25 Years After 9/11, the War on Terror Has Left a More Dangerous World

The biggest casualty in the aftermath of 9/11 is the loss of US credibility, writes C Uday Bhaskar.

Osama bin Laden is central to the 9/11 trajectory. In 2001-2002, he was made into the devil incarnate—the most wanted man on earth, the face of global jihad, the reason the Global War on Terror was launched.

(Photo: Reuters)

The 25th anniversary of 11 September 2001—the enormity that saw the Twin Towers in New York collapsing after an audacious jihadi terrorist attack—is an opportune moment to reflect on the many anomalies, extraordinary incongruities, and tragic ironies that have punctuated the 9/11 trajectory.

On that ill-fated day, 25 years ago, the world stood united. The attack on the US was seen as a brutal assault on the very idea of a modern, open society. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1368, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) invoking Article 5 for the first and only time, and the global outpouring of support: Washington enjoyed empathy and credibility in spades.

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) was not seen as a US-led war but as one against a medieval ideology that used jihadi terror as an instrument.

The perpetrators, Al-Qaeda and its chief Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban regime in Kabul that provided sanctuary, were zealously prosecuted by the US-led coalition.

The Osama bin Laden Paradox

Osama bin Laden is central to the 9/11 trajectory. In 2001-2002, he was made into the devil incarnate—the most wanted man on earth, the face of global jihad, the reason GWOT was launched.

And then, incongruously, he fades out of the US narrative. The Bush team gets distracted by Iraq, resources shift, and the bin Laden's hunt goes cold. The supreme irony, the anomaly that sums up GWOT, is that after a decade of war in Afghanistan, bin Laden is finally found not in a cave in Tora Bora, but in a comfortable safe-house in Abbottabad, next to Pakistan's premier military academy. The ISI maintained it had no inkling whatsoever, but the world knew better about the architect of that double game: the Pakistani Army Chief General Pervez Musharra.

Musharraf fine-tuned the ability to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare to an art form. Within months of 9/11, he convinced Washington he was their indispensable ally, so much so that Pakistan was designated a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) in 2004. Musharraf, the skilled salesman, also convinced the Pentagon that the Pakistan Army was on their side in the GWOT, while simultaneously signalling to the Taliban and to jihadi groups that their cause was being protected and their leadership given sanctuary in Quetta and Karachi.

The tragic irony was that the US was inadvertently funding the Pakistan Army, which provided tactical support to the adversary, resulting in many US casualties.

That duplicitous diplomacy is the original incongruity of GWOT. While the US bombed Afghanistan with impunity, its critical supply lines, intelligence cooperation, and political cover depended on Rawalpindi (global headquarters of the Pakistan Army), which was nurturing the very enemy.

India's Lonely Campaign

For Delhi, the 11 September 2001 bookmark is critical.

Barely three months after 9/11, on 13 December, the Indian Parliament was attacked by jihadi terror groups nurtured by the same establishment that was cosying up to the US. While the world rallied around the US in its GWOT, India was waging a more lonely campaign against terrorism.

In December 1999, the Vajpayee government swallowed the ignominy of a hostage exchange, after the hijack of Air India flight IC 814. Delhi was compelled to release Pakistan-trained jihadi terrorists to a safe haven in Afghanistan then under the Taliban rule. It was evident that India had few meaningful options to contain the terror challenge, and the GWOT was a welcome development for a weary Delhi.

However, the central, unlearned lesson of the past three decades is what this author had termed at the time as NWET, which stands for Nuclear Weapon Enabled Terrorism.

Pakistan discovered that nuclear weapons are not just a deterrent against full-scale war, but a shield behind which jihadi terrorism can be waged with impunity. Every major attack—Parliament 2001, Mumbai 2008, Pulwama 2019, and Pahalgam April 2025—follows the same template: inflict mass casualties through proxies, then immediately invoke the threat of nuclear escalation to forestall Indian retaliation and invite the international community to counsel restraint.

GWOT floundered because it never confronted NWET. It punished a non-nuclear Afghanistan for harbouring bin Laden, chased a mirage in Iraq at enormous cost but rewarded a nuclear Pakistan that institutionalised terrorism as state policy. The war bombed Kabul to the 'stone age' but gave Islamabad billions in aid and MNNA status for helping hunt bin Laden that Rawalpindi was hiding.

An uncomfortable question that arises is: did the US fall for this post 9/11 Pakistani perfidy due to professional ineptitude or institutional turpitude?

The Strategic Cost of GWOT

Ironically, the cost of those lapses was strategic. While the US bled over $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan-Pakistan and lost precious lives, China grew from $1.3 trillion GDP to over $17 trillion in the period 2001-2021, launched Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), militarised the South China Sea, and turned Pakistan into a client state via China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

While GWOT was not the only causal factor that enabled the rise of China, the real post 9/11 winner was Beijing, which received a 20-year free run, while the US and its allies were mired in the Hindu Kush morass.

Fast forward to September 2026 and the most incongruous reality is that after all that treasure expended and blood shed, the US withdrew in a shambolic manner from Afghanistan in August 2021 under President Biden. Today, the Taliban is firmly back in the saddle. Ironically, the very entity against whom the global war was launched now rules Afghanistan with a harsh whip.

If there is one metric of collective shame, it is the fate of Afghan women and girls. Twenty-five years after the world promised to liberate Afghanistan from medieval barbarism, half its population is banned from education, work, and public life.

The second irony is sharper for India. Pakistan, the epicentre of the jihadi terror scourge, has been rehabilitated as a credible regional interlocutor. This rehabilitation has been accelerated under US President Donald Trump. Pakistan's role as mediator in the US-Iran war of 2026, facilitating the Islamabad MoU and now the Mecca Pact, have burnished its profile.

The Erosion of US Credibility

As for consequences, the biggest casualty in the aftermath of 9/11 is the loss of US credibility.

In 2001, America was a stunned victim with moral authority. In 2003, Washington blundered into Iraq and was deemed guilty of misleading the UNSC. In 2026, it is seen as a petulant, transactional power that has discarded both norm and principle in the use of military force.

The same US that launched GWOT against terror has supported what many now call terrorist acts by Israel—the disproportionate destruction rained on Gaza in 2023 and the pre-emptive attack on Iran in June 2026. Iran's abiding support for Hamas and Hezbollah on one hand and the tactical US support to affiliates of the Islamic State have muddied the eco-system nurturing jihadi terrorism.

State support to terrorism in different forms is a recurring Faustian bargain.

In 2001, UNSC Resolution 1368 gave US action legitimacy. In 2026, the UNSC is paralysed with no resolutions on the Israel-US bombing of Iran, no resolution on Hormuz mining by Tehran, and no resolution on Pahalgam. That is why Pakistan can be a terror sponsor and a peace mediator, for there are no inviolable norms. Clearly, Musharraf's old playbook now has many practitioners.

What does this mean for India?

First, global sympathy is transient and does not translate into action. Terrorism is fought by national will and proven capability, not coalitions. Second, India must push back against Nuclear Weapon Enabled Terrorism in a resolute manner. The evolution from strategic hesitation in 2001, to restraint in 2008, to surgical strikes in 2016 and 2019, and finally, Operation Sindoor 2025, marks a doctrinal evolution that must be refined.

Twenty-five years ago, 9/11 promised a world united against terrorism without distinction. Today, it is more grey and opaque, and pragmatism couched as realpolitik is the preferred option. Delhi has also decided to deal with the Taliban, while holding the line on state sponsored terrorism. But it is a lonely vigil.

The US has ostensibly moved on after 9/11, but the scars remain.

(C Uday Bhaskar is a leading expert on strategic affairs. He is currently Director, Society for Policy Studies. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)