2001: The year history exploded

Seldom is an event recognised as historical the instant it happens, writes the Herald's deputy editor DAVID HASTINGS. But in 2001, an event of earth-shattering significance occurred.

About 200 years after the French Revolution, Chinese communist leader Zhou Enlai was reportedly asked what he thought it all meant. After mulling it over for a few moments he replied "Too early to tell".

It is one of those quotations that has been used so often it has become part of the historical record, although no one is sure whether he really said it. In one sense this does not matter. The words survive because they encapsulate the difficulties facing those who try to make sense of their own times.

It is usually impossible to tell which changes will have long-lasting effects and what will be remembered as historically important. Such things are decided by people looking down from the high ground of the future who have not only their own ideas but also the decided advantage of knowing how things turned out in the end.

Even so, it is customary before we step over the threshold of a new year to take a look back at the old one to remind ourselves of the people and events that made news, if not history, and to try to make sense of it all.

Usually it is impossible to characterise a particular year in general terms. Too much happens at random, there are too many changes competing for our attention and too many people have their 15 minutes of fame or infamy. Inevitably, people, events, times and places fade from memory and even the years blur into one continuous stream.

The year 2001 was different. The event known as the September 11 attacks - even here in New Zealand where it actually happened on September 12 - dominated it to such an extent that everything else seemed to be diminished.

Despite Zhou Enlai's warning, it already has the hallmarks of a historic event that will be remembered as a marker in time, a point of rapid and sweeping change. People now talk of "before September 11" and "after September 11" in the same way that older generations used to say "before the war" or "after the war".

So, as we look back over 2001, let us take that day as the key marker and ask whether, so soon afterwards, it is possible see the big implications.

Like any ordinary year, 2001 before September 11 was crowded with miscellaneous events that made news briefly before fading from memory almost as quickly as they faded from the headlines.

Who now remembers the Indian earthquake that killed thousands of people in January, or the helicopter crash that created an enormous traffic jam on the Southern Motorway that same month? Or Dennis Corrin, the New Zealander freed in March after spending 147 days as a captive of South American guerrillas?

Then there was Sam Walton of the American Wal-Mart retail chain, who took over from Bill Gates at the top of the Sunday Times World Rich List. The score was $158 billion to $131 billion.

Better remembered, perhaps, are Russell Crowe, who shone in the spotlight on Oscar night, Christine Rankin, who had the nation agog with tales of sexism in high places, and reclusive former All Black Keith Murdoch, who was his usual taciturn self when a coroner questioned him about a mysterious death in the Australian outback.

It was also a year of villains. Great train robber Ronnie Biggs and Auckland drug trafficker Brian Curtis were finally back behind bars. So was Lord Jeffrey Archer, former darling of the British Conservative Party, novelist and perjurer.

The villainy of such people paled besides the butcher of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic and Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. Both were unrepentant. McVeigh went coldly to his death without showing a flicker of remorse. Milosevic arrogantly defied the judges who will try him for atrocities committed during his bloody decade at the top of Balkan politics.

As usual there were many departures from this world of people who, because of their exceptional talents, were part of the human landscape. Two notables were Sir Donald Bradman, cricketer supreme, and Peter Sinclair who chronicled his last days in a poignant Weekend Herald column.

All of these events and people contributed to make 2001 before September 11 what it was, but none in any way defined the year.

To better characterise this period we need to pick up the recurring themes in the news. Arguably the two most important were the vigorous debate sparked by advances in genetic science and that old standard, the state of the economy.

The genetic theme was a battle on two fronts. One concerned the cloning of humans and its benefits in treating disease and aiding reproduction. The other was the genetic modification of organisms, also to develop new treatments as well as to improve the food supply.

Both met with strenuous ethical and moral objections. In New Zealand the battleground was a Royal Commission. In the United States the pro-cloning lobby fought with provocative promises of a baby cloning factory within a matter of years.

Perhaps the most prominent theme was the delicate state of the economy, epitomised by the collapse of two airlines - Qantas NZ and Ansett - with a third, Air New Zealand, teetering on the brink.

It was clearly shaping up as a downturn year, one of those blips that sends the graph of growth into reverse.

To get a feel for the economic theme you only have to look at the first edition of the Herald on September 12, the one that was rolling off the presses as Mohammed Atta and his band of terrorists were boarding their four flights to hell in the United States.

The Air New Zealand crisis was the big story, dominating not only the front page and the Business Herald, but also the letters to the editor.

There was also evidence of anxiety about the state of the economy generally. One report predicted a 2.2 per cent growth rate in the year to March 2002, but with the important, dare we say ominous, rider that it could be achieved only if the the international slowdown did not deepen or lengthen.

But we were not just passively waiting to see what the world would dish up to us, we were vigorously debating whether the structure of our own economy was right. This debate, stimulated by the Knowledge Wave conference in Auckland, continued with a weighty contribution that drove home the point that economic success these days depended more on ideas than raw materials.

These large themes are nearly always about change. Not rapid change on a sweeping scale, as in a historic event, but slow, stuttering, uneven change, which could be deflected or reversed in the face of resistance.

The big themes came to a head after September 11 - the Air New Zealand rescue package, the decision to continue GM field trials and the announcement in America of the first cloned human embryo.

It was also after September 11 that New Zealand was rocked by the loss of one of our favourite sons, Sir Peter Blake gunned down on his Amazon environmental odyssey.

But all big stories and themes were now played out against the background of the war on terror, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the anthrax scare and the unfolding catastrophe of the Afghan refugees.

In the fog of war it was easy to overlook sharp changes in economics, international relations and the way liberal democracies operate. But the extraordinary power of these changes can been seen clearly in the way they affected US President George W. Bush, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and Muhammed Butt, a 55-year-old Pakistani Muslim who lived in New York harbouring a guilty secret.

Before September 11, Mr Bush was resisting all pressure to stimulate the flagging economy by increasing government spending. After September 11 he began splashing out billions of dollars on the airlines, the victims, the war effort and the economy generally.

It was a classic example of priming the pump to get things moving again.

You do not need any special insight in psychology or economics to see what made him perform such an extraordinary policy somersault. Mohammed Atta and his men did more than just destroy flesh and blood, concrete and steel - they knocked the pins out from under the already fragile American economy and sent economic shock waves around the world.

Mr Bush's first move was an appeal to patriotism as he begged travellers not to desert the airlines. The people obliged by waving the Stars and Stripes and singing the Star Spangled Banner. But no one was really convinced.

The people and their President knew very well that economies run on confidence, not patriotism. They would not go near an aircraft after September 11 and when Wall St reopened, stocks plummeted.

The fallout was immediate, severe and global. From a routine downturn year, 2001 had suddenly become an all-hands-to-the-pump crisis and Mr Bush was forced to prime that pump like a man whose life depended on it.

The effect on Jiang Zemin was almost as dramatic. Before September 11 China opposed American military adventures as a matter of course. After September 11 President Jiang actually supported the American campaign in Afghanistan.

The Chinese stand was by no means unusual. The Russians were enthusiastic supporters of the war on terror and the Japanese sent forces overseas for the first time since the Second World War.

The New Zealand Government offered SAS troops and there was a distinct thawing in relations with the US made chilly by the Anzus row nearly 20 years ago.

There was some dissent, but such was the single-mindedness among world governments that one commentator remarked the United Nations was acting in unison for the first time in its 56-year history.

The reason, however, was not a sudden outburst of altruism, but a common fear. In shaking the most powerful nation on earth the hijackers had demonstrated that all states were vulnerable to a new kind of terrorism. The common threat was the one force powerful enough to bind them together.

Finally, let us see what happened to Muhammed Butt. Before September 11 he lived in the New York suburb of Queens. His guilty secret was an expired visa - if caught he would certainly have been sent packing.

After September 11 he was rounded up with hundreds of others, for no better reason than his religion and nationality.

He was held in Hudson County Jail, New Jersey, while the FBI investigated and found he had nothing whatever to do with the attacks. Thirty-five days after he was arrested, jailers found him alone in his cell, dead from a heart attack.

There is no suggestion that he died from foul play or ill treatment, but his story illustrates how September 11 brought out an ugly, authoritarian impulse in liberal democracies.

Pakistani community leaders in New York complained that people like Mr Butt were arrested for no good reason and then held without trial or proper legal representation.

Immigration officials were unapologetic for the infringement of civil liberties. "This is a time of war, and we are on a war footing," said one.

But it was only the beginning. Governments in New Zealand and Britain, as well as the United States, moved to rush through tough anti-terrorism laws. In America there was even debate about allowing torture to loosen the tongues of some suspects.

It was astonishing how quickly the authoritarian impulse asserted itself in countries that base their claims to moral superiority on legal and political systems that have checks and balances to prevent the abuse of power.

Even the most cursory comparison is enough to show that changes such as these are much swifter and more sweeping than the changes at the root of the great genetic debate. Yet these consequences of September 11 may not, by themselves, be memorable in history.

It is likely that the world economy will bounce back, the unanimity among nations will break down and the authoritarian impulse in liberal democracies will be rolled back as people assert their rights.

When will these things happen? As Zhou Enlai reputedly said, it is too early to tell. Only the people on the high ground of the future will be able to answer those questions.

But there is one big change that occurred on September 11 which will cast its shadow over those future generations, no matter what happens next or what they may regard as important. To see it clearly you need to look at the attacks not just as one event that characterises a particular year, but as an event that makes 2001 stand out in the context of 30 years of world history.

Throughout this period terrorism has been a common political tactic. Terrorists from the Far East to the Americas rivalled each other in devising novel ways to spread fear and grab attention.

They assassinated leaders and they murdered ordinary people. They used chemical weapons and high explosives. They hijacked planes and even a cruise liner. They killed people in small numbers and they blew up planes and buildings to kill people in large numbers.

Yet it could hardly be called an age of global terror. The damage they did was localised and the political fallout contained. If they had a global impact, it was merely in the headlines they generated. Most acts of terror were big news stories rather than historic events and, like most news stories, were quickly forgotten by everyone except those directly affected.

Who now remembers the year that Leila Khaled was arrested after taking part in the spectacular hijack of four jets in the Middle East? Or the year that Lord Mountbatten was blown up? Or the years of the Lockerbie bombing, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, the bombing of the Royal Marines School of Music in London, the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, or the seizing of hostages at the Japanese embassy in Lima?

On September 11 the world was confronted with something new - mega terrorism. Unlike the old forms, this terrorism had the power to shake nation states and to send shockwaves around the world.

Until Mohammed Atta and his men struck, the idea of mega terrorism was confined to science fiction and the dark warnings of United Nations weapons inspectors. It seemed highly improbable at the time, but now George W. Bush exaggerates only a little when he describes it as a threat to civilisation.

He exaggerates somewhat more when, in Churchillian cadences, he promises victory in the war against terrorism no matter how long it takes. He may be able to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and drive the bullying Taleban from power but he cannot undo the past.

The legacy that Mohammed Atta has left terrorists everywhere is that any state has a weak underbelly that can be easily exploited by anyone with simple weapons and a suicidal will.

This legacy is the historic change that occurred on September 11. Even in the unlikely event that al Qaeda is wiped out root and branch, the example it set, and the threat, will remain.

For the record, Leila Khaled took part in the spectacular Middle East hijackings in 1970, Lord Mountbatten was blown up in 1979, the Lockerbie bombing was 1988, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro 1985, the bombing of the Royal Marines School of Music 1989, the sarin gas attack in Tokyo 1995, and the seizing of hostages at the Japanese embassy in Lima 1996.

No one should ever need reminding of September 11, 2001.

2001 – The year in review