Content warning: this episode describes the aftermath of 11 September 2001, including torture and civilian deaths.
How does a country go from the sympathy of the entire world to invading a nation that had nothing to do with the attack?
What does a blank cheque from the UN Security Council actually buy?
And if torture only counts as torture when the pain is equivalent to organ failure, what exactly is everything below that line?
Peter Frankopan follows the response from NATO's Article 5 to the caves of Tora Bora, while Afua Hirsch — then a trainee human rights barrister — describes what the war on terror did to British law.
Within twenty-four hours, NATO invokes Article 5 for the first and only time in its history. Within three days, Congress passes a sixty-word resolution with a single vote against it; it has since been used to justify American military operations in more than twenty countries. Afghanistan is meant to be narrow and quick, and for five weeks it looks like it. Then bin Laden walks over the mountains into Pakistan, Washington's attention swings to a country with no connection to the attacks, and Colin Powell goes to the United Nations holding a small glass vial. Ten years later he is found living a mile from Pakistan's military academy — and by then the war no longer needs him. Part two of three, twenty-five years on.
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[0:00] The scorecard: two invasions, $8 trillion, 900,000 dead, and the Taliban back in Kabul
[3:56] Nous sommes tous américains — Le Monde, the Brandenburg Gate, and candles in Tehran
[5:39] Article 5, invoked once in NATO's history, to defend America from nineteen men
[12:37] Five weeks to Kabul — then a cave complex at Tora Bora, and bin Laden walks away
[18:53] \"These are facts. They're not statements.\" Colin Powell at the United Nations
[26:32] Afua's first day as a pupil barrister, and a man accused of training the hijackers
[33:19] The torture memos: pain that only counts if it's equivalent to organ failure
[41:50] A compound in Abbottabad, a mile from Pakistan's military academy
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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