On the 11th of September, 2001, members of terror group Al Qaeda hijacked two US passenger planes and flew them into the World Trade Centre in New York City. 2,997 people died and US foreign policy changed irrevocably. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in history. Twenty years and two wars later, the USA enters the twilight of its superpower years.
The Second War World War ended dreams of German world domination, but it also helped end the British Empire. After fighting two world wars on their soil, the old empires of Europe were exhausted. In the following decades, their colonies in Africa and Asia gained their independence. Britain, who had ruled a quarter of the world’s people, resigned from its place as a global superpower and its two wartime allies – the United States and the Soviet Union, took its place.
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the USA became the world’s undisputed superpower. The nations of Eastern Europe, now free from the shackles of Soviet-enforced communism, embraced American-style liberal democracy, and it seemed for a time the rest of the world would follow suit. Capitalism, democracy and mass media would unite the world and there would be no need for wars. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama called it ‘The End of History.’
But it wasn’t. Wars continued, most notably in former Yugoslavia and Kuwait. In Afghanistan, the rebel factions who had defeated the Soviets with American support turned on each other. In 1996, the Taliban seized the country.
Al Qaeda began as an Arab volunteer force that fought the Russians in Afghanistan. They saw themselves as Jihadis, protecting the Muslim world against aggressors like the Soviet Union. In the 90s, now based out of Afghanistan, they turned against the other remaining superpower.
Al Qaeda saw the encroachment of the USA’s political and cultural influence across the Muslim world, particularly after the fall of the USSR, as a threat to Islamic civilization. They deplored American support for dictators, its pursuit of Middle Eastern oil and, in particular, its support for Israel, a Jewish state on Arab land. As Al Qaeda could not match the military might of the USA and its allies, they turned to terrorism.
Their attack on the World Trade Centre shattered hopes of world peace and the security of the United States. The Bush Administration demanded the Taliban government hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. They refused, and the United States invaded.
The Bush Administration also used the post 9/11 climate of fear and nationalism to invade Iraq in 2003 – a country with no link to Al Qaeda – on the false pretence of its leaders harbouring ‘weapons of mass destruction.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq fell quickly, but the US military found themselves bogged down supporting flimsy new governments and fighting vicious insurgencies. The Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies fought a practically invisible enemy for over twenty years.
If anything, the USA’s ‘War on Terror’ justified Al Qaeda’s worldview. The fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq birthed a climate of war and instability, giving rise to the Islamic State – a militant group who committed genocide from 2014 – 2016, while in Afghanistan, the Taliban rose once more. US special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
At home, a recession hit in 2008, from 2016 the political divide reached its widest since the Civil War and, in 2020, a global pandemic hit that exacerbated all its problems.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2020 was overdue, but it was also clumsy and rushed. In a matter of months, the USA pulled out its military, and the Taliban took back control, this time with the millions of dollars worth of tanks and guns the US left behind. For the second time, the US has lost a war to an underequipped and canny opponent in a decades long insurgency.
Empires do not last forever, nor do superpowers. While the US has wasted its resources and reputation fighting the War on Terror, rival China has built its strength and bided its time.
The USA spent over 780 billion dollars on the War on Afghanistan. When they invaded in 2001, the Taliban controlled 90% of the country – they now control 100.
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Khosrow I (reigned 531-539) gave the empire a second wind. He reformed the inefficient tax system and eased persecution of Christians and Jews while crushing the Mazdakites. His occupation of Egypt, Anatolia and Yemen brought Sassanian Persia to its greatest extent. When the Romans closed the Athenian Academy in 529, Khosrow welcomed its scholars to his court. An admirer of Plato, he sought to emulate the ideal philosopher-king.
Ctesiphon today
Afghanistan is home to five major ethnic groups and nine smaller ones. Being a mountainous land at the crossroads of empires, Afghanistan was historically settled by various people and nations. Today each group practises its own distinct culture and generally lives in different parts of the country while mingling in the cities. Though they might all be seen as ‘Afghans’ to outsiders, within the country ethnic divisions predominate.
Mani (216 – 277) was a painter and theologian who preached in 3rd century Persia. His teachings became Manichaeism, a religion that peaked in the 9th century and rivalled early Christianity. Mani envisioned a global faith that combined the teachings of Christianity, Gnosticism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism and could breach cultural and linguistic divisions. Persecuted in Persia and Rome, Mani’s teachings spread as far as China and North Africa.
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Medians (non-Persian Iranians, 678 – 549 BC)
The Safavid Dynasty restored native rule in the 1500s. They retained Persian culture, made Persian, not Arabic, the country’s official language and made Iran the centre of the Shia Muslim world. In 1979 clerics overthrew the last Shah, Reza Muhammad of the Pahlavi Dynasty, and replaced the monarchy with a theocratic republic, ending 2,500 years of imperial rule.
Among other things, Persia has given the world:
“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.”
The Kite Runner is semi-autobiographical. Like Amir, Hosseini (right) grew up in Kabul and moved to California at 15. Amir is a writer too, which explains his well-crafted prose. Hassan is loosely inspired by a Hazara servant Hosseini once knew but his story and relationship with Amir are fictional. The Kite Runner embodies the survivor’s guilt Hosseini felt when he visited his home country in 2001, a few months before 9/11. He felt like a tourist in his own country.
Saparmurat Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from 1991 – 2006. Brutal, eccentric and narcissistic even for a dictator, he impoverished his oil-rich country and built one of the world’s most extensive cults of personality.
Niyazov was born in 1940. His father died in the Second World War and an earthquake killed his mother when he was seven. After a lonely childhood, he studied engineering in Leningrad and joined the Communist Party in the 60s, where he demonstrated a flair for intrigue and a lust for power.
renaming all days of the week and months of the year, including one month after himself and another after his mother
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The Xiongnu were the first nomadic empire and the greatest threat China had faced. From 209 BC to AD 89 they ruled a confederacy of nomadic tribes and tributary states across the Asian Steppe. Xiongnu horsemen combined the composite bow and iron stirrups to devastating effect and the echoes of their fall were felt as far as India and Rome.
The Xiongnu enter Chinese history as nomads in the Yellow River’s northern bend. Their first known leader, or chanyu, was called Touman. His warriors pillaged China until Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor, pushed the Xiongnu into the Gobi Desert and constructed the Great Wall of China to keep them out.
The Han-Xiongnu War began in 129 BC. The humiliating treaties cost China dearly and were often ignored by Xiongnu raiders. Defeating them in battle, however, required matching the Xiongnu strategy. China had few horses of its own.
From the Parapet 