September 11 Anniversary: Americans Remember Souls of the Departed

Americans on September 11, remember the lives lost when terrorists hijacked passenger planes and rammed into New York City’s World Trade Center, in Washington.

14 years ago, terrorists killed 2,977 people in one of the deadliest attacks on American soil. Tears flowed as the nation marks a dark day in sorrowful yet hopeful ceremonies. On September 11, 2001, terrified strangers became friends as Americans united on a day that changed the world forever.

Today, like every other anniversary, a resilient nation looked forward to the future, but remembered the past.

In 14 years since the September 11 attack, the face of terrorism has changed out of recognition. To many experts, the threat of Islamist terror is in some ways greater and in some ways diminished. It is geographically more diverse and organisationally more divided, and leverages on social media and the internet since 2001.

In the West, Islamist terrorism is often more inspired than organised and directed. Its menace is also more fluid and unpredictable than it was on that bright autumn morning in 2001, but the tools to combat it are also more plentiful, from ever more sophisticated and accurate drones to financial intelligence and algorithms for chewing terabytes of data in the pursuit of suspicious communications.

The likelihood of an attack on the scale of September 11, has receded. But the probability of more frequent though less devastating attacks have increased.