The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - 9/11 TEN YEARS LATER

WHY IT COULD HAVE BEEN AVERTED
A vital piece of information, which the CIA chose not to share with the FBI, could have helped avert 9/11. Personal likes and dislikes were allowed to cloud good sense and the world has never been the same.
John Carlin

It could all have been avoided. One blunder, one failure of communication between the CIA and the FBI, one vital clue they failed to share, opened the way for the terrorists.

At the centre of it were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, the two hijackers who boarded their aircraft in Washington. If the CIA had passed on critical information that they had collected early in 2000 regarding these two men to John O'Neill's al-Qa'ida squad, the tragedy could have been averted.

Three former members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, all of whom occupied senior roles in O'Neill's 150-strong counter-terrorism team, told me in interviews that there was good reason to believe that had the Central Intelligence Agency, America's external spy service, not declined to share with them what they knew about the al-Qa'ida duo, the 11 September conspiracy would have been foiled at the root.

Most vehement of the three, but also the best informed as to the details of the alleged blunder, was Mark Rossini, right-hand man and close friend of the luckless John O'Neill, for five years America's number-one al-Qa'ida pursuer. "I shall go to my grave convinced that it could have been avoided," Rossini said.

Pat D'Amuro, who was second in command to O'Neill and went on to become the FBI inspector leading the 9/11 investigation, said that from the vast body of official research conducted into whether the attacks might have been prevented, "the one thing - the only thing - that stands out is this particular piece of information regarding those two terrorists that the Agency did not tell us about".

Holy warriors

Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, 26 and 25 at the time of their death, were brothers of sorts. Saudis both, they had fought for the Muslim cause in the Bosnian war, they had been trained at the al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan (where camels were used to perfect the techniques of throat-cutting) and had been hand-picked by their revered leader, Osama bin Laden, to take part in the organisation's most ambitious terrorist action yet.

The two flew to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, on 5 January 2000, where they held what US intelligence officials later described as an "al-Qa'ida planning summit". With the help of Malaysian intelligence, the CIA kept track of their movements. The National Security Agency (NSA), America's giant global eavesdropping mechanism, had been monitoring for more than a year a telephone number in Yemen to which Bin Laden himself would call in from Afghanistan, according to Mark Rossini.

The number belonged to Muhammad Ali al-Hada, the father-in-law of Mihdhar and a key player in the simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which left 224 dead. Pat D'Amuro said Hada had two other sons-in-law who had already killed themselves in suicide terrorist attacks. After the Malaysia meeting, the NSA discovered that both Mihdhar and Hazmi had US visas in their passports, issued in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. They gave this astonishing piece of information to the CIA.

"Once they knew these two guys had US visas, it was screamingly obvious that they had to pass this information on to the FBI," said Mark Rossini, quivering with indignation as he spoke. For the CIA, which has stayed silent on the matter, deliberately did not pass on the information.

His anger and frustration were directed in part at himself, too. For Rossini, a lithe man, tall, with sharp-jawed film-star looks who had worked on counter-terrorism for the FBI since 1996, had been temporarily detailed to the CIA during the time of the Malaysia summit as the liaison man between the two organisations. But liaison with severe legal restrictions. On pain of breaking the law, he was sworn not to pass classified CIA intelligence to his FBI employers, unless expressly given permission to do so.

"I saw the information on Malaysia and the visas these guys had and I immediately wrote up a report to send on to the FBI, to my friend John O'Neill," Rossini said. "But I was blocked by the CIA from ever passing it on. They said this was not an FBI case. I complained to the person responsible at the CIA but the reply was, 'It is a CIA matter and you will not tell the FBI.' I was enraged but helpless to do anything about it."

Why didn't he break the rules? It is a question, he says, that will dog him for the rest of his days. In his defence he says that only with hindsight can one tell just how earth-shakingly critical that information was at a time when intelligence material on al-Qa'ida's activities, real or rumoured, was flooding the intelligence airwaves. "But even then, I could see this was highly, highly significant and important for the FBI to know about. The judgement I made, and which I shall always regret, is that it was not quite important enough for me to risk losing my job, facing the law and going to jail."

American nightmare

What would have happened if the FBI had received the information about the duo ? Mark Chidichimo said, "We'd have had placed them under close surveillance, we'd have got their hotel to say who they called and who they met, we'd have had security re-screens at the airports and found the box cutters and knives. Pat D'Amuro, himself a very focused man, has no doubt the FBI would quickly have obtained authority from the Department of Justice to put wiretaps on Mihdhar and Hazmi.

Rossini, who worked closely with international intelligence agencies, said John O'Neill would have sent a team immediately to Malaysia and he would have blitzed the FBI's foreign friends for information. "John O'Neill would have scoured the world and, obviously, we'd have tracked every move those two guys made inside the US. You can imagine how many alarm bells would have gone off once we'd discovered they were taking flying lessons! But John was blinded. He led the hunt for al-Qa'ida and Bin Laden, no one in the entire US government apparatus was more informed or more obsessed or more aware of the threat they represented than he was, yet they deliberately blinded him."

Why? D'Amuro sees it partly as a matter of institutional habit. "The CIA and the NSA never want their information to see the light of day in a criminal prosecution, which is the terrain the FBI moves in. And in this case there was overlap between the Malaysia meeting and the East African embassy bombings, which we were investigating and prosecuting at the time."

In the view of Rossini, the problem was entirely personal. "The CIA hated John O'Neill and they disliked the FBI and they protected their little turf and put their little ego-ridden bullshit ahead of national interest. They disliked John because he was charismatic, because he wore black designer suits, because he drank and enjoyed women and because they knew he was a man who worked harder than anybody, who got the job done, better than all of them put together. And they disliked me, too, because I was John's buddy and I too wore designer suits and liked the good life. That is the story of why they didn't pass us the information and that is also why John eventually quit the FBI."

D'Amuro agreed that O'Neill was a "larger-than-life figure" with a brilliant mind who was spectacularly committed - "consumed by it, 24/7," D'Amuro said - to the job of tracking down al-Qa'ida.

But did he believe there could have been personal factors in the decision not to pass him the Malaysia information? "Dealing with other agencies he was like a bull in a china shop," D'Amuro replied. "I spoke to him about this a lot. I warned him to ease up. But he couldn't. That was his style."

John O'Neill

In a case of life imitating a thousand Hollywood movies, O'Neill was the classic bold, brilliant and handsome hero thwarted by what Rossini calls "grey, by-the-manual, institution" men. O'Neill clashed with them personally but, because of his independent-mindedness and brashness, he also gave them the ammunition to strike back at him.

He broke rules. Once, when his car broke down, he borrowed an FBI car to take a girlfriend home. Innocuous enough, but sufficient to get him a rap over the knuckles and a warning. Of various such incidents, the gravest was one in which O'Neill unwittingly lost, if only temporarily and with no one else seeing it, a top-secret FBI file. An internal investigation was under way when, in July 2001, O'Neill and Rossini flew to Spain to liaise with the Spanish Guardia Civil and to take a few days' holiday.

"We were sipping coffee one morning in a villa in Marbella that belonged to a friend when on my computer I saw a story in The New York Times concerning John. Someone, some creepy little enemy of his somewhere, had leaked the story of the missing file to the newspaper. I printed out the story, John read it and his face changed. He went silent and he said, over and over, 'Why? For what? Why?'

I couldn't believe it. The best guy the US had fighting al-Qa'ida and they do this to him. John stayed silent most of the day, thinking hard, and next morning he announced his decision. 'KMA, man! KMA!' KMA means 'kiss my ass'. It's what we say in the Bureau when we've had enough, we're quitting. 'I'm done,' he said. 'I'm free. I don't need these little minions commenting on my suits any more.'

He remained in his post at the FBI until the end of August before taking up his new job, on 9 September, as head of security at the World Trade Centre. The day after he quit, in a measure of the largesse that characterised him, he took an old friend from a European intelligence service out for dinner in a swanky New York restaurant he liked to frequent. When the owner refused to charge him for the meal, he left the staff a $200 tip.

The World Trade Centre towers took 10 seconds to collapse, removing their mark for ever from the New York skyline. Yet Mark Rossini thought for a while that O'Neill had survived.

After learning of the attack on the car radio on his way to work at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, he phoned the FBI's New York office, where they told him O'Neill had called in to say he had got out of the building. "I phoned John's many friends around the world to tell them he was all right. Later, the news changed. They'd found him in the rubble, they identified him by his suit and university graduation ring." Rossini's eyes watered up at the memory. "He died a hero. He died taking command, as he had always done. 'I'm the boss. I'm in charge.' There was a crisis and he had to resolve it. So he went back inside."

By arrangement with The Independent

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
The train I missed on 9/11
Akhilendra Tomar

It was a usual Tuesday morning and I had missed my usual train to work. I don't remember cursing myself. But later I did feel fortunate. The train I had missed was the last train which had entered the Path subway, which is right at the base of WTC, when the first plane hit the Twin Towers. Path subway station still works from makeshift platform. The location of my office is just 20 meters from the Twin Towers. Just a month before 9/11, I had declined a lucrative job offer from an insurance company

(Marsh & McLennan) that had their office on the 93rd Floor of WTC, due to some visa issues. This is where the first blow was struck.

That morning, being late I took a different train and got down at another station and started walking. This is when I heard the thunderous sound. The second plane had hit its target. Smoke, noise, dust, rubble followed. It was like the roar of Mirage fighters taking off in my hometown Gwalior. Then I saw the first building coming down with white opaque smoke. Everyone was running randomly without knowing which direction was safe. There were rumours that New York had been nuked. It was both a grand and a dangerous spectacle, a part of you wanted to witness it and the other wanted you to run for your life.

I saw several people taking the leap of faith from the burning tower. I could see some were already burning in the inferno. There was little choice between burning in the tower or jump to death. And they looked so tiny from that distance.

While I was stranded in the chaos around falling towers, Rajani, my wife was watching it on television. The whole world was. And I couldn't call her. Cell phones had stopped working. Surrounded by rumours that several other planes had been hijacked and were on their way to hit other targets. This was the first time, I heard the word " Kamakazi Attack". There was lots of debris all over the place . I saw office stationery ,boarding passes lying on the ground . For months I saw people wearing nose masks to protect themselves from the dust of asbestos which came with debris.

This was my firsthand experience with fear. No one was allowed to stay in the area. But to mobilise people back to their home took a lot of time. We were totally disconnected from our colleagues and NYSE was closed for three days. The whole area was cordoned off for more than 6 months. All of us were told to walk up to Midtown . The only source of authentic information was to listen to car radios parked there . The time was really horrific as people in NYC didn't know that the Terrorist attack was actually over. Distraught strangers embraced each other and cried.

I remember feeling a swell of pride and admiring the courage and leadership of NYPD ( Police) and Fire fighters. All of us were running for our lives and these heroes were standing tall to guide people where to go. People were running out of the twin towers but an army of fire fighters was entering those very towers to save lives at the cost of their own lives.

The tunnels of underground railways were closed. One was opened at 5 PM and I eventually reached home around 7 PM. I took a train for a different route and then a fellow passenger gave me a lift to my place. It was only after reaching home that one could see the mammoth disaster caused by the terror attacks, where civilian planes were used as missiles.

Several of my friends thought I was one of the victims, because I had just recently changed my phone numbers and they couldn't connect. By the time they found out I was alive, they had already come to terms with my assumed fate similar to so many unfortunate ones.

Downtown Manhattan was closed for business for two months. Being a critical employee of my company, we moved location for business continuity. Remaining 90 % of the staff had a paid vacation for 2 months.

Being the only son, I had difficulty convincing my parents 14 years ago about making a move from India to the US. I had told my mother then that I was going to the safest place in the world. On the very first call home after 9/11, my mother asked how this could happen in the safest place of the world. I had no answer for her.

It is sunny here now. I am still working next to the WTC site at 100 Church Street. I still take the same train. Some days I walk to the site and look at that hollow space the magnificent towers have left behind. And the buzz, people, life and business which have gone with it. I can't really forget this, but I remember it less often now as I juggle between life, work and family. You live with reality. And move on with it. Like the world has.

My two sons were born after 9/11. I haven't told my two sons about my being an eyewitness. I don't want to.

The writer is a Business Analyst in Pearson group and works at their New York headquarters. His views are personal

For Pakistan, a kiss of death
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad

Having forced Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan with American backing the Al-Qaeda spent the next decade in reorganizing itself to challenge the sole super power in fulfillment of its international agenda for establishing Islamic order in the world. The 9/11 attacks targeted the symbols of US power-World Trade Centre, the US financial-economic hub, the military nerve centre Pentagon while another unsuccessful aircraft mission was heading for Capitol Hill, the symbol of the most powerful democracy in the world. It was an attack that exposed the vulnerability of the sole surviving super power and provoked it to an awesome response that would bog it down for a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq. President George Bush described it as war on terror against an elusive enemy which had no territory.

Many Pakistanis, however, believe it was a Zionist plot that pitted the West against Islam. Almost all, however, agree that no other country has suffered more for joining this war. Ten years down Pakistan is lurching to join the global map of failed states. It has ripped apart the country's social fabric with terror striking its peaceful cities, weakened political institutions and promoted fundamentalism and religious bigotry. The economy is teetering on the brink while daily violence has brutalised the society and radically altered social norms and behaviour.

Military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf saw in 9/11 an opportunity to end his pariah status. On 9/12, ISI chief Gen. Mahmud was summoned to Washington and warned by Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage that his country would be "bombed back to the stone age" if it didn't join the war on terror. His boss Colin Powell called Musharraf, spelling out a seven-point agenda for cooperation in the invasion of Afghanistan.

Musharraf buckled under pressure and, much to Powell's surprise, conceded all the demands, allowed use of his country's airspace and bases for launching attacks on Afghanistan. Its road network was made available to NATO forces to transport supplies into its landlocked neighbour.

What Musharraf and his associates did not anticipate was that a large number of vanquished Taliban and their Al Qaeda supporters would slip into Pakistan, escaping saturation bombing of their Afghan hide outs in Tora Bora. Among those who did was Osama bin Laden. Musharraf snapped ties with the Taliban regime, that had been installed and accorded recognition by Pakistan in the pursuit of the long-standing search for 'strategic depth'. In return the US and its allies accorded legitimacy to his regime and removed sanctions to provide military and economic aid.

Two years later he also sent 80, 000 troops to tribal areas bordering Afghanistan for operation against the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In retaliation, the Taliban turned entire Pakistan into a battlefield for suicide attacks on security forces, mosques and commercial centres.

Over the years about 390 suicide attacks have killed nearly 4, 700 people in major Pakistani cities. The army also had to launch an offensive in Swat where the Taliban had seized control close to capital Islamabad.

Overall, Pakistan has suffered immense financial and human losses. Nearly 35,000 civilians and 5,000 troops have been killed and hundreds and thousands of people displaced. The economy has sustained an estimated damage of $ 68 billion in increased defence spending, infra-structure destruction, complete halt in direct foreign investment, disruption of tourism and deterioration in law and order.

Initially Pak-US relations were restored to almost the Cold War level of warmth. US provided nearly $20 billion in military aid and what was termed as "coalition Support Fund" to bear costs of army operation in tribal areas. Pakistan captured and handed over about 560 Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants to America.

In the recent past, however, these ties have soured. The US believes that Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment has kept its connection with the Afghan Taliban. While it acted against the Taliban who are engaged in terrorist activities inside Pakistan, it is not prepared to launch operation against those attacking US and NATO forces inside Afghanistan from sanctuaries in tribal areas. Across the world the country has earned the reputation of becoming an epicenter of terror. Its neighbours, particularly India, hold it responsible for terrorist acts in Kashmir and inside India like the Mumbai carnage of November 2008 that brought the two nuclear nations close to a dangerous clash.

The US wants Pakistan to strike at militants like the Haqqani group that uses sanctuaries in North Waziristan for attacks on its forces inside Afghanistan. But Pakistan is looking beyond American exit and would not like to antagonise Pushtuns inside Afghanistan whom it considers as bulwark against influence of a not so friendly Northern Alliance.

All of NATO and most of American troops are scheduled to leave the country by 2014. Pakistan hopes to fill the power vacuum thus created and is wary of India or Iran getting any foothold.

The rising tensions with US and accompanying trust gap between their intelligence agencies took an ugly turn early this year when a CIA operative Raymond Davis killed two people in Lahore, revealing the secret that the spy agency was running a parallel network of its own in the country.

Later on May 2, US unilateral operation in Abbotabad that killed Osama bin Laden worsened these ties. While Pakistan termed it as an assault on its sovereignty, the US accused ISI of either complicity or incompetence in failure to uncover OBL's long stay in his Abbotabad hideout. Pakistan expelled CIA personnel and American trainers while America halted its economic and military aid. Pakistan believes that America cannot continue with this policy for long because President Obama needs its assistance for the success of his exit strategy.

Two young men caught in the crossfire
C. Bryson Hull and Saeed Achakzai

Danny Sjursen of the U.S. Army needs two hands to count the friends who died rescuing people from the wreckage of al Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

But too much time and two wars have passed between the day Sjursen, now 28, saw the towers fall while he was a cadet at the West Point U.S. Military Academy.

"When I see this place, I don't see the towers," he said, sitting inside the wooden walls of the B troop, 4-4 Cavalry Regiment's operations centre in Pashmul South. Near the birthplace of the Taliban in Kandahar province, it is still one of Afghanistan's most violent areas for U.S. soldiers.

For him, there is little connection anymore between the war he is fighting and the retribution against the Taliban for harbouring al Qaeda.

A few hundred kilometres away, his enemy rests by a roadside, just across the Pakistani border. Fida Mohammed's seminal moment in jihad came when he was only 10 years old, from a man he was too young to know much about. Osama bin Laden's deadly handiwork created excitement in his village in Pakistan.

Mohammed, now 20 and a Taliban fighter, recalls people crowding around a man with a newspaper telling of the attacks in New York and Washington. "Most of them were cursing America," Mohammed told Reuters in his village of Norak, 20 km (12 miles) from the Afghan border. "Very few people said it was not good because innocent people were killed."

Earlier that day at his madrasa, the lesson was simple: the 9/11 attacks were America's punishment "for its crimes", and the beginning of its destruction. Over his parents' objections, Mohammed soon began collecting clothes and food from people to help the Taliban. "My aim is jihad and only jihad, and to defeat the infidels and drive them out of Afghanistan," said the strongly built, bearded Pakistani, who commutes to the war from his village.

Seven years passed before he was old enough to join up as a mujahideen. Even then, he had to sneak away, feigning plans to visit relatives, and his parents caught and tried to stop him. "I told them in plain terms that jihad has become obligatory on all Muslims and I cannot give it up at any cost. Now I often go to Afghanistan for the jihad," he said.

Sjursen's call to war, too, came from school. He was sparring in boxing class, as a first-year cadet, when someone burst in shouting that the World Trade Center was on fire. Only the second in his family to get a university degree, he excelled in his high school studies and followed "the old romantic reasons for wanting to be a soldier" to West Point. Suddenly those reasons become more personal. His father worked across the street, but evacuated quickly. His Uncle Steve went missing for 24 hours, surfaced briefly and then went back into the ruins for five days, Sjursen said. "He was digging the rubble for Marty," Sjursen said, referring to firefighter Marty Egan, his uncle's best friend who was discovered dead days later.

"It was the single most emotional event. You know how it is in a blue-collar neighbourhood. I was almost hoping the war would still be going on when I graduated in 2005," he said.

Mohammed took to jihad in Afghanistan in 2008, migrating across the border for attacks and sometimes into Helmand province to pick poppies for pocket money, with the bulk of the profits from the opium sales going to finance the Taliban.

Barely a year after he joined jihad, he took two bullets in the arm during a firefight with Afghan troops that killed three of his comrades. That was barely a taste of the war.

"Talk of war is very sweet, but the situation on the battlefield is very bitter," Mohammed said, sipping from a glass of water as he recalled how an American helicopter rained death on his comrades a year ago. He and about 60 other fighters were heading to attack a military post in southern Uruzgan province, when the chopper spotted them and unleashed its cannon. Mohammed and 20 others, lagging behind, dashed for life-saving cover in the bushes. "There were many childhood friends among the 40 killed and that saddened me. I cried a lot that in just a few seconds so many Taliban mujahideen had been martyred. We collected their body parts with our hands and buried them there," he said.

Sjursen met death in the cauldron of Baghdad in 2006, where he took command of his first platoon during the U.S. surge to stabilise Iraq as it boiled in a bloody sectarian civil war. "It was a bad time," Sjursen recalled, sitting in front of a bank of three computers inside his command centre. "This place has nothing on that. The madness is lacking here." Three of his men were killed and eight were wounded within the first 90 days of deployment. The wish for vengeance for 9/11 was swallowed by a greater violence.

"It's farmboys picking up guns. How do you hate that? What do you do when you turn 15 or 18 here? You fight. Imagine if our country was at war since 1979?" Sjursen said, referring to Afghanistan's almost-constant state of conflict since mujahideen started attacking the occupying Soviet forces.

Like many other Taliban leaders, Mohammed's commander comes from Kandahar. The war is turning in their favour, after a time when foreign troops inflicted heavy casualties, Mohammed said. "We have restricted Americans and their forces to their bases," Mohammed said. "There is no dearth of Taliban, in whatever number we need. We get them easily."

With the end of 2014 the deadline for all foreign combat troops to pull out of Afghanistan, Sjursen can see an end to his wars. He will enrol for a master's degree later this year. "We're tourists here. We're going home, but this is their life," Sjursen said.

Mohammed said he has had little time to think about his plans after the war, although he intends eventually to teach -- if the war ever ends. If foreign troops don't leave, Mohammed said: "I will keep up my jihad as long as I'm alive and until I embrace martyrdom." — Reuters

US: SAD, Suspicious and Scared
Ashish Kumar Sen
writes from Washington

Life in the United States of America changed on a crisp September morning 10 years ago. The deadliest terrorist attack on American soil resulted in a vicious racial backlash, the sting of which continues to be felt by Sikhs, Muslims and the South Asian community.

The U.S. has succeeded in preventing another major terrorist attack in the country, but civil liberties groups and some analysts argue that this security has come at a heavy cost.

Images of a bearded Osama bin Laden, his head wrapped in a turban, were seared into the collective consciousness of Americans by round-the-clock news coverage of the attacks on 9/11.

“After 9/11, anything that was not considered ‘American’ was looked at with suspicion,” says Manjit Singh, co-founder and chairman of the board of the Sikh American Legal Defence and Education Fund (SALDEF).

“If you were an immigrant with brown skin and had a turban, it was the worst thing,” he added. Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, was shot dead four days after 9/11. He was the first Sikh to die as a result of the backlash, but not the last. In March, two more Sikh men were gunned down in Sacramento, California.

Amardeep Singh, the New York-based director of programmes at the Sikh Coalition, said the biggest concern for Sikhs is that their articles of faith — particularly the turban and beard — are associated with terrorism in the American mind. “That stereotype at the grassroots level has hardened since 9/11,” he said.

Incidents of bullying at school have increased. In 2002 and 2003, 11-year-old Kabir Virdee, then a seventh grader at Marlboro Middle School in Marlboro, New Jersey, was taunted by schoolmates who called him "Osama" and punched him in the head. Kabir endured three incidents of verbal and physical abuse.

It was the third incident, in which he was viciously assaulted, that was the final straw for his family. Kabir's father, Jaspal Virdee, decided to move his family back to England from where they came in 1999.

“The school refused to guarantee Kabir’s safety and instead was trying to blame him for the incident,” Virdee told The Tribune in a phone interview from his home in London. The Virdees had enjoyed their life in America until 9/11.

After the attacks, Virdee recalls, people would often stick their middle finger up at him while he was driving or would cast suspicious glances in his direction when he entered a store.

Virdee says the episode has not left him angry at America. “I have an open mind, I know this is not a representation of most Americans but it is a sign of a sad society that is so internally focused,” Virdee said.

At the workplace, too, Sikhs are frequently the target of discrimination by employers. “On both coasts [of America], more that 10 per cent of our community reports employment discrimination. That is much higher than the general population,” said Singh of the Sikh Coalition.

Manju Kulkarni, executive director of the South Asian Network in Artesia, California, describes the backlash as significant in every context. “South Asians face discrimination even in places of worship,” she said.

Members of the community, particularly first generation Indians, are reluctant to report incidents of discrimination or harassment because of a fear of they will be profiled or detained by law enforcement.

“The perception among people coming from India is that there is no point going to the police because they won’t do anything,” said Singh of SALDEF, adding that groups like his constantly struggle to change that mindset and educate the community about its rights. Kulkarni said the iWatch programme in Los Angeles, part of the nationwide policy known as Suspicious Activity Reporting that instructs the public to report suspicious behaviour, is essentially “state-sanctioned racial profiling.”

Since 9/11 there have been numerous incidents in which Sikhs and Muslims have been pulled off flights, trains and even detained while entering federal facilities simply because their presence made some people uncomfortable.

The Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in October of 2001, has been criticised by civil liberties groups for its sweeping powers. ACLU describes it as an “overly broad surveillance bill” the provisions of which give the government sweeping authority to spy on individuals inside the United States, and in some cases, without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

However, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, says 39 terrorist plots have been foiled since 2001 and credit policies enacted by the Bush administration, including the controversial Patriot Act.

Is America safer?

So, is America safer ? Those who believe it is, point to the fact that there have been no major terrorist attacks on American soil in the past 10 years. Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says the U.S. is much safer today than it was on 9/11 largely due to good coordination between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and aggressive counter-terrorism measures both inside the country and abroad. She too gives credit to the PATRIOT Act.

In April, President Barack Obama’s administration scrapped a controversial special registration programme that made it mandatory for adult males from predominantly Muslim countries to report to an immigration office to be photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed. Anyone who failed to comply faced arrest and deportation. K. Alan Kronstadt, a specialist in South Asian affairs at the Congressional Research Service, said: “We might view [the attacks on Sept. 11] 2001 as this generation’s Pearl Harbor and it woke up the country and the people to the threat.”

U.S. law enforcement agencies have engaged in a number of surveillance activities, often aimed at the Muslim community. The FBI has placed informants in mosques and in New York the CIA worked with the New York Police Department to keep tabs on Muslims.

“What you are doing is basically encouraging people to report those behaviours or activities or types of people that make them uncomfortable. And this tends to be people of colour,” added Kulkarni. A recent ACLU report, “A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties 10 Years After 9/11,” makes the point: “By allowing - and in some cases actively encouraging - the fear of terrorism to divide Americans by religion, race, and belief, our political leaders are fracturing this nation’s greatest strength: its ability to integrate diverse strands into a unified whole on the basis of shared, pluralistic, democratic values.”

Initiative by Sikhs

At airports Sikhs are more often than not pulled aside by security officers for pat downs and additional screening. Such incidents of discrimination have produced an opportunity for the community to educate Americans about immigrant cultures and their faiths. Singh of SALDEF says the Sikh community grasped the opportunity to create an awareness about Sikhism and the articles of faith.

SALDEF produced a training video, “On Common Ground,” which is being used by the Justice Department to educate Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers about the Sikh faith. In Texas and New Jersey, community organisations have succeeded in making it mandatory for school boards to educate students on the Sikh faith. However, Amardeep Singh believes that is not enough. “At the end of the day, if you walk out on the street with me and ask people what religion I follow, they will not say Sikh, and that is a problem,” he said.

aftershocks

Incidents of bullying at schools have increased. In 2002 and 2003, 11-year-old Kabir Virdee, then a seventh grader at Marlboro Middle School in Marlboro, New Jersey, was taunted by schoolmates who called him "Osama" and punched him in the head. Kabir endured three incidents of verbal and physical abuse. It was the third incident, in which he was viciously assaulted, that was the final straw for his family. “My son was the only child that was visibly different from all the other children in the school; 9/11 changed things for my whole family — Jaspal Virdee, father of Kabir

The Patriot Act enhanced safety of Americans by allowing law enforcement the ability to investigate terrorist plots, to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and criticism of the Act has turned out to be unfounded — Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation

Lessons for India
Ashish Kumar Sen
writes from Washington

While the US has managed to prevent terrorists from striking on its soil since 9/11, India hasn’t been able to achieve a similar degree of success after 26/11.

While the United States has managed to prevent terrorists from striking on its soil since 9/11, the recent bomb blast outside the Delhi High Court left many in India wondering why India hasn’t been able to achieve a similar degree of success.

Many analysts have pointed to the weaknesses in law enforcement in India, including poorly developed technical capacity, poor training and poor equipment in the police forces, the insufficient number of policemen compared to the large population, the slowness of the courts in prosecuting terrorists. Also, Homeland Security in the United States has spent enormous sums of money on beefing up security.

The contiguousness of the border with Pakistan is also often cited as a factor. “India is the site of contested history,” said Kronstadt. “The US has large oceans on each side and has not typically had the fight brought to it in the way India has since its birth.”

However, Sumit Ganguly, Professor of Political Science and Tagore Chair in Indian cultures and Civilisations at Indiana University in Bloomington, has a different explanation. He says India’s inability to stop terrorists from attacking is in “considerable part because of the stoicism of the Indian public, their unwillingness to hold the political class accountable and because of the sheer slackness of governance in India.”

Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank says that in the past there was a propensity in India to point fingers across the border — toward Pakistan — every time a terrorist attack took place. She said the Indian government is slowly starting to recognise that it needs to improve homeland security. “There is a realisation that part of the solution is to fix things at home. It has taken a while for that to sink in,” she added.

Curtis believes India can learn from the US’ counterterrorism experiences. “The US has put itself on a war footing in its fight against terrorism, both abroad and at home. India can learn from that,” she said.

In the days of post-9/11 rhetoric, Washington’s allies and foes were decided by the rigid mantra coined by President George W. Bush in his speech to a joint session of the US Congress on September 20, 2001. “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,” Bush declared at the time.

Even as the Bush administration enlisted Pakistan, led by Pervez Musharraf, as a frontline ally in its war against terrorism, Washington went about laying the foundation for a more solid partnership with India. The civilian nuclear deal, which the Bush administration offered to India in 2005, helped India shed its status as an international nuclear pariah and was quickly turned into the centrepiece of the relationship.

K. Alan Kronstadt, a South Asia specialist at the Congressional Research Service, says the events of 9/11 also put Pakistan back on the centre of the radar for US foreign policy decision makers.

“With regard to India, there was recognition of what it means to suffer from Islamist terrorist attacks. There was a great deal of empathy for India that was not seen before 9/11,” said Kronstadt. He contends that the relationship between Washington and New Delhi took off and became more expansive than people would have imagined on 9/11.

Washington’s reliance on Pakistan in the war against terrorism was motivated by the realisation that Islamabad’s cooperation was essential in eliminating terror threats to America, many of which originated from within Pakistan.

In May, following a decade-long manhunt, Osama bin Laden was killed by US commandos during a raid on a house in Abbottabad. The leader of Al-Qaida, which was responsible for the attacks on 9/11, had been living in comfort a short distance from Islamabad.

Laden’s death has forced a rethink in Washington about its relationship with Pakistan. Some lawmakers have suggested cutting off military aid to Pakistan, but others have warned that letting go of the relationship at this point would be counterproductive.

Curtis says five years ago many in the U.S. administration believed that Pakistan was serious about taking on the terrorists. Now, she added, they question Pakistan’s sincerity.

“The fact that the Obama administration decided to conduct the Laden raid unilaterally speaks volumes” about the relationship between Washington and Islamabad, she said. Curtis believes US officials do not want to see a disruption in the relationship with Pakistan, but they want to push the envelope to try and get more out of it.

The US had started to engage India before 9/11. However, the attacks increased the impetus behind the relationship. The relationship become more heavily focused on areas such as counterterrorism cooperation after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and this week’s blast in Delhi.