Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1409324
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 SEPTEMBER 2021 NEWS The Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan and post-invasion Iraq served as an incubator for the spread of even more ferocious monsters like ISIS, while Al Qaeda still lurks in the shadows haunting both the West and Middle Eastern tyrants. James Debono goes through the epochal global changes provoked by the Twin Towers attack, asking whether the response has made the world even less safe than ever before 9-11 Twenty years later, a world less safe 1. Airports are more secure but the streets and neighbourhoods less so The most tangible change in daily life has been in the way we fly. Security at airports increased over the last two dec- ades, with passengers now required to go through X-ray machines before they get to the gate. Taking off your shoes and belt at security is a regular occurrence. Large liquids like shampoos or body washes, and knives were banned on airplanes af- ter 9/11. While attacks on planes have become rarer (even if Malta experienced one by alleged Gaddafi loyalists in 2016) terrorist attacks on soft targets like the Bataclan theatre in 2015 in Paris, have become more regular. An emergent far- right that fans Islamophobia also contrib- uted to more insecurity, culminating in a spate of attacks on mosques like that in Churchville, New Zealand. And the allure of jihad remained strong even among sec- ond and third-generation migrants living in marginalised ghettoes and where coun- tries are devastated by war and western occupations. In short the "war on terror" unleashed even more savagery and Amer- ica and the West are still hated, and in some cases with good reason. 2. Bin Laden, Saddam and Gaddafi are gone… the Taliban is back Osama Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. special forces ground attack on his Paki- stani compound in 2011 in what looked like an extra-judicial execution. Saddam Hussein was hanged by an Iraqi court in 2006, while western-backed rebel insur- gents killed Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Of the three, only Bin Laden was linked to 9-11. And while Saddam was a brutal and dangerous dictator who gassed his own people when he was in the West's good books still fighting Iran, claims by the U.S. that he posed a global security through his WMD programme and links to Al Qaeda were bogus. Gaddafi disman- tled his more real WMD programme to save his skin, but his rehabilitation as a trusted guardian of the EU's external frontier was always fragile, and interrupt- ed by the Arab Spring which prompted a so-called 'humanitarian intervention' by French, US, and UK-backed forces which left the country in chaos. Libya and Iraq remain destabilised, and Afghanistan is now back in the hands of the Taliban. 3. The Middle East is still ruled by nasty monarchs, dictators and occupiers Despite claims by the likes of Tony Blair that the Iraq invasion would serve as a beacon for democracy in the Middle East, the region still harbours some of the most unsavoury and repressive rulers in the world, like the Saudis and their bloody war in Yemen for the past years. Thee courage of pro- testers in the streets of Cai- ro, Benghazi, Tunis and Damascus did unleash a wave of hope which brought about the downfall of west- ern-backed dictators like Hosni Mubar- ak and Ben Ali. But a counter-revolution set in with the military tak- ing back power in Egypt under Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, whose security services are notorious for torturing and butchering their victims. And in Syria, Bashar al-Assad is backed by Russia, and winning his war against an opposition that started as a peaceful dem- ocratic challenge but then was radicalised by sheer brutal repression. The festering wounds of the occupation of Palestine, now a sideshow as wilder fires raged in Syria and Iraq, remain unseen. Withthe exception of Tunisia's fragile democracy, dictators and monarchs still rule through sheer brutality. All after 9-11 strengthened the misguided nar- rative that dictators are best to keep the Arab masses in line, a narrative favoured by isolationists and r i g h t - w i n g s o v e r - Bin Laden, gone... Saddam Hussein... gone. But the Middle East remains still in the grip of dictators, the brutal repression of their people, and new terror attacks on European soil After 9-11, George W. Bush and Tony Blair moved fast to initiate war against Iraq by attempting to convince the United Nations Security Council that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction