UN News Service/D. Dickinson Memorial dedicated to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York. 9/11 through the eyes of UN staff: “The shock wave is still being felt” Peace and Security
Twenty-five years ago, an ordinary September morning began for three employees of the UN headquarters in New York, which, as it turned out, they would never forget…
As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, the Director of Electoral Assistance at the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Michelle Griffin, and the Editor-in-Chief of the UN News Service, Victor Evans-Harvey, recall the day that changed their lives and the work of the United Nations. UN News Service/J. Wang From left to right: Victor Evans-Harvey, Michelle Griffin and Stephane Dujarric. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Victor Evans-Harvey was driving to work at the UN. He saw the smoke over Manhattan, but was confident that no matter what happened at the Twin Towers, the UN would work. “I saw the smoke, but I still went to the subway station – I had to go to work,” he says. “I thought that nothing would change in New York and we would work as usual.” Evans-Harvey lived in downtown Jersey City, which is on the opposite side of the Hudson River from Manhattan. He saw the Twin Towers from his window every day – they were part of the familiar cityscape. When he reached the UN headquarters, it became clear to him that this would not be an ordinary day: “I was stopped by a security officer. He asked: “Where are you going??” I answered: “To work.” He said, “Unfortunately, you won’t get there today.” Photo UN/T. Engberg As part of the new security measures, on September 28, 2001, UN Headquarters conducted a building evacuation drill. On the 37th floor of the UN Secretariat building, overlooking the waters of the East River, Michelle Griffin observed the same scene as Evans-Harvey, but from a different angle. While on her way to work, she saw that the first of the World Trade Center towers was on fire. “When I left the house, I heard a neighbor shout: “That’s where my office is!” “I went outside and saw a huge hole in the facade of the first tower,” Griffin recalls. According to her, at that moment, many still thought that there had been an accidental collision with the building of a small plane. By the time she reached the 37th floor, the second tower had already been hit, and it became clear that this might be a deliberate attack. Despite the current situation, Griffin and her colleagues held a morning meeting. They discussed the situation in Afghanistan: two days earlier, the leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was killed. The attack on him was organized by al-Qaeda. Soon the scale of what was happening became obvious. Evacuation began along the building’s stairs. Cellular communications were overloaded, making it difficult for people to call home. Griffin’s husband miraculously managed to contact her, and he said that one of the twin towers had collapsed. “As we went down, the news was carried along the stairs from floor to floor,” Griffin recalls. “I remember the Chief of Staff of the Secretary General and his protocol staff discussing whether to continue the planned events, including the ceremony of ringing the Peace Bell. In the end, we still evacuated. I walked to my house. At this time, crowds of people were moving away from the destroyed towers.” At this time, in the UN headquarters building, Stephane Dujarric was preparing a news report for the Secretary-General. “There was panic inside the building – there were reports that another plane could be sent to the UN headquarters,” the press secretary recalls. “It was therefore decided that Kofi Annan would remain in his residence. My then manager took me with him to a meeting of senior employees: they discussed what statement to give and what to do next. Then he turned to the young staff and said: “You better go home.” Dujarric’s wife had already called several times, begging him to leave the headquarters. Their first child was then less than a year old. Public transportation stopped, and Dujarric and a colleague walked to the north of Manhattan. “On the way, we started meeting people coming from the center,” Dujarric says. “They were covered in ash from head to toe and looked almost like ghosts.” Eventually they saw a bus pulling up to a stop. No one had change for travel, but the driver invited everyone to come inside for free. Photo UN/E. Debebe George W. Bush (left) and Secretary General Kofi Annan (center) stand at the site of the World Trade Center after the September 11 attacks. Returning home, people still did not understand what had happened and what would happen next. Griffin and her husband sheltered a colleague who lived alone: “No one wanted to be alone at that moment.” The supermarket on the ground floor of her building was crowded: residents were buying groceries en masse, since no one knew when city life would return to normal. In 2001, New York did not yet have smartphones and social networks in the modern sense. Everywhere on the streets there were notices of missing persons: “Have you seen this man?” Evans-Harvey recalls one strange episode that he remembered for the rest of his life: “The explosions threw a huge amount of paper into the air. Small fragments swirled like snowflakes in a souvenir glass ball. Against the background of the bright blue sky it looked almost unreal – especially since the day was unusually clear.” Photo UN/E. Debebe Ruins of the World Trade Center. For many years, Griffin began her mornings by jogging around the Twin Towers. Usually she would go around the high-rise buildings and run further along the river, but that morning the run did not take place: “I decided to stay at home, I don’t know why. For a long time afterwards I blamed myself for this. This could be my last goodbye. I really loved this route, I loved running. And then everything disappeared, everything was covered with ashes…” As already mentioned, the attack completely disrupted the UN’s work schedule. The ceremony of ringing the Peace Bell, scheduled for September 11, was postponed to the 14th. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the heads of UN agencies began issuing statements in memory of the victims. The terrorist attacks instantly changed the Organization’s political agenda. Griffin, who was involved in political issues, almost immediately focused her efforts on Afghanistan. It was a country where al-Qaeda’s leadership was hiding and power was in the hands of the Taliban. “The Secretary-General appointed one of our best coordinators, Lakhdar Brahimi, to head the UN mission in Afghanistan to help chart the political path for that country after international intervention,” she says. This proved to be a task of enormous complexity. “Over time, it became clear that the road would be long and, ultimately, It was a failure,” Griffin admits, “but at the very beginning it all seemed like an incredibly important mission.” She was able to return to work at the UN building because she lived in Manhattan – and she had roller skates: “I felt like I had to keep working, no matter what.” Dujarric recalls another almost surreal moment that reminded him: the work of the UN must continue. In the days when New York was still trying to comprehend the scale of the destruction, a journalist from Cyprus called him and asked how the attack on New York might affect the upcoming negotiations on the Cyprus settlement. Dujarric remembers that he wanted to answer rudely: “Thousands of people have just died in New York. Maybe we can think about something else for a minute?” But this seemingly inappropriate question from a journalist accurately reflected the reality: even when all of New York is plunged into mourning, conflicts and crises in other parts of the world do not stop. © Eric Ganz Light installation in New York dedicated to the memory of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In the days following the attack, there was an extraordinary sense of unity at the UN. Griffin recalls: “New Yorkers showed incredible solidarity, and it was the same among diplomats and UN staff – mutual support, participation, concern.” On September 11, diplomats from different countries, who usually disagree on many issues, found themselves witnessing the same tragedy. They saw the same distorted urban landscape and experienced a common shock. In the first hours after the attack, the Security Council spoke with one voice. The consequences of the September 11 terrorist attacks went beyond the shock of the first day. The attack changed the work of the UN in the fight against terrorism and set off a chain of political and military events that reshaped international relations for decades. For Griffin, these changes are especially noticeable in the example of Afghanistan and the way international mechanisms of cooperation have evolved. For Evans-Harvey, 9/11 was the moment when UN staff became much closer to each other: “It was a special time. We who worked at headquarters truly felt like one big family. And yet it was an extremely difficult period.” For Dujarric, the unity that the Security Council showed after the attack stands in stark contrast to what is happening now: “There is nothing left of the cohesion of the Security Council in the first days after 9/11… In my opinion, it is now in the most divided state that I have seen in my 26 years at the UN.” The UN spokesman believes that the echo of 9/11 continues sound, and we see the long chain reaction set in motion by that tragedy: “It was like an explosion. Its shock wave is still felt today.”
“You won’t get there today”
News was transmitted from floor to floor
“You better go home”
“Snowflakes” on the blue sky
A routine that suddenly became a memory
Work at the UN continued
Solidarity and support
The tragedy and its consequences