In November 2001, my phone rang. The number was unknown, but the voice was familiar.

“The man is ready to meet you again. Can you come to Kabul?”

It was the Al-Qaeda messenger who had arranged my interview with Osama bin Laden months earlier in Kandahar. That interview turned out to be Bin Laden’s last before the 9/11 attacks.

By then, Afghanistan was collapsing under the US-led military invasion. Kabul was close to falling. Getting there was becoming more difficult and more dangerous.

But the call took me straight back to Kandahar, and to a warning I had heard there.

The coffin business will increase in the United States.

Baker Atyani

Abu Hafs Al-Masri, Al-Qaeda’s military chief, had been present during my interview with Bin Laden in his fortified compound.

He told me: “The coffin business will increase in the United States.”

There would be a “big surprise,” he said, and US and Israeli interests would be targeted.

A few months later, the 9/11 attacks happened.

As I watched the Twin Towers fall, the words I had heard in Kandahar reverberated in my mind.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed and many more were wounded. The United States responded with what became known as the global “war on terror.” George W. Bush told the world: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” He promised to “smoke them out.”

The Taliban regime that sheltered Al-Qaeda was toppled. Much of Al-Qaeda’s leadership was eliminated and the group was weakened. Bin Laden himself was killed in 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

But the “war on terror” went on.

Bin Laden’s followers have quoted him several times as saying he wanted the United States to come to Afghanistan. He said Al-Qaeda would lure the US there and trap it in a longer war.

On many occasions, he described Al-Qaeda’s role using the Arabic word muharridun, meaning inciters, or those who urge others to act.

The US came to Afghanistan with a NATO-led ISAF of 50 nations. The war lasted 20 years.

In the end, the US negotiated with the Afghan Taliban.

The Doha agreement was signed between the United States and a second party the document named as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, while adding that it is not recognized by the US as a state and is known as the Taliban. The Taliban had recovered, on paper at least, the name of the regime they lost 20 years earlier.

The US signed that agreement.

The Afghanistan war cost the US about $2.3 trillion, and 2,461 US service members were killed.

This “US comes first” approach was central to Al-Qaeda’s strategy under Bin Laden. His deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, told me they needed to “strike the head of the snake” — to weaken Washington so governments dependent on American power would weaken with it.

But militancy did not disappear. It grew and spread.

Pakistan chose to go along with US demands after 9/11 and entered the “war on terror.”

On September 13, 2001, then-US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage presented a seven-point list of demands to Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, in Washington, to be conveyed to Musharraf.

Armitage later recalled: “President Musharraf agreed to all the conditions, without exception.”

Pakistan’s tribal belt became a war zone. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan emerged. Pakistan is still fighting militancy today and dealing with the consequences of that war.

After Afghanistan, US-led forces invaded Iraq. After their withdrawal, Daesh emerged, seizing territory in Iraq and Syria.

The cost was not only military.

Brown University’s Costs of War project put the bill for the post-9/11 wars at about $8 trillion.

A new economy also emerged around counterterrorism.

Military contracts, private security companies, research centers, university programs, specialist departments, surveillance systems, consultants and a permanent class of experts all grew around the war.

A multitrillion-dollar business became the bread and butter of many.

In many places, the “war on terror” also became an instrument for pursuing broader political, military and commercial interests.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, its victims deserve remembrance and justice.

But so do the civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria and elsewhere who were killed or wounded during wars the United States and its allies waged in the name of 9/11.

A May 2023 report by the Costs of War project estimated that the total death toll in the post-9/11 war zones could be at least 4.5 million to 4.7 million, counting both those killed in the fighting and the far larger number who died from its reverberating effects.

I was sitting in that compound in Kandahar when Abu Hafs said: “The coffin business will increase in the United States.”

I looked toward Bin Laden.

He smiled and nodded.

As he was leaving the interview, Bin Laden told me: “We will invite you again.”

That November 2001 call from the familiar voice was the promised call.

I did not go.

Baker Atyani is a veteran journalist with two decades of covering militant groups in Asia. He was held captive for 18 months by the Abu Sayyaf Group in the southern Philippines.

X: @atyanibaker