25 Years

Last week marked the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It also marks 25 years since the beginning of what became known as the Global War on Terror. Many have noted that discussions and commemorations of 9/11 focus on those murdered by Al-Qaeda and first responders who risked and in many cases lost their lives, but are often silent about the death and destruction that came after.¹ This is understandable, those who died that day should be remembered, as victims of a crime against humanity driven by the belief that a political ideology was more important than each and every life that was taken on that day.² But this choice overlooks the way 9/11 itself was used to manufacture consent for what came after.

What came after, was the extraction of a price from millions of people in the name of those who die in terror attacks, merely because they shared a faith with those responsible for that atrocity crime. This was not the fault of those who died, their loved ones or those that survived 9/11 or any other terror attack, instead it was a choice made by policy makers. What faced muslims after 9/11 is not dissimilar from the price all minorities are forced to pay, when someone like them does something worth of condemnation. But what remains true, is that this process remains unchallenged by most. This became apparent this year when the Muslim Mayor of New York, Zorhan Mamdani, was told by 100,000 people that he is not welcome at the 9/11 memorial events as the result of his faith alone.³

The losses suffered as the result of the Global War on Terror are equally worth remembering, because each of those lives were lost because world leaders decided their own policies on combating terrorism were more important than human lives. Perhaps if those policies had reduced terrorism, their choices would have been understandable. But even that is not the case, more people die as the result of terrorism 25 years later, than prior to the beginning of the Global War on Terror.⁴ In 2021, it was estimated just under one million people died directly because of the War on Terror, and 3.6 million died by indirect causes, such as destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment.⁵ Hundreds of Thousands more have died since 2021, because as Kumar argued in a piece published this year in the Journal of Palestine Studies, every death in Gaza was justified by arguments that Israel was merely combating terrorism.⁶ A genocide was justified in the language of the War on Terror, but this was not the first time atrocity crimes were justified using this language. What follows is the stories of some such crimes, that many have likely never heard. They are told to make clear our governments invoked the trauma of past atrocities and fear of future ones, to harm people in the present. In the name of guaranteeing security from terrorism, but for the fact that the war on terror was instigated by states, their actions would be condemned as terrorism itself.⁶

Abdul Rahman Al Aulaqi:

In May 2013 Eric Holder, the then Attorney General of the United States, wrote a letter to congress, disclosing the deaths of four American Citizens, killed in US drone strikes outside of the declared battlefields: Iraq and Afghanistan.⁷. The list included both a father and a son.

The father, Anwar Al-Aulaqi was an American Muslim preacher, an imam, who both condemned 9/11 and was invited by the CIA and others to speak at events they hosted followed the beginning of the War on Terror. His mosque was attended by two of the 9/11 Hijackers although th FBI stated that he likely did not know of the plot.⁸ The war in Iraq changed his views on the War on Terror. Eventually he left the US. Some claim he left the US after turning against his own country, but others claim it was because his own involvement with sex workers was going to be made public and as a result he would not be able to work as an imam anymore.⁹

He went onto spend time in prison in Yemen, after taking a job teaching at a university because its head was designated as a terrorist.⁸ Following his release, he began to explicitly justify terrorism and involved with a branch of Al-Qaeda based in Yemen known and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).⁸ He published an English language magazine titled Inspire, with the explicit intention of radicalising more people against the US and into committing terror attacks.¹⁰ He corresponded with both Maj Nidal Malik, before he committed a mass shooting at fort hood which killed 13 people⁸ and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab prior to him committing a suicide attack.⁸ What is unclear, even to this day, is whether he was directly involved with planning terror attacks against the US, because there appears to be little evidence beyond claims by various security services.¹¹ Regardless, the Obama administration took the position that they could act as judge, jury and executioner and kill him via a drone strike.⁷ That strike also killed another American Samir Khan, whom was with Al-Aulaqi at the time and was involved with Inspire magazine.¹²

A strike of this nature would not be lawful in the US. However Eric Holder claimed it was lawful because the law of war applied to the activity of AQAP which legalised the killing.⁷ This argument has been heavily criticised by many such as Agnes Callamard, in her role as UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary Killings. ¹³ She argues these killings violate international law because the right to life applies regardless whether an armed conflict is present and such strikes violated this right.¹³ Whatever you believe Al-Aulaqi was, he like all people had a right to life and in death he is not alone, hundreds have died in US drone strikes.¹⁴ Those who died after him included his son who died three weeks later.

Abdul-Rahman, was born in America and was living with his extended family in the Capitol of Yemen Sana’a prior to his killing. Jeremy Scahill told the story of his death at the beginning of his book Dirty Wars¹¹:

Abdul-Rahman “In a note he left for his mother, before he snuck out the kitchen window as the sun was rising and headed to the bus station, he admitted that he had taken money from her purse- $40 - for the bus fare, and for that he apologised. He explained his mission and begged forgiveness. He said he would be home soon”

He “was the eldest in his family… Once his grandmother twisted her ankle and went to the hospital for treatment. When she limped out of the treatment room, the boy was there to greet her and make sure she got home safely. ‘you are a gentle boy’ his grandmother always told him. ‘Don’t ever change’”

“The boys mission was simple: he wanted to find his father. He hadn’t seen him in years and was afraid that if he didn’t find him, he would be left only with blurred memories…”

“Finding his father would not be easy. He was a wanted man… That powerful forces in multiple countries wanted his father dead did not deter the boy. He was tired of seeing the videos of his father that painted him and a terrorist and an evil man. He just knew him as his dad and wanted at least one last moment with him…”

“Three weeks after he climbed out the kitchen window, the boy was outdoors with his cousins- teenagers like him- laying a picnic beneath the stars. It was then he would have heard the drones approaching, followed by the whiz of the missile. It was a direct hit. The boy and his cousins were blown to pieces”

“He was the third US citizen to be killed in operations authorised by the president in two weeks.”

Abdul Rahman was allegedly killed in a so-called signature strike. Such a strike involves a list of criteria being used to identify terrorists, which is specific to region the strike occurs in.¹⁵ Such strikes often terrify the local population.¹⁶ Ahmed Ali Jaber, a Yemeni, wrote about the fear of his children and the psychological effect of his uncle and cousins deaths caused by a drone strike.¹⁶ As the result from a leaked memo, the US accepted both were civilians.¹⁶ Years after their killings, following a drone flying overhead his home, he received a call from his wife asking him to come home.¹⁶ When he arrived, he found her “huddled over our children, crying as she tried to shield them”.¹⁶

How a group of children were targeted in such a strike remains unexplainable- not because the US hasn’t tried to explain- but most drones used to carry out strikes like the one that killed Abdul Rahman have camera’s mounted to them, meaning it is likely whoever operated the drone that night saw the children in their final moments.¹³ And the strike occurred anyway.

The Grey Lady of Bagram:

Following 9/11, the US built a system of black sites where people were arbitrarily detained and tortured.¹⁷ Donald Rumsfeld, the then Secretary of Defence, described many who were later renditioned to Guantanamo Bay as the “worst of the worst”.¹⁸ The majority would go onto be released because they were not terrorists.¹⁸ Some were handed to the US after being taken into Pakistani custody.¹⁹ Pervez Musharraf, the former dictator of Pakistan, bragged in his autobiography that the Pakistani intelligence service made large amounts of money from providing these men to the US for interrogation, claiming they were terrorists.¹⁹

Many of the men later sent to Guantanamo were detained in Bagram air-base. Following their release, they testified they heard a woman being tortured.²⁰ Yvonne Ridley, a journalist whom had been detained by the Taliban for 11 days, made a documentary in 2009 seeking the identity of this woman. She concluded that this woman, the Grey Lady of Bagram also known as prisoner 650, was Dr Aafia Siddiqui.²¹

Dr Siddiqui has a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University, is the mother of three children (two of which were US citizens) and had divorced her abusive husband prior to being taken from the streets of Pakistan. She was transfered into the custody of the US and she and her children were disappeared to Afghanistan. Her youngest child Suleman, a mere baby was according to her eldest son Ahmed dropped by those kidnapping them. His fate remains unknown. During her rendition and torture in Bagram, Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui her sister began a campaign to find her and her children. This culminating in millions of people protesting in Karachi, during a military dictatorship which was known for violating the rights of protesters.

The story that follows is the account provided by her lawyer Clive Stafford Smith:²²

As mentioned, she was detained and tortured for alleged involvement with Al Qaeda but once it became clear that Dr Aafia had no such involvement, she was dumped in the streets of Karachi with a young boy whom was dressed in a thick jacket in summer, which made him look like he was a suicide bomber. Dr Aafia did not recognise him as the result of being traumatised. Said young boy was her son, whom himself had been terrified into silence as to his identity. She was told by those who left her there, that if she traveled to a mosque in another city she would be reunited with her daughter. Police in that city had been told to look for a suicide bomber traveling with a woman. Ultimately, Dr Aafia went to the wrong mosque and a tailor Mohammed Ajwal Mohammedi, who was working opposite spoke Urdu and was able to communicate with her. He was able to prevent the Afghan Police from killing her and the boy who was with her. The police took her to a police station and established she had committed no crime.

The next day the US military arrived and demanded to interrogate her which is when the attempted murder she was later convicted of occurred, according to the prosecution. The prosecution’s case was that a US soldier put his M4 rifle down on the floor, and she reached under the curtain, grabbed it, and tried to shoot the Americans in the room, letting off at least two rounds from the M4. Dr Aafia claims she heard US accents, believed she was being taken back to Bagram, looked around the curtain and was then shot by the solider who shouted “she’s on the loose”.

There was no forensic evidence- no gunshot residue on her or no DNA/fingerprints on the gun. The bullet holes witnesses claimed were the result of her use of the gun, were already present in the wall of the room. She also did not know how to turn the safety off the gun that she used to commit the attempted murder. Following these events she was taken to the US, convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 86 years in prison. Her lawyers in the original trial were paid for by the Pakistani government, who were complicit in her kidnap and torture meaning they had a conflict of interest. Her defence did not seek to present any evidence as to her kidnap, rendition or torture. Her lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, recently filed an appeal on her behalf alleging the conviction was unsafe because of a lack of evidence supporting it and that evidence that she had been tortured should have been part of the trial. The evidence submitted in support of that appeal includes the testimony of members of Pakistan’s intelligence service and the man whom saved her life Mr Mohammedi.

Her son Ahmed whom was 6 years old, was detained in a prison in Afghanistan following his kidnap, given a false name and told that if he ever mentioned his mothers name they would kill him. His aunt worked with the ICRC to find him and when they visited the prison and showed him a photograph of his mother, whom he denied knowing but he asked to keep the picture. His release was later secured after a call with his aunt where he called her his nickname for her “Adda”. Her Daughter Maryam was adopted into an American family in Afghanistan and was also given a false name. Following Dr Fowzia Siddiqui meeting with the President of Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai, Afgan authorities attempted to find her niece. Maryam was later dropped in central Karachi which a note attached to her with her aunts address on it. Both children now live with their aunt and have have graduated university. They remain deeply traumatised by their experiences and afraid of Pakistani authorities, whom have threatened the family.

Dr Siddiqui remains detained in FMC Carswell, a prison she and others have been subject to sexual assault.²³ She has not only been denied independent medical assessment but also access to a chaplain which compounds her suffering.²² This year, Annie Jacobsen wrote a book on biological warfare in which she alleges Dr Aafia was a biological weapons expert whom was developing such weapons for al-Qaeda, based on CIA sources.²⁴ Such an allegation appears based on information obtained from her and others under torture.²⁵ The consistent attempts to rely on torture obtained evidence against Dr Siddiqui are an attempt to avoid accountability for the crime of torture, as they are in all cases of persons tortured by the US during the War on Terror. Yvonne Ridley recently described her as “the most wronged woman in the world”.²⁶

Detention in the Northeast of the Syrian Arab Republic:

On the 24th of October 2023, Dr Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin held a press conference following the presentation of her final report as UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. She discussed her visit to the Northeast of the Syrian Arab Republic, where she stated there are “70,000 people detained in these various places of detention in Northeast Syria and the vast majority of that population is a child population. This makes northeast Syria the largest detention site for children on the grounds of terrorism anywhere in the world”.²⁷

In an end of visit memorandum, she stated she found violations of the Convention against Torture, Convention on the rights of the Child, the Mandela rules on minimum conditions in Prisons, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Humanitarian law.²⁸ She specifically highlighted the:²⁸

“forced arbitrary separation of hundreds of adolescent boys from their families, specifically mothers, absent any legal procedure, in what can only be qualified as summary separation based on an unproven security risk that male children pose upon reaching adolescence (around 10 to 13 years old). It appears that such practices are primarily directed at third country nationals raising profound questions about the knowledge or acquiescence of their governments in these processes”.

“Boys whom she met in other detention facilities described the process of their abduction from Al Hol and Al Roj a sudden – most frequently in the middle of the night or in the marketplace — violent and causing them extreme anxiety, as well as mental and psychological suffering. The Special Rapporteur was informed that children reaching the age of 11 or 12 suffer from extreme stress and anxiety fearing their imminent removal from the camp and separation from their mothers. Mothers she spoke to confirmed that it was often many months before they were told where their boys had been taken, and this was also confirmed by the boys she met who had been taken away”.

“In the Special Rapporteur’s presence young boys spoke of their extreme fear of being taken by the authorities. Mothers reported sleeplessness, extreme psychological distress and panic, including in one case suicidal ideation from young boys. Mothers are reportedly trying to hide their boys to keep them safe. The profound and intentional psychological harm to mothers and children from the threat of separation meets the threshold of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law”

“In another case reported to her of the removal of an adolescent boy which had escaped capture, it was alleged that camp authorities took a nine-year-old child in lieu, until the twelve- year-old surrendered to them. If correct, this would constitute hostage taking under international law which is absolutely prohibited”

Dr Ní Aoláin makes clear, if as alleged by the mothers, the Global Coalition Against Daesh gave the authorisation for removals and separations of these children from their mothers, they are responsible for the practice which is a systematic violation of the human rights of these children. The UK was part of that coalition and its nationals and former nationals remain detained there.²⁸ All these children- boys and girls- are detained not for their own conduct, but because of who there parents were and where they were born.

Where’s daddy?

In April 2024, 6 months after the genocide in Gaza began,²⁹ 972 magazine reported on the use of AI program called Lavender to develop a kill list that included close to 37,000 people in Gaza. The status of these people- as combatants or not was not known at the time they were added to the list. A second program titled Where’s daddy, tracked persons placed on the kill list to allow them to be targeted at night, while they were asleep at home with their families. Both programs along with permissive rules on the use of force, led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the first six months of the genocide in Gaza. We do not know if these programs remained in use. These permissive rules on the use of force were discussed in provisional measures hearings in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.³⁰

One of the journalists who drafted the story Yuval Abraham, in an interview with Democracy now stated:³⁰

“These systems track the suspects and wait for the moments that they enter houses, usually family houses or households where no military action takes place, according to several sources who did this, who spoke to me about this. And these houses are bombed using unguided missiles. This was a main characteristic of the Israeli policy in Gaza, at least for the first weeks.”

The choice to name an AI system designed to track men to their homes and allow them to be targeted when they were with their families, where’s daddy represents the ultimate disregard for the lives of Palestinian men. The relationships these men with their loved ones- wives, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents, friends- were weaponised to kill entire families. They were condemned as terrorists for no reason beyond the fact they were Palestinian, and as noted by Kumar, because of the lie that to be Palestinian is to be a potential terrorist.⁶ The acceptance of that lie by the West, long ago, ultimately manufactured consent for genocide.

Debates about the War on Terror focus on two questions: what price liberty? what price security? But neither question is honest, because liberty and security are rarely sacrificed equally. In 2024, Connor Gearty published a book called Homeland Insecurity where he argued that terrorism has its origins in the backlash by colonial authorities to anti-colonial movements of the early 20th century and the cold war.[^31] We see echoes of these origins today, in every story of the loss of both liberty and security discussed in this post. And the millions of stories not told.

A price had been extracted from every brown person, every Muslim, every Sikh (whom are often targeted because people think they are Muslim), in the name of preventing terrorism. But even this price is not born equally, it is most often lower for those that reside in the global north because they live in relative safety from the worst of War on Terrors atrocities unlike those just like them in the global south. And that relative safety is a product of the law’s operation as more protective to those within its its territory than those without. 25 years later, terrorism remains with us, as does the war on, no of terror. The least that is owed to the victims of both is a rejection of the contempt for human life at the core of both, namely the belief that any policy or ideology is more valuable than the lives and rights of people in the present.