[9] His work applies systems theory to explore the intersection of multiple global crises, including climate, energy, financial, political, military, and others.
In The War on Truth, he argues that the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington were facilitated due to US government relations with key state-sponsors of al-Qaeda in the Middle East and North Africa such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and many others.
"[25] In The Oil Drum, Jeff Vail, a former US Department of Interior analyst specialising in energy infrastructure, "highly recommends" the book, concluding: "In the end, if the crisis of our modern civilization can be solved—or at least if the transition to whatever replaces it can be softened—then it will be through a syncretic understanding of the system of threats we face, such as that presented by Dr. Ahmed, that pave the way.
The impressive scope of the book owes to the fact that Ahmed is very deliberately a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scholar" - he questions whether there is "a clear and feasible notion of systematicity" that is "applied methodologically to the resolution of the identified crises".
[27] Following the publication of the book, Ahmed's chance meeting with filmmaker Dean Puckett led to the development of a feature documentary, The Crisis of Civilization.
[28] It was received positively by Hitcham Yezza, editor of Ceasefire magazine, for whom the "film is necessary viewing, not just for activists but for anyone who’s planning to hang around this planet for the foreseeable future".
[34] In 2005, he testified in US Congress about his investigative work on the events leading up to 9/11, where he argued that Western states had undermined national security by using Islamist militant groups for geopolitical purposes in parts of Central Asia and the Middle East.
[35] In 2018, Peter Oborne in the British Journalism Review described him as "one of the most courageous and interesting investigative reporters of our time" and "an expert on the environment and the war on terror ... His articles can make very uncomfortable reading for the media and political elite".
Those decisions were made to protect vested interests linked to US support of Islamist extremist networks like the Taliban and their state-sponsors, such as the Gulf kingdoms, rooted in Western oil dependency and intersecting financial investments.
[39]On the same day, The Independent on Sunday ran a news story on the whole episode, reporting that Ahmed "had not suggested there was a conspiracy [on 9/11], rather a 'dereliction of duty'", and that he had "used the word 'complicity' in a legal sense".
A December 2013 blog post by Kloor asserts: "Once someone starts down this civilization-is-collapsing road, like Guardian blogger Nafeez Ahmed, it's hard to stop.
"[45] Ahmed rejected this characterisation of his work in his Guardian blog: "Rather what we are seeing ... are escalating, interconnected symptoms of the unsustainability of the global system in its current form.
While the available evidence suggests that business-as-usual is likely to guarantee worst-case scenarios, simultaneously humanity faces an unprecedented opportunity to create a civilisational form that is in harmony with our environment, and ourselves.
He cites Ahmed’s work on 9/11 for making a major contribution to the systematic study of "State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADS)" that stands "in contrast to conspiracy theories": "The SCAD construct is designed to move beyond the debilitating, slipshod, and scattershot speculation of conspiracy theories by focusing inquiry on patterns in elite political criminality that reveal systemic weaknesses, institutional rivalries, and illicit networks".
[50][51][52] On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, Ahmed wrote a column for the Italian Left Magazine outlining outstanding questions that had not been sufficiently resolved by official inquiries.
In another 2015 essay, Ahmed expressed more in-depth criticisms of the 9/11 truth movement, pointing out that reasonable questions about how the World Trade Center towers collapsed did not justify believing in controlled demolition or conspiracy theories.
I particularly hate the very phrase 'inside job,' which is a meaningless bullshit euphemism... there is not a single alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11 blaming the state that does not itself contain holes and gaps.