There are some days in history that we remember because we read about them. There are others we remember because we lived through them. For me, September 11, 2001 belongs firmly in the second category.
Twenty-five years later, I can still remember the shock, the confusion and the deep sense of vulnerability that came over me that day. I was a PhD student at the University of Natal in South Africa. I had my own academic concerns, my research and the ordinary pressures of student life. Nothing prepared me for what I was about to watch unfold on television.
Two hijacked commercial airliners crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City in the United States of America on the morning of September 11, 2001. Hijackers also crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, U.S. military headquarters just outside Washington, D.C. Then, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, because passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers
I watched the attacks on CNN for much of that day.
At first, like millions of people around the world, I struggled to understand what I was seeing. The images seemed unreal. There was something almost impossible about the sight of aircraft crashing into buildings, smoke rising into the sky and people running for safety. Then came the second plane, and with it the realisation that this was not an accident. It was a terrorist attack.
I stayed with the television.
The images were repeated again and again, but repetition did not make them easier to absorb. If anything, it made them more disturbing. Every replay seemed to deepen the horror. People jumping from the towers of 110 floors…
The collapse of the towers was particularly difficult to comprehend. These were enormous buildings, symbols of power and modernity, and suddenly they were gone.
But beyond the buildings and the scale of the destruction were the people.
People who had gone to work expecting an ordinary morning. People who had boarded planes without knowing they would never return home. People who were suddenly trapped, frightened and desperately trying to escape. Families who, somewhere else, were waiting for loved ones who would never come back.
Watching all of this from South Africa, I felt both close to the tragedy and impossibly far away from it. I was not in New York. I did not know anyone personally who was in the World Trade Center. Yet the events felt intimate because television brought the horror directly into my room. CNN provided a continuous stream of images and updates, and I found myself watching for hours, trying to make sense of something that seemed beyond explanation.
There was fear, but there was also uncertainty. Would there be more attacks? Would other countries be targeted? Was this the beginning of something much larger?
As a student of International Relations, I was also watching the events through another lens. I understood that terrorism was not simply an act of violence against individuals. It could alter foreign policy, reshape international relations and influence the behaviour of states for years to come.
And that is exactly what happened.
September 11 transformed international politics. Security became an even more dominant concern in global affairs. The United States launched what became known as the “War on Terror”. Afghanistan became the first major theatre of the new war, followed later by the invasion of Iraq. Borders, airports, intelligence systems and national security policies were reshaped. The language of terrorism became central to international diplomacy.
For me, however, the impact of September 11 is not only something I understand intellectually. It is something I remember emotionally.
There is a difference between studying a historical event and witnessing it, even from a television screen. Academic distance has its limits. I can teach or write about terrorism, foreign policy and international security, but there is a personal memory attached to September 11 that no textbook can remove.
Even today, when I see footage from that morning, I experience something of the same heaviness I felt then.
Perhaps it is because the images have become permanently connected to that particular moment in my life: being a PhD student at the University of Natal, sitting and watching CNN, trying to understand how something so terrible could happen.
September 11 also changed the way I thought about vulnerability. We often imagine violence as something that happens somewhere else, to someone else. That day demonstrated how quickly a seemingly distant event can become personal. Sitting in South Africa, thousands of kilometres away from New York and Washington, I still felt the shock of an event unfolding on another continent.
Perhaps that is one of the most enduring lessons of September 11: in an interconnected world, distance does not necessarily protect us from history.
Today, September 11, 2026, marks 25 years since the attacks. A whole generation has grown up with September 11 as a historical event rather than a lived experience. For those of us who watched it unfold in real time, however, it remains something different. We remember where we were. We remember the television pictures. We remember the disbelief. We remember the silence that followed the shock.
And we remember the feeling that the world had suddenly become a more frightening place.
I still find September 11 traumatic.
I do not say that because I want to remain trapped in the past. I say it because some historical events leave an emotional imprint that does not disappear simply because the years move on. Memory can be persistent. Sometimes it returns through an image, a date, a news report or an anniversary.
For me, September 11 is one of those memories.
Twenty-five years later, I still remember sitting in front of CNN, watching the attacks unfold from South Africa. I still remember the horror of those images. I still remember wondering what kind of world was emerging from the ashes of that day.
And, even after all these years, September 11 still lives with me.
Olubukola. S. Adesina is a Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan
