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23 Years After 9/11, Are We Any Safer?
True justice for the lives lost on 9/11 and during the U.S.’ war on terror would require us to put an end to overfunding violence and war, and instead prioritize safety and security through investing in our communities.
Sep 11, 2024
It is hard to forget the burning stares of people in the airport that look at you with suspicion and disdain, to the point that your eyes close in shame. I remember feeling deeply embarrassed as a teenager when the Transportation Security Administration officers took my family and I aside to do a secondary screening at the airport. It wasn’t until many years later I realized that this was just a small cost of being Muslim in America after 9/11.
It has been 23 years since September 11, 2001. The phrase “Never Forget” is echoed nationally to memorialize the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day. Instead of building a safer world after 9/11, the United States government responded with misplaced vengeance on multiple civilian populations, the consequences of which continue to be felt at home and globally.
Following the attacks on 9/11, the U.S. government launched an international military campaign, called the “Global War on Terror,” under then President George W. Bush’s leadership. It was a campaign with no end date that included “large-scale surveillance measures in the U.S., torture, global drone strikes, blacksites, and the Guantánamo Bay military prison.”
If investing money in militarism and incarceration was meant to serve as a measure of justice for a post 9/11 world, then our communities would be safe and thriving.
The U.S. government’s response included wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan that killed 940,000 people directly, while 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones. The names of the people killed may never be known and memorialized. At the same time, 38 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria were forcibly displaced. Over 7,000 U.S. service members also lost their lives due to our government’s foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks.
Since 2002, 780 Muslim men and boys have been detained at Guantánamo Bay, which claims to hold terrorist suspects. However, most were released without being convicted of a crime, and many are survivors of torture at the hands of U.S. officials. Thirty individuals still remain there.
Due to decades of dehumanization and propaganda, the American people have become conditioned to believe that death and violence among Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (BAMEMSA) communities is inevitable. These Islamophobic and anti-Muslim tropes continue today, as we witness the genocide of Palestinians with increasing normalization.
The U.S. government also spent $8 trillion on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other countries. Over $21 trillion has been spent on militarism since9/11; militarism expenditure includes funding for the Pentagon, detentions and deportations, and policing and prisons. Our priorities become clear too when we see that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate and largest immigrant detention system in the world.
If investing money in militarism and incarceration was meant to serve as a measure of justice for a post 9/11 world, then our communities would be safe and thriving. Instead, Americans feel less safe than 30 years ago, while 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Oftentimes the U.S.’ global war on terror and intervention in other countries is seen as “an over there problem.” However, the general American public must also pay attention to how the military-industrial complex influences how we are governed, and firmly reject it. The military-industrial complex is a term used to describe the influence of those who profit from war such as contractors who produce weapons, our policymakers, and armed forces. Defense contractors have spent over $60 million in donations to politicians in the 2024 and 2022 election cycles.
During the Democratic National Convention (DNC), we saw a clear example of how Vice President Kamala Harris would continue this pattern of brute American force and militarism. She said, “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Lethal is defined as: deadly, mortal, fatal, causing or capable of causing death. Criticisms of the Democratic Presidential candidate or party are often accompanied by “Trump would not be any better.” No politician is exempt from accountability when embracing death and destruction as values to lead with. Other realities are possible. How else have oppressed communities fought for their freedoms in the U.S.? Visionaries challenged the choices given to them by fighting for new ones. Power does not only lie in the hands of defense contractors and lobbyists, but among all of us too.
In a moment when our politicians are paying close attention to the issues voters care about, we cannot separate the genocide in Palestine from police brutality, or issues like access to abortion from the economy. Each issue is inextricably linked because of how our government chooses to prioritize its budget, and the domestic or foreign policies we employ always have a domino effect. During the DNC, Prism interviewed Cherrene Horazuk, the former president of a union at the University of Minnesota. Cherrene shares, “Palestine is a workers’ issue first because money that goes for war is not available for jobs.”
Pro-Palestine advocates understand the interconnectedness of struggles for all people. Their moral compass exemplifies that if we don’t reject this cycle of violence now, we are signaling to those in power that we condone and are willing to continue the U.S.’ culture of forceful domination that has existed since its inception.
The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding examined 3,100 bills in 50 U.S. state legislatures across several years and issue areas including abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, and more. Eighty-five percent of legislators that supported anti-Shariah or anti-“foreign law” bills also supported restrictive bills against other marginalized communities. When we understand that any form of injustice threatens all of us, we can act to advance our collective needs.
What does real justice look like for all those who have been harmed by the legacy of the U.S.’ war on terror since 9/11? Reparations for the lives lost that day some may argue could be revenge, but families advocating for a peaceful response to end the cycle of harm and violence are also showing us another way. True justice must include demanding our government to:
- Invest our taxpayer dollars in programs and services that actually lead to safety and healing;
- Repay our debt to the Afghan people who suffered immensely due to U.S. intervention and policy;
- Shut down and free the men detained at Guantánamo Bay;
- Ensure a cease-fire and enact an arms embargo on Israel; and
- Enact campaign finance reforms to end the influence of special corporate interests in our elections, such as lobbying by weapons manufacturing companies.
Islamophobia is not just a threat to Muslims—it’s a threat to all marginalized communities in the U.S. and globally. We must end the war on terror, and the violence U.S. government has inflicted on its people and elsewhere. Through our collective power and action, we can create a world that prioritizes and benefits from life, not death.
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The Forever Wars Grind on Without Apology
The U.S. has a long history of killing civilians in air strikes, failing to investigate the deaths, and ignoring pleas for apology and compensation.
Jan 31, 2024
In war, people die for absurd reasons or often no reason at all. They die due to accidents of birth, the misfortune of being born in the wrong place— Cambodia or Gaza, Afghanistan or Ukraine—at the wrong time. They die due to happenstance, choosing to shelter indoors when they should have taken cover outside or because they ventured out into a hell-storm of destruction when they should have stayed put. They die in the most gruesome ways—shot in the street, obliterated by artillery, eviscerated by air strikes. Their bodies are torn apart, burned, or vaporized by weapons designed to destroy people. Their deaths are chalked up to misfortune, mistake, or military necessity.
Since September 2001, the United States has been fighting its “war on terror”—what’s now referred to as this country’s “Forever Wars.” It’s been involved in Somalia almost that entire time. U.S. Special Operations forces were first dispatched there in 2002, followed over the years by more “security assistance,” troops, contractors, helicopters, and drones. American airstrikes in Somalia, which began under President George W. Bush in 2007, have continued under Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden as part of a conflict that has smoldered and flared for more than two decades. In that time, the U.S. has launched 282 attacks, including 31 declared strikes under Biden. The U.S. admits it has killed five civilians in its attacks. The U.K.-based air strike monitoring group Airwars says the number is as much as 3,100% higher.
On April 1, 2018, Luul Dahir Mohamed, a 22-year-old woman, and her four-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse were added to that civilian death toll when they were killed in a U.S. drone strike in El Buur, Somalia.
They could have taken one more hard look and, in the process, let a mother and child live. Instead, they launched a second missile.
Luul and Mariam were civilians. They died due to a whirlwind of misfortune—a confluence of bad luck and bad policies, none of it their fault, all of it beyond their control. They died, in part, because the United States is fighting the Somali terror group al-Shabaab even though Congress has never declared such a war and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force on which the justification for the conflict rests predates the group’s existence. They died because Somalia has limited options when it comes to rural public transport and they caught a ride with the wrong people. They died because the United States claims that its brand of drone warfare is predicated on precision strikes with little collateral damage despite independent evidence clearly demonstrating otherwise.
In this case, members of the American strike cell that conducted the attack got almost everything wrong. They bickered about even basic information like how many people were in the pickup truck they attacked. They mistook a woman for a man, and they never saw the young girl at all. They didn’t know what they were looking at, but they nonetheless launched a Hellfire missile that hit the truck as it motored down a dirt road.
Even after all of that, Luul and Mariam might have survived. Following the strike, the Americans—watching live footage from the drone hovering over the scene—saw someone bolt from the vehicle and begin running for her life. At that moment, they could have paused and reevaluated the situation. They could have taken one more hard look and, in the process, let a mother and child live. Instead, they launched a second missile.
What Luul’s brother, Qasim Dahir Mohamed—the first person on the scene —found was horrific. Luul’s left leg was mutilated, and the top of her head was gone. She died clutching Mariam whose tiny body looked, he said, “like a sieve.”
In 2019, the U.S. military admitted that it had killed a civilian woman and child in that April 1, 2018, drone strike. But when, while reporting for The Intercept, I met Luul’s relatives last year in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, they were still waiting for the Pentagon to contact them about an apology and compensation. I had obtained a copy of the internal U.S. military investigation which the family had never seen. It did acknowledge the deaths of a woman and child but concluded that their identities might never be known.
Expendable People
The Pentagon’s inquiry found that the Americans who carried out the strike were both inexperienced and confused. Despite that, the investigation by the very unit that conducted the attack determined that standard operating procedures and the rules of engagement were followed. No one was judged negligent, much less criminally liable, nor would anyone be held accountable for the deaths. The message was clear: Luul and Mariam were expendable people.
“In over five years of trying to get justice, no one has ever responded to us,” another of Luul’s brothers, Abubakar Dahir Mohamed, wrote in a December 2023 op-ed for the award-winning African newspaper The Continent. He continued:
When I found out later that the U.S. admitted that they killed civilians in the attack, I contacted them again, telling them that the victims were my family members. I am not sure if they even read my complaint.
In June 2020, [U.S. Africa Command] added a civilian casualties reporting page to their website for the first time. I was very happy to see this. I thought there was finally a way to make a complaint that would be listened to. I submitted a description of what happened and waited. No one got back to me. Two years later, in desperation, I submitted a complaint again. Nobody responded. I now know that the U.S. military has admitted not only to killing Luul and Mariam, but doing so even after they survived the first strike. It killed them as Luul fled the car they targeted—running for her life, carrying Mariam in her arms. The U.S. has said this in its reports, and individual officers have spoken to journalists. But it has never said this to us. No one has contacted us at all.
Late last month, a coalition of 24 human rights organizations called on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to make amends to Luul and Mariam’s family. The 14 Somali groups and 10 international non-governmental organizations devoted to the protection of civilians urged Austin to take action to provide the family with an explanation, an apology, and compensation.
“The undersigned Somali and international human rights and protection of civilians organizations write to request that you take immediate steps to address the requests of families whose loved ones were killed or injured by U.S. airstrikes in Somalia,” reads the letter. “New reporting illustrates how, in multiple cases of civilian harm in Somalia confirmed by the U.S. government, civilian victims, survivors, and their families have yet to receive answers, acknowledgment, and amends despite their sustained efforts to reach authorities over several years.”
Days later, the Pentagon unveiled its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” which clarified “the Department’s enduring policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm” and laid out “further steps to protect civilians and to respond appropriately when civilian harm occurs.” Under the DoD-I or “dody,” as it is known at the Pentagon, the military is directed to take steps including:
(1) Acknowledging harm suffered by civilians and the U.S. military’s role in causing or otherwise contributing to that harm.
(2) Expressing condolences to civilians affected by military operations.
(3) Helping to address the harm suffered by civilians.
Under the DoD-I, the military is instructed to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations… This includes expressing condolences and helping to address the direct impacts experienced…”
The mandate seems clear. The implementation is another story entirely.
Phoning It In
Since the letter from the humanitarian organizations was sent to Austin, the defense secretary has been both everywhere—and nowhere to be found. In December, he traveled to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar to thank American military personnel for their “selflessness and service.” He met with the king and crown prince of Bahrain to discuss their “enduring defense partnership” with the United States. On December 20, he paid a visit to the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group in the Mediterranean Sea to thank the sailors for their “patriotism and professionalism.”
A couple days later, Austin underwent surgery without informing his deputy Kathleen Hicks, much less his boss, President Biden. On January 1, Austin was rushed back to the hospital, in “intense pain,” but that information, too, was withheld from the White House until January 4, and from Congress and the American public for an additional day.
Austin reportedly worked from his hospital room, monitoring American and British air attacks on Houthi rebel targets in Yemen—more than 150 munitions fired from the sea and air on January 11, alone—and conducting meetings by phone with military officials and the National Security Council. He was released from the hospital four days later and began working from home. “Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke by phone today with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov to discuss the latest on the situation on the ground,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder announced on January 16. Two days later, he had a call with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. And on the 19, he talked shop with Swedish defense minister Pål Jonson.
“My sister was killed, and she won’t be back again—but doesn’t she have the right to get justice, and for her family to at least be compensated for the loss of her life?”
Austin has had plenty of time for phone calls, travel, and elective surgery. He’s been around the world and is now hunkered down at home. But what he hasn’t done, since the letter from those 24 humanitarian groups was sent to the Pentagon more than a month ago, is make any apparent effort to contact Luul and Mariam’s family.
“Since the strike, our family has been broken apart. It has been more than five years since it happened, but we have not been able to move on,” wrote Abubakar in December. It’s been a common story. In Yemen, where the U.S. has recently ramped up air strikes, victims of past U.S. attacks wait—just like Luul and Mariam’s family—for acknowledgment and apology.
Between 2013 and 2020, for example, the U.S. carried out seven separate attacks in Yemen—six drone strikes and one raid—that killed 36 members of the intermarried Al Ameri and Al Taisy families. A quarter of them were children between the ages of three months and 14 years old. The survivors have been waiting for years for an explanation as to why it happened while living in fear. In 2018, Adel Al Manthari, a civil servant in the Yemeni government, and four of his cousins—all civilians—were traveling by truck when a U.S. Hellfire missile slammed into their vehicle. Three of the men were killed instantly. Another died days later in a local hospital. Al Manthari was gravely wounded. Complications resulting from his injuries nearly took his life in 2022. He beseeched the U.S. government to dip into the millions of dollars Congress annually allocates to compensate victims of U.S. attacks. They ignored his pleas. His limbs and life were eventually saved by the kindness of strangers via a crowdsourced GoFundMe campaign.
The U.S. has a long history of killing civilians in air strikes, failing to investigate the deaths, and ignoring pleas for apology and compensation. It’s a century-old tradition that Austin continues to maintain, making time to issue orders for new strikes but not to issue apologies for past errant attacks. Through it all, Luul and Mariam’s family can do nothing but wait, hoping that the U.S. secretary of defense will eventually respond to the open letter and finally—almost six years late—offer amends.
“My sister was killed, and she won’t be back again—but doesn’t she have the right to get justice, and for her family to at least be compensated for the loss of her life?” Abubakar wrote in his op-ed. He and his relatives find themselves endlessly grappling with their loss as the Pentagon puts out press releases filled with high-minded and (as yet) hollow, rhetoric about “improving the Department’s approach to mitigating and responding to civilian harm,” while promising to make amends under the DoD-I.
It isn’t the only War on Terror pledge to be broken. President Joe Biden entered the White House promising to end the “forever wars.” “I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war,” Biden announced in 2021. “We’ve turned the page.” It wasn’t remotely true.
Instead, the Forever Wars grind on from the Middle East to the African Sahel. And despite assertions to the contrary, America’s conflict in Somalia grinds on, too, without apology—from Biden for the broken campaign promise and from the Pentagon for Luul Dahir Mohamed and Mariam Shilow Muse’s deaths.
“The U.S. claims that it works to promote democracy, social justice, the rule of law, and the protection of rights around the world,” Abubakar wrote. “As we struggle to get them to notice our suffering, we hope the U.S. will remember what they claim to stand for.”
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Pentagon Doc Reveals US Lied About Afghan Civilians Killed in 2021 Drone Strike
One Amnesty International campaigner called the new report "more evidence that we need a huge change in how the U.S. uses lethal force and assesses and reveals its consequences."
Jan 06, 2023
U.S. military officials knew that an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul likely killed Afghan civilians including children but lied about it, a report published Friday revealed.
New York Times investigative reporter Azmat Khan analyzed a 66-page redacted U.S. Central Command report on the August 29, 2021 drone strike that killed 10 members of the Ahmadi family, including seven children, outside their home in the Afghan capital. The strike took place during the chaotic final days of the U.S. ground war in Afghanistan, just three days after a bombing that killed at least 182 people, including 13 American troops, at Kabul's international airport.
"When confirmation bias was so deadly in this case, you have to ask how many other people targeted by the military over the years were also unjustly killed."
Zamarai Ahmadi, a 43-year-old aid worker for California-based nonprofit Nutrition and Education International, was carrying water containers that were mistaken for explosives when his Toyota Corolla was bombed by a Lockheed-Martin Hellfire missile fired from a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone.
As reports of civilian casualties began circulating hours after the strike, U.S. military officials claimed there were "no indications" that noncombatants were harmed in the attack, while stating that they would investigate whether a secondary explosion may have killed or wounded people nearby.
\u201cNEW: A U.S. Central Command investigation into the botched August 2021 drone strike in Kabul reveals how biases and assumptions led to the deadly blunder, and that military analysts saw possible civilian casualties within minutes of the strike:\nhttps://t.co/iGcmulbyw9 #FOIA\u201d— Azmat Khan (@Azmat Khan) 1673007692
However, as the Times details:
Portions of a U.S. Central Command investigation obtained by The New York Times show that military analysts reported within minutes of the strike that civilians may have been killed, and within three hours had assessed that at least three children were killed.
The documents also provide detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder.
Military analysts wrongly concluded, for example, that a package loaded into the car contained explosives because of its "careful handling and size," and that the driver's "erratic route" was evidence that he was trying to evade surveillance.
Furthermore:
The investigation refers to an additional surveillance drone not under military control that was also tracking the vehicle but does not specify what it observed. The Times confirmed that the drone was operated by the CIA and observed children, possibly in the car, moments before impact, as CNN had reported.
U.S. military officials initially claimed the "righteous strike" had prevented an imminent new attack on the airport. However they later admitted that the botched bombing was a "horrible mistake."
The military's investigation was completed less than two weeks after the strike. However, it was never released to the public. The Pentagon said it would not punish anyone for killing the Ahmadi family.
Hina Shamsi, an ACLU attorney representing families victims of the strike, told the Times that the investigation "makes clear that military personnel saw what they wanted to see and not reality, which was an Afghan aid worker going about his daily life."
"When confirmation bias was so deadly in this case, you have to ask how many other people targeted by the military over the years were also unjustly killed," Shamsi added.
Daphne Eviatar, who heads Amnesty International's Security With Human Rights program, called the new report "more evidence that we need a huge change in how the U.S. uses lethal force and assesses and reveals its consequences."
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