <a href="https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/crisis/">support students</a> and staff during times of collective crisis? </p>
<p>Studies of the impacts of disasters on university students have largely focused on hurricanes, earthquakes and acts of terrorism. Although each disaster is different, these studies show some simple steps can make a big difference when supporting university students and staff. </p>
<h2>September 11 attacks, 2001</h2>
<p>Six months after the September 11 attacks, US researchers set out to explore <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2334-4822.2007.tb00483.x">what college students thought</a> of the most common lecturer responses to the tragedy, and which of these students found most helpful.</p>
<p>Of the 484 Carnegie Mellon University students surveyed, 62% said their lecturer addressed the attacks. Some lecturers held a one minute silence, or had a brief discussion with their class. Others incorporated the event into the lesson or decided to do a class project. Some lecturers offered to talk privately with students or made a point of asking after the well-being of their families and friends. </p>
<p>Acknowledging a disaster in a way we are comfortable with can <a href="https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/recovering-disasters">build emotional well-being</a> and resilience. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-familiar-place-among-the-chaos-how-schools-can-help-students-cope-after-the-bushfires-129904">A familiar place among the chaos: how schools can help students cope after the bushfires</a>
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<p>When asked what teaching approaches they found most helpful, 78% of students appreciated when their lecturer mentioned ways to support emergency relief efforts. And 69% said they found coping strategies such as being offered an extension on an assignment or being excused from class particularly helpful. </p>
<p>The general conclusion from the students’ perspective was to “do something, just about anything”.</p>
<h2>Atlantic hurricane season, 2004</h2>
<p>During a 44-day period in 2004, four hurricanes (Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne) raged through Florida, USA at the beginning of the autumn teaching semester. They destroyed homes, businesses, college campuses and roadways. </p>
<p>One <a href="https://clutejournals.com/index.php/TLC/article/view/1778">study examined</a> stress among 107 college students who had been exposed to natural disasters after Hurricane Charley and Frances. Researchers also looked at adjustments made by two faculty members in attempts to reduce student stress while maintaining academic standards.</p>
<p>Adjustments included changing exam schedules, relaxing classroom attendance policies, reducing lecture time; and providing students with notes, study guides and additional in-class study time.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bushfires-can-make-kids-scared-and-anxious-here-are-5-steps-to-help-them-cope-126926">Bushfires can make kids scared and anxious: here are 5 steps to help them cope</a>
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<p>Most (63%) students said they experienced moderate to extremely high levels of stress after the disaster. Half of those surveyed indicated they suffered lost wages or income and 65% sustained some damage to their residences.</p>
<p>When asked about the adjustments, 84% of the students agreed or strongly agreed the quality of their education was not compromised by them. All the students surveyed either strongly agreed or agreed that overall the adjustments had reduced stress.</p>
<h2>Christchurch earthquakes NZ, 2010</h2>
<p>Fewer than 12 hours after the Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand, the University of Canterbury activated a communication strategy. It provided its 15,830 students with support and logistics information, such as daily road closures.</p>
<p>All students received a personalised daily email, alongside multiple daily updates to the university website. The university also created a dedicated social media site. </p>
<p>Six weeks after the earthquake, <a href="http://ijmed.org/articles/661/">3,571 university students had completed a survey</a> to gauge their well-being and the role of the communication provided.</p>
<p>Most students (more than 75%) said the earthquakes had some, or a significant, effect on their study. But the majority (93%) reported feeling “OK again” at the time they completed the survey.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/massacre-is-now-part-of-christchurchs-identity-so-how-does-a-city-rise-above-that-113854">Massacre is now part of Christchurch's identity, so how does a city rise above that?</a>
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<p>Nearly all students (97%) were satisfied with the news and updates provided by the university, particularly the regularity of website updates, the daily emails, and the fact the information was always current. Suggestions for improvement included using text messaging and radio updates.</p>
<p>Nearly all (95%) students reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the communication they received from the university.</p>
<h2>It doesn’t have to be complicated</h2>
<p>While each of these disasters unfolded and impacted students and university staff in different ways, the studies show a lecturer’s response doesn’t need to be complicated. It can be as much as acknowledging a tragic event has occurred, showing support and empathy and offering flexibility.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311050/original/file-20200121-187158-60j8hv.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">My university, Charles Sturt’s, Macquarie campus was directly impacted by the bushfires.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prue Gonzales</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>As academic staff, we also need to <a href="https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/faculty-development/teaching-during-a-personal-crisis/">acknowledge the impact of the crisis on ourselves</a> by adjusting our expectations of self. For instance, we may need to triage how we spend our time, identifying things that need our attention and others that can wait. Or we could consider talking with family, friends or joining a support group.</p>
<p>Many <a href="http://www.run.edu.au/cb_pages/news/bushfire_support.php">universities offer support</a> and resources for staff, students and communities in times of crisis. Consider contacting the university counselling centre for support, whether personal or in the classroom. </p>
<p><em>This article was written with the assistance of Phillip Ebbs and Patrick Edsall.</em></p>
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<p><em><strong>Information sheets about taking care of yourself after the bushfires can be found at the <a href="https://www.psychology.org.au/Australian-bushfires-2020">Australian Psychological Society</a>.</strong></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130047/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prue Gonzalez 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>Universities can help students affected by the bushfires by learning from what others have done in past crises.Prue Gonzalez, Lecturer in Environmental Management, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1121392019-02-22T00:11:17Z2019-02-22T00:11:17Z2001 polls in review: September 11 influenced election outcome far more than Tampa incident<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260291/original/file-20190221-195867-1ekh3xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Howard's Coalition won the November 2001 election, but the September 11 attacks had more impact on that outcome than the Tampa crisis.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many commentators have compared Labor’s support for the Medevac legislation with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">Tampa incident</a> in late August 2001. The implication is that Labor lost the 2001 election due to Tampa, and could lose this year’s election due to Medevac.</p>
<p>Political commentator <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/16/without-facts-we-slide-into-trumpism-the-truth-matters-here?CMP=share_btn_tw">Katharine Murphy</a> has said she was certain at the time Labor leader Kim Beazley “had just lost the election” after announcing Labor would vote against retrospective legislation giving the Coalition government the power to forcibly remove the Tampa from Australian territorial waters.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">Australian politics explainer: the MV Tampa and the transformation of asylum-seeker policy</a>
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<p>But are the claims that Labor lost the 2001 election due to the Tampa true? <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/">The Poll Bludger</a>, William Bowe, kindly sent me the polling data for the 1998-2001 term, on which the historical <a href="https://pollbludger.net/images/bludgertrack-historical-2016.png">BludgerTrack</a> is based. BludgerTrack is a bias-adjusted poll aggregate.</p>
<p>I have used this data to create the graph below of the Coalition vs Labor two party preferred vote during 2001. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Australian_federal_election">election</a> was on November 10.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259895/original/file-20190220-148509-1temdbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&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">BludgerTrack two party preferred vote during 2001.</span>
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<p>The graph shows that Labor had a massive lead in March 2001 of about 57-43, but it gradually narrowed to about 52-48 by the time Australian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_affair">government involvement</a> in the Tampa incident began on August 26. The Tampa was denied permission to dock at Christmas Island and deliver asylum seekers who had been rescued.</p>
<p>The Coalition received about a two-point boost from the Tampa affair to draw level with Labor. However, it had a much bigger lift from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks">September 11, 2001</a> terrorist attacks, which lifted the Coalition’s vote five points to about a 55-45 lead. As the shock of the attacks wore off, the Coalition’s vote fell back to a 51.0-49.0 victory on election day (November 10).</p>
<p>If the Tampa had occurred in 2001, but not September 11, other issues, such as the economy, health and education, would probably have appealed to people in the lead-up to the election more than boats. Labor could have recovered to an election-winning position. September 11 made national security a huge asset for the Coalition government at the 2001 election.</p>
<p>If not for September 11, Labor may have won the 2001 election. The Tampa put the Coalition into a tie with Labor, not a lead.</p>
<p>Analyst <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/votes-by-the-boatload/">Peter Brent</a> in Inside Story thinks that, given economic factors, the Coalition would probably have won the election by 51-49 without either the Tampa or September 11. You can achieve this result by drawing a line from the Coalition’s nadir in March to the election, with the assumption that the slow improvement in the polls had continued. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-beazley-had-become-prime-minister-instead-of-rudd-might-we-have-had-more-stable-government-87765">If Beazley had become prime minister instead of Rudd, might we have had more stable government?</a>
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<p>However, the graph shows the Coalition’s recovery had stalled for over a month before the Tampa. Even though the September 11 shock had faded by the election, the boost it gave to the importance of the Coalition strength of national security assisted the Coalition at the election.</p>
<p>Labor did not lose the 2001 election because of the Tampa, and they are unlikely to lose the 2019 election because of their support for the Medevac bill. I believe the shock factor of terrorist incidents has been reduced by their frequency. There were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election#Background">two terrorist atrocities</a> shortly before the 2017 UK general election, yet UK Labour performed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election">much better than expected</a> at that election.</p>
<h2>Eight UK Labour and three Conservatives MPs form new Independent Group</h2>
<p>On Monday, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/labour-centrists-quit-party-recalling-failed-80s-experiment-20190218-p50ynq.html">seven UK Labour MPs</a> resigned from their party to form The Independent Group. In the next two days, another Labour MP and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/20/tory-mps-defect-independent-group-soubry-allen-wollaston">three Conservative MPs</a> also resigned to join The Independent Group.</p>
<p>While other causes, such as alleged antisemitism within Labour, have been cited, the reason these defections have happened now is Brexit. The defecting MPs are strongly opposed to their former party’s handling of Brexit, and all want a second referendum on Brexit – currently opposed by both major parties.</p>
<p>The Independent Group MPs have consistently voted in favour of proposals to avoid a “no deal” Brexit when the UK leaves the European Union on March 29. However, these MPs votes will not change. To avoid a no deal, either other MPs votes must change, or the major parties need to reach a compromise. The next important Brexit votes will be on February 27. The article I wrote on my <a href="http://adrianbeaumont.net/no-deal-brexit-more-likely-after-theresa-mays-crushing-loss-in-brexit-deal-vote/">personal website</a> in January about why a no deal Brexit is a plausible scenario is still relevant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Beaumont 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>It is often thought that the Tampa incident won John Howard the 2001 election, but an analysis of polling from the time shows the September 11 attacks had a far bigger impact on voting intentions.Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1029662018-09-11T10:37:45Z2018-09-11T10:37:45ZWhy al-Qaida is still strong 17 years after 9/11<p>Seventeen years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida conducted the most destructive terrorist attack in history. </p>
<p>An unprecedented onslaught from the U.S. followed. <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/20177.pdf">One-third of al-Qaida’s leadership</a> was killed or captured in the following year. The group lost its safe haven in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/369161-2001-03-27-afghanistan-an-incubator-for.html">Afghanistan</a>, including its extensive <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/369179-2003-06-20-afghanistan-camps-central-to-11.html">training</a> infrastructure there. Its surviving members were on the run or in hiding. Though it took nearly 10 years, the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead">U.S. succeeded in killing</a> al-Qaida’s founding leader, Osama bin Laden. Since 2014, al-Qaida has been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/30/world/meast/isis-overshadows-al-qaeda/index.html">overshadowed</a> by its former ally al-Qaida in Iraq, now calling itself the Islamic State.</p>
<p>In other words, al-Qaida should not have survived the 17 years since 9/11. </p>
<p>But it has. Why?</p>
<h2>The ties that bind</h2>
<p>Much of the credit goes to al-Qaida’s extraordinary ability to form alliances and sustain them over time and under pressure.</p>
<p>In my book “<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15818.html">Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances</a>,” I examine why a small number of groups, such as al-Qaida and IS, emerge as desirable partners and succeed at developing alliance networks. </p>
<p>Understanding terrorist alliances is critical because terrorist organizations with allies are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228192307_Allying_to_Kill">more lethal</a>, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/58/2/336/2963248/Terrorist-Group-Cooperation-and-Longevity1?redirectedFrom=fulltext">survive longer</a> and are more apt to seek <a href="http://www.start.umd.edu/publication/connections-can-be-toxic-terrorist-organizational-factors-and-pursuit-cbrn-weapons">weapons of mass destruction</a>. Though terrorist partnerships face numerous <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2014.993466">hurdles</a> and severing al-Qaida’s alliances has been a U.S. objective for <a href="https://www.cia.gov/news-information/cia-the-war-on-terrorism/Counter_Terrorism_Strategy.pdf">over a decade</a>, the fact is that these counterterrorism efforts have failed.</p>
<p>It was allies that enabled al-Qaida to survive the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Afghan Taliban stood by al-Qaida after the attack, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taliban-wont-turn-over-bin-laden/">refusing to surrender bin Laden</a> and thereby precipitating the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fleeing, al-Qaida was able to turn to allies in Pakistan to hide its operatives and punish the Pakistani government for capitulating to U.S. pressure to crackdown on the group.</p>
<p>It was alliances that helped al-Qaida continue to terrorize. In October 2002, for example, al-Qaida’s ally in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah brutally commemorated the first anniversary of 9/11 by bombing a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-19881138">bar and a nightclub in Bali</a>, killing more than 200 people and injuring an additional 200.</p>
<p>And it was alliances that allowed al-Qaida to project viability. With the “prestige” that came with conducting 9/11, al-Qaida was able to forge affiliate alliances in which partners adopted its name and pledged allegiance to bin Laden.</p>
<p>Al-Qaida’s first and most notorious affiliate alliance, <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm">al-Qaida in Iraq</a>, was formed in 2004 with Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Using the standing he accrued through his role in the insurgency in Iraq, Zarqawi then helped al-Qaida acquire its second affiliate in 2006, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/world/africa/01transcript-droukdal.html?mcubz=0">al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb</a>. Then, in 2009, al-Qaida designated its branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11483095">as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula</a>. Its alliances spanned the Middle East and helped it to project power, despite the U.S. war on terrorism. </p>
<h2>A lower profile</h2>
<p>While al-Qaida still sought affiliates, by 2010, it changed some aspects of the relationships.</p>
<p>Al-Qaida forged an alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia, but did not initially publicly announce it or ask al-Shabaab to change its name. Bin Laden <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/posts/letter-from-usama-bin-laden-to-mukhtar-abu-al-zubayr-original-language-2">justified</a> the shift to a less visible form of alliance as a way to prevent an increase in counterterrorism pressure or a loss of funds from the Arabian Peninsula. He privately expressed <a href="http://www.jihadica.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SOCOM-2012-0000009-Trans.pdf">concerns</a> that al-Qaida’s name “reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam.” Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the move as bin Laden capitulating to members of al-Qaida who worried about “<a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/posts/letter-to-azmarai-english-translation-2">inflating the size and the growth of al-Qaida</a>.” After bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-allied-somali-terror-group-al-shabaab/story?id=15548647">publicly announced</a> al-Qaida’s alliance with al-Shabaab, though al-Shabaab still did not adopt al-Qaida’s name.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/2018-ATA---Unclassified-SSCI.pdf">staying power</a>” of Al-Qaida’s allies has helped it remain a threat despite the loss of its founding leader in 2011 and the ascent of a far less capable leader. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/09/16/the-man-behind-bin-laden">Zawahiri’s</a> rise to the helm of the group was itself the consequence of an alliance between his original Egyptian group, al-Jihad, and al-Qaida. The alliance culminated in a merger in 2001, with Zawahiri becoming bin Laden’s deputy and successor.</p>
<p>Zawahiri lacks bin Laden’s cachet or diplomatic savvy, and his shortfalls are evident in al-Qaida’s alliances. His <a href="https://archive.org/stream/710588-translation-of-ayman-al-zawahiris-letter/710588-translation-of-ayman-al-zawahiris-letter_djvu.txt">poor handling</a> of the strife between jihadist group al-Nusra in Syria and its parent organization, the Islamic State in Iraq – previously al-Qaida in Iraq and now known as the Islamic State – led to the alliance <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1373895">rupture</a> between al-Qaida and its affiliate in Iraq.</p>
<p>Zawahiri has also struggled to manage the relationship with al-Qaida’s ally in Syria, the very group that spurred the conflict between IS and al-Qaida. Al-Nusra changed its name, an effort to gain <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/al-qaida-lost-control-syrian-affiliate-inside-story/">more legitimacy within the conflict in Syria by publicly distancing</a> itself from al-Qaida, which left a <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/true-story-al-qaedas-demise-and-resurgence-syria">smaller faction still allied with al-Qaida</a>.</p>
<p>Al-Qaida organized a new branch, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29056668">al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent</a>, in 2014. The branch in South Asia reflected al-Qaida’s success at expanding beyond its predominantly Arab base, particularly in <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/10/22/going-native-pakistanization-of-al-qaeda-pub-53382">Pakistan</a>, and has allowed the group to expand its activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.</p>
<p>Most of al-Qaida’s alliances have proven resilient over time. This is true despite ample reasons for its partners to abandon ties, such as the heightened counterterrorism pressure that comes with affiliation to al-Qaida; the death of its charismatic leader; and the Islamic State’s efforts to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/isil-eyes-east-africa-foments-division-150322130940108.html">court</a> al-Qaida allies. Even the Afghan Taliban has not severed ties, even though doing so would eliminate one of the major reasons that the United States will not withdraw from the “forever war” in Afghanistan. </p>
<p>There is still a window for the U.S. to damage al-Qaida’s alliances: It has a weak leader and major rival. But that window may be closing as the Islamic State <a href="https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2018/08/islamic-state-leader-downplays-territorial-losses-in-new-audio-message.php">adapts</a> to its losses and al-Qaida appears poised for a <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/resurgence-al-qaeda">resurgence</a> with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bin-ladens-son-steps-into-fathers-shoes-as-al-qaeda-attempts-a-comeback/2017/05/27/0c89ffc0-4198-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html">bin Laden’s son</a> as its future, more inspiring leader. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story has been updated. The original version ran on <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-al-qaida-is-still-strong-16-years-after-9-11-83403">Sept. 10, 2017</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tricia Bacon is a fellow at Fordham University's Center for National Security and a non-resident fellow with George Washington's Center for Extremism.</span></em></p>An unprecedented onslaught from the US hasn’t destroyed the terrorist organization. What is the secret of its resilience?Tricia Bacon, Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941672018-03-29T04:20:23Z2018-03-29T04:20:23ZHowling Girls: a bold experiment exploring female voices constricted by trauma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212555/original/file-20180329-189810-1eyjzb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Veiled girls appear with death masks in Sydney Chamber Opera's The Howling Girls</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In broad terms, “opera” denotes some combination of music, drama and spectacle in which some, if not all of the words are sung. Damien Ricketson’s new theatre work, The Howling Girls, which premiered on Wednesday, 28 March at Carriageworks in Sydney, has no recognizable words and certainly stretches generic boundaries.</p>
<p>Can it be called an opera? But what’s in a name? In the end it doesn’t matter if the work itself sustains the interest of a theatre audience. Ricketson observes: “There’s no libretto, there’s no story and no orchestra. So I’ve already been challenged once as to whether I can call it an opera.”</p>
<p>The impetus for the piece is described by Susan Faludi: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center … five gaunt teenage girls had arrived separately at a Manhattan hospital complaining of identical symptoms. They were wasting away because they couldn’t ‘swallow’ … All five believed that some debris or body part from the destruction of the towers had lodged in their throats and produced the symptom. The surgeon who examined them found no obstruction, and ‘needless to say, no body parts’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The terrorist attack has generated a wide variety of artistic responses, including John Adams’s memorable musical work, On the Transmigration of Souls. Howling Girls consists of one vocal soloist, the redoubtable contemporary music specialist, soprano Jane Sheldon, and a chorus of six teenage girls from the performing arts company, The House That Dan Built. The music is directed by Jack Symonds from a keyboard and includes some very non-traditional instruments such as Aztec death whistles, and a theremin played by Symonds. In addition, there is a vast range of electronic enhancements overseen by sound designer, Bob Scott.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212556/original/file-20180329-189801-167sn9o.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">Various non-traditional instruments are employed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The opera’s subject matter is the female voice, or lack of voice, or constricted voice, as a result of trauma. Ricketson observes: “I was quite interested in the type of vocalisations that we make in heightened states of distress or emotional arousal such as weeping, moaning, howling. All of those kind of sounds that are not words but definitely carry strong meaning.” </p>
<p>This is actually not that far from more traditional opera in which the words are often all but unintelligible and we gather much of the “meaning” through the sheer materiality of the human voice, often pushed to its extremes. We viscerally respond to Mozart’s Queen of the Night’s aggressive, and wordless coloratura - words lose all semantic meaning and become purely a vehicle for sound, which in itself has intrinsic “meaning”. </p>
<p>The Howling Girls suggests the operatic mad scene, where the use of the female voice in 19th century opera reflects many contemporary male composers’ ambivalent attitudes to women, based on the concept of hysteria as means of characterizing or dismissing female behaviour. </p>
<p>The work starts with a low electronic rumble and then a lengthy period of the sound of laboured breathing before the first voice emerges. Jane Sheldon’s mammoth opening “aria”, well over half an hour, includes a combination of singing while inhaling and exhaling, rapidly alternating between chest and head voice, often creating a choked, constricted sound – a “proto-language”. The electronic enhancements allow us to almost feel that we are in the throats of her and the other singers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212557/original/file-20180329-189795-1qz6uw9.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">Visually and aurally, The Howling Girls is disturbing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The performance is directed by Adena Jacobs who admits that the work is both challenging for performers and audiences alike. The set is an ubiquitous black box, which for the first half hour remains in almost total darkness. A figure gradually emerges, lying on a plinth with a ray of light, reminiscent of a medical scanner, passing over her. Finally Sheldon comes to the front of the stage in a blaze of light. Visually and aurally the work is disturbing, none more so than the moment when the six veiled girls appear to taunt Sheldon by sounding the death masks.</p>
<p>The 70-minute piece will certainly not be to everyone’s taste in the expectation of attending an opera. However, much credit must accrue to one of Australia’s most innovative opera companies, the Sydney Chamber Opera, and to all involved. It is a bold experiment in how the human voice, singly and collectively, can be stretched almost to breaking point, while providing a vivid investigation of responses to trauma. </p>
<p>It will find an audience interested in the outer reaches of art music and music theatre; but one would have to conclude that like so many new works, it will probably not enter into any kind of contemporary operatic repertory. So catch it while you can, it’s well worth it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Halliwell 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>A new opera explores the story of five girls who believed that debris from the World Trade Centre was lodged in their throats after the September 11 terrorist attacks.Michael Halliwell, Associate Professor of Vocal Studies and Opera, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/933672018-03-19T18:37:33Z2018-03-19T18:37:33ZWhat does a ‘Leb’ look like?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210756/original/file-20180316-104659-1wkl7w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The term 'Leb' embodies hyper-masculinity on the street. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Generic image from Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2012, I was interviewing a young man, Hamid*, as part of my research on the creative vocational aspirations of Lebanese-Australian young men. I asked him whether he had anything else to add, the usual courtesy given by researchers to interviewees. He paused, then said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well, your study is about creative identities and Lebanese young men, right? But the thing is you can’t be a Leb and be creative – it doesn’t make sense.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The interview was clearly not over.</p>
<p>In what followed, Hamid explained to me in great detail the defining stylistic elements of a “Leb”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They wear Nike TNs and Dry Fit [shirts] … They walk around in their wannabe gangs and piss on everyone else, go to the gym, listen to Tupac or gangsta rap – that kind of thing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A very similar image emerged when I asked the question, “What does a Leb look like?”, of the rest of my 20 informants, interviewed between 2011 and 2014. One young man said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not about being Lebanese; like me for example, I am Lebanese but I’m not a Leb. I have respect for people and I don’t walk around like I’m about to smash shit and graffiti the school.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The “Leb” embodies a type of hyper-masculinity that the young men in my study rejected entirely. One of the goals in my research was to uncover why this was the case and how ideas about masculinity can constrain aspirations.</p>
<p>Wassim*, an avid fan of Parkour, said all the Lebs at his school mocked him for riding his skateboard to school. “I hated the Lebs,” he said, without any concern that he might be mistaken for one – despite having been born and raised in a Lebanese migrant family.</p>
<p>In the public high schools in southwest Sydney, Leb style and attitude were dominant among the male students in the late 1990s and 2000s, giving them a certain sense of power in a society that consistently treated them as a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Kebabs_Kids_Cops_and_Crime.html?id=xLlTa8iSAL4C">source of moral panic</a>. </p>
<p>In the book based on my research, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Young-Migrant-Identities-Creativity-and-Masculinity/Idriss/p/book/9781138234048">Young Migrant Identities</a>, I detail how every young Lebanese-Australian man I interviewed called himself a “non-Leb” at varying life stages. They had creative vocational aspirations in fields such as film, media, music and literature. They aspired to escape the stigma of their ethnic and working-class neighbourhoods in and around Bankstown; one of the ways they could articulate this to me was to distance themselves from the “Lebs” at their schools. </p>
<p>This is the reality that serves as the starting point for Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s provocative new novel, <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/michael-mohammed-ahmad/the-lebs">The Lebs</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210243/original/file-20180314-113462-19nfg1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&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"></span>
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<p>In it, he takes us on the fictional journey of Bani Adam, a Lebanese-Australian boy who is friends with, but doesn’t always like, the Lebs at his under-resourced, all-boys public high school in Sydney’s southwest. He tells us directly: “I hate maths like I hate being Lebo – I am above it.” </p>
<p>Through Bani’s narration in this insightful, and funny, novel we are reminded that “Leb” is not shorthand for Lebanese. Rather, The Leb emerges out of Western Sydney and a cocktail of racial profiling, relentless negative media representation of Arabs and Muslims after 9/11, and local familial conditions of poverty and underemployment.</p>
<p>The Lebs is scary because it does something other stories about Arabs growing up in Australia don’t – it is unapologetic in its rebellion against the institutions that have consistently told young ethnic-minority men that they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/nov/18/australia-paying-for-immigration-mistakes-made-by-malcolm-fraser-says-peter-dutton">have destroyed the moral fabric of our society</a>. While Bani is a model student at school, he is acutely aware, at just 15, of how he is lumped together with the troublemaking boys on the outside. One of those kids is Mustafa Fatala who puts no effort into school, and yet Bani feels that the world sees them as one and the same:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>sand niggers, rejected and hated and feared. Cops and transit officers target us and chicks and Skips avoid us. There’s nothing I can do about it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Beyond addressing racism, The Lebs reveals the dialogue, tensions and disputes young Lebanese-Australian have among themselves. Bani aspires to be a “great novelist”, which doesn’t sit well with the NRL Bulldogs supporting “Lebos” at his school.</p>
<p>What came through in my research is that there are rigid masculine templates for Lebanese-Australian young men within their communities, such as completing further education in business or finance, or becoming a successful self-employed entrepreneur. Despite their aspirations for a creative life, these young men felt pressure to fulfil the dreams of their parents – often without the necessary financial support and resources. Similarly, many of the other students in Mohammed Ahmad’s book are “as poor as kebabs”. </p>
<p>The “mullets, the tattoos and the TNs”, which my informants describe as the cornerstone of Leb style, are not some universal feature of “Lebaneseness” or “Arabness”, but a hybridised and temporary form of masculine protest. It is also an identity position that can, to a degree, be outgrown, in a similar fashion to a former punk swapping a mohawk for a collared shirt.</p>
<p>At the heart of The Lebs is a story about how marginalised young people deal with racial and religious prejudice and a burning sense of injustice. For young people of Western Sydney, but especially those of Lebanese-Australian backgrounds, this is a story they can relate to far too well. </p>
<p><em>*Not his real name</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93367/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sherene Idriss 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>Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s novel The Lebs is a realistic portrayal of teenage boys in Western Sydney.Sherene Idriss, Research associate, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/904532018-01-23T19:10:57Z2018-01-23T19:10:57ZAustralians rate the most significant events in their lifetimes – and show the ‘fair go’ is still most valued<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202912/original/file-20180122-182976-11f7vpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Same-sex marriage becoming legal was rated by as the most significant event in their history by the largest proportion of respondents.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every little while, we have a panic about history. We’re having one right now, over Australia Day. A few months back, inspired by an American panic, we had one over statues.</p>
<p>A hardy perennial has been the panic about ignorance, especially among the young. What are they learning in schools and universities? Do “they” know enough about “our history”? And what is “our history” anyway? Is it the history of Australia, of our region, of Europe, of western civilisation, or of humanity? Is it all these things? Where does Indigenous history fit into the picture? What of Asian history?</p>
<p>Much of this panic finds forceful expression in politics and the media. But it is less clear how, if at all, the take-no-prisoners cultural warfare of the elites resonates in the lives of ordinary Australians.</p>
<p>We do know, from the work of researchers such as <a href="http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2011/05/history-at-the-crossroads-australians-and-the-past">Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton</a>, and <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522868951-private-lives-public-history">Anna Clark</a>, that many Australians encounter the past through personal, family and emotional connections, as well as via film, museum displays, historical fiction and popular histories. There is considerable ignorance of, or indifference to, the history wars.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202913/original/file-20180122-182951-u6gx3n.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 importance of marriage equality testifies to the endurance of the Australian ‘fair go’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what happens when you ask Australians to think about the times they have lived through? What do they see as the historical events that have had the largest influence on their country?</p>
<p>Between November 15 and December 3, 2017, the <a href="http://www.srcentre.com.au/">Social Research Centre</a> asked this question of the just over 3,000 members of its Life in Australia panel, and heard back online or via phone from 2,074 of them (68.9%). Based on a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2016/12/15/americans-name-the-10-most-significant-historic-events-of-their-lifetimes">similar survey</a> carried out in 2016 by the Pew Research Center in the US, <a href="http://srcentre.com.au/historic-events">the results</a> therefore also allow us to compare the attitudes of Australians and Americans.</p>
<p>So, what do these Australians, aged 18 to 93, tell us when they are asked to construct a top ten? </p>
<p>It is no surprise, given the timing of the survey, that 30% named same-sex marriage, placing it first. When asked to nominate the event that made them proudest of Australia, same-sex marriage was also the most common response (13%). The popularity of same-sex marriage in this survey surely contradicts the claim that Australians regarded it as, at best, a second-order issue. </p>
<p>Pollsters have asked Australians many questions about same-sex marriage, but so far as we are aware, this is the only occasion on which they have been invited to consider that event in the sweep of modern history. </p>
<p>Quite probably, if this survey were to be repeated a few years from now, not so many will be impressed by its historical significance. But here we have a precious hint of the importance that Australians attached to this moment in their history, at the very time it was being translated from public opinion into the law of the land.</p>
<p>Just behind same-sex marriage, there is the September 11 attack on the US, with 27% making mention of it. And it was the most-frequent response (11%) when respondents were asked to nominate the single most significant nation-shaping event of their lifetime. But more than three-quarters of respondents in the US survey mentioned 9/11 – so, even if Australians do see the “war on terror” partly through a lens constructed in the US, we are not “Austerica”.</p>
<p>Rather, our own backyard still matters. Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations came in at three with 13%, sharing that place with the Port Arthur massacre. </p>
<p>The Sydney Olympics and the dismissal of the Whitlam government came next with 12% each, followed closely by the Vietnam War (11%), the Apollo 11 moon landing and the arrival of the internet (9% each), and Australia II’s America’s Cup victory, the global financial crisis, and the election of Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, in equal tenth (8% each).</p>
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<p>Naturally, generational differences are powerful. Older people, after all, have many more events from which to choose. Those born in 1945 or earlier ranked the second world war first, with 44%: no other generation was in such agreement about the significance of any single event.</p>
<p>For this group of older Australians, and even more for the Baby Boomers (born after 1945), events that epitomised the transformations of the 1960s and 1970s matter greatly. So, the boomers had the Vietnam War first (28%), the Dismissal second (27%), and the moon landing fourth (21%), just after same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>Generation X was the only one to rank 9/11 first, with 35%. But we might perhaps rename Australian GenXers “the winged-keel generation”, for they seem especially impressed with national esteem, especially in connection with sporting achievement and spectacle. They ranked the Sydney Olympics fifth (16%) and the America’s Cup sixth (15%).</p>
<p>Younger people – millennials (aged 23-37 in 2017) and Gen Z (aged 18-22 at the time of the survey) – rated same-sex marriage and Gillard’s election considerably more highly than their elders, and were particularly likely to nominate terrorist events. The younger generations seem more impressed than others by the impact of Donald Trump’s election.</p>
<p>Australians, by and large, share a fairly cohesive sense of the most important historical events that have unfolded in their lifetimes. The events are remarkably similar when examined by characteristics such as gender, place of residence, income, political affiliation, education and birthplace.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202910/original/file-20180122-182955-1orzzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The September 11 attacks were ranked particularly high by men and Coalition and One Nation supporters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/stringer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are some differences. Same-sex marriage was the most commonly nominated event for women, as well as Labor Party and Greens supporters, whereas 9/11 was the most popular for men and Coalition and One Nation supporters. </p>
<p>A much larger proportion of Tasmanians place the Port Arthur massacre in their top ten. Sydneysiders were more likely to include the Sydney Olympics. University graduates were more disposed than others to nominate the Mabo decision. </p>
<p>The results both undermine and confirm common impressions of Australians. We perhaps still like to think of ourselves as less insular and more cosmopolitan than Americans. </p>
<p>But whereas 13% of US respondents mentioned the end of the Cold War (placing it eighth), it did not figure in the Australian top ten at all. Australians are supposedly practical and pragmatic – “jobs and growth” types – yet we find a prominent place for the symbolic, while economic events do not figure prominently.</p>
<p>Yet the results do confirm one of our esteemed self-images: the concept of a “fair go” resonates in our historical consciousness. </p>
<p>When events are placed in categories, 45% found a place for events concerned with human rights and civil liberties. And whereas terrorism, war and politics figure prominently, just under one-quarter of respondents named one of the landmarks in the modern history of Indigenous people.</p>
<p>This last point helps explain why we are having such a passionate debate about Australia Day. What anthropologist W.H. Stanner in 1968 called “The Great Australian Silence” has well and truly ended.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90453/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darren Pennay works for the Social Research Centre, the company that owns and operates the Life in Australia panel.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno 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>A new survey asking Australians to rank the most significant events in their lifetimes show that same-sex marriage, September 11 and the apology to the Stolen Generations matter most.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityDarren Pennay, Campus Visitor, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/834032017-09-11T00:40:28Z2017-09-11T00:40:28ZWhy al-Qaida is still strong 16 years after 9/11<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185372/original/file-20170910-32266-1d74lu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sixteen years ago, on September 11, 2001, al-Qaida conducted the most destructive terrorist attack in history. </p>
<p>An unprecedented onslaught from the U.S. followed. <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/20177.pdf">One-third of al-Qaida’s leadership</a> was killed or captured in the following year. The group lost its safe haven in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/369161-2001-03-27-afghanistan-an-incubator-for.html">Afghanistan</a>, including its extensive <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/369179-2003-06-20-afghanistan-camps-central-to-11.html">training</a> infrastructure there. Its surviving members were on the run or in hiding. Though it took nearly 10 years, the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead">U.S. succeeded in killing</a> al-Qaida’s founding leader, Osama bin Laden. Since 2014, al-Qaida has been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/30/world/meast/isis-overshadows-al-qaeda/index.html">overshadowed</a> by its former ally al-Qaida in Iraq, now calling itself the Islamic State.</p>
<p>In other words, al-Qaida should not have survived the 16 years since 9/11. </p>
<p>So why has it?</p>
<h2>The ties that bind</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185373/original/file-20170910-32284-1inb4i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&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">A fighter from the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front holds his group flag in front of the governor building in Idlib province, north Syria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mideast-Syria-Rebel-Stronghold/a0a4575fd95745aaa885d982face6f7c/2/0">Twitter/via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much of the credit goes to al-Qaida’s extraordinary ability to both form alliances and sustain them over time and under pressure.</p>
<p>In my forthcoming book “Alliances for Terror,” I examine why a small number of groups, such as al-Qaida and IS, emerge as desirable partners and succeed at developing alliance networks. </p>
<p>Understanding terrorist alliances is critical because terrorist organizations with allies are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228192307_Allying_to_Kill">more lethal</a>, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/58/2/336/2963248/Terrorist-Group-Cooperation-and-Longevity1?redirectedFrom=fulltext">survive longer</a> and are more apt to seek <a href="http://www.start.umd.edu/publication/connections-can-be-toxic-terrorist-organizational-factors-and-pursuit-cbrn-weapons">weapons of mass destruction</a>. Though terrorist partnerships face numerous <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2014.993466">hurdles</a> and severing al-Qaida’s alliances has been a U.S. objective for <a href="https://www.cia.gov/news-information/cia-the-war-on-terrorism/Counter_Terrorism_Strategy.pdf">over a decade</a>, the fact is that these counterterrorism efforts have failed.</p>
<p>It was allies that enabled al-Qaida to survive the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Afghan Taliban stood by al-Qaida after the attack, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taliban-wont-turn-over-bin-laden/">refusing to surrender bin Laden</a> and thereby precipitating the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fleeing, al-Qaida was able to turn to allies in Pakistan to hide its operatives and punish the Pakistani government for capitulating to U.S. pressure to crackdown on the group.</p>
<p>It was alliances that helped al-Qaida continue to terrorize. In October 2002, for example, al-Qaida’s ally in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, struck a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-19881138">bar and a nightclub in Bali</a>, killing more than 200 and injuring more than 200 more, to brutally commemorate the first anniversary of 9/11.</p>
<p>And it was alliances that allowed al-Qaida to project viability. With the “prestige” that came with conducting 9/11, al-Qaida was able to forge more of them and indeed create affiliate alliances in which partners adopted its name and pledged allegiance to bin Laden.</p>
<p>Al-Qaida’s first and most notorious affiliate alliance, <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm">al-Qaida in Iraq,</a> was formed in 2004 with Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Using the standing he accrued through his role in the insurgency in Iraq, Zarqawi then helped al-Qaida acquire its second affiliate in 2006, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/world/africa/01transcript-droukdal.html?mcubz=0">al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb</a>. Then, in 2009, al-Qaida designated its branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11483095">as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula</a>. Its alliances spanned the Middle East and helped it to project power, despite the U.S. war on terrorism. </p>
<h2>A lower profile</h2>
<p>While al-Qaida still sought affiliates, by 2010, it modified how its alliances work. </p>
<p>Al-Qaida forged an alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia, but did not publicly announce it or ask al-Shabaab to change its name. Bin Laden <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/posts/letter-from-usama-bin-laden-to-mukhtar-abu-al-zubayr-original-language-2">justified</a> to al-Shabaab’s leader the shift to a less visible form of alliance as a way to prevent an increase in counterterrorism pressure or a loss of funds from the Arabian Peninsula. He privately expressed <a href="http://www.jihadica.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SOCOM-2012-0000009-Trans.pdf">concerns</a> that al-Qaida’s name “reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam.” Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the move as bin Laden capitulating to members of al-Qaida who worried about “<a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/posts/letter-to-azmarai-english-translation-2">inflating the size and the growth of al-Qaida</a>.” After bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-allied-somali-terror-group-al-shabaab/story?id=15548647">publicly announced</a> al-Qaida’s alliance with al-Shabaab, though al-Shabaab still did not adopt al-Qaida’s name.</p>
<p>Though al-Qaida’s alliance arrangements have varied, these relationships have helped it to survive the loss of its founding leader in 2011 and the ascent of a far less capable leader. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/09/16/the-man-behind-bin-laden">Zawahiri’s</a> rise to the helm of the group was the consequence of an alliance, specifically between his original Egyptian group, al-Jihad, and al-Qaida. The alliance culminated in a merger in 2001, with Zawahiri becoming bin Laden’s deputy and successor.</p>
<p>However, Zawahiri lacks bin Laden’s cachet or diplomatic savvy. He is a better deputy than a leader. His <a href="https://archive.org/stream/710588-translation-of-ayman-al-zawahiris-letter/710588-translation-of-ayman-al-zawahiris-letter_djvu.txt">poor handling</a> of the strife between jihadist group al-Nusra in Syria and its parent organization, the Islamic State in Iraq (previously al-Qaida in Iraq and now IS), led to the alliance <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1373895">rupture</a> between al-Qaida and its affiliate in Iraq.</p>
<p>Though al-Qaida had an acrimonious break with IS, it gained al-Nusra as an affiliate in the central conflict in the Sunni jihadist movement: Syria. As was the case with al-Shabaab, this alliance with al-Nusra did not include a rebranding and was initially kept secret. In addition, al-Nusra subsequently changed its name, an effort to gain <a href="https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/03/al-qaeda-in-syria-can-change-its-name-but-not-its-stripes.html">more legitimacy within the conflict in Syria by publicly distancing</a> itself from al-Qaida, though seemingly with al-Qaida’s <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2016-08-28/rebranding-terror">consent</a>. </p>
<p>Al-Qaida has not acquired another affiliate since the alliance rupture and rise of IS as a rival in 2014. It organized existing members into a new branch, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29056668">al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent</a>, that year. The branch in South Asia reflected al-Qaida’s success at expanding beyond its predominantly Arab base, particularly in <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/10/22/going-native-pakistanization-of-al-qaeda-pub-53382">Pakistan</a>.</p>
<p>Critically, with the exception of IS, al-Qaida’s alliances have been resilient over time. This is true despite ample reasons for its partners to abandon ties, such as the heightened counterterrorism pressure that comes with affiliation to al-Qaida; the death of its charismatic leader; and the Islamic State’s efforts to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/isil-eyes-east-africa-foments-division-150322130940108.html">court</a> al-Qaida allies. Even the Afghan Taliban remains unwilling to sever ties, even though doing so would eliminate one of the major reasons that the United States will not withdraw from the “forever war” in Afghanistan. </p>
<p>There is a window now for the U.S. to damage al-Qaida’s alliances: It has a weak leader and major rival. But that window may be closing as the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/europe/isis-2-0/index.html">crumbles</a> and al-Qaida grooms <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bin-ladens-son-steps-into-fathers-shoes-as-al-qaeda-attempts-a-comeback/2017/05/27/0c89ffc0-4198-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html">bin Laden’s son</a> as its future leader.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tricia Bacon worked for the U.S. Department of State from 2003-2013. </span></em></p>An unprecedented onslaught from the US hasn’t destroyed the terrorist organization. What is the secret of its resilience?Tricia Bacon, Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/727812017-02-22T02:09:38Z2017-02-22T02:09:38ZThreats of violent Islamist and far-right extremism: What does the research say?<p>On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were murdered in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Thousands more, including many first responders, lost their lives to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/16/9-11-death-toll-rising-496214.html">health complications</a> from working at or being near Ground Zero.</p>
<p>The 9/11 attacks were <a href="https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">perpetrated</a> by Islamist extremists, resulting in nearly 18 times more deaths than America’s second most devastating terrorist attack – the Oklahoma City bombing. More than any other terrorist event in U.S. history, 9/11 drives Americans’ perspectives on who and what ideologies are associated with violent extremism.</p>
<p>But focusing solely on Islamist extremism when investigating, researching and developing counterterrorism policies goes against what the numbers tell us. Far-right extremism also poses a significant threat to the lives and well-being of Americans. This risk is often ignored or underestimated because of the devastating impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>We have spent more than 10 years collecting and analyzing empirical data that show us how these ideologies vary in important ways that can inform policy decisions. Our conclusion is that a “one size fits all” approach to countering violent extremism may not be effective.</p>
<h2>By the numbers</h2>
<p>Historically, the U.S. has been home to adherents of many types of extremist ideologies. The two current most prominent threats are motivated by Islamist extremism and far-right extremism. </p>
<p>To help assess these threats, the Department of Homeland Security and recently the Department of Justice have funded the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2012.713229">Extremist Crime Database</a> to collect data on crimes committed by ideologically motivated extremists in the United States. The results of our analyses are published in peer-reviewed journals and on the website for the <a href="http://start.umd.edu/publications?combine=ECDB&year%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=">National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism & Responses to Terrorism</a>.</p>
<p>The ECDB includes data on ideologically motivated homicides committed by both Islamist extremists and far-right extremists going back more than 25 years. </p>
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<p>Between 1990 and 2014, the ECDB has identified 38 homicide events motivated by Islamist extremism that killed 62 people. When you include 9/11, those numbers jump dramatically to 39 homicide events and 3,058 killed.</p>
<p>The database also identified 177 homicide events motivated by far-right extremism, with 245 killed. And when you include the Oklahoma City bombing, it rises to 178 homicide events and 413 killed.</p>
<p>Although our data for 2015 through 2017 are still being verified, we counted five homicide events perpetrated by Islamist extremists that resulted in the murders of 74 people. This includes the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482322488/orlando-shooting-what-happened-update">Pulse nightclub massacre</a> in Orlando, which killed 49 people. In the same time period, there were eight homicide events committed by far-right extremists that killed 27 people. </p>
<p>These data reveal that far-right extremists tend to be more active in committing homicides, yet Islamist extremists tend to be more deadly.</p>
<p>Our research has also identified violent Islamist extremist plots against 272 targets that were either foiled or failed between 2001 and 2014. We are in the process of compiling similar data on far-right plots. Although data collection is only about 50 percent complete, we have already identified 213 far-right targets from the same time period.</p>
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<p>The locations of violent extremist activity also differ by ideology. Our data show that between 1990 and 2014, most Islamist extremist attacks occurred in the South (56.5 percent), and most far-right extremist attacks occurred in the West (34.7 percent). Both forms of violence were least likely to occur in the Midwest, with only three incidents committed by Islamist extremists (4.8 percent) and 33 events committed by far-right extremists (13.5 percent).</p>
<p>Targets of violence also vary across the two ideologies. For example, 63 percent of the Islamist extremism victims were targeted for no apparent reason. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, often visiting symbolic locations or crowded venues such as the World Trade Center or military installations. </p>
<p>In contrast, 53 percent of victims killed by far-right extremists were targeted for their actual or perceived race or ethnicity. Far-right extremists, such as neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists, often target religious, racial and ethnic, and sexual orientation and gender identity minorities.</p>
<h2>Motives and methods</h2>
<p>There are also differences in violent extremists across demographics, motives and methods. For instance, <a href="http://start.umd.edu/publication/twenty-five-years-ideological-homicide-victimization-united-states-america">data show</a> that guns were the weapon of choice in approximately 73 percent of Islamist extremist homicides and in only 63 percent of far-right extremist homicides. We attribute these differences to far-right extremists using more personal forms of violence, such as beating or stabbing victims to death.</p>
<p>We have also found that suicide missions are not unique to Islamist extremists.</p>
<p>From 1990 to 2014, we identified three suicide missions in which at least one person was killed connected to Islamist extremism, including the 9/11 attacks as one event. In contrast, there were 15 suicide missions committed by far-right extremists.</p>
<p>Our analyses found that compared to Islamist extremists, far-right extremists were significantly more likely to be economically deprived, have served in the military and have a higher level of commitment to their ideology. Far-right extremists were also significantly more likely to be less educated, single, young and to have participated in training by a group associated with their extremist ideology.</p>
<h2>Threat to law enforcement and military</h2>
<p>Terrorists associated with Islamist and far-right extremist ideologies do not only attack civilians. They also pose a deadly threat to law enforcement and military personnel. During the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 72 law enforcement officers and 55 military personnel were killed by members of Al-Qaida. On April 19, 1995, 13 law enforcement officers and four military personnel were killed when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed by an anti-government far-right extremist in Oklahoma City.</p>
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<p>Outside of these two events, Islamist extremists are responsible for the murders of 18 military personnel in three incidents, and seven law enforcement officers were killed in five incidents between 1990 and 2015. Far-right extremists have murdered 57 law enforcement officers in 46 incidents, but have never directly targeted military personnel. </p>
<p>Far-right extremists, who typically harbor anti-government sentiments, have a higher likelihood of escalating routine law enforcement contacts into fatal encounters. These homicides pose unique challenges to local law enforcement officers who are disproportionately targeted by the far right.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>The events of 9/11 will continue to skew both our real and perceived risks of violent extremism in the United States. To focus solely on Islamist extremism is to ignore the murders perpetrated by the extreme far right and their place in a constantly changing threat environment. </p>
<p>Some have even warned that there is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2010.514698">potential for collaboration</a> between these extremist movements. Our own <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2010.514698">survey research</a> suggests this is a concern of law enforcement.</p>
<p>Focusing on national counterterrorism efforts against both Islamist and far-right extremism acknowledges that there are differences between these two violent movements. Focusing solely on one, while ignoring the other, will increase the risk of domestic terrorism and future acts of violence.</p>
<p>Both ideologies continue to pose real, unique threats to all Americans. Evidence shows far-right violent extremism poses a particular threat to law enforcement and racial, ethnic, religious and other minorities. Islamist violent extremism is a specific danger to military members, law enforcement, certain minorities and society at large. It remains imperative to support policies, programs and research aimed at countering all forms of violent extremism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Parkin receives funding from the Department of Homeland Security. He is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Gruenewald receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. He is also affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua D. Freilich receives funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). He is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and is a member of its executive committee.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Chermak receives funding from National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Klein 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>Data on violent incidents in the US reveal that our focus on Islamist extremism since 9/11 may be misguided.William Parkin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Seattle UniversityBrent Klein, Doctoral Student, School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State UniversityJeff Gruenewald, Assistant Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, IUPUIJoshua D. Freilich, Professor of Criminal Justice, City University of New YorkSteven Chermak, Professor of Criminal Justice, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/731122017-02-17T02:00:43Z2017-02-17T02:00:43ZWith Comey gone, how can Congress investigate Russia, Trump and the 2016 election?<p>Now that James Comey has been <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/10/james-comey-fired-ousted-fbi-director-learned-was-fired-from-tv.html">fired</a> as FBI director, how will the U.S. conduct a fair and accurate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and links with President Donald Trump’s campaign?</p>
<p>U.S. congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are discussing options.</p>
<p>Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats have called for a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/09/comey-firing-congress-reaction-238180">special prosecutor</a> to be appointed. </p>
<p>House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has called for the creation of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics/congress-reacts-james-comey-firing/">an independent commission</a>. Justin Amash, a Republican leader of the House Freedom Caucus, said he is <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/332659-gop-lawmaker-calls-for-independent-commission-on-russia-after-comeys">considering that option</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Republican Senator John McCain has urged the formation of a <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/09/mccain-comey-firing-confirms-need-for-select-committee-to-investigate-russias-election-meddling/">select congressional committee</a>.</p>
<p>Each of these alternatives may seem reasonable, but there are key differences between them. My <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/international-relations-and-international-organisations/terrorism-and-national-security-reform-how-commissions-can-drive-change-during-crises?format=PB&isbn=9780521173070">research</a> on more than 50 government investigations reveals that independent commissions, like the one Pelosi is advocating for, are more likely than regular or select congressional committees to achieve consensus about controversial events.</p>
<p>A congressional investigation into Russian activities and ties to Trump’s advisers is likely to be riven by partisan discord. An independent commission has greater potential to generate a widely agreed-upon understanding of Russian misbehavior.</p>
<p>At a time when Congress is sharply polarized along partisan lines, congressional investigations tend to become microcosms of that polarization. This is all the more true when an investigation involves an issue about which the president is vulnerable to political embarrassment or attack.</p>
<h2>How a congressional probe might unfold</h2>
<p>The Senate Intelligence Committee, responsible for overseeing intelligence matters, is characterized by more bipartisanship than most congressional committees. It possesses a highly professional staff that works together well across party lines. Its leaders – Republican Sen. Richard Burr and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner – have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/top-senate-republican-blunt-says-congress-should-probe-flynn-situation/2017/02/14/8abbcad4-f2d5-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html?utm_term=.93d733c7494d">expressed</a> a willingness to cooperate in investigating issues related to Russia.</p>
<p>But sharp divisions are likely to emerge between Democrats and Republicans on the committee when they face decisions such as whether to require Trump campaign advisers to testify under oath, or demand that relevant records be turned over to the committee. The same goes for drawing conclusions about the motivations behind Russia’s interference, or the nature of ties between Russia and Trump’s aides. Such issues could run the risk of undermining the credibility of Trump’s election – thereby weakening the Republican Party’s hold on power.</p>
<p>This could result in the issuance of majority and minority committee reports. This happened with congressional reports in 2012 on the Central Intelligence Agency’s treatment of <a href="http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/senate-intelligence-committee-study-on-cia-detention-and-interrogation-program">detainees</a> and in 2016 on events related to the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/benghazi-committee-releases-final-report/story?id=40171034">Americans</a>. Such competing reports would fuel the perpetuation of distinct Republican and Democratic narratives about Russia’s role in the 2016 election. </p>
<p>The same outcome would likely result from an investigation by a select congressional committee, since select committees are also composed of lawmakers from both parties.</p>
<h2>Investigations of the 9/11 attack</h2>
<p>The congressional response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack illustrates the tendency of partisanship to infect investigations into events that could call into question the president’s standing. </p>
<p>In 2002, the House and Senate intelligence committees conducted a joint investigation of matters related to the attack. This probe, known as the <a href="https://fas.org/irp/congress/2002_rpt/911rept.pdf">joint inquiry</a>, uncovered important information about government lapses that made it easier for Al-Qaida operatives to enter the United States and hijack four airplanes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157229/original/image-20170216-32706-ushrt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Families of of 9/11 victims protest the handling of the investigation of the 9/11 attacks, Oct. 2002.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo, Toyokazu Kosugi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the joint inquiry’s substantive findings were overshadowed by partisan <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/politics/democrats-say-bush-must-give-full-disclosure.html">disagreements</a> over issues such as whether George W. Bush or Bill Clinton bore responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack. Some Republican members of the joint inquiry were also unwilling to support efforts to press the Bush White House for access to key witnesses and documents. The inquiry concluded with the release of a <a href="https://fas.org/irp/congress/2002_rpt/911rept.pdf">majority report</a> that included separate concluding statements from nine inquiry members, some of whom expressed serious disagreement.</p>
<p>Dissatisfaction with this process led Congress and President Bush to approve a law that created the independent <a href="https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">9/11 Commission</a> nine months after the joint inquiry had begun its work. The commission was characterized by strong bipartisanship. None of the 9/11 Commission’s members held public office during their tenure on the commission. </p>
<p>This distance from the partisan environment of Congress gave the commission’s five Republicans and five Democrats the freedom to find common ground. The result was a unanimous report that provided the definitive account of the Sept. 11 attack. However, the delay in creating the commission meant that this account and the commission’s recommendations were not published until 2004, years after the attack.</p>
<p>To be sure, some commissions also fall prey to polarization. I have <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/international-relations-and-international-organisations/terrorism-and-national-security-reform-how-commissions-can-drive-change-during-crises?format=PB&isbn=9780521173070">found</a> that about one-third of commissions created to investigate national security issues fail to produce unanimous reports. </p>
<p>But even staunch Democrats and Republicans typically place the national interest above partisan considerations when serving on a commission. They have an incentive to do so because their own reputation is at stake.</p>
<p>To create a commission, Congress would need to approve and Trump would need to sign legislation establishing the body. For now, this outcome appears unlikely. For this reason, some Democratic leaders in Congress are focusing instead on ensuring that the intelligence committee’s investigation is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/top-senate-republican-blunt-says-congress-should-probe-flynn-situation/2017/02/14/8abbcad4-f2d5-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html?utm_term=.d749412a1732">robust</a>.</p>
<p>But if the intelligence committee proves unable to conduct a thorough and bipartisan investigation of Russian meddling and Trump’s campaign, pressure will build on America’s leaders to establish a more independent probe. Hanging in the balance could be whether the United States can forge consensus about what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: An earlier version incorrectly stated the 9/11 “joint inquiry” had released one majority report and seven dissenting statements. The inquiry’s final report included separate statements from nine members of the committee, some of whom expressed serious disagreement.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Tama has received funding for this research from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.</span></em></p>Research on more than 50 government investigations reveals how partisanship can get in the way of finding answers we all agree on.Jordan Tama, Assistant Professor of International Relations, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648382016-09-09T04:35:45Z2016-09-09T04:35:45ZFlashbulb memories of dramatic events aren’t as accurate as believed<p>Where were you on Sept. 11 when you first heard that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center? </p>
<p>Many of us may have vivid memories of that day, recalling where we were and what we were doing when we first learned of the attack, perhaps even remembering seemingly irrelevant details. Chances are, that memory isn’t as accurate as you think it is.</p>
<p>This is called a flashbulb memory. Researchers coined the term <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1978-11559-001">in the 1970s</a> as a metaphor for capturing an entire scene in one moment, from the most important to the most mundane details, and then being able to hold on to that memory indefinitely as if you had a photographic record of it. </p>
<p>Flashbulb memories have intrigued memory researchers like me for a long time. We know that they are a type of autobiographical memory – memories of personally experienced events. Like other autobiographical memories, we think we remember them accurately. In reality, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1109793/the-memory-illusion/">we often don’t</a>. </p>
<p>While we know that flashbulb memories aren’t perfect records, for a long time no one knew if these memories were more accurate than ordinary autobiographical memories. Since flashbulb memories are often formed after sudden, dramatic events, it’s hard to create experiments to test this. </p>
<p>I was a graduate student at Duke University on Sept. 11, 2001. My adviser, David Rubin, and I instantly recognized the opportunity to conduct a study of flashbulb memories in response to the event.</p>
<p>On Sept. 12, we asked our undergraduates about their memories of how they learned about the terrorist attacks, as well as an ordinary autobiographical memory from the preceding weekend. In the months afterward, we were able to follow up with our undergrads to see if and how their memories changed. </p>
<h2>You think you remember it exactly, but you don’t</h2>
<p>While the term “flashbulb memory” was introduced in 1977, the phenomenon was known to researchers well before then. In fact, in 1899 psychologist <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1412480?origin=crossref">F. W. Colegrove</a> recorded vivid and detailed memories from people about when they learned of President Lincoln’s assassination.</p>
<p>For a long time, researchers argued that flashbulb memories really were a complete and accurate snapshot of events.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/us/ulric-neisser-who-reshaped-thinking-on-the-mind-dies-at-83.html">Ulric Neisser</a>, a pioneering cognitive psychologist, drew on a flashbulb memory of his own to suggest that this wasn’t the case in 1982. Here is how he <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=yf1F1c8oAB4C&q=pearl+harbor#v=snippet&q=pearl%20harbor&f=false">described his memory</a> of learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I recall sitting in the living room of our house – we only lived in that house for one year, but I remember it well – listening to a baseball game on the radio. The game was interrupted by an announcement of the attack, and I rushed upstairs to tell my mother.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Years later, after reading scientific research on flashbulb memories, Neisser realized that this memory <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7dSaBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=was+ulric+neisser+listening+to+a+football+game&source=bl&ots=rJNs6uDlD-&sig=NrLX604VXXQ-Uro3E9VIzyLbEEU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX0J24noDPAhWJbRQKHalSAoAQ6AEIPDAG#v=onepage&q=was%20ulric%20neisser%20listening%20to%20a%20football%20game&f=false">had to be wrong</a>. Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, and there is no baseball on the radio in December. </p>
<p>This realization led him to explore the accuracy of flashbulb memories. </p>
<p>In 1986, Neisser and his collaborator Nicole Harsch <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1993-97049-001">asked a group of undergraduates</a> to recall how they learned of the Challenger space shuttle disaster the morning after it happened. Much like earlier reports, they found that almost all of the students had detailed memories of “exactly” where they were and what they were doing when they found out about the explosion. </p>
<p>Neisser and Harsch did something that other researchers hadn’t done before. They asked participants to recall the same event a few years later. They found that although everyone still had vivid and complete memories, some of the memories had changed quite remarkably. In fact, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1993-97049-001">25 percent of participants</a> reported different memories altogether, such as first describing having learned from a fellow student in class, and years later saying they saw it on a TV news bulletin with their roommate. </p>
<p>This meant that the vividness and confidence that participants had shown were not related to the actual accuracy of their memories.</p>
<p>And the errors that flashbulb memories develops are not random. Our emotions and sense of belonging to a group can color them. For instance, Neisser <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1987-21000-001">was probably listening to a football game</a> on the radio when he heard about Pearl Harbor. He <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010027786900375">argued</a> that the switch from football to baseball served to emphasize his personal connection to the “national pastime” at a time when that nation, to which he was an immigrant, had been attacked.</p>
<p>And a 2005 study found that Danes remember the day when Denmark surrendered to Germany in World War II <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15869348">as being colder, cloudier, windier and rainier</a> than it truly was and the day when Denmark was liberated from Germany as being warmer, sunnier, less windy and less rainy than it truly was. </p>
<p>While these studies demonstrate that flashbulb memories aren’t completely accurate, they don’t test whether flashbulb memories are more accurate than memories of everyday events.</p>
<p>That was the question that my colleague and I sought to address in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.</p>
<h2>Flashbulb memories vs. ordinary memories</h2>
<p>On Sept. 12, David Rubin and I <a href="http://911memory.nyu.edu/abstracts/talarico_rubin.pdf">asked a group of 54 undergraduates questions</a> about how they learned about the attacks. We asked questions about the memory like, “How did you learn the news?” “Where were you?” “What were you doing?” and “Who were you with?” We also asked questions about the feeling of remembering like, “How clearly can you see this event in your mind’s eye?” and “How strongly do you believe that the event actually happened in the way that you are remembering it?”</p>
<p>We also asked participants the same questions about another memorable event from the weekend before the attacks. By doing so, we could directly compare how flashbulb memories and ordinary memories of life events change over time. </p>
<p>We then asked subgroups of our participants the same questions either one week, one month, or seven months later. By recruiting subgroups at each time point, each person only told us about their memories twice, but we were able to observe how memories changed over three distinct time points. </p>
<p>Flashbulb and ordinary autobiographical memories were very consistent over the course of one week. By one month and certainly by seven months, both memories showed fewer consistent details between the two reports. The rate of that forgetting was the same for both types of memories.</p>
<p>We also found that errors, like the introduction of new or contradictory information, were introduced at about the same rate in both types of memories. </p>
<p>So what is the difference between flashbulb memories and autobiographical memories? Our beliefs about those memories. </p>
<p>People believed that their flashbulb memories were more accurate than the ordinary memory we asked them to recount. They felt that they remembered the flashbulb memory more vividly as well. And it’s this difference in perception that makes flashbulb memories so remarkable. </p>
<h2>We believe flashbulb memories are accurate</h2>
<p>So why do we believe that these flashbulb memories are more accurate than other memories? </p>
<p>For our sample of American students, the attacks of 9/11 were highly emotional and dominated not just national discourse but also much of private conversation for days and weeks later. These processes serve to enhance the vividness of our memories and our subjective confidence in those recollections. </p>
<p>Furthermore, by virtue of having these long-lasting and detailed memories of significant events, we can demonstrate and reinforce our membership in these important social groups. In other words, community exhortations to “never forget” serve to maintain memories not just collectively, but individually.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Talarico received her doctoral education at Duke University where she was funded, in part, by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship awarded by the Department of Defense and administered by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The work described here was completed during that time.</span></em></p>We may feel like flashbulb memories of dramatic events are more accurate than ordinary memories, but are they really? An experiment begun Sept. 12, 2001 sheds light.Jennifer Talarico, Associate Professor, Psychology, Lafayette College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647252016-09-09T04:35:39Z2016-09-09T04:35:39ZHow the pain of 9/11 still stays with a generation<p>The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were the worst acts of terrorism on American soil to date. Designed to instill panic and fear, the attacks were unprecedented in terms of their scope, magnitude and impact on the American psyche.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.3.709">vast majority (over 60 percent) of Americans watched</a> these attacks occur live on television or saw them replayed over and over again in the days, weeks and years following the attacks.</p>
<p>As we reflect on the anniversary of this tragic event, a question to consider is: How has this event impacted those individuals who are too young to remember a world before 9/11? </p>
<p>As an applied social psychologist, <a href="http://www.danarosegarfin.com/about.html">I study</a> responses to natural and human-caused adversities that impact large segments of the population – also called <a href="http://www.danarosegarfin.com/uploads/3/0/8/5/30858187/vol4_ch29_silver_garfin.pdf">“collective trauma.”</a> My research group at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) has found that such exposures have compounding effects over the course of one’s lifespan. This is particularly relevant for children who have grown up in a post-9/11 society. </p>
<h2>PTSD and Ground Zero</h2>
<p>Many of the outcomes on which my team and I focus involve mental health, such as post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTS) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/dsm5_criteria_ptsd.asp">Post-traumatic stress symptoms</a> include feeling the event is happening again (e.g., flashbacks, nightmares), avoiding situations that remind individuals of the event (e.g., public places, movies about an event), negative feelings and beliefs (e.g., the world is dangerous) or feeling “keyed up” (e.g., difficulty sleeping or concentrating). </p>
<p>In order to meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD, an individual must have been directly exposed to a <a href="http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx">“traumatic event”</a> (e.g., assault, violence, accidental injury). Direct exposure means that an individual (or their loved one) was at or very near the site of the event. It might be somewhat obvious that people directly exposed to a collective trauma like 9/11 might suffer from associated physical and mental health problems. What is less obvious is how people geographically distant from the epicenter or “Ground Zero” might have been impacted.</p>
<p>This is particularly relevant when considering the impact of 9/11 on children and youth across America: Many reside far from the location of the actual attacks and were too young to have experienced or seen the attacks as they occurred. The point is people can <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.76.4.657">experience collective trauma</a> solely through the media and report symptoms that <a href="http://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20289">resemble those typically associated</a> with direct trauma exposure.</p>
<h2>Impact on physical and mental health</h2>
<p>The events of 9/11 ushered in a new era of media coverage of collective trauma, where terrorism and other forms of large-scale violence are transmitted into the daily lives of children and Americans families. </p>
<p>I have been exploring these issues with my collaborators <a href="http://faculty.sites.uci.edu/rsilver/">Roxane Cohen Silver</a> and <a href="http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5441">E. Alison Holman</a>. My colleagues surveyed a nationally representative sample of over 3,400 Americans shortly after 9/11 and then followed them for three years after the attacks. </p>
<p>In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, media-based exposure was associated with <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=195281">psychological distress</a>. This included <a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treatment/early/acute-stress-disorder.asp">acute stress</a> (which is similar to PTS but must be experienced in the first month of exposure), post-traumatic stress and ongoing fears and worries about future acts of terrorism (in the months following the attacks). </p>
<p>These harmful effects persisted in the years following 9/11. For example, the team found <a href="http://doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2007.6">measurable impact</a> on the mental and physical health (such as increased risk of heart diseases) of the sample three years after the attacks. Importantly, those who responded with distress in the immediate aftermath were more likely to report subsequent problems as well. </p>
<p>These findings bear close resemblance to research led by psychologist <a href="http://psychiatry.duke.edu/faculty/details/0098909">William Schlenger</a>, whose team found that Americans who reported watching more hours of 9/11 television in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 were more likely to report symptoms resembling PTSD. For example, those who reported watching four to seven hours were almost four times as likely to report such symptoms <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=195165">compared to those who watched less</a>. </p>
<p>These findings were echoed in work conducted by <a href="https://www.bu.edu/card/profile/michael-w-otto-ph-d/">Michael W. Otto</a>, who also found that more hours of 9/11-related television watching was <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.10.008">associated with higher post-traumatic stress symptoms</a> in children under 10 in the first year following the attacks. </p>
<h2>9/11’s impact on children</h2>
<p>However, it is also the case that studies have found the number of children who reported longer-term distress symptoms to be relatively low. Among other factors, children whose parents had low coping abilities or themselves had learning disabilities tended to report higher distress. </p>
<p>For example, my collaborator <a href="http://psych.uncc.edu/people/gil-rivas-virginia">Virginia Gil-Rivas</a>, who <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jts.20277">studied American adolescents</a> exposed to 9/11 only through the media, found that symptoms of post-traumatic distress decreased in most adolescents at the one-year mark. An important finding of her study was how parental coping abilities and parental availability to discuss the attacks made a difference. </p>
<p>Furthermore, children who had prior mental health problems or learning disabilities <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jts.20277">tended to be at higher risk for distress symptoms</a>. That could be because children prone to anxiety in general experienced increased <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15374410802148145">feelings of vulnerability</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024619">number of studies</a> that have followed children over the course of several years, no studies have comprehensively examined the long-term impact of 9/11 on children’s development and adjustment. That is because it is difficult to compare American children who lived through 9/11 with those who did not, since almost every American child was exposed to images of 9/11 at some point in time. </p>
<p>This limits the ability of researchers to examine how children’s lives might have changed over time.</p>
<p>However, some researchers believe that even media-based exposure to collective trauma could likely have a longer-term impact on the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024619">attitudes and beliefs</a> of those who grew up in a post-9/11 world. It is possible, for example, that exposure to 9/11 and other acts of terrorism <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2005.00144.x">has led to fears of perceived threats</a>, political intolerance, prejudice and xenophobia in some American children.</p>
<h2>How 9/11 trauma impacts people today</h2>
<p>Years later, a bigger question is: How does the collective trauma of 9/11 affect people today?</p>
<p>Over the past several years, my team and I have sought to address many of the issues that remained unanswered in the scientific literature after 9/11. We sought to replicate and extend the findings initially produced after 9/11 through an examination of responses to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the worst act of terrorism in America since 9/11. </p>
<p>To this end, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/1/93">we surveyed 4,675 Americans</a>. Our sample was demographically representative, meaning that our sample proportionally matched the U.S. Census data on key indicators such as ethnicity, income, gender and marital status. </p>
<p>This allowed us to make stronger inferences about how “Americans” responded. Within the first two to four weeks of the Boston Marathon bombings, we surveyed our sample about their direct and media-based exposure to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and their subsequent psychological responses. </p>
<p>Our study found that as media exposure (a sum of daily hours of Boston Marathon bombing-related television, radio, print, online news and social media coverage) increased, so did <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/1/93">respondents’ acute stress symptoms</a>. This was even after statistically accounting for other variables typically associated with distress responses (such as mental health). </p>
<p>People who reported more than three hours of media exposure had higher probability of reporting high acute stress symptoms than were people who were directly exposed to the bombing. </p>
<p>Then, last year, we <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614561043">sought to explore</a> whether the accumulation of exposure to events like 9/11 and other collective trauma might influence responses to subsequent events like the Boston Marathon bombing.</p>
<p>Once again, we used data from demographically representative samples of people who lived in the New York and Boston metropolitan areas. We assessed people who lived in the New York and Boston areas to facilitate a stronger comparison of direct and media-based exposure to 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing: people who lived in New York or Boston were more likely to meet criteria for “trauma exposure.” </p>
<p>This study had two primary, congruent findings. First, people who experienced greater numbers of direct exposure to prior collective trauma (e.g., 9/11, the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/12/us/sandy-hook-timeline/">Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting</a>, <a href="https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/superstorm-sandy-anniversary-20141029">Superstorm Sandy</a>) reported higher acute stress symptoms after the Boston Marathon bombings. </p>
<p>Second, greater amounts of media-based live exposure (i.e., people watched or listened to the event as it occurred on live television, radio, or online streaming) to prior collective trauma were also associated with higher acute stress symptoms after the Boston Marathon bombing.</p>
<p>So greater direct and media-based exposure to prior collective trauma was linked with greater acute stress responses (e.g., anxiety, nightmares, trouble concentrating) after a subsequent event. </p>
<h2>Stay informed, but limit exposure</h2>
<p>Overall, our research indicates that the impact on children growing up post-9/11 likely extends well beyond the physical and mental health effects of exposure – be it direct or media-based. Each tragic incident that individuals witness, even if only through the media, likely has a cumulative effect.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137093/original/image-20160908-25249-lzoe0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People are resilient, but they need to be aware of the potential for distress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dvids/4990687967/in/photolist-8B1zEg-o9P5QB-2VZDA9-2VVeti-4pB8f-kAHLQX-akD8ep-ame3o6-am4QmR-fnyKvK-hzH1Uo-7p9WEb-am4yyK-oJTDo1-pGWYHT-2VZDxw-hyiVZA-dfu157-am4E6T-am4RxM-hwUCie-am4vHr-am4LZp-5kRRU5-am7p9Q-2VVevH-5kEtCa-am7s3m-am7k4A-am4kh4-am4Ls6-2VZDjs-u2ZEmQ-5JjbsH-7ZMhfx-7841HP-eMkA8Q-6XCcg9-787URG-oQjvQ2-6C1gop-hAMzpN-2VVeDt-am4Txp-am7ax3-bTVtwr-am7Cab-Curwec-am79UG-kGfxc3">DVIDSHUB</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, the positive finding is that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.20">most people are resilient</a> in the face of tragedy. In the early years following 9/11, several studies examined <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01664.x">how 9/11 impacted children nationally</a>. Like adults, children exposed both directly and through the media tended to be resilient in the early years following the attacks and symptoms generally decreased over time. </p>
<p>Even so, being aware of the potential for distress through media exposure is important. Even small percentages can have large implications for our nation’s physical and mental health. For example, in the case of 9/11, 10 percent of a nationally-representative sample reporting <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=195281">post-traumatic stress</a> represents <a href="http://www.census.gov/popclock/">32,443,375 Americans</a> with similar symptoms. </p>
<p>So, people should stay informed, but limit repeated exposure to disturbing images, <a href="http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/psyc.65.4.289.20240">which can elicit</a> post-traumatic stress and lead to negative psychological and physical health outcomes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64725/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dana Rose Garfin receives funding from the National Science Foundation to conduct this research. </span></em></p>Even indirect exposure to the terrorist attacks of September 11 has left profound and deep impact on those too young to remember a world before that.Dana Rose Garfin, Research Scientist, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/645172016-09-09T04:34:13Z2016-09-09T04:34:13ZCommand under attack: What we’ve learned since 9/11 about managing crises<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136941/original/image-20160907-25260-1eqthqy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aerial view of the Pentagon, September 14, 2001</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#/media/File:Aerial_view_of_the_Pentagon_during_rescue_operations_post-September_11_attack.JPEG">Wikipedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 was the largest coordinated, multi-site international act of terror ever carried out on U.S. soil. Almost 3,000 people died, many others were injured and property damage ran into tens of billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Many people acted heroically at both attack sites. In New York, firefighters climbed staircases inside the World Trade Center towers even as damage from fires on upper floors threatened the integrity of the buildings and eventually caused them to collapse. At the Pentagon, military personnel, civilian employees and first responders entered the still-burning impact area to help people who had been injured. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, these efforts were not as coordinated or effective as they could have been.</p>
<p>At the Harvard Kennedy School’s <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/crisisleadership/">Program on Crisis Leadership</a>, we work to help societies prepare for and respond to catastrophes, from accidents and natural disasters to terrorist attacks. Since 9/11, government agencies have developed new tools for organizing collaborative responses to novel large-scale emergencies. We believe that these new techniques are making a difference, and that many more agencies – especially at the state and local levels – should be using them.</p>
<h2>The challenges of large-scale emergencies</h2>
<p>Major disasters pose difficult challenges for responders on the ground and for higher-level officials trying to direct operations. Some events are novel because of their scale – for example, flooding throughout New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Others involve challenges that no one may ever have envisioned, such as terrorists using commercial aircraft as weapons. Almost inevitably, no single agency has all of the capabilities needed to respond, so many agencies need to be deployed and coordinated. Often it is hard for officials to understand what is happening, both because the situation is unusual and because conditions are evolving. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136947/original/image-20160907-25279-b2m8u2.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">National Guard and emergency response agency personnel at a June 2016 exercise in Wisconsin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wiguardpics/27251413860/in/album-72157668991637652/">Wisconsin National Guard/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>What makes for an effective response? First, agencies develop an array of capabilities in advance: They craft plans, design procedures, procure equipment, train responders and leaders, and practice carrying out operations. Second, they develop methods for rapidly designing response efforts that can adapt to novel events. Third, they organize and coordinate response actions in real time to manage the deployment of resources.</p>
<p>During the 9/11 response, coordination was better in some places than in others. At the Pentagon, responding agencies including the Arlington Fire Department, the FBI and others quickly formed a “unified command” structure to coordinate critically important tasks. These included locating, treating and evacuating victims, fighting the fire, finding and preserving evidence and stabilizing the building. </p>
<p>With one exception, all responding agencies eventually came under the aegis of one unified command. It utilized a process called the Incident Management System (IMS), which had been developed by federal agencies for fighting wildfires in western states.</p>
<p>Responders in New York City faced an enormous and complex event at Ground Zero. With separate command posts, it was near-impossible for police, firefighters and other actors at the scene even to form a common picture of what was happening, let alone to develop collaborative solutions or carry out a coordinated response. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most widely cited problem was communication between firefighters and police. When observers in a police helicopter above the World Trade Center buildings radioed to police officials on the scene that the towers looked ready to collapse, those officials ordered their personnel to withdraw from the building. But this information was not passed to firefighters, some of whom were climbing stairs even as the towers fell.</p>
<p>In response Congress directed the newly created Department of Homeland Security to develop a national system to help agencies at all levels of government respond more effectively to large-scale attacks and disasters. The result was the National Incident Management System, or NIMS – a framework for responding to significant emergency incidents, such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters and industrial accidents. NIMS has produced some important successes, including better-coordinated responses to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and several recent mass shootings.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136950/original/image-20160907-16611-n3o1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&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">Emergency personnel at work at the Boston Marathon bombing site.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hahatango/8653177841/in/set-72157633252445135/,%20CC%20BY-SA%202.0,%20https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25611505">Aaron Tang/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>From 9/11 to the Boston Marathon</h2>
<p>NIMS is designed to provide structures and processes that enable responders from different agencies – firefighters, police, medical personnel, emergency managers and so forth – and from different jurisdictions and levels of government to come together quickly in major emergencies to design and then implement adaptive response plans.</p>
<p>Much of this work takes place in advance. Planners assign agencies roles for many types of emergencies, based on their core competencies. For example, in New York City the police and fire departments are primary response agencies for situations including plane and train crashes and explosions, and anticipate coordinating with and gaining support from other relevant agencies such as Amtrak or the U.S. Coast Guard. </p>
<p>Then agencies engage in exercises that give leaders and responders the opportunity to practice carrying out coordinated operations. NIMS emphasizes close cooperation at the scene: Incident commanders need to join together quickly and stay within sight and speaking distance of each other. This strategy was evident when a Metro-North commuter train <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/nyregion/metro-north-derailment.html">derailed in the Bronx</a> in December 2013, killing four people and injuring more than 60. Managers from the New York fire and police departments and Metro-North set the conditions for effective incident management by working an arm’s length apart to jointly direct responders at the crash site. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136945/original/image-20160907-25257-1pc7ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&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">Police, firefighters and federal investigators at the site of the Metro-North derailment in New York, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ntsb/11170805255/in/album-72157638279064693/">National Transportation Safety Board/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>NIMS is still a work in progress, but it has produced some important successes. In our <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/crisisleadership/events/why-was-boston-strong">review</a> of the response to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Marathon-bombing-of-2013">2013 Boston Marathon bombing</a>, we found that numerous agencies effectively used many core NIMS principles as they treated hundreds of seriously wounded victims and conducted a citywide manhunt for the bombers. Law enforcement, fire, emergency medical and other organizations almost immediately formed an effective unified command structure to oversee the response and delegate responsibilities among agencies. </p>
<p>Officials from such a disparate set of organizations were able to do this because they had worked together for more than a decade to plan and orchestrate many major events, including the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Boston’s annual July 4 concert and fireworks, and parades for world champion basketball, baseball, hockey and football teams. Response leaders took advantage of these scheduled large-scale activities to bring together agencies that would need to work together in other events, including emergencies. </p>
<p>Responders also used incident command after mass shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in October 2015 and at the offices of a nonprofit in San Bernardino, California in December 2015. In both cases, NIMS created a process for many agencies to come together quickly and effectively, including local and state police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), emergency medical responders and victim assistance organizations. </p>
<h2>Taking learning on board</h2>
<p>Today the idea of NIMS is widely accepted, but it has been implemented unevenly across the United States. NIMS works well within individual response agencies, but is harder to implement across multiple agencies and levels of government. Conducting big response exercises is expensive, and many cities do not have large events like those in Boston that give them frequent opportunities to practice. And individual agencies naturally tend to focus inwardly on their own organizational interests and drift away from the tasks of collaboration.</p>
<p>Moreover, NIMS ideally reaches beyond first response organizations. Many agencies whose primary mission is not emergency response, such as transportation and public works departments, could play important roles in major emergencies. These agencies may adopt NIMS and give their employees basic training, but lack opportunities to sharpen those skills so that they can operate effectively in a high-pressure, NIMS-organized event. </p>
<p>Communities need to bring their response agencies together regularly to plan and practice. This can develop and maintain knowledge and relationships that will enable them to work together effectively under the high stress of a future attack or disaster. Any community can do this, but many have not. </p>
<p>Where training and practice have taken place, these tools have worked. They can be improved, but the most important priority is getting more communities to practice using them more regularly, before the next disaster. One important way this nation can honor the victims of 9/11 is by using these lessons to create the conditions for even better coordination in future events.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard has received support for research related to crisis management from the US National Guard Bureau. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arnold M. Howitt receives funding for Harvard-based research on crisis management in the United States from the US National Guard Bureau's Homeland Security Institute. He has also worked as a consulting trainer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency..</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Cole is Vice President of Community Resources for Justice in Boston, MA.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph W. Pfeifer is the Chief of Counterterrorism and Emergency Preparedness for the New York Fire Department (FDNY).</span></em></p>The National Incident Management System (NIMS), created after 9/11, has helped government agencies respond to large-scale emergencies, including mass shootings and the Boston Marathon bombing.Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, Baker Professor of Public Management and Faculty Co-Director, Program on Crisis Leadership, Harvard Kennedy SchoolArnold M. Howitt, Faculty Co-Director, Program on Crisis Leadership; Senior Adviser, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy SchoolChristine Cole, Senior Fellow, Program on Crisis Leadership, Harvard Kennedy SchoolJoseph W. Pfeifer, Senior Fellow, Program on Crisis Leadership, Harvard Kennedy SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641992016-08-25T17:54:13Z2016-08-25T17:54:13ZRebuilding ground zero: How twin mandates of revival and remembrance reshaped Lower Manhattan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135555/original/image-20160825-6622-g23kf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lower Manhattan's new skyline.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NYC skyline via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the beginning, rebuilding ground zero was fraught with strategic consequence, for the city of New York and for the nation.</p>
<p>The original World Trade Center complex, completed in 1973, represented the <a href="http://www.panynj.gov/wtcprogress/history-wtc.html">culmination of a decades-long effort to revitalize</a> the city’s founding center of business. Forty years later, rebuilding those 16 acres reprised history – with new meaning, in a new century, in a new geopolitical context brought forth by 9/11. </p>
<p>The destruction of the massive complex created a rare opportunity for New York City to rethink its long-term economic needs in the downtown area, while sending a message to the world that regardless of whatever al-Qaida terrorists aimed to do, New York City would come back stronger than ever. It was an unparalleled opportunity in the city’s history that otherwise would not have happened.</p>
<p>This opportunity carried with it an unquestionable priority: everlasting remembrance of those who died on that fateful day. September 11 transformed the human meaning of the World Trade Center site. What had been secular was now sacred, a graveyard for nearly 3,000 souls. Those 16 acres, achingly defined by past images of the iconic twin towers anchoring the skyline of lower Manhattan, were now unbearably painful ruins transformed into repositories of memory. </p>
<p>That led to many tough questions: How would the need to commemorate the loss of thousands of lives be accommodated with the need to rebuild an economic future for lower Manhattan? How would the rhetoric of defiance and resilience translate into concrete plans, architectural reality, political decisions, building priorities and economic costs? And who had the power to execute the ideals and ambitions of rebuilding when property rights were split and political power fragmented?</p>
<p>Those are among the many questions I sought to answer in my book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/power-at-ground-zero-9780190607029?cc=us&lang=en&">Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan</a>” by unraveling the political and economic dynamics behind the controversies and conflicts that shaped the process of rebuilding, including billions in public aid to ensure visible construction progress by the 10-year anniversary. </p>
<p>Five years later, though it’s not yet fully complete, the palpable energy on the site belies the conventional wisdom that delay has been destructive.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135552/original/image-20160825-6614-15vdyh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Remembering the victims was an unquestionable priority in the rebuilding of ground zero.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Hack</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Symbolic city building</h2>
<p>I started this research after completing “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Times-Square-Roulette-Remaking-Press/dp/0262692953">Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon</a>.” The successful redevelopment of naughty bawdy West 42nd Street became testimony to the city’s ability to once again think big and execute on an ambitious scale. </p>
<p>Rebuilding the World Trade Center site, however, differed from the Times Square project in two salient ways that complicated the task: The cast of players was much larger, especially on the intergovernmental front, and the emotional overlay of 9/11 created an unprecedented planning condition. If Times Square served as the symbolic soul of the city, the World Trade Center served as the symbolic pulse of its economy – despite the fact that much of downtown’s financial establishment had moved to midtown Manhattan. </p>
<p>As in Times Square, the importance of symbolic politics loomed large at ground zero. And for 15 years, rebuilding ground zero has been the <a href="https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/3587/Politics%20of%20%20Planning.pdf">world’s most visible redevelopment project</a>. </p>
<p>To understand the multiple forces underlying the decision-making, I spent 12 years sourcing hundreds of primary documents, reading through thousands of articles and consulting scores of public testimonies, economic reports, design statements, meeting minutes and other documents. This research is also based on more than 150 interviews with nearly all the players and many others whose involvement or expertise was relevant to unraveling a story in which complexity prevailed at every level: design, emotion, security, governance, control.</p>
<p>While modern city building is often dismissed as cold-hearted and detached from meaning, the opposite was true at ground zero, where every action was infused with symbolic significance and debated with emotional intensity. </p>
<h2>The twin mandate: To rebuild and remember</h2>
<p>The cleanup effort removing 1.5 million tons of debris out of the 70-foot-deep hole of the World Trade Center site was unexpectedly rapid. Its completion in May 2002 marked a profound turning point: It signaled the start of renewal at ground zero – a dual effort to rebuild and remember.</p>
<p>A month later, then-Governor George Pataki made a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/nyregion/02REBU.html">surprise announcement</a>, declaring: “We will never build where the towers stood.” From that point forward, the “footprints” became sacred ground, inviolable. A permanent memorial would have to “<a href="http://www.wtcsitememorial.org/pdf/LMDC_Guidelines_english.pdf">make visible the footprints”</a> of the original towers, which meant that commercial redevelopment of the World Trade Center replacing 10 million square feet of office space would have to “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/31/opinion/turning-to-renewal.html">coexist harmoniously with the memorial itself</a>.”</p>
<p>Whatever was built on the site had to be architecturally ambitious. Simply replacing what was lost or replicating past approaches to city building would constitute a pallid response to human loss and physical destruction of such magnitude. The rebuilding response demanded a big, inspiring, physical presence that embodied the symbolic aspirations of American values.</p>
<p>If these twin mandates – to remember and rebuild – were clear in the minds of public officials, how to achieve them was not. They were competing claims. The terrorist attack created a compelling public interest that trumped prevailing property rights. </p>
<p>Repeatedly, the legal prerogatives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as landowner, and Larry Silverstein and his investment partnership, as owners of a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center site <a href="http://nypost.com/2001/07/25/signed-sealed-and-delivered/">executed just six weeks</a> before 9/11, were challenged by the politics of accommodating the twin mandates. Ultimately, the property rights of both stakeholders were amended. The Port Authority and Silverstein <a href="http://www.panynj.gov/corporate-information/foi/13209-WTC.pdf">relinquished</a> development rights on the 4.7-acre memorial quadrant, and responsibility for the development of the commercial office space <a href="https://www.panynj.gov/corporate-information/pdf/092106_minutes.pdf">was realigned</a>. The Port Authority took on development of the iconic One World Trade Center (aka Freedom Tower) and a second tower while Silverstein took responsibility for three additional office towers.</p>
<p>But the process was terribly messy, terribly tangled and, at times, terribly chaotic.</p>
<h2>Many voices: ‘Who’s in control?’</h2>
<p>The decision-making arena was packed with many contending voices: elected officials, government decision-makers, private real estate interests, the families of 9/11 victims, civic leaders, preservationists and the editorial boards of the city’s daily newspapers. There was no powerful rebuilding czar, a modern-day <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/the-legacy-of-robert-moses/16018/">Robert Moses</a>, who could overcome the conflicting imperatives and incessant pressures to “get things done.” </p>
<p>The idea of a master builder was out of fashion. But also there was no overriding governance structure to set priorities among competing building ambitions, clarify the inevitable trade-offs and resolve the inevitable disputes. And that repeatedly gave rise to the question, “Who’s in control?” </p>
<p>The ambiguity of the control issue not only created constant confusion; it weakened the public sector’s position when it came to negotiating the terms of rebuilding with the private leaseholder. When government entities are not united, developers are able to exploit the fissures among government agencies to their advantage.</p>
<p>Tension between the political needs of the public sector and the commercial demands of the private investors permeated conflict after conflict at ground zero. Other tensions constantly simmered throughout the tortuous process of rebuilding: tensions between City Hall and Albany, between the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority, and between the Port Authority’s two governing sides. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135543/original/image-20160825-6593-somc7v.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">Bloomberg beams at a press conference in 2010 after a critical milestone is passed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Woodhead, Courtesy Silverstein Properties Inc.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pivotal factors</h2>
<p>Rebuilding advanced in fits and starts. Public contention, even conflict, had a way of clarifying what would be politically acceptable, and “delay” gave planners and elected officials time to correct plans, reverse decisions and build coalitions of support. </p>
<p>By 2006, the big conflicts over what to build were settled, thanks in part to the eventual acquiescence of those involved, making continuous accommodations and adjustments throughout. By 2008, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s personal leadership assured the opening of the memorial on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and by mid-2010, the government entities and Silverstein had found a solution to the money question that had bedeviled progress on the commercial office towers.</p>
<p>Contrary to the narrative of delay that prevailed throughout the many years of controversy, rebuilding the emotionally charged terrain was relatively fast-paced compared with the typical two-decade timeline for big development projects to reach fruition.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1273&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135544/original/image-20160825-6588-bn0elr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1273&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 World Trade (aka Freedom Tower) rises a symbolic 1,776 feet into the sky.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Hack</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Money, a lot of money – US$25.5 billion, by my estimate – made a big difference in the timetable of achievement at ground zero. Billions from the federal government for recovery and rebuilding. Billions from the Port Authority for a grand transportation hub and an architectural icon for Lower Manhattan. Billions in subsidies for the timely development of private commercial office towers. </p>
<p>While there was a time when observers wondered whether anyone would set up shop above the ruins of a terrorist attack, One World Trade Center stands tall at 1,776 feet, anchored by media giant Condé Nast. The other towers are gaining tenants and the 100 retail shops at the complex have been opening, including a two-story Apple store. Nearly two million people have visited the Memorial Museum since it opened in May 2014.</p>
<p>After 15 years, this monumental effort – fraught by ambitions, power struggles, public dismay and constant criticism – stands as a much valued achievement, a statement of political will and public purpose. Many of the revelations here and others in my book are not part of the conventional wisdom about rebuilding.</p>
<p>Lower Manhattan is stronger today than ever before, the result of a constellation of social and economic trends that would not have materialized without the energy and dedication of many and the billions in public funds that made the new World Trade Center a reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynne B. Sagalyn received funding for this research from the Russell Sage Foundation; the J. M. Kaplan Foundation (Furthermore grants in publishing); the Regional Plan Association of New York; and Columbia Business School via the dean's office, Robert Berne Research Fund and the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate. Sagalyn is a board member of the Skyscraper Museum and the Regional Plan Association of New York.</span></em></p>Those involved with the monumental task faced many challenges as they balanced the unquestionable priority of remembrance with the commercial task of recreating an economically vibrant downtown.Lynne B. Sagalyn, Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia Business School, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641972016-08-22T14:39:52Z2016-08-22T14:39:52ZLouisiana’s Cajun Navy shines light on growing value of boat rescuers<p>As we look at the <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/19/490605862/catastrophic-floods-in-louisiana-have-caused-massive-housing-crisis">devastating losses</a> suffered by Louisiana communities from the recent flooding, one of the inspiring aspects to emerge from the disaster are the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/volunteer-cajun-navy-rescues-fellow-community-members-trapped/story?id=41482404">reports</a> of the “Cajun Navy” – everyday residents in their boats checking on and rescuing family, friends, neighbors and even strangers in need. </p>
<p>The efforts of the Cajun Navy, however, are not unusual. Indeed, one consolation of the disaster is the extent to which the informal responses by survivors bolster stressed and overburdened formal response systems. </p>
<p>This type of emergent activity has become an integral component of the disaster environment. Over a half-century of research by the <a href="https://www.drc.udel.edu/">Disaster Research Center</a> at the University of Delaware and other disaster scientists shows how typical it is, in fact, for groups of people to engage in new tasks, work with people they’ve never worked before or both. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"766079203460591616"}"></div></p>
<h2>From Katrina to 9/11</h2>
<p>Disasters, after all, by their very definition signify that some aspects of the more official emergency management system has been overwhelmed. This could be due to poor planning, but it also could be related to the size of the event or some unusual aspect that has taken us by surprise. </p>
<p>Communities in Louisiana know this well and need only recall the tremendous contribution of boat owners after Hurricane Katrina. The Coast Guard, one of the few federal agencies to receive considerable praise after that catastrophe, demonstrated <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/sep/8/20050908-090641-4058r/">remarkable skill</a> in working with the ad hoc flotilla of boats <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/remembering-the-cajun-navy-10-years-after-hurricane-katrina/">contributing to rescue operations</a>. But a few years before Katrina, we saw something similar occur in another part of the country to a very different type of disaster.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135015/original/image-20160822-18714-1phnhnt.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During the September 11 attacks in 2001, ferries and private boats were integral to evacuating people from southern Manhattan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York Police Department</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This year marks the 15th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. In 2001, as most people were concentrated on the fires at the Pentagon, the crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the collapse of the Twin Towers, a remarkable and less noticed scene was unfolding along the New York Harbor waterfront. </p>
<p>Mariners from across the harbor <a href="http://www.downtownexpress.com/2016/07/29/armada-of-heroes-the-story-of-the-civilian-led-waterborne-evacuation-of-downtown-on-911/">spontaneously converged</a>, some of their own accord and some in response to a Coast Guard call for all available boats, to <a href="http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2016/june/americas-dunkirk/">provide assistance</a>. Vessels of all sorts succeeded in moving hundreds of thousands of evacuees from around the southern reaches of the island, despite the fact that there was no plan in place for such a mass activity. </p>
<h2>Doing what needs to be done</h2>
<p>In the maritime community, the imperative toward rescue is very strong, and maritime law compels seafarers to provide assistance to vessels in peril. In <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2211_reg.html">researching boat owners’ response on September 11</a>, we found mariners extended their rescue ethos to provide assistance to evacuees still on land. The Coast Guard demonstrated the same culture of flexibility they later exhibited after Katrina struck.</p>
<p>One of our interviewees described a lead official at the time, “He went with the flow. ‘If you need me I’m here’…It wasn’t like he was trying to play Big Mr. Coast Guard.” That is, what was commendable about the official actions of the Coast Guard, harbor pilots and harbor police is that they recognized the value of the emergent resource around them. They saw people with particular skills working in their areas of expertise, doing things well, and they came to the conclusion the response was better off letting them help. </p>
<p>Not everyone appreciates those contributions as readily as others. Even after the August 2016 flooding, we heard of some <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/louisiana_flood_2016/article_bbf5263e-6646-11e6-a775-ebda9d5c17ae.html?sr_source=lift_amplify_">initial resistance to volunteer efforts</a>. And yes, sometimes well-meaning volunteer efforts can pose <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/03/opinion/la-oe-holguin-veras-hurricane-donations-20121104">serious challenges</a>. But we can’t tout the resilience of community or the value of the “<a href="https://www.fema.gov/whole-community">whole community</a>” in disaster response if we wholesale forbid them from stepping up to rightfully do what needs to be done.</p>
<p>We see that the willingness to “just do what needs to be done” – a phrase that mariners used repeatedly after 9/11 to describe their actions – is not a uniquely Gulf Coast tendency. Nor is it uniquely American. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134847/original/image-20160819-30406-1rbna8e.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">During Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued tens of thousands of people, at times using the aid of volunteers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcquaid/134941680/in/album-72157600150706195/">mcquaid/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Consider the boat operators who spontaneously converged and worked alongside formal responders while a shooter attacked a youth camp on the Norwegian island of Utoya. Like his 9/11 peers, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8658437/Norway-shooting-German-tourist-hailed-a-hero-after-saving-30-lives.html">one boat operator described</a> in a Telegraph interview that you “just do what it takes.” </p>
<p>In last week’s flooding, the Cajun Navy did what it takes. But it has also illustrated, yet again, that the success of our formal responses often depends upon latent capacities already present in our communities. </p>
<p>We must be clear: They do not replace the resources required from outside the affected areas or by those we often deem as officials. Citizen capacity does not justify divestment. </p>
<p>In events on the scale of disaster and catastrophe, however, those formal systems will fall short without involving informal responses in a meaningful way. And in some cases, lives will be lost. Although safety and security are critical during a crisis, there is value in the improvised citizen response to disaster.</p>
<h2>Value in planning and improvisation</h2>
<p>Throughout history, frustration with current policies has often led to changes in disaster management. As historian Scott Knowles <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14925.html">pointed out</a>, even the Federal Emergency Management Agency was established in response to a concern that disaster response was too fragmented across agencies. More recently, a focus on the Incident Command System (<a href="https://www.fema.gov/incident-command-system-resources">ICS</a>) has permeated the rhetoric of American emergency management. </p>
<p>ICS, which a formalized management system of organizing resources and tasks, is highly practical in incidents such as wildfires – the type of hazard for which ICS was first developed – and was borne out of the frustrations with incompatible systems across organizations. But our research on the boat evacuation of 9/11, as well as <a href="http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jhsem.2006.3.3/jhsem.2006.3.3.1252/jhsem.2006.3.3.1252.xml">evaluation by other social scientists</a>, points to how ICS does not deliver a completely uniform compatible system in more decentralized, complex disasters, precisely because of the improvised and emergent activity that can’t be fully structured ahead of time. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MDOrzF7B2Kg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Boat operators on 9/11 did not neatly fit into an ICS system, nor could they have, given the surprise of their involvement. But the reason they were able to do so much was because no one forced them to. Rather, they were able to evolve and fit alongside formal systems in a thoughtful, collaborative and deliberate way. </p>
<p>Although we are sure to eventually hear examples of risks unnecessarily taken, or of errors in judgment, throughout the vast armada of boat operators engaged in rescue operations in flooded Louisiana communities, that shouldn’t let us lose sight of the impressive coordination and collaboration that bolstered this response effort. </p>
<p>We must continue to learn the right lessons from disaster: that there is value of both planning and improvisation in disaster. That although citizens might sometimes make mistakes, they also enable the greatest of responses. That successful disaster response, in part, depends on a willingness of formal responders to acknowledge the capacities of our citizenry, be they mariners or farmers, welders or educators, or something else entirely.</p>
<p>So thank you to the Cajun Navy, and to the rest of those in flood-affected communities drawing on their supplies, equipment and know-how to help their neighbors, to help complete strangers and to keep reminding us of the value of citizenry in disaster response.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tricia Wachtendorf receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the University of Delaware Research Foundation, and the State of Delaware.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Kendra receives funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the State of Delaware</span></em></p>Improvised rescues, such as boat owners saving people in flooded Louisiana, have become an integral part of federal and state disaster response efforts.Tricia Wachtendorf, Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of Disaster Research Center, University of DelawareJames Kendra, Professor of Public Policy & Administration, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.