India does not wield the big stick when it should. The Indian overseas tries to keep himself apart from the local Indian, and is usually arrogant, even dismissive of the Indian here. Elsewhere in the region, the Indian is tolerated by the local governments, even if they themselves are Indian in their culture. Many Indonesians have Sanskrit names, Bali practices a Hinduism that disappeared with Adi Sankaracharya in the 8th century. The Rama legend is theirs too, and the Balinese often say the Indians took it from them. As one Indonesian professor of Sanskrit once explained to me: "Islam is my religion; Sanskrit my culture." The state is guided by the Panchashila, the five principles, and a take off from the Panchatantra, the five arts. The former Indonesian president, Megawati, was given her name by an Indian politicians, Biju Patnaik. The present president's name, Yudhoyono, is Sanskrit although he is a Muslim.

AL-QAEDA SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE blamed for bombing three Amman hotels. Abu Musab Al-Zarkawi, who is believed to be dead, is the agent directly responsible, the television news and talk shows try desperately to inform the world that this bombings are the trade mark of Al-Qaeda. There is great effort to blame Al-Qaeda for the bombing although there is no hard evidence. But the United States and others have decided that Al-Qaeda is responsible. And that gets world wide play. But is it? Jordan is a soft target who could cause mayhem in the West's war on terror. Iraq is to the left of it, Syria to the north, Israel to the East. It need not be Al-Qaeda or the believed dead Al-Zarkawi, it could be any of the myriad of countries and organisations that could be responsibe. It could also be the West, which is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which we are told can investigate it, is rushing to Amman to aid the Jordanian authorities. But is the FBI going there as the Australian police authorities are going to Bali to help the Indonesian authorities investigate the bombing in Bali: to remove the evidence of their involvement?

Similarly in Bali. The emphasis is on how badly off the Balinese are, and the tourists, mostly Australians, who are put to such terrible inconvenience, by being bombed out of their revelry. No one stops to think why they are bombed. The news is about Balinese who lose their tourist dollars, and the news wring us our tears, and makes us not to think. But the Bali bombing is not accepted as an Indonesian attack. It is to get Indonesia on the anti-Islamic terror bandwagon. There is widespread news on Malaysians taking part, and we are told soon enough that they have escaped. We are shown on television the sabotuers leaving the scene in grainy pictures, and we concentrate our attention on news about the saboteurs, and the impact on the locals and the tourists, who have had an idyllic existence destroyed by the bombers. It did not work as those in authority intended. As is well known, cameras can lie. Early this morning (05 October 2005), the Bali bombing is still news on CNN and BBC. The Western reporters are sceptical of Al Qaeda or its fraternal cousins responsible. So CNN is forced to bring on Rohan Gunaratne, a questionable security expert, to show the Al Qaeda or Jemah Islamiyah is responsible. No one has yet told us why it took place, or given a credible explanation why the bombing should be in Bali, other than it is Hindu and a popular Holiday resort of lumpen Australians. But to have Al Qaeda or Jemah Islamiyah conduct two or its four alleged bombings in Indonesia in Bali suggests that the organisation operates to make the Western powers look good. But as I wrote on 04 October 2005, they used bombs normally available to governments. What the Bali bombings showed is that they have an arsenal as powerful as the Western powers. That may not be correct, but it leaves us wondering if the Western powers are a match to them.

THE EMAILS AND TELEPHONE CALLS I received after I wrote the piece yesterday (3 October 2005) led me thinking about the Bali bombings three years ago. I did not have the guts to write about it then. It remains a theory, as what I wrote yesterday is, but they remain plausible theories. It will be years before they are proved right, by someone looking at the causes of the Bali bombings. Historians, and journalists, looking for what happened miss the causes, often lie. They look at the dominant event, and interview people of their recollection of it, and miss the larger story, which is why it took place. If you read Patrick Keith's book, Ousted, the story of an insider's account of why Singapore was ousted from Malaysia in 1965, you get the impression that it was wholly the Tengku's fault and Mr Lee Kuan Yew was blameless. Much like the Iraq war, where the Americans are blameless and insurgents are guilty of fighting their invader. But the two men represented two different points of view. Singapore would have remained in Malaysia had Mr Lee Kuan Yew behaved then as he behaves now. Patrick Keith, who left Malaysia for Australia forty ears ago, wrote the book, which is pubiished in Singapore and (not yet) released in Malaysia - the Special Branch has not cleared it for distribution) as a senior government official involved in the drama. But Singapore would have left Malaysia in 1965, because Mr Lee did not understand the Tengku, and it was the Tengku who held the cards. And he put in charge of the negotiations those who wanted Singapore to be out of Malaysia. All this remains a theory, although books are coming out by historians and journalists who suggest the Tengku's raison d'ete was correct and Mr Lee's wrong.

TUN MAHATHIR GOT IT RIGHT. He did not apportion blame on the Bali bombings to Al Queda or the Jemayah Islamiyah or to other Muslim groups. But the ease with which both these organisations were blamed, and that this has been on the news particularly round-the- clock ever since the bombings last week, and the defensive posture of the Indonesian government followed by the British blaming the Australians for not letting it know of its 'early warning' to Australian revellers in Bali, and the constant berating of those who would listen that Al-Qaeda was involved, suggests something has gone wrong. The Western governments, or its intelligence agencies, are behind it, and keep at it because the people on the ground in Indonesia and elsewhere do not believe the events in Bali last week. The United States (and Australia, among others) created incidents in South Vietnam in the 1960s, blaming it on the Vietcong. There is no unanimity among Western reporters that Al Qaeda was involved, Jason Burke of the Guardian thought that Al Qaeda could not be involved, and the discordant voices in the Western media is matched by the ordinary people around the world, Muslim or otherwise, having doubts on the official story of the Bali bombing.

He faces the same position that President Nixon, then a Pepsi Cola general counsel, found in Vietnam in 1966. I was with Reuters news agency then and was reporting his visit to the higlands. A boy, who looked 13, was brought to the great man's presence. He was told that he was before the great white man, who could American president before long. The boy looked at him, rolled his tongue, and spat at him, with his spittal landing on the future President's nose. The UPI photographer, who unlike today were free lancers, took a photograph of the event, My memory must be failing me, for I had always thought that the UPI photographer was Martin Stuart Fox, who now lives in Bali, but I was told later on by Fox himself that it was not he. I reminded the UPI photographer that the photograph he took was worth its weight in gold, and he should view it as such. When we were returning to Saigon by helicopter, the UPI photographer made the mistake of putting the camera on the seat, the open helicopter made a shake and the camera with its weight in gold disappeared in the forests beneath. President Nixon was elected in 1968 and 1972, ended the war in Vietnam, opened bridges with China, and resigned.

Last week the United States announced a total of 468-million US dollars in development assistance for Indonesia, about a third of that goes to schools. In the wake of the Bali bombing the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said a lack of funds for education in Indonesia and other Asian countries attracted students to colleges teaching a radical Islamic philosophy.

What surprised me then was how widespread this view in Europe of Libya's involvement in Mindanao, with Malaysia in the centre. But the ties soured and began with the death of a Libyan agent under Special Branch interrogation. Libya would not admit the man was its citizen, insisted the Libyan passport he carried was a fake. Malaysia took to going on its own to help Muslim groups fighting for independence, and distanced itself from Libya and other countries prepared to help. The rogue elements of those programme still continue to work independently, but this continued doubt of Malaysia's involvement in Muslim irredentist groups overseas refuse to go away, especially when Tun Mahathir Mohamed was Prime Minister. Many of those accused in the war on terror met frequently in Malaysia, several established religious schools, especially several of those accused in the Bali bombings. Malaysians during the Kosovo crisis sent several plane loads of weapons for the Kosovo rebels, using South American charter planes and weapons bought from such places as Lebanon, and transhipped through Karachi. It is in the light of Malaysia's past actions that raises doubts of its latest caper in Hong Kong.

What is worse is that President Bush flounders over Iraq, is defensive so he could be re-elected, and knows he has done more damage to the United States than the Muslim ever could. The Muslim forces, disparate and diffused, are united in the conviction that they are right, are on the march. Washington knows it, and can do little to prevent it. The anger rises every time Washington and its war-on-terror ally makes a needless point. Indonesia, which did not have a fundamentalist Islamic image, almost certainly now has, helped in no small measure by Australia's political decision to rub Indonesia's noses into the ground over the Bali bombing. Countries do not forget a cultural hurt like this, as Canberra would no doubt find out years or decade hence.

AN AUSTRALIAN TV STATION AIRS a documentary which in these days of Washington's war on terror bears little or no relationship to the truth. The United States' sheriff in Asia has to intrude into the region with a blunderbuss, and does not miss a trick to hold Southeast Asia to ransom. So it establishes seigneurial rights in Bali to impose a monument for those who died in a terrorist attack on a Bali night club last year. It would regret this in time to come. When those accused were charged and convicted under an unconstitutional law, about the only people in court to observe the proceedings were Australians, there to ensure that the courts would not do something stupid, like acquitting them for lack of evidence or unconstitutionality. With Indonesia under its belt, the sheriff moves to Malaysia to link it to terror. The SBS TV station aired the sheriff's first salvo on its "Dateline" programme on Wednesday, 22 October 2003, a shoddy piece of work cobbled to help Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, prime minister before this week is out, to destroy his jailed rival and former deputyh prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, but which backfired.

AMROZI IS SENTENCED TO DEATH, his brother soon would be. As many more in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the months and years ahead for sundry acts of terror. Now the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombing and other sundry acts of terror and an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden no less is in US hands. It is touted as yet another feather in the US worldwide campaign against terror. How was he caught? No one knows. Where was he caught? The Thais and Malaysians claim credit. Should he not be extradited to Indonesia? Not on your life. The US demands the right of first interrogation - and trial at its option - in its war on terror. Should not Indonesia be upset at it? Why should it? The global policeman accepts no national boundaries - indeed it has on more occasions than one can count gone into countries to seize whomsoever they want, in once instant the president of that country, who now languishes in a Florida jail.

This double standard came to a high point on Thursday, 07 August 2003, when an Indonesian court in Bali sentenced to death an Indonesian Islamic militant to death for his role in the Bali bombing. The court sat as a Roman circus, put on a tight leash to deliver the verdict demanded, with the baying spectators there to ensure it is. Indonesia is caught in a bind. Justice could not be served when the only acceptable verdict is death whatever the circumstances. Amrozi is portrayed as the bomber, and if he was acquitted, there would be hell to pay. He had already been convicted and condemned long before the trial, in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia. It does not matter here if Amrozi is guilty or not. Only the death sentence was. If it had not been handed down, Indonesian justice is at fault. If it did, Amrozi should not have been sentenced to death for that would make him a martyr, a long life sentence would have been preferable.

What is frightening is the accepted belief that whatever Washington says of Islamic terror is accepted without question. Al Qaeda is evil. Who says that? A Sri Lankan (i.e. an Asian) researcher. It must then be true. An Asian has said so. So any one with links to it, however tenuously, is evil. If there is a tenuous link between the Indonesians on trial for the Bali bombings with anyone in Malaysia, then the Malaysian is ipso facto a terrorist. The independent inquiry the Malaysian Special Branch was once noted for is no more. It is quick to take foreign reports and investigations as good enough for its work. It forgets the foreign work is done in their national interest, which may not be Malaysia's. But Malaysia goes along not because they are a threat but so it could castigate its political opponents.

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.

THE AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER, Mr John Howard, picks a needless if understandable, in his view, necessary, fight with Southeast Asia when he insisted, in a radio interview this month, on his nation's right to pre-emptive attacks against terrorists in foreign countries. The Bali bombings provided the backdrop. About 200 died, half Australians, as many Indonesians, and a smattering of other nationalities. Seven or more groups, including dissident Indonesian armed forces, even a high-level power play between the armed forces and President Megawati Sukarnoputri, and one to warn off Australia for its overt and covert meddling in Indonesian politics, could have been responsible. But within days, the elusive Muslim Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden, is proclaimed guilty, condemned, Indonesian Islamic clerics allegedly linked to him are arrested and quickly blamed. So far, nothing is proven. When Mr Alexander Downer was asked, in a BBC interview about the involvement of Al-Qaida, he fudged it. The best President Bush has allowed in apportioning blame is he "believes" Al Qaida is responsible.

THIS WAR ON TERROR IS, like a chameleon, now a war on ghosts. For all the rhetoric, threats, warnings, military buildup, we do not know who or what they are or want. There is Osama bin Laden, who Washington and sundry terrorism experts eager for their 15 minutes of fame decided is the terrorist-in-chief who dispenses at will mayhem and terror. His regional consultants and supporters, in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, are another army of ghosts which Washington, and Australia now, want to bomb. The world has gone mad after the brilliant terrorist attack on the remaining global superpower's symbol of military and financial might. The Bali and Mombassa bombings attacked Washington's regional sheriffs, Australia in Southeast Asia and Israel in the Middle East.

In the wake of the Bali bombings, security was tighter that normal, more so with a high profile international meeting. When the police insisted twice more -- once when she was about to get into her car, and another at the hotel where she stayed -- "I got furious and told them if they touched my luggage I will leave immediately" and boycott the WTO meeting. The lady threw a tantrum. And, would you know, they kept her incommunicado in her hotel, and prevented her to shop for gems and jewellery as she is wont to. She implies the Australians are terrible people: "when I was in New York recently, we were not subject to such harrassment."

Malaysia keeps mum these days when the war on terror is mentioned. It turns out, on anecdotal evidence, that those accused of the Bali bombings, and others the US believes is part of the Al Qaeda network, all had close links in Malaysia, many having lived here in exile from official pressures in Indonesia. To burnish its Islamic credentials, and to steal the religious thunder from the theocratic PAS, it had, for a few years, allowed sundry Muslim groups, terrorist and others, safe haven in Malaysia. As it had in the 1970s the Moro National Liberation Front. In the 1990s, Malaysia even brought to Kuala Lumpur the fractious Muslim factions in Somalia in an attempt to force them to unite under one leader, possibly Farrah Aidid. But since this policy is not thought through, cracks soon appeared, and it was Kuala Lumpur that had to distance itself from it.

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.

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."

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