Helen Clark: 9/11 changed how we viewed the threat of terrorism

Saturday, 11 September 2021

Helen Clark meeting US President George W Bush at the White House.

OPINION: Epochal events by definition don’t occur frequently. When they do, many of us recall where we were at the time. On 9/11, I was flying to Europe for a bilateral visit to Italy and a meeting with other Progressive Governance leaders in Stockholm.

As I transited through the VIP lounge at the airport in Hong Kong, strange scenes were being telecast from the United States without interpretation. Tall towers were burning. It looked grim, very grim.

I boarded my connecting flight to Rome. In the course of the flight, the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mark Prebble, managed to connect to me. He advised me that the United States had experienced a devastating terrorist attack and that many people had died. Information was still sketchy. We agreed to talk again when I landed.

In the park where the Twin Towers once stood, a new memorial highlights the lingering impact of the September 11 attacks.

On arrival, and after more briefing on the confused situation, I decided to fly home at the end of the day. Decisions would need to be taken about how the New Zealand Government would react to what had happened, and it was best for the captain to be on the bridge.

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Jim Anderton was Acting Prime Minister in my absence and had led Parliamentary statements in expressing New Zealand’s grief and shock at what had happened.

People flee from downtown Manhattan after planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 in New York City.

Jim Bolger was New Zealand’s Ambassador to the United States. He phoned to brief me on the reaction to the attacks in Washington DC and to offer advice on how New Zealand might continue to respond. He made it clear to me how hurt and angry the United States was by the tragic events.

Until 9/11, terrorist attacks of modern times had had little direct impact on New Zealand. Those who visited the United Kingdom experienced the security measures necessitated by a series of devastating IRA attacks. There was also an awareness of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Extremists purporting to act in the name of Islam, but in reality demeaning and distorting it, were less well known here.

9/11 changed all that. Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban who had allowed them to operate from Afghanistan, became household names. Eventually, as the “war on terror” and the extremist reaction to it gathered pace, we became more aware of the reach of the so-called Islamic State, and of Boko Haram in the Lake Chad basin of West and Central Africa, and Al Shabaab in Somalia with spillover impacts elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.

In responding to 9/11, the New Zealand Government assessed that Al-Qaeda with its capacity to mount attacks already demonstrated from East Africa and Yemen to the United States was a threat to the security of our country. Two New Zealand citizens had been killed on 9/11. Our thoughts are with their families today and at all times.

A decision was made to send a small force of SAS soldiers to Afghanistan where they were rotated three times. A longer commitment was that of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan. In my time, I was satisfied that it played a useful role in supporting the reestablishment of government authority in the area. In Afghanistan, that and lifting the country out of poverty was always going to be a very long-term endeavour. If far more of the international investment there over the past twenty years had been in development rather than in military salaries and hardware, the sad spectacle of the return of the Taliban might have been able to be avoided.

The war in Iraq must be seen as gross overreach of the proclaimed “war on terror”, and has consequences there to this day in the high death toll from conflict and the country’s straitened circumstances. New Zealand, like most countries refused to be part of the 2003 invasion. Our year-long deployment of army engineers to support basic reconstruction ended when security deteriorated to the point that they could scarcely leave their Basra base.

Ideally this twentieth anniversary of 9/11, coming hard on the heels of the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, would be an occasion for reflection in the West on the past two decades of focus on the “war on terror” rather than on long term support for inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful development which over time has the best prospects for draining extremist groups of the foot soldiers they need to carry out their murderous acts.

Helen Clark is a former prime minister and head of the United Nations Development Programme