It's been 25 years since nearly 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 attacks, which triggered the US-led War on Terror and drew Australia into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A quarter-of-a-century later, former prime minister John Howard and security experts say the terrorist threat has evolved into something far more complex.
A warning: This story includes material about the 9/11 terror attacks that some listeners may find confronting. Discretion is advised.
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TRANSCRIPT
“This just in: you are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Centre, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. Clearly, something relatively devastating happening this morning there.”
They were the attacks that killed 2,977 people and left thousands more injured.
The victims came from more than 90 countries.
Australia's then prime minister, John Howard, was in the United States at the time.
He had met with President George W Bush the previous day.
“Well, I remember it very vividly. I was there. I recalled doing a news conference and it was during that news conference that the third plane hit the Pentagon. I remember pulling back the curtains and you could see the smoke rising from across the Potomac River from the Pentagon.”
As the American airspace shut down and Washington went into lockdown, he made a public commitment Australia will stand with the United States.
“Be assured of Australia's resolute solidarity with the American people at this most tragic time. “
Within days, that solidarity becomes a military commitment as Prime Minister Howard speaks to then-foreign minister Alexander Downer and the government decides to invoke the ANZUS Treaty.
“The Americans were kind enough to provide me with Air Force Two, the first plane to leave American airspace after the attack and it flew me from Andrews Air Force Base in Washington to Hawaii, where I was collected by a Qantas flight and it was on that flight on Air Force Two I spoke at length to Alexander Downer. And he suggested that what we should do as a demonstration of support for America was to invoke the ANZUS Treaty. Now, we never thought that ANZUS, which was designed for America to help Australia and New Zealand, that it would be, in a sense, the other way around.”
Less than a month later, the United States and its allies begin military operations in Afghanistan, against al-Qaeda and the Taliban government, which is sheltering its leadership.
Australian forces deploy as part of that campaign.
It becomes Australia's longest war.
More than 39,000 Australian Defence Force personnel serve in Afghanistan over the next two decades.
Forty-one are killed.
Mr Howard recently sat with SBS News reporter Alexandra Jones.
ALEX: "Was there ever any hesitation about that?"
JOHN HOWARD: "I never thought there should be any hesitation. The Americans made it very plain that they valued the Australian military contribution, and of course I always fretted about committing our military because I knew they were in danger of getting killed or badly wounded, and we were to lose 41 soldiers in Afghanistan, and that's a lot for a country our size. And we paid a heavy price.”
The Taliban would eventally return to power in 2021, after the withdrawal of U-S and allied forces.
But Afghanistan was only one part of the response.
The attacks fundamentally changed the way governments approached terrorism.
Airports became more heavily secured, and intelligence agencies expandeda; governments introduced new surveillance and counter-terrorism powers.
And security agencies began looking much more closely at the international networks linking extremist groups across borders.
Dennis Richardson was Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation - or ASIO [[ay-see-oh]] at the time.
“I was at home at the time. I had just got into bed. I got a phone call from someone in ASIO. Got up, turned on the TV. Like many people, saw the second plane go in. That made it obvious that there was a terrorist attack underway. I phoned the Attorney-General who was in Western Australia at the time, then went into work like many other people and remained there for the next 36 hours.”
At the time, ASIO had a workforce of only around 600 people, it's since grown to more than two thousand ((2,200)).
Mr Richardson says the attacks immediately changed the organisation's priorities.
“ASIO's world had changed. It was very clear that counter-terrorism was going to be the major preoccupation and challenge.”
That work quickly became global.
ASIO began trying to identify Australians who had trained with al-Qaeda or associated groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Mr Richardson says those investigations reached almost every part of the world.
“Following 9-11 we set out to identify all Australians that had trained with Al-Qaeda. Those investigations took us to every continent but Antarctica.”
And it was not long before the threat came much closer to Australia.
Just over a year after September 11, bombs exploded in Bali's tourist district.
Two-hundred-and-two people were killed; eighty-eight of them Australians.
That attack was carried out by Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional extremist organisation with links to al-Qaeda.
For Australians, terrorism was no longer something viewed through the TV from New York or Washington.
It had struck a destination visited by hundreds of thousands of Australians every year.
"A huge bomb blast on the island of Bali has killed at least 182 people in the worst terrorist attack since September the 11th, many Australians are feared to be among the dead.”
The years that followed brought further attacks and plots around the world, while governments continued expanding counter-terrorism capabilities.
Dr Levi West is an internationally recognised authority on terrorism and counter‑terrorism, currently a Research Fellow at the Australian National University.
He says one of the successes of that period was making the kind of complex, coordinated, mass-casualty attacks seen on September 11 more difficult to carry out.
But he says it also produced decisions with consequences that are still being debated.
“Controversies around torture or enhanced interrogation techniques, the controversies around the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and that is the claims that the Iraqis had possession of weapons of mass destruction. The ongoing existence of Guantanamo Bay, there is a litany of controversies that can be considered failures in the aftermath of 2001.”
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 expanded the War on Terror beyond Afghanistan.
Australia again joined the United States.
The weapons of mass destruction used as a central justification for the invasion were never found and the consequences of that war, and of the wider upheaval that followed, continued long after the initial campaign.
Twenty-five years after September 11, John Howard believes the overall security picture is more dangerous, not less.
“The security environment is always changing but it's fundamentally much worse than it used to be.”
According to Dr West, the nature of the threat is different.
“Rather than terrorism being the sort of singular isolated relatively straightforward phenomenon that it had been previously, what we're now looking at is kind of complex, multi-phase, multifaceted threat manifestation.”
Large terrorist networks remain a concern.
But agencies are also confronting lone actors, far-right extremism and younger people being radicalised online.
The 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, which killed 51 Muslims and were livestreamed, showed how quickly extremist violence and propaganda can spread.
Dennis Richardson says the ideologies may not be new, but their reach and intensity are.
“Most of the terrorist types that exist today existed then, but the scale, intensity of it and the nature of it has certainly changed. Throw in foreign interference and all of that and you have a much more complex picture.”
Dr West believes another significant shift came after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October the 7th, 2023 and the war in Gaza that followed.
“I think, regrettably, it's been eclipsed, and there is probably now a before October seven and after October seven. 911 was incredibly significant and had global ramifications. I think it's pretty comfortable and pretty reasonable to put October seven and the attacks on Israel by Hamas on the same kind of footing. We're all watching the geopolitical consequences of that play out. So yes, there is a before and after 9/11, but I think we're now moved into a phase where we're talking about before and after October 7.”
Australia has also faced heightened tensions around antisemitism, Islamophobia and politically motivated violence.
Since the Bondi terror attack last December, questions have re-surfaced about whether security agencies are adequately resourced.
And terrorism now competes with foreign interference, espionage and cyber threats, leaving ASIO to confront a far more diverse security landscape.
“The security environment has never been more complex and resourcing across the board for Western jurisdictions has never been more scarce.”
A quarter of a century ago, September 11 reshaped global security.
The structures built in response remain, but the threats have evolved, from organised terrorism to lone actors, online extremism and foreign interference.
Twenty-five years on, security agencies are confronting a far more complex landscape.
