Nothing has changed since. I do not believe the official view that it was the Muslims who bombed the Pentagon and destroyed the World Trade Centre. Osama bin Laden is the fall guy here, for he jumped on it to pursue his own agenda, which is to destroy the Saudi and other Muslim governments who do not follow the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam. But the demonisation has begun. So it is in Iraq. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein are proved to be dead. Afghanistan and Iraw are in the throes of a guerrilla war that must eventually transcend into a civil war. Imperial proconsuls and their stooges rule, frightened of their shadows and threatening mayhem of their attackers. A sideshow of this is this regional anti-terrorism centre. It can do not but nothing to resolve the fundamental discrepancy between theory and practice in this new Game.

If anything undermined Western confidence in the past two decades, it is the Iran revolution, the Afghanistan regime under the Taliban, the Iraq regime under President Saddam Hussein, the isolationist North Korean regime. Add to this the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers in New York, and the rise of virulent Islamic groups, and for the first time in centuries there is a deliberate and systematic challenge to Western hegemony. It is run as a collective hurt, one the West does not understand, and which it insists on cataloguing, often irrelevantly, into easily digestible intellectual pigeonholes. But the United States can forget about pulling its troops in Iraq for, let us say, Christmas, ten years hence. It begins to make the mistakes it made aplenty in Vietnam. It does not begin to understand what makes Iraq tick, that democracy cannot be imposed in chaos. Afghanistan, for all its hype, is led by an American citizen and forced upon the people. So would Iraq if the Pentagon had its way.

That had, in other words, to destroy Iraq in order to save it. It had done that twice in the past: in Japan and in Afghanistan. In Japan, the United States wisely worked with the existing regime, the changes made acceptabed because of the ingrained Buddhist belief in bowing down to the victor. That helped the US along but that is changing. The Japan today is more confident and assertive now because the policy makers, born after the San Francisco Treaty in 1953, which formally ended the war with Japan, have no mental baggage of Buddhist subservience to the United States. In Afghanistan, it went in to destroy the government led by its proteges, the Taliban, bombed the country with such bombs that decades after, children would be destroyed by it, put a puppet administration in place, and left. In Iraq, it would have to stay, whether it likes to or not, and face constant antagonism from the people.

How else would one explain Zam's reaction to a comment by a Malaysian analyst, on BBC, no less, that more Malaysians back the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq than the government would have us believe? He wants to micromanage the reaction, that all protest be channelled through an organisation the BN controls, and nothing outside it is allowed. The government is afraid that if these protests are allowed to fester, it could turn vicious and anti-government. What makes Zam uncomfortable is that the English-education, especially non-Malaysians, think it is time that the Anglo-American forces defang the Muslim countries. It does not matter if it is Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Libya, they should be put in their place. It is the built-in bias against Islam, a view strengthened by how it is officially practiced in Malaysia. It is also to tell the government it does not function, and is one way to show their distaste for it. This is well understood in the higher ranks of the BN coalition government. It is, in other words, a form of protest over their local difficulties.

President Bush and his bumbling group of right-wing advisers, and his principal spokesman, US secretary of defense, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, does not understand this new dynamic, angered all and sundry, in Europe and elsewhere, with their threats to punish if they did not cave in to often unreasonable demands. It behaves now as the Soviet Union once. The Soviet Union had, without doubt, the most powerful military machine on earth, far superior to the United States', but Washington won the Cold War because it relied on diplomacy, example and soft touch to overcome it. The Soviet Union plunged into a quagmire in Afghanistan and self-destructed because military power alone cannot sustain an empire. Now as the world's sole superpower, it makes the Soviet Union's mistakes, believes in brute force, not diplomacy and subtle pressures, and behave as a bully as Moscow once did. Its Afghanistan could well be Iraq.

So it did not surprise that even before the huge bomb blast in Bali on 12 October 2002, which killed and wounded 500, mostly Australian, tourists and destroyed the area, it was quickly decided it was the Al Qaida through its alleged local offshoot, the Jemaah Islamiyah. Singapore quickly found local Malay Muslims planning to blow up the US embassy and local government establishments. It even found some of those it arrested to have had links with Al Qaida before it was established. Several had visited Afghanistan and visited Muslim groups there, including one led by Osama bin Laden, at a time when the CIA and other US government agencies funded them to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. In Malaysia, the government has arrested several who had studied in Pakistani madrasas. All are linked to the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS). It has not admitted that the governent, no less, encouraged this study at Pakistan madrasahs to reduce the dependence on those who went to the Middle East to study.

So it does not matter if Mr Howard meant what he said or said what he meant, that Canberra considers it fair game, in present circumstances, to order pre-emptive strikes on other countries harbouring terrorists. The countries he had in mind are not Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran or even Pakistan. Nor South America nor Africa. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines took Mr Howard to task, but spoiled their case in needless rhetoric. In this hysteria, Malaysia and Indonesia are accused of harbouring Islamic terrorists; Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have Islamic irridentists fighting for their own homeland -- in southern Thailand, Acheh and Mindanao, respectively. Australia's security fear for decades have been the unwashed Asian hordes in countries to its north who, it believes in its simplistic and racist view, to unsettle its middle class values and existence. The fear is raised a notch by now targetting the Muslim terrorist hordes.

There is horror at the carnage terror brings only when civilians from the West are targets. The war in Vietnam, for instance, was in one sense Washington's war on civilians, the effects of which are seen to this day. Who cared about them, then and now? So the civilian casualties of bombings and state-induced terror in Afghanistan, Palestine, East Timor, Nicaragua, Turkey, Iraq, Kashmir. The list is endless. And lest we forget, the United States's most important terrorist strike of the United States in its path to super power status: the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was all but ready to surrender when the bombs were dropped, more it turns out to test the weapons than to force Japan into submission. American wars since had an important codicil of testing new weapons. It was in Iraq, in Afghanistan, now Iraq about to again. More frightening is Washington's view that, as the sole military global superpower, can annoy its allies as it pleases. Now its sheriffs demand that right as well.

Abu Bakar Basyir, the man at the centre of the Islamic storm in Indonesia after the Bali bombings, ran a religious school in Negri Sembilan, as did the other shadowy figure, Hambali. Canberra officially invited some JI leaders, amongst others, whom they now want destroyed, including possibly Abu Bakar Basyir and Hambali, into Australia in the early 1990s so they could persuade Australian Muslim citizens to back Washington's plans for a militant theological campaign against the Russian-backed modernisation in Afghanistan. But after 11 September, as Dr Mahathir's campaign to be accepted as the only accepted and acceptable Islamic leader in Malaysia faltered, Kuala Lumpur cracks down as hard on Al Qaedah and its offshoots as Canberra. The fear and self-doubt in both is clear.

However one rationalises what happened over the weekend: if the Chechen rebels decide to take their war for national integrity to Moscow, as the Palestinians did in Israel, it is proof yet again that an ideal or idea can take on the mightiest army on earth. The Vietnamese would be happy to give you chapter and verse on that. One has to look at the Chechen struggle in historical terms. The Irish got their state after five hundred years. The Bangladeshis after 40. Other battles like these go on. In every continent in the world. Some are Muslim, some not. The Acehnese battle for independence is more than a century old. What drives each drives the Chechen. When that drive is hijacked, or sidetracked, by fiat, as now, blood must flow in torrents. The US is caught out because it would rather its allies shed their blood instead. The shedding of its blood forces it to retreat: Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia. The panic reflected over the snipers reflects it. Russia is prepared to shed more of its enemies' blood than its own, but could they sustain it if this is reversed? They could not in Afghanistan. Could they in Chechnya? I doubt it

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, said in New Delhi on 18 October 2002, Malaysia could be the next target following bombings in Bali and the Philippines. He has reason to worry. And he cannot rein in journalists overseas as he can in Malaysia, and he has to answer questiolns lobbed at him. Malaysia supports the United States in the latter's global war against terror, and Al Qaeda. She targets Malaysian groups whom she accuses of having trained in Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban. He does not mention his government once encouraged to do so. He told a news conference during a lightning visit to the Indian capital that "terrorists respect no borders. They can operate in any country. Even the countries least involved might find themselves targets of terrorist attacks."

No one asks why the Bali bombings happened. But all are quick to link it with the global enemy of choice: Osama and his ubiquitous Al Qaeda. But people are arrested today for their involvement with Osama bin Laden and his network at a time when they were bankrolled by Washington and the CIA. As recently as 1999, the State Department, in a Congressional hearing, described the Taliban not as fundamentalist Muslims but as conservative Muslims it could deal with. Yet two years later they had to be destroyed as Washington perfected its 'regime change' model. In the 1980s, the US backed Osama bin Laden and his fundamentalist crusade so they could be unleashed on the Russians in Afghanistan. When he and his organisation turned their fundamentalism on the US, they became the ultimate evil. But as you sow, so you reap. Suddenly, the officially-encouraged activities that led many a Malaysian Muslim to cavort with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan at the time when Washington approved it, to detention under the Internal Security Act when they became the enemy. As others elsewhere in the region.

The US went to war with terror when it bombed Afghanistan a year ago. It is still there, mired deeply into a quagmire as surely as the British and the Soviet Union before it. The Taliban and Al Qaida remain potent threats to Afghanistan, Pakistan and US interests. The Pakistan elections over the weekend put all three on notice. How else could the strong showing of the fundamentalist Muslim parties be looked at?

It reflects national impotence. In every reference to 11 September 2001 attacks, there is the ritual genuflection to the 3,000 who died there. On Oct 7, United States aircraft bombed Afghanistan in its search for Osama bin Laden and his network, killing, according to a University of New Hampshire estimate, 5,000, but other agencies say 200,000 more died as a direct consequence of that. Would anyone stop to pause for a prayer on that day?

One year later, we do not know who did it, though theories abound, often as "informed comment" or policy pronouncements from Washington. The shock on the US body politic is the worse for it couches its continuing impotence in bravado and threats. It went into Afghanistan in supreme confidence, certain only in its uncertainties, that untested military weaponry would smoke out the man the world now holds responsible for the carnage. Osama bin Laden, the son of the Saudi billionaire, should be rooted out. He is in Afghanistan. So it attacks Afghanistan, and gets sucked deeper into the quagmire there. Washington cannot now pull out of Afghanistan at will, now can it afford to stay. Either option ensures only an inexhaustable toll of unacceptable body bags.

What difference is there then between Malaysia and the lawless that passes for law in Afghanistan? It is but a matter of degree. Not so long ago, the whole country would have landed on you for saying it. Today, the Prime Minister promises to investigate a rape. I can assure you nothing would come out of it. The rape, like so many in the Klang Valley, would not be solved, not can it. The next time your car is towed to a police station, you should be happy and overjoyed if it is returned to you in one piece in the same condition it was towed away.

Haji Qadir's Death And The Great Game In Afghanistan

So, it does not surprise that UMNO leaders are worried of the future. Some perceptive ones think the BN cannot rule out a coalition government after the next general election. If anything, the war on terrorism united the Malay in the ground with PAS more than with UMNO. The government's attempts to use it to excoriate PAS fell flat because it spread that message to keep the non-Malay on his side; the Malay saw the message differently, leading to the problems Dato' Seri Abdullah faces now when he wants the Malay to back him. The short TV clips on TV1, TV2 and TV3 showing the Taliban excesses in Afghanistan, including one of executing women, and of the Memali incident, got the Malays even more riled against UMNO.

Malaysia is now described as a terrorist and militant nation, those involved in the terrorist attacks in the United States did their planning here, and it now threatens to sink him. The US wants Mr Yazid Sifaat extradited to Washington for his role in this planning. Malaysia refused. When the Taliban in Kabul refused to hand over Mr Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, the US bombed Afghanistan. What could Malaysia do if the US decides it wants Mr Yazid so badly that it bombs Malaysia as surely as she did Afghanistan?

Afghanistan has tripped more powerful nations than the United States. Since Alexander the Great conquered parts of it in the 4th century BC, none, including Great Britain and the Soviet Union, could hold on to the country for long. Its history is a continuing tale of ultimate defeat of the foreign conqueror.

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