25 years after 9/11, a world reshaped by the attacks

The Sep 11, 2001 attacks transformed air travel, set in motion wars whose consequences are still being felt, and changed how some communities in the United States were viewed and treated.

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11 Sep 2026 04:45PM

NEW YORK: Facial recognition, baggage scanning and passenger screenings are now an everyday part of air travel.

But much of the security surrounding modern aviation can be traced to one morning 25 years ago.

For those who remember the world before Sep 11, 2001, much of life today can seem almost unrecognisable.

HOW 9/11 CHANGED AIR TRAVEL

Before the attacks, aviation security looked very different.

Passengers could carry bottles of liquids through security, while some knives with blades under four inches were permitted on board aircraft under US rules at the time.

“A lot of people think 9/11 was a screening failure. It really wasn't. It was a policy failure,” said Jeffrey Price, professor of aviation and aerospace sciences at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

“A lot of those items on a plane, had those been discovered at the checkpoint when the hijackers came through, they simply would have been given right back to them, because that's what the policy said,” he told CNA.

That rapidly changed after the attacks.

In November that same year, the US Congress created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), moving responsibility for passenger screening away from airlines and towards federal control.

That led to stringent new measures, such as the screening of all checked baggage, the expansion of the Federal Air Marshal Service and the reinforcement of cockpit doors.

The changes introduced in the US were eventually reflected in aviation security measures around the world.

“We had the impetus to do it. It was our country that got attacked,” Price said.

“But as the international bodies that provide standards for aviation, operations, aviation security, International Civil Aviation Organization …  as their standards changed, all the other countries had to come up to speed with that.”

AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ AND THE RISE OF ISLAMIC STATE

The impact of 9/11 extended far beyond airports.

Within weeks, the US was at war in Afghanistan, where American forces hunted Osama bin Laden, the leader of terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda, who orchestrated the attacks.

Less than two years later, then-US President George W Bush turned to Iraq as part of the wider War on Terror, accusing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government of pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

On Mar 20, 2003, Bush announced the start of military action. The invasion toppled Saddam, but no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found.

The resulting power struggle created an opportunity for Islamist militants seeking to establish control in the country.

During this period, Al-Qaeda in Iraq became a major force in the insurgency. It later became known as the Islamic State of Iraq.

When neighbouring Syria descended into civil war after 2011, the group expanded there. In 2013, it became the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The group went on to carry out attacks that killed and wounded thousands of people around the world.

Today, thousands of families with alleged links to Islamic State remain in camps across Syria, while its affiliates have grown in strength in parts of Africa, including the Sahel.

A NEW ERA OF SURVEILLANCE

America's response to 9/11 also changed the way its intelligence agencies operated.

“Terrorism had been a function that the intelligence community had looked at for many years prior to that, especially in the years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,” said David Viola, an adjunct professor at the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“But it was never a ‘priority one’. It wasn't even priority two or three.”

“Following September 11th, counterterrorism and exploring terrorism became almost the sole focus of the intelligence community,” he added.

At the same time, technological advances have transformed how surveillance is carried out.

“Surveillance has become much easier, frankly, because of the advances in technology and also because we as citizens are more willingly sharing much more of our information,” Viola said.

Social media, smartphones that track their users and the widespread use of public surveillance cameras have also made it easier for authorities to access information, he added.

SUSPICION AND BACKLASH AGAINST COMMUNITIES

The attacks also changed the lives of many Muslims, South Asians, Sikhs and other communities in the US.

In the aftermath of 9/11, members of these communities became targets of suspicion, hate and violence.

Suman Raghunathan, an immigrant rights and policy advocate, remembers the change.

“There were attacks on houses of worship spanning South Asian, Arab and Sikh communities. There was a huge level of hate and violence."

She also remembers experiencing that suspicion personally in New York.

"I lived in Queens, in a very immigrant-heavy neighbourhood, and I went to the fruit market at the end of my block. And it was the first time I had ever experienced people looking at me in a particular way, clearly intended to convey their suspicion of me."

Raghunathan believes that the backlash after 9/11 helped pave the way for policies affecting immigrant and minority communities in the years that followed, pointing to the 2017 travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries and more recent immigration enforcement in the US.

She added: "All the backlash that continued to manifest after September 11th has opened the door to what is happening today, to a level of racial profiling promulgated by the federal government that is intended to chip away at the rights, the sense of safety, and the sense of belonging of tens of millions of Americans.”