9/11/2001 may be a distant memory, but the terror that shook
America is still very much in our thoughts. It was a beautiful and clear sunny
day, and I was driving my younger son, Steven, to the United Nations
International School in Manhattan. After dropping Steven at school and parking
the car at the U.N. garage, I joined the prayer breakfast, an annual event for
diplomats from around the world, before the start of the General Assembly on
the third week of every September.
The message at the prayer breakfast was plain and
straightforward; there is so much injustice all around, and we must not shy
away from confronting the evil but do it courageously and assiduously with the
divine help. Looking back, I couldn't imagine that the evildoers were busy at
work at the same time wrecking lives, wreaking havoc only couple of miles down
the street and bringing a nation to a standstill.
As I was climbing the stairs to reach my office, I could
feel an eerie silence all around, and there was not a soul to be found
anywhere. Finally, I reached a Security Officer and inquired what was
happening? He had an offbeat look on his face and said, 'Haven't you heard that
the World Trade Center was hit, and the U.N. building has been already
evacuated'. I couldn't still fathom the gravity of the situation until reaching
a T.V. monitor that had a live feed from the burning Tower 1. The fear and
uncertainty surrounding the event were so palpable, and I was not spared
either.
I ran to my office
and found out that the entire staff had already left the building, and the
security ordered the evacuation as a precautionary measure because the U.N.
Secretariat building itself could be a potential target. Soon my attention was
turned to finding my son, whom I had left at school, and I tried to ring the
principal's office, and there was no response. Soon after, I walked out of the
Secretariat building to the First Avenue only to hear the sirens of fire trucks
and ambulances racing towards downtown.
I felt as if life had come to a standstill on the East side
with police blocking all traffic in and out of Manhattan and vehicles stranded
in a gridlock mode. I almost ran 20 blocks to reach the school only to learn
that the building had been evacuated and the students were sent home. I met few
students who had gathered in front of the school, waiting eagerly for their
parents or guardians to come around.
As I came out of the school gate still looking for Steven, I
found a man totally covered in white ashes walking towards north on the side
road of the FDR drive. I inquired and found him totally shaken and hardly
audible but understood that the tower had come down, and he was one of the
lucky ones either from the building or its surroundings. I couldn't believe my ears that those towers
of grandiose and pride for the big apple were no longer standing. As an early
immigrant to this country from India in the late 60's, I have witnessed the
construction of these towers and visited them many more times with family and
friends.
At that point, I was not sure whether all the occupants of
the tower were evacuated. The Restaurant at the top of tower two was a familiar
place to me as many of the technical conferences were held there, and I
distinctly remembered the service manager and many of the crew who were
originally from Bangladesh.
Soon after, I connected with my son, who went to the nearby
home of Shashi Tharoor whose sons Kanishk and Ishaan were his classmates at
UNIS, and then went on to pick up the car before waiting an hour to reopen the
midtown tunnel to reach home.
Only after I reached home, I fully realize the carnage that
took place with the collapse of two towers and the body blow it had inflicted
on the U.S. psyche. The United States that had not seen a major attack on its
soil for nearly 200 years, was shocked to find its financial center and
military headquarters Washington hit by a small band of terrorists from abroad.
Almost 3000 innocent lives were lost on that day including Valsa John and many
other Indian immigrants to this country.
The catastrophe unleashed a sequence of reactions and
unintended consequences the country has been dealing with ever since. An
unending war on terror, western antagonism towards Muslims, and decline of U.S.
power, and Donald Trump's rise, and others like him are all outcomes directly
or indirectly related to this earth-shattering event. There is little doubt
that the post 9/11 period has seen civil rights being eroded across the world.
Many governments have used it as a cover to justify increased surveillance and
curbing dissent.
Soon after the attack, America invaded Afghanistan and
ousted the Taliban that was providing a safe haven to al Qaeda terrorists who
planned and executed 9/11 destruction. By 2011, U.S. forces had also located
the mastermind Osama Bin Laden, who was
hiding in Pakistan, and killed him. However, to the warmongers in Washington
under George W. Bush, it was another opportunity to expand the power of the
military-industrial complex.
At the urging of neoconservatives in Washington, Iraq was
also invaded, and the poorly executed and error-ridden plans subsequently
destabilized the whole region giving birth to ISIS and triggering a
long-running and anti-insurgency campaign. The impact of 9/11 is still
reverberating here in the U.S. after spending almost 2 trillion dollars and
sacrificing thousands of American and Afghan lives; it is a sad and pitiful spectacle to see the Taliban government full
of terrorists back in power on this 20th
anniversary of the 9/11.
Although many of these geopolitical issues are complex, the
world we live in has been indelibly shaped by 9/11 and its aftermath. May I
join all of you in paying heartfelt gratitude to all those heroes, including
the first line responders who perished in this devastating tragedy and to the
families who have suffered the harrowing loss of their loved ones!
George Abraham
