Terror forever

THE 9/11 attacks happened 25 years ago, ushering in a new epoch. The so-called global war on terror was launched by the Bush administration a few days later, and Washington has wreaked havoc across the globe ever since. The majority of the world’s states have followed the US lead by making the prosecution and hunting down of ‘terrorists’ their primary raison d’être. Ideological apparatuses, including the culture industry, have indoctrinated generations of young and old alike into believing that ‘terror’ is ubiquitous and that the state must be endlessly empowered to snuff it out, even at the cost of basic liberties. Pakistan was one of the major staging grounds of the ‘war on terror’, facilitating both the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan whilst also launching innumerable military operations on its own soil.

A plethora of ‘anti-terrorist’ laws have been promulgated since 2001, the scope of which is growing wider. While these instruments are deployed to clamp down on all forms of dissent and popular political mobilisation, the insurgencies and other forms of political violence that ostensibly should have been curbed by the state’s various ‘counterterrorist’ initiatives have only become more intense. Beneath the surface, a global military-industrial complex profits endlessly from the West’s totalitarian regime. Washington has thrown $8 trillion at various wars since 2001, a significant chunk of which has been pocketed by private defence contractors integrated with the deep state. In Pakistan, too, the ‘war on terror’ inaugurated a host of opportunities for state functionaries and private contractors to mint money. The policing of dissent is paralleled by Big Tech’s power. Today, we are at another crossroads. With the rise of Big Tech to the apex of global…