MANY can remember, 15 years to date, where they were on September 11th, 2001 when news broke that planes flew into the United States’ (U.S.) World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon Building. When it dawned on the world that these simultaneous acts were not accidents, but were well-coordinated attacks from foreign individuals, it brought new recognition of the vulnerability of a country thought to be the ultimate fortress. 3000 lives were lost in the WTC and 115 at the Pentagon as a result of these cowardly acts. The average person never thought anything like this could have happened on U.S. soil.

September 11, 2001, or 9/11, represents the telephone number to call in the case of emergency. That this date was chosen by those who attacked the U.S. says that the date was no accident, but a deliberately symbolic attempt to show America its vulnerability; and it is not unfair to say that the comfort zone of complacency has since been disrupted.

These attacks have also taken away the complacency of the safest means of transportation, which is airline travel. New institutions and restrictions have been established for airlines, to prevent any other terrorist act. The world has become more hypertensive to terrorism and acts of terrorism, and new code systems are in use to assess levels of terrorism or threats.

The attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were the first on America’s soil since Pearl Harbour (1941). Not only did that attack send a signal that what is considered the world’s most prosperous nation can be hit, but the hit was aimed at the heart of U.S. commerce, given that New York is considered its money capital. The Pentagon is the military headquarters of what is considered the world’s most powerful army. It is here that the president, vice president and others take their briefings and engage in military planning for the world.

Given the symbolism of the stated, the psychological impact had to have reverberated in the corridors of U.S. power. Further, these acts were not conducted by a country, but by a small group of men perceived to be ill-equipped and underfunded, but having an ideology of destruction that is still prevalent 15 years after, becoming more complex in operation and wider in spread. The new form of terrorism, i.e. non-state actors, is more terrifying than Adolf Hitler and his army, which had threatened the world before World War Two.

With increasing access to information technology and social media applications, persons with terrorist propensities have mastered the Internet and have spread propaganda, influencing and recruiting people from all corners of the world. Persons are now creating their own cells to become self-sufficient to commit acts of terrorism in representation of a group they have never met, or men/leaders that are dead.

The Internet has removed boundaries based on ideology, beliefs and even terrorism to the extent that persons from middle income or affluent families in the Western societies can fall into the belief and ideology of a leader half way around the world. People are also leaving their countries to go to the Middle East and elsewhere to join terrorist groups with the mindset of becoming martyrs/jihadists on the promise of an ideology pertaining to the now and hereafter.

America itself has created its own home-grown terrorists, as in the instances of the 2013 Boston, Massachusetts marathon attack, and the 2016 San Bernardino, California night club attack by persons who had influence of Islamic extremists to attack or destroy anything that has modern Western ideology.

The question as to whether the world is safer after all the new systems that have been put in place after 9/11 will forever be debated. What is undebatable is that terrorism is global, and the fight against it requires global collaboration. It continues to be seen that there is no boundary, race, ethnicity, financial standing, or limit to who can be recruited or engaged in terroristic acts. This situation can be likened to a snake that has no head, or an organisation without a leader, driven by an ideology, not a person. This makes modern terrorism, aka jihadism, the hardest fight the Western world has ever fought; and unlike previous wars, when these leaders die or are captured, the war is not over.

Answers to fighting this new form of terrorism are not easy. The problem is complex and represents an enemy that is ever evolving, transcends all levels of modern-day warfare, and makes common-sense approach to getting rid of it far exceeding modern understanding. What is encouraging, however, is that governments are not giving up in trying to understand the phenomenon that drives the behaviour and efforts to contain it.