How 9/11 Changed The World And The America-Pakistan-India Trilateral
For India, the U.S. war on terror—and especially Pakistan’s role in it—created new challenges as well as opportunities.
Even now, it’s hard to fathom the chain of events that produced the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in history, and the international upheaval it triggered. Nineteen Islamic jihadis, trained by Al-Qaeda and inspired by Osama bin Laden’s war against the West, boarded four different commercial U.S. jetliners, following a carefully crafted plan to turn them into suicide missiles. None of the nineteen appeared on the U.S Federal Aviation Administration’s ‘no fly’ list, which consisted of only twelve names—the operation’s alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, among them; two—Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar—graced the State Department’s 61,000-person ‘TIPOFF’ list, but the FAA had no access to that list. Most of the hijackers came from countries at least nominally allied with the U.S.; three had entered the country on visas easily obtained through an expedited programme in Saudi Arabia requiring no interviews with U.S. officials. One, Hani Hanjour, had been rejected from a Saudi flight school before earning his pilot’s license in Arizona. On that sparkling morning, they carried chemical sprays, utility knives and box-cutters through airport security. And when they broke into the cockpits mid-flight to hijack the aircraft, only one team faced enough resistance to prevent it from reaching its target. United Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 40 passengers and crew and four terrorists.
The other aircraft struck their targets with sickening precision, abetted by an alarming lack of communication and coordination among U.S. government agencies on the ground. One plane plowed into the side of the Pentagon, creating a gaping hole in the heavily-guarded headquarters of the U.S. military, and killing 125. In New York, the twin towers of the World Trade Center—that glittering icon of Western prosperity—were hit seventeen minutes apart; in perhaps the day’s most incomprehensible horror, they buckled under the heat from the fiery crashes and crumpled to the ground. In all, nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, including more than 400 emergency service workers.
Markets plunged in Europe and North America, and the dollar fell against the euro, the pound and the yen. Official estimates put the immediate property losses at roughly $16 billion. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that the attacks cost the city between $33 billion and $36 billion in lost earnings, property damage and cleanup. New York City’s private sector lost 1,47,000 jobs – nearly 5 percent.
Washington’s response to 9/11—an aggressive combination of military action and economic measures—was meant to preserve American hegemony and stabilise the U.S. economy. Instead, it paved the way for the 2008 financial crisis and the biggest geopolitical shift since the end of World War II.
Pakistan And India, Thousands Of Miles Away, Got Sucked Into The Epicenter
For President Pervez Musharraf, the tragedy marked an irresistible opportunity to end Pakistan’s diplomatic isolation and repair its relationship with the U.S., which had suffered since he seized power in a coup two years earlier. He agreed to provide intelligence and logistical support for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in exchange for a hefty aid package and an end to the economic sanctions imposed after Pakistan conducted a nuclear test in 1998. At a joint press conference in November, President Bush thanked Musharraf for condemning the terrorist acts of 9/11 and for the ‘even greater courage and vision and leadership’ he’d shown since then. He called the Pakistani dictator the ‘strong leader’ of a ‘strong ally’.
For India, the U.S. war on terror—and especially Pakistan’s role in it—created new challenges as well as opportunities.
India, which was among the first countries to respond after 9/11, pledged full ‘ideological and diplomatic support’, though it stopped short of providing direct military aid.
A Gallup poll conducted just ahead of the invasion of Afghanistan found that out of thirty-seven countries, India was one of just three—along with the U.S. and Israel—where the public supported military action instead of extradition and trial for the 9/11 suspects. That Indians joined Israelis in supporting America’s armed response to the terrorist acts demonstrated a stunning shift in historic alliances: Delhi had only established diplomatic relations with Jerusalem in 1992, after initially opposing the creation of a Jewish state in 1948. But India shared significant connections with Israel: born of religion and steeped in bloodshed, the two democracies were established within six months of each other, and both were accustomed to battling hostile neighbours and internal terrorist attacks.
India’s Dramatic Vindication
Yet India remained calm and supportive, demonstrating its growing maturity as a democratic partner. It didn’t hurt that India also reaped some economic benefits from Pakistan’s cooperation: when Bush eliminated sanctions on Pakistan, he did the same for India—which had conducted a nuclear test around the same time—because ‘parity had to be maintained,’ as a 2003 Congressional Research Service report put it. Among the controls loosened for India was Washington’s export of ‘dual use’—civilian and military—nuclear technology, a move that was downplayed but symbolically significant
The denouement came full circle when Pakistan’s ultimate perfidy was revealed ten years later. Osama bin Laden’s last hiding place stood less than a mile from the premier Pakistan military academy, the equivalent to America’s West Point or Britain’s Sandhurst.
By the time a team of specially trained U.S. Navy SEALs blasted their way into the unassuming compound on May 2, 2011, America’s most wanted terrorist had been holed up there for six years. India stood dramatically vindicated.
Raghav Bahl is the co-founder and chairman of Quintillion Media, including BloombergQuint. He is the author of three books, viz ‘Superpower?: The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare and India’s Tortoise’, ‘Super Economies: America, India, China & The Future Of The World’, and ‘Super Century: What India Must Do to Rise by 2050’.