Richard Fenning: 9/11 ... The Decade Since Has Been One To Celebrate
Richard Fenning is CEO of Control Risks, a firm advising on political, security and integrity risks.
Each generation assumes it lives through tumultuous times. But as we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the last decade will surely be remembered as one of extraordinary volatility and insecurity. We now assume that 9/11 not only changed the world, but set in train a global geopolitical rollercoaster ride.
The evidence seems compelling. 9/11 propelled al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden from shadowy obscurity to global infamy overnight. The US and its allies went to war in Afghanistan to destroy the group’s capability to stage a repeat performance, before being distracted into regime change in Iraq.
Al-Qaida and its affiliates continued to plan attacks. Some succeeded, others were frustrated by massive international counter-terrorism efforts. But we became conditioned to the inevitability of future attacks. This anxiety was used to justify forms of intelligence-gathering - extraordinary rendition, water-boarding - we had previously preferred not to know about.
Public support fractured. Moral clarity was partly replaced by cynicism in the West as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became less about building shiny new nations and more about bringing our troops home with a modicum of dignity intact. Western opinion seemed to oscillate between aggressive defensiveness from the political right and hand-wringing contrition from the left. There seemed little space for consensus.
In the Muslim world, responses varied. In countries like Saudi Arabia, pragmatic support for the US remained firm, founded on shared animosity to Iran, and fear of local, radical Islamism. In Pakistan, the Afghan spillover ruptured fragile political stability, culminating in the killing of bin Laden by US Special Forces a few miles from a top military establishment. The prospect of an enduring peace between Israel and Palestine remains pretty much where it was ten years ago: nowhere.
But to everyone’s surprise - including a deflated al-Qaida - the decade ends with the ‘Arab spring’ dispatching rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. Syria hangs in the balance. Theirs is an unfinished story in which unpredictability is the only certainty...