The day of reckong is at hand for Mr Mohamed Bakke, who prides himself as a Malay but is as Yemeni as Osama Bin Laden. He will have to face the flak for the losses LTH and its subsidiaries for the rising anger of those who farmers and others who had saved for years for the Haj, only to find they have to pay for the misdeeds and misappropriations and misadventures of the likes of Mr Bakke and his highly paid band of incompetent accountants. Questions will be asked, in Parliament and elsewhere, about this. At a time when Malaysia is out to burnish its Islamic credentials, the average depositor finds that he cannot trust Islamic financial institutions and would get a better return on his investment from the commercial banks. When Mr Mohamed Bakke leaves when his contract expires in two years, the farmer and other poor Muslims who deposited their money in Tabung Haji would have cause to say: "Bakke-nya kosong!"

The world's solitary global superpower believes only in behaving like one, and is peeved when it is second guessed, be it from France, Iraq or North Korea. What Washington set out to do in this war on terror, it failed miserably. It could caputre neither Osama Bin Laden nor Mullah Omar. It does not matter if either is alive or dead, but what they left behind, the Al Qaeda network and the Taliban, are very much alive to give the Washington superhawks insomnia. Russia, on the other hand, decides on a scorched earth policy to rein in the Chechen rebels in a dispute that is 150 years old over a national homeland. But because the Chechens and Chechnya are Muslim, it is conveniently linked to this global war on terror as, for example, Kashmir is. But both, like Northern Ireland, are not religious wars but for a homeland in which religion -- Islam in Kashmir and Chechnya, Roman Catholicism in Northern Irealand -- but when Muslims irredentists are involved, what caused the problem is ignored.

When Washington -- and let us not forget Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia -- decide who is and who is not a terrorist, something must give. And both react in like fashion. When Al Qaida and its leader, Osama Bin Laden, cannot be found, find another target. Iraq. When Kuala Lumpur decides terrorism is a problem, it finds groups aligned to the opposition. The opposition can scream as they like, but the deed is done. When Kuala Lumpur is the target -- on the same spurious grounds as it decided KMM and Al Maunah are terrorist groups -- it screams blue murder. But is anyone the wiser?

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.

It is the declared view of all who matter in this war on terror that what happens anywhere in the world that smacks of Muslim terror must be the handiwork of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaida. Any group in Washington's, and its satrapies', eyes, linked to Al Qaida is ipso facto true. So Singapore has a newly discovered terror network of Al Qaida fanatics who were in it years before it was set up. Malaysia has its Kesatuan Militan Malaysia, many of whose members she once encouraged to study Islam in Pakistan but are now convenient scapegoats. In Indonesia there is Jemaah Islamiah. In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf. Last week, A French oil carrier on charter to Petronas was attacked in Yemeni waters. Over the weekend, a powerful carbomb blasted two popular foreign haunts in Kuta, in the Indonesian resort isle of Bali, killing 182 and wounding 300, mostly Australians and other foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility, but Washington and Canberra, and Al Qaida experts, are quick to label it an Al Qaida outrage.

A bearded terror named Osama Bin Laden reduced President Bush's leadership of Western political dominance to quivering jelly: using American planes to crash into America's citadels of commercial, political and military power. It was an act of, perhaps misguided, brilliance; but it evened scores, with hints of more. President Bush is made impotent, his administration is made impotent, every speech or policy or move he or his administration shows how impotent, and unsettled, it is. He tries to seize the leadership yet again with his bumbling response to it, with his simplistic and naive demand that if the world did not go with him, then the world is his enemy. It was a gut reaction of a terrified leader whose feet is now certified of clay. He reacts to vent his anger on "Muslims", all who follow the Islamic faith.

The world went mad on 11 September, two days ago, in ceremonies marking the wounding of the global superpower, with no attempt to address what caused the brilliant co-ordinated attack on the citadels and symbols of the United States' military, political and economic power. Who caused it is not as important as its impact. It exposed the underbelly of the United States in ways that a year later it cannot come to terms with it. In typical no-nonense fashion, the United States quickly identified the culprit, Osama Bin Laden, the fugitive son of the Saudi billionaire, and his ubiquitous Al-Qaida network. But not his grievances: the 'desecration' of Islam's holiest sites by a United States-United Kingdom-led armada; the mind-numbing misery of Palestinians under Israeli occupation; an Iraq breaking down under the weight of US/UK-led sanctions. All that mattered is that Muslims are responsible, and they must be put in their place.

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.

As President George Bush and the United States cannot ignore Mr Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida, even if its leading light is dead. The government can declare Reformasi dead, editorial writers can dismiss it as irrelevant, as they once did of the Communist Party of Malaya. But it remains a threat. The Government insisted then the CPM was impotent, as now of Reformasi, but the thorn it was could only be plucked out with an agreement. So Reformasi.

Nothing angers the MIC president more than the suggestion that the IPF president, Mr M. G. Pandithan, could be of help where he could not. To him, it is akin to President George W. Bush asking Mr Osama Bin Laden to intercede with Congress over his pre-presidency business deals. So he attacks Dr Khir for saying the unthinkable: "The MIC is hurt ... He should clarify what he means."

When the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, finally got his 15 minutes of President George Bush's attention at the White House, he decided he is rehabilitated, his nemesis and once putative successor given the same respect the West has for one Osama Bin Laden, and could venture into the Lion's Den with applomb and confidence. So, when CNN asked him to join it for a question-and-answer session with the "world", how could he refuse? Two nights ago he did, and cries foul. He was not given the respect he felt due to him as President Bush's sergeant-major for Southeast Asia in this global war of Islamic terror.

September 11 forced a narrowing of a focus. When the Malaysian government decided to target PAS and its supporters for terrorist activity, narrowly defined, questions arose over its own involvement. There is no suggestion here if Osama Bin Laden was here for a nefarious purpose. But in the knee-jerk reaction after Septmber 11, everything is suspect. After all, Mr Zaccarias Moussavi, a suspect in the terrorist attacks in the US, was appointed to a position in the United States by a Malaysian company, which provided him money and a job there. And the man who signed that document is detained under the Internal Security Act. It does not matter if the appointment is above board. In the heat, such niceties are forgotten. For all we know or care, Mr Moussavi could well be innocent. But does that matter? As we are told to forget that Kedah Acquaculture is losing money, and its history should not be raked lup.

When the graduate gets out into the wide world, his employer would send him packing if he does something stupid as being vocal about what he disagrees with, or is decidedly anti-government. Could anyone say something nice about not Dato' Seri Anwar but of someone the powers that be do not like, say Osama Bin Laden now, and see it published in mainstream newspapers? Would an editor publish a column or letter which questions government policy or demand the release of Dato' Seri Anwar? Or wonder aloud why cabinet ministers become rich beyond greed after a few years in office?

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?

The graver US accusation is that Malaysia where some of the planning, organising, and fund raising was done. Could this be true? Malaysia, which embraced President Bush's war on terror, and used it to accuse the opposition PAS of involvement in it, is suddenly on the defensive. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, used it to strengthen his own political hold. But he could hold on to it for long. Soon, the focus was on the Prime Minister and his government for allowing this to happen. Whatever is said and done, the Malaysian Special Branch is still a top-flight organisation, especially on counter-intelligence matters, to have not known of these dealings and developments. To continue with tarring the opposition of colluding with terrorism could not hold. Especially, when he and his government, not the Kesatuan Militan Mujahideen or PAS, became the target in Washington. It was he who allowed Mr Osama Bin Laden to have a foothold in Malaysia. Sure it was in better times, when the US was glad someone did. But when the chips are down, it does not save you. As it does not.

Like all such campaigns it is focussed on one man, and that is its public relations problem: If one man, Osama Bin Laden, could cause much havoc on not just the United States but sundry countries around the globe that they see Islamic fundamentalists behind every corner, what happens next is unpredictable.

He did not score political points on the judgement. Nor the events of 11 September either. No one address its frightening impact. It is not as modern myth allows, the collapse of the World Trade Centre in New York and the damage to the Pentagon, but for what they represent: the implied destruction of the world's most powerful economic nation and its superpower war room. It is the classic replay of David with a catapault against the mighty Goliath. The David here of course is Osama Bin Laden. Its impact, as in the Bible, reverberated throughout the world, and as they aligned with the Goliath of the modern world intensified their search for the Davids in their bailliwick. Dr Mahathir looks out for David clones among his flock. By running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.

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