AMERICA knows how to mourn and remember its losses. An elaborate ceremony was held at “ground zero” — the place where the twin World Trade Towers once stood before they were brought down by two airliners that smashed into them, piloted by ten suicide bombers. A ceremony was also held in Washington which had suffered from a terrorist attack as well. A few minutes after the first hijacked Boeing 767 hit the World Trade Centre, a similar plane ploughed into the Pentagon, just across the Potomac River from Washington.

A fourth plane, also commandeered by the terrorists, was brought down in the planes of Pennsylvania. It came down after a group of passengers, having learnt of what other planes had done, overpowered the hijackers and crashed the plane hundreds of miles short of Washington. No one will ever know what was the destination of the fourth plane.

Was it headed towards the White House or towards the Capitol, the seat of the United States Congress? Not allowing the plane to proceed towards its intended targets by a group of passengers was an act of extraordinary heroism. It has been celebrated by a book written by the widow of a passenger who seems to have organized his fellow travellers with the words “Let’s roll!” That became the title of the book by Lisa Beamer, the widow of the hero who lost his life in the hijacked plane.

What the 19 hijackers carried out on September 11, 2001 was an act of extraordinary hate directed at America, its people and its leaders. The reaction in the countries spread all over the world was that of love towards the victims of that horrendous crime. In reliving that experience and remembering the reaction of the crime committed by the Egyptian Mohammed Ata, the apparent leader of the group of nineteen terrorists who assaulted America on that bright September morning, this is what Gerard Baker of the Financial Times had to say on the second anniversary of 9/11: “But only the crime of Mohammed Ata and his friends could have produced the love that flew into New York and Washington that day from Moscow and Paris and new Delhi and yes even from parts of Damascus and Riyadh and Islamabad.”

In the 24-month period since that fateful day, what has America done in return for all that pouring of love? It has fought two wars, one that had the full support of the international community and the other that deeply divided it. The war in Afghanistan the world could understand, and understanding it, it could support. The 9/11 attacks were launched by a group of people who were trained and supported by Al Qaeda, an Arab group that had been provided a sanctuary by the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

This sanctuary was turned into a training ground for terrorists by Al Qaeda and most of the graduates of these training camps directed their wrath at the United States. With 3,015 lives lost in the US in the attacks carried out by the Al Qaeda terrorists, America had every right in hitting back at the terrorists in Afghanistan.

America was careful in choosing its targets in Afghanistan. It tried to give an opportunity to the Taliban regime to abandon its support to Al Qaeda. It was only after the American ultimatum was ignored that Washington launched a war on the Taliban. Much to its relief, the Taliban regime folded quickly and, after a little over two months, America and its allies were in control of Afghanistan.

In the internal high level discussions that led to the American invasion of Afghanistan President George W. Bush had repeatedly shared his distaste for involving the US troops in nation-building in Afghanistan. His reluctance to get into nation building was shared by several of his senior associates, in particular defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. According to journalist Bob Woodward’s detailed account of policymaking in Washington as America prepared to attack Afghanistan, President Bush was inclined to let Kabul, once freed, be managed by the United Nations.

“Look, I oppose the military for nation-building. Once the job is done, our forces are not peacekeepers. We ought to put in place a UN protection and leave,” Bob Woodward quotes Bush in his book, “Bush at War,” telling his senior associates. In one of his discussions with his colleagues, President Bush also toyed with the idea of handing over the task of administering Kabul to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC in its meeting on October 10, 2001, two days after the beginning of the Afghan campaign, had passed a strong resolution condemning international terrorism, particularly when committed in the name of Islam.

This approach stood on its head in Iraq, the second major campaign launched by the US in the two-year period since the 9/11 attack. The United Nations was deeply involved in Afghanistan before the US went into the country and also later once Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance forces. Among the countries that supported the US war in Afghanistan were Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbours to the north. At one point even the French offered to provide 50 combat planes to participate in the air war.

The American campaign in Iraq did not have that kind of international support. Washington attacked and conquered Iraq without receiving the approval of the United Nations. Its policy was bitterly opposed by France, Germany and Russia and did not have the support of the Muslim states. America went into Iraq virtually alone, receiving help only from Britain whose own involvement became the subject of a high-level judicial inquiry, the first phase of which was concluded before the observance of the second 9/11 anniversary.

While the regime of Saddam Hussein crumbled even faster than that of the Taliban, the post-conquest period in Iraq turned out to be much more difficult than was the case in Afghanistan. Most of the killing of American soldiers was done by the armed militia who either remained loyal to the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein or were extremely disturbed by the US inability to supply basic services to the country’s citizens. Two massive suicide attacks in Iraq, one in Baghdad and the other in Najaf, killed scores of people. The UN representative in Iraq died in the Baghdad bombing while the attack in Najaf claimed the life of a popular Shia cleric who had supported America’s nation-building efforts in Iraq.

All this seemed to suggest that terrorism had found a new home in Iraq. As the economist Paul Krugman wrote in one of his weekly columns for The New York Times, Iraq, before the invasion of its territory by the US, was free of terrorism. It was also not harbouring terrorists. After the invasion, much of the terrorist activity in the world was taking place in Iraq and the country was also turning rapidly into a terrorist haven. President Bush acknowledged this in his TV address to the nation on September 7, as his administration began the countdown to the second 9/11 anniversary.

While Iraq was proving extraordinarily difficult to settle to any kind of state that could be described normal, Afghanistan saw the beginning of another uprising in its south-eastern provinces. There were almost daily encounters between the American troops and the troops of the Kabul government on the one side and guerilla forces on the other. It appeared that the persistent weakness of the government of President Hamid Karazai had given hope to the remnants of the Taliban who had begun to regroup in the difficult mountain terrain that runs along the south-eastern Afghan border with Pakistan.

What was the scorecard of preventing terrorism in other places and arresting or killing known terrorists in the two-year period since September 11, 2001? In the television address by President Bush referred to above, the American chief executive claimed that great progress had been made on the war on terror. “We have exposed terrorist front groups, seized terrorist accounts, taken new measures to protect our homeland and uncovered sleeper cells inside the United States,” declared the American president. Tom Ridge, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, also projected an air of confidence. “We are safer today and without doubt it is because of the new level of cooperation that the president has spearheaded with our allies around the world,” he said.

But some analysts have presented a different picture. According to one group, in the last two years the eight largest attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliates have left more than 320 people dead. Many others have been killed or injured in attacks inspired by Al Qaeda. Of the twelve major attacks attributed to Al Qaeda since September 11, 2001, three were carried out in Pakistan — on March 16 against Christian worshippers in an Islamabad church; on May 11, 2002 on the French technicians working with the Pakistan Navy in Karachi; and on July 14, 2002 on the US Consulate in Karachi. Twenty-seven people were killed in these attacks, eleven of them foreigners.

But, at the same time, considerable progress was made in weakening the command structure of Al Qaeda. A number of its senior functionaries including Khaled Shah Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s third ranking officer and the co-planner of the September 11, 2001, attack was arrested by Pakistan’s security forces and handed over for interrogation to the US authorities. Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and said to be mastermind of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia, was captured in Thailand. Islamic militant, Imam Samudra was sentenced to death on September 10, 2003 after being convicted of playing an important role in the October 12, 2002 bombing in Bali that killed 202 people.

Is America winning the war it launched right after September 11, 2001? At best the picture is mixed. While there is no doubt that Al Qaeda’s command structure has weakened, there are indications that its organization is changing its approach, having become decentralized. Has Al Qaeda and related organizations lost their safe havens and the sanctuaries they need to operate? Having lost the welcome afforded them by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, is Al Qaeda able to move on to some other place, some other country? From the accounts of a number of newspapers and magazine it appears that Iraq is now ripe for becoming the centre of Islamic terrorism.

What should be perhaps most disturbing for the Americans is that the love and good will that was shown towards them by countries around the globe has been replaced by considerable apprehension at the way the world’s superpower is conducting itself. Such a dramatic change in attitude does not augur well for international peace and for the orderly evolution of a new world system.

WHEN George Bush addressed the UN general assembly in September last year, his message was blunt. The UN must either support his campaign against Iraq or be doomed to irrelevance. In the event, most countries refused to back him and, ignoring the UN, Bush plunged into war.

Today, when Bush returns to the general assembly, his tone is expected to be somewhat less brusque. Although Bush is loath to admit it, the US badly needs international assistance, troops and money to prevent its Iraq occupation becoming an inescapable quagmire. In other words, the UN has turned out to be anything but “irrelevant”. And through officials like Colin Powell, Bush the heedless unilateralist is now emphasising consultation and an agreed, multilateral approach.

Has he seen the error of his ways? Hardly. If Bush has changed his tune, it is not because he has developed new-found respect for the UN and those who opposed his war. It is because the cost of Iraq, in terms of American lives and American tax dollars, is beginning to have a seriously negative impact on his re-election hopes. It is because ordinary Americans are critical (as ever, in fact) of his go-it-alone approach.

It is because Bush’s credibility, like Tony Blair’s, is rapidly shredding. His admission last week that there is “no evidence” tying Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks was a significant moment. For months, he and his top advisers have been deliberately giving the very opposite impression. As a result, a large majority of Americans did come to believe Saddam was somehow responsible for September 11. They can see now that Bush knowingly misled them.

When this realisation is coupled with Bush’s failure to justify claims that Saddam presented an imminent threat to the US and possessed fearsome weapons of mass destruction, it is not hard to see why trust in his leadership is eroding. When George Bush Sr broke his famous “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, he broke the back of his 1992 re-election bid. Bush Jr’s forced confession on Iraq may yet prove to be a similar watershed.

Bush’s handling of the economy, and in particular the stark contrast between higher unemployment, higher deficits, public spending cuts and multibillion tax giveaways for the better-off, is increasing a national sense of disenchantment. The post-9/11 popularity bonanza from which Bush profited for nearly two years is all but spent. And the Democrats sense it. Senator Edward Kennedy calls the Iraq war a “fraud made up in Texas” and — unusually for him — he is now probably expressing the majority opinion.

As the 9/11 trauma fades, Americans are beginning to remember that the 2000 election installed Bush as a minority president. And as Bill Clinton put it in a recent speech in Iowa: “That election was not a mandate for radical change, but that is what we got. We went from surplus to deficit, from a reduction in poverty to an increase in poverty...” After 9/11, he said, “instead of uniting the world, we alienated it. And instead of uniting America, we divided it by trying to push it too far to the right.” After appearing untouchable for so long, a former White House official notes: “Bush is vulnerable.”

These and other considerations pose a strategic choice with implications stretching far beyond Iraq. Why should the international community gathered at the UN help Bush get out of his Iraq mess? Why not let him stew and, by withholding cooperation, possibly hasten his electoral demise?

This is indeed tempting, for another four years of Bush in the White House is an unappealing prospect. Bush bamboozled the UN as well as his fellow citizens over Iraq, pretending for at least six months that a decision to attack Saddam had not been made, when in truth it had. He made of Hans Blix’s good faith weapons inspections a charade that was sure to end in failure, whatever Iraq did and whatever Blix found.

Bush’s primary purpose was not enforcement of the UN’s resolutions, as he said at the time. It was regime change — which, ironically, has become his only remaining justification for the war as his other claims have been exposed as exaggerations or lies. Bush’s treatment of the UN on Iraq and other issues has been disgraceful. By him it has been disdained, divided, debauched. The UN as a body owes him nothing.

A second Bush term promises more, not less, WMD proliferation and more confrontations. Iraq’s fate, when contrasted with North Korea’s, has taught others that only a nuclear arsenal may provide protection against US attack. Yet Bush’s threats against Iran, Syria and Libya and his pre-emptive war doctrine presage only more conflicts. His failure to follow through on his Aqaba pledge of a new, balanced beginning for Israel and Palestine promises more, not less, Middle East strife.

By alienating Muslim opinion, and insulting key allies, Bush has undermined the fight against international terrorism. On a wide range of other issues, from the international criminal court to civil rights to climate change to multilateralism in its broadest sense, it is plainly in the national interest of many states to see the back of Bush.

Under Blair, Britain has lost its independent voice. But France, Germany, Russia and other big powers could and perhaps should hold out for a government in Washington that is more amenable to their vision of a multipolar world. Bush’s growing weakness should certainly be recognised and exploited to contain his worst excesses in the last 15 months of his presidential term. This is already beginning to happen as countries prevaricate over US requests for troops and cash.

The problem with such recalcitrance is that it does not help the people of Iraq right now, as their country totters on a knife-edge between chaos and recovery. It opens opposing states to charges of irresponsibility.

The answer must thus be to do all that is possible in terms of immediate humanitarian and technical aid to Iraq while insisting, with France, on a greatly accelerated handover of sovereign powers to a provisional Iraqi government and on primary political oversight for the UN security council. Longer-term reconstruction investments and loans and any contributions to a UN-mandated peacekeeping force should be conditional on US agreement to relinquish its stranglehold on Iraq.

Until Iraqis are able physically to control their country, and unless it cuts and runs, the US will continue to bear the main security burden. Yet as the war’s progenitor, it is only right that it should. It is a price Bush should be made to pay even though, thanks to his foolishness and hubris, it is America’s soldiers who pay the highest price of all.

Such a hard-nosed approach by the international community will hardly help Bush’s re-election chances. It may even dish him. But it will help Iraq recover its dignity and get back on its feet. —Dawn/Guardian Service

Even Donald Rumsfeld will have to admit that things are not going according to the plan in Iraq, presuming, that is, that there was a plan. On the other hand, it can be claimed that the plan in Iraq was to have no plan so that the Middle East could be kept in perpetual turmoil. The military victory brought a certain euphoria, as if the outcome was ever in doubt.

But, perhaps, chastened by the memory of Vietnam, nothing could be taken for granted and short of using nuclear bombs, everything was thrown at the Iraqis, from land, sea and air. In a sense it was a spectacular display of modern weaponry, of the wizardry of technology and of how far advanced that United States was when it came to making war.

It was unthinkable that Saddam Hussain did not know this. Did he take a chance that the United States was bluffing? He may have been a tyrant but he was not a fool. Nor can it be said that he had become unbalanced and his responsibility had been diminished to the point that he was living out a fantasy. Is it not likely that he too wanted to keep the Middle East in perpetual turmoil?

That once in Iraq, the invading armies would find themselves fighting a different kind of war and a different kind of enemy? Is it not an irony that the neo-conservatives in Bush’s administration, the government of Ariel Sharon and Saddam Hussein had the same agenda—-to scuttle any prospects of a stable and peaceful Middle East?

President Bush now admits that no evidence is available that links the terror attacks of 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. Yet the American public was led to believe or was brainwashed by a gung-ho, flag-waving, hand-on-heart media that there was a direct connection and two-thirds of the American public believed it. But the media does not just make up lies. The media engineers public opinion but in turn, it is manipulated and is the ventriloquist’s dummy.

On the eve of this year’s anniversary of 9/ll, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defence Secretary and one of the high priests of the neo-conservatives told ABC, one of the main television channels:” We know (Iraq) had a great deal with terrorism in general and with Al Qaeda in particular and we know a great many of Osama bin Laden’s key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime. “Even Paul Wolfowitz realized that he had gone over the top and told not just a lie but a whopper.

He admitted as much to the Associated Press and said that his remarks referred not to a “ great many” of Osama bin Laden’s lieutenants but rather to a single Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. “I should have been more precise, “ he admitted. But the damage had already been done. Even his clarification was sinister in intent. By clarifying one detail, he provided credibility to the rest of the accusations. There are no flies on Mr. Wolfowitz. His boss, Donald Rumsfeld uses a wood-chopper’s axe. He uses a surgeon’s scalpel.

Christianne Amanpour, CNN’s star reporter cannot be said to be soft on the war on terror or Iraq. She can’t even be called one of those ‘woolly liberals’ who fall just short of being traitors. She has impeccable credentials. Apparently, she too has been sickened by the web of deceit. She told Tina Brown on her CNBC talkshow that US television networks including CNN were ‘intimidated’ by the Bush administration in their coverage of the invasion of Iraq. “ I think the press was muzzled and I think the press self-muzzled. I am sorry to say that, but certainly television — and perhaps to a certain extent my station — was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News” she said. She was not revealing some well-guarded secret.

The BBC did a documentary that showed that much of the footage of the invasion of Iraq including Iraqi crowds welcoming the conquering armies had been pre-recorded in some desert or other in the United States and the live coverage was a fake. Some footage must have got stuck for one Iraqi town was ‘liberated’ several times!

I got an e-mail from someone who had read my book “As Time Goes By” and which is about my student days at the University of Southern California. The person wanted to know whether I had changed my mind about the United States since my columns about Afghanistan and Iraq were “harsh” and in the book I had warmly praised the United States. I think he has got the wrong end of the stick.

My book was about the wonderful friends I had made, about decent and kind people I had got to know and about a country that had so much going for it. I did, however, write about McCarthy and about race relations and about growing patriotism, which masked a warrior-complex. I wouldn’t change a line of the book.

But the United States is now cast in a new role, that of a hyper-power and it is in this new role that it has discovered that it has a mission to re-make the world in its own image, to share out not its blessings, but to accept its leadership and those who don’t are to be rooted out, through regime-change even if it means the use of force. It is this that I have a quarrel with and it has nothing to do with the American people who are hurt and bewildered why there should be so much anti-Americanism about.

It is because the channels of information available to them have been so manipulated even entertainment is slanted. The villains used to be the American Indians in the films when I was a boy. Then it became the Germans and the Japanese and then the Russians and now it is the terrorists all of whom seem to be bearded and bear Muslim names. This is stereotyping at a basic level. It is, in a sense, to catch a person unaware that he or she is being brainwashed. And anti-Americanism is explained away that the rest of the world is jealous. The very simplicity of this explanation makes it self-evident and needs no further proof. It stands by itself as a belief.

THE Muslim world is living through an abnormal time — a time of tribulations and crisis. Times are abnormal not just for the Muslim states but for the Muslim community at large. The pity is that far from realizing the gravity of the situation, most Muslim states are content with playing ducks and drakes with local and regional issues that have long lost their relevance.

A few words on Islam as a creed and a way of life may be in order. Islam is a religion dedicated to peace and tolerance. As is the case with all religions of the book, Islam too is on the side of peace and a just and equitable social order. Aggression is alien to the very philosophy of Islam. Allah does not love aggressors. History bears witness to the fact that, over the centuries, whenever Muslims have been obliged to take up arms, it has invariably been strictly in defence of what is theirs by right. And yet, Islam today is being made the butt of slander, regrettably by those who have never been known for championing the cause of the just.

As Roedad Khan aptly remarked, in this space sometime ago, history has dealt the Islamic world a terrible hand. From the thirteenth century onward, the defining moments in the world of Islam were the Mongol invasions and the imperialist intrusion by the West and the advent of colonial dependency. The western approach to the Muslim world has changed little since then. Given what passed for normal times over the past few decades, the leadership of the Muslim states has been quite content to continue with their puerile games in which they and their elders have been indulging in for centuries.

Today, the world of Islam is faced with grave challenges that present it with stark choices. Ironically, these are not of our own making. Muslim countries have certainly not shown any untoward ambition of late. No Muslim nation has coveted the land that belongs to non-Muslims. Muslims have exhibited no tendency to cast an evil eye on the riches and resources of others.

If anything, we are indeed guilty of criminal over-indulgence in our dealings with the industrialized world. A close look at the international economic scenario of the past few decades would indicate a net transfer of resources from the Islamic countries to the developed world. Why, then, is the Islamic world in the dire straits it finds itself in today?

The fault lies not in our stars but within ourselves. We need to cultivate the habit of having a good hard look at the mirror. We have nurtured the somewhat unsavoury habit of blaming others for our failings. Should we not ask ourselves: is this a healthy attitude? It is time that we developed the habit of self-appraisal. It is time that we took time off to take a look within our souls and ponder.

Can we honestly say that we have contributed our due share to the prosperity and stability of the Muslim world and the Muslim ummah? We may well discover to our eternal shame that we have, in reality, short-changed the very entity that we have so often pledged to preserve and protect. This is not intended to apportion blame or to point the finger at anyone. The blame should squarely fall on one and all.

For one thing, have we done enough to promote Islamic unity? Has sufficient heed been paid to the words of the holy Prophet (peace be upon him) that each Muslim is the brother of every other Muslim and that all Muslims constitute but one brotherhood? If this had been done, perhaps the Muslim world would not have been in the bind that it finds itself in today. One must hasten to explain that one is not trying to be idealistic. Realism is the name of the game. Yet it is imperative to set out achievable goals and focus all energies on achieving these.

When one talks of the “unity” of the ummah, one is not implying that all differences must be drowned and that everything must be white as snow. Far from it. The last thing the Muslims should aim for is to live a life of make-believe. Healthy competition even among Muslim communities and a certain measure of give-and-take is a must. At the same time, it is important to ensure that our differences are not of a nature to provide a chink in our armour wide enough to permit our enemies to take advantage of it.

Much to our regret, we find Islam under flak from all directions. Muslims around the world are being branded as “terrorists” without the formality of indictment, trial or proof. The omnibus phrase “Islamic extremism” has been expressly coined to suit vested interests — interests that have predetermined that Islam is an “enemy” that has to be subdued by any means, fair or foul. Any and every act of “terrorism” is conveniently laid at the door of “Islamic extremists.” The evident fact that hundreds of other acts of violence are being committed day after day by non-Muslims is conveniently swept under the rug. What is more, no weightage is given to the evidence that most of the victims of terrorism over the past several decades have been Muslims.

The word “jihad” is being bandied about by the enemies of Islam, with the intention of bringing a bad name to the Muslim world. The intent is to twist and distort the concept of jihad in Islam to give it an unsavoury connotation. What do the Muslims do to stand up to these calumnies? They fight amongst themselves over trivial matters created for them by their enemies.

The September 11 outrage was justifiably condemned by all right-thinking people, irrespective of religious affiliations. And yet some responsible leaders took it upon themselves to give an uncalled for religious connotation to this event. One recalls with anguish the statement of British Prime Minister Tony Blair on television shortly after the event that “we shall not allow Islamic extremists to destroy Christian and Jewish civilizations.” If ever there was an example of jumping to unwarranted conclusions this was one. One has yet to see the western media use the phrases “Christian extremist” or “Jewish extremist” to describe the perpetrators of violence belonging to these religions.

Mention must also be made of a remarkable phenomenon that erupted during the frenzied outpourings of the anti-terrorist lobby. The reference is to the several “peace marches” held around the world in which millions of people of all nations, creeds and denominations participated. These demonstrations were enough to show that “peace” and “civilization” are not the exclusive preserves of any one group of persons, whatever their credentials.

The posture of His Holiness the Pope, who openly sided with the overwhelming majority clamouring for peace, was enough to restore one’s faith in human nature. The phenomenon of the peace marches has also shown up the hollowness of the line of argument of those who were propagating the inevitability of a “clash of civilizations.” The common people of the world have demonstrated that civilizations must not only coexist but actually complement and enrich each other. So much for the soundness of the Huntington thesis.

If only the Muslim states would resolve to put their act together. Those who are taking potshots at Islam are bound to wake up to the fallacy of their argument and, indeed, to the error of their line of reasoning. This said, one must emphasize the need for the Muslim world to have the determination to look within to fathom the causes of its decline.

The ummah is made up of all sorts — the rich, the poor, the powerful and the infirm, the righteous and the shirkers. This s the law of nature. It devolves upon all to make allowances for these differences and to use their resources and collective power of persuasion to right the wrongs within their ranks. By so doing, they would be able to forestall outsiders from interfering in what are, after all, the family affairs of the ummah.

The Muslim world finds itself at a unique and critical juncture at this time. The deck is heavily stacked against it. The omens are not very promising. There is a dry wind blowing throughout the land and the parched grasses wait for the spark. The blaze, if lit, will spread like wildfire and the entire Muslim world will find itself engulfed. It is for the Muslims to see the symptoms and take pre-emptive measures where they can. To fail now would amount to letting down the ummah. There may not be another opportunity down the road.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan and currently assistant secretary-general of the OIC.