25 Years after September 11: Lessons for Americans and Africans
Chido Nwangwu captures and reflects on the events of 25 years ago on September 11, 2001. In New York and nearby Pennsylvania, almost three thousand Americans, Africans and other nationalities suffered deaths from the direct consequences of the terrorism of September 11. Hopefully, the world will come to terms with the interconnectedness of our global security and individual safety.
This second week of September 2026 is the 25th anniversary of the Tuesday, September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States by the radical jihadist group known as Al-Qaeda.
Those acts of terror and wholesale visitation of murder and mayhem did not only affect Americans but persons from almost 20 countries. Before that, on August 7, 1998, the U.S Embassy in the East African country of Kenya was bombed — it led to the deaths of 207 Kenyans, 12 U.S citizens and left more than 4,000 injured. Within a minute of that sad event, a smaller terrorism blast rocked Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam, killing 11 Africans.
For those who have forgotten, late Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian was the driving force for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was based, briefly, in the Islamic African country of Sudan (largely a failed State) before he left in 1996. He later settled in the Islamic fundamentalist country of Afghanistan. His primary operational base, according to unclassified records and security analyses of the September 11 attacks, was in Afghanistan, under Taliban rule.
