9/11: 20 years after attacks, what now for the War on Terror?

That announcement marked a key inflection point, giving rise to what became known as the the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a concept aimed at addressing the shock inflicted by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s cadres not just on America but across the world.

For terrible as it was, 9/11 was only the starting point as jihadist-inspired terrorism made its bloody impact in places as far apart as Bali, Mombasa, London, Paris, Baghdad and Madrid.

READ MORE: September 11: I heard the sirens, then saw black smoke rise from the Pentagon on that terrible day

Under Mr Bush’s catch all concept of a “war on terror,” law enforcement authorities, intelligence services and military forces across much of the world, exchanged counter-terrorism expertise, data and technology, often working together on joint operations.

Along with the US driving force behind the effort, some countries like the UK found themselves intervening wholesale in lengthy and costly wars in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter of which under the Taliban acted as hosts to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Now, 20 years to the day after 9/11 and with the return to power in Afghanistan of the Taliban despite the US-led coalition throwing everything they had at the insurgency, few would deny that the war on terror has come full circle.

So why did it go wrong and where now, if anywhere, does the war on terror go from here?

In the two decades that I’ve covered the events in the Arab and Islamic world that followed in the wake of 9/11, time and again I was to hear one particular refrain from those caught up in or analysing its aftermath.

In short, while the US-led intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan might have succeeding in degrading the capabilities of Islamic extremism it did little to address the causes at it roots.

“They managed to kill bin Laden,” says Abdul Sayed, a researcher on jihadism based at Lund University in Sweden, referring to the killing of the al-Qaeda chief by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

“But if the goal was to end transnational jihadism, then it's a total failure,” was how Mr Sayed summed up US-led efforts recently to the French news agency AFP echoing the views of many I’ve talked with over the years.

READ MORE: Rosemary Goring: September 11, 2001 – the day our illusions died

As bitter experience has shown, the West must now accept that force is not, on its own, a sufficient or viable solution. Islamist inspired terror or ideologies cannot be eradicated through the use of drone strikes or night-time raids by special forces.

Yes, these might take out individuals, but more often than not they result in civilian casualties only further consolidating the resentment that already exists towards occupying forces among people often impoverished and whose already unstable lives are open to manipulation by zealous terrorist recruiters.

In their execution such operations also display that singular ‘might is right’ arrogance that has been a hallmark of the war on terror epitomised by US General Stanley McChrystal boastful quip that he could “unpack democracy from the back of a Chinook”.

In almost all of the strategic thinking on the war on terror there was always an over reliance on head on confrontation and little pause given to consider those factors that account for the breeding grounds of jihadism, notably political instability, poverty, chaos, bad governance and corruption.

As many long-term watchers of such places will attest, one of the most powerful tools to prevent recruitment to Islamist extremism is providing people with better alternatives.

Some evidence of that at least was visible in parts of Afghanistan even if ultimately undermined by an emphasis on military clout and the corruption among senior Afghan officials that the West allowed to take root to the Taliban’s clear advantage.

As Dr Julien Theron, International Security and Conflict analyst and lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris rightly observed recently in an article for the EUobserver online newspaper, military interventionism in counter-terrorism is one strategic option but before any implementation it should always first require answers to certain important questions.

Among these, is “when should large-scale coercion be applied and why? What are the odds of winning? How do we proceed? What is the (human, political, military, and financial) cost? Can we afford it? Do we want it? Is there an embryo of a representative state that we can rely on? Are we committed to victory enough to assure it in the long run? What are the alternatives?”

Perhaps it’s because of the failure to establish as near as possible definitive answers to these strategic and tactical questions before engaging in all out military intervention that the war on terror morphed into what current US president described as America’s “forever wars.”

The Biden administration now claims to have drawn a line under US ‘nation building’ in what the president has described as a new era in American foreign policy.

Yes, admittedly the US, and the broader Western world, has seen no attack on the scale of 9/11 in subsequent years, and there have been some successes in combating jihadist-inspired terror, with some networks disrupted, financial resources squeezed, territory retaken as in Iraq from the Islamic State (IS) group.

But not for one moment should that be used to claim that the war on terror has been effective or a success. If anything, jihadist terrorism has transformed into a far greater global threat, posed by disparate groups and individuals around the world from West Africa to Syria that have only been bolstered by the Taliban’s recent “victory.”

Joe Biden might like to think that he has drawn a line under America’s “forever wars”, but as long as Islamist-inspired terrorism poses a transnational security threat so the war on terror will go on.

Today as we remember those dark days in America 20 years ago and the million lives the war on terror is estimated to have subsequently cost, that’s a sobering thought.

In tomorrow's Herald on Sunday David Pratt reflects on his personal experience of 9/11 and the global fallout he covered as a correspondent in its aftermath.

David Pratt, Contributing Foreign Editor. The Herald On Sunday / The National/ Sunday National