SPECIAL: The long shadow of 9/11 twenty-five years on

Lyse Doucet (0:02)

A LISTNER PRODUCTION.

Chris Spyrou (0:10)

Today marks 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. And when we talk about 9-11, we often talk about the terrible events of the day, the hijacking of the planes, the collapse of the Twin Towers, those who were killed, those who survived and the first responders. But we talk less about the war that followed, America's longest, and the people whose lives that changed.

Now, the ripples of 9-11 reach far beyond America's borders, and so 25 years on, we're looking back at the long shadow of it through the eyes of one journalist, a journalist who witnessed the invasion of Afghanistan from start to end. That journalist is BBC Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet, and she spent decades reporting from Afghanistan and the region, and she sat down with one of our senior journalists not too long ago. Here's Claudianna Blanco with this special report. And look, a warning before we do start. This episode contains some of the sounds of the day, which may distress some listeners.

SPEAKER_3 (1:18)

American 11, are you trying to call?

SPEAKER_4 (1:19)

I am in a situation where Americans are on a possible hijack.

Hi, baby. I'm on a plane that's been hijacked. I want to tell you I love you. Please tell my children that I love them very much, and I'm so sorry they love you.

SPEAKER_5 (1:38)

What are those people going to do? All the elevators are blocked out.

Claudianna Blanco (1:46)

On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda carried out the deadliest terror attack in modern history. Two planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York, another into the Pentagon in Washington, DC., while a fourth crashed in field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

It was a day that left an indelible mark and changed the course of history.

SPEAKER_7 (2:18)

Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack.

SPEAKER_8 (2:29)

I just saw a second plane.

Claudianna Blanco (2:30)

It hit the south tower.

SPEAKER_4 (2:32)

It's got to be a terrorist attack.

SPEAKER_7 (2:34)

I can't tell you anything more than that.

SPEAKER_8 (2:35)

I saw the plane hit the building.

SPEAKER_7 (2:37)

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended.

Claudianna Blanco (2:43)

The BBC's Lyse Doucet was on her commute when the attacks happened. She had recently returned to the UK after years living and reporting across the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Do you remember when you first saw the planes plunging into the towers?

Lyse Doucet (3:04)

I was in London. I was on my way to go to work and I stopped somewhere then to look at the television screens. I think we all stopped in our tracks. First of all, people thought, well, first one must have been an accident and the second one and then suddenly everyone realized very quickly this was something on an order that we hadn't seen before.

Claudianna Blanco (3:22)

The South Tower collapsed first, only 56 minutes after impact.

SPEAKER_8 (3:27)

You can see large pieces of the building falling. You can see the smoke rising. This is just a horrific scene and a horrific moment.

Claudianna Blanco (3:36)

The North Tower stood for nearly two hours before it too came down.

SPEAKER_8 (3:42)

Good Lord, there are no words.

Lyse Doucet (3:45)

Just that image of these mighty buildings, the height of engineering collapsing into these huge columns of smoke towering in the sky with dust and people running and crying and people stopping and looking. And it was one of those defining moments. We knew that this is something which really mattered, something which we hadn't seen before and then couldn't anticipate what would come next.

Claudianna Blanco (4:13)

What came next would become America's longest war. The US was reeling, with then President George W. Bush swiftly promising revenge.

SPEAKER_7 (4:26)

Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.

Claudianna Blanco (4:33)

Within weeks of the 9-11 attacks, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan. It was a country that had endured two decades of conflict and had, by then, been under Taliban rule for five years.

The Taliban first emerged from the chaos of Afghanistan's civil war in the mid-1990s promising to restore order. But their vision of order was brutal.

Lyse Doucet (5:01)

This was a country which was back in the last century. There were no telephones, there were no television stations, almost no airlines were operating in Afghanistan.

Once the Taliban came, then they went around yanking music cassettes from the bazaar. You'd saw the tape from the music cassettes, those were back in the days of the cassettes, hanging like shiny ribbons from the trees. Women accused of adultery, whether or not there was evidence or not, were stoned in public. And then women then were told not just to cover their heads, they were told to cover themselves from head to toe. They forced the burqa, the Taliban would be out in the streets whipping women if they were showing their ankles. And of course, that was the first time the Taliban said girls could not be educated, women could not go to university, women had to stay at home. And people were living day by day, often hand to mouth. So it was the kind of thing where rumors and reports went word to mouth in the market.