The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist

mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

Look what is happening is American bombers and missiles killing Afghan men, women and children. That is what happens when you bomb a city or town. The US government calls it a long, hard war against international terrorism, focusing right now on Osama bin Laden, his Al-Qaeda organisation's network and their hosts, the Taliban regime.

But, it does not know where Osama, Mullah Omar or Al-Qaeda men are. So they are killing a very large number of boys, girls, women and men by using cluster bombs that kill maximum number of people. And now the Bush government has informed it will be in Afghanistan a long time and will also take the war to other countries. What does all this mean?

We all hate terrorism and we sure support anti-terrorist cause. How can we not support it? And thus we have to support Pakistani government's decision to give "full support" to the US-led campaign by allowing the use of its air space, exchanging intelligence and providing logistic support. America took this cooperation rather than Musharraf government gave it. But in a way this ongoing war is our war though in a larger view it is America's and UK's. In expensive wars, what Bush and Blair governments say cannot be accepted at face value. No, I don't suspect the sincerity of Bush or Blair. It is just that events, as they happen, alter their perspective and mind of decision-makers.

Irrespective of what ideas the top government leaders begin with, once the war starts the generals takeover. With them come grey suited security thinkers, flanked by propagandists and media persons, claiming to be friends and philosophers of generals and governments. Last in the train are big business executives out for a killing. Usually the wishes and purposes of this gentry functionally overpower and transform the government's original objectives. Actually what the generals themselves desire by way of objectives is security thinkers' wish list-within reason, of course. As the war in Afghanistan proceeds - with troops, Americans or proxies, start advancing into the vacuum created by the early crumbling of formal Taliban resistance - war aims of Bush and Blair will increasingly begin to look like what had hitherto been mere strategic possibilities. This is what I mean by others' war; it will then be the war for American strategic purposes.

Don't forget that Afghanistan will soon be up for grabs. Not that war will necessarily end. Only formal battles by Taliban's Army will come to an end and with that the collapse of their administration in Kabul and Kandhar. Taliban's remnants will, as many assume, take their resistance to mountains, caves and ravines. Isolated siege, search and kill operations will probably go on indefinitely. The Anglo-American forces will probably have to stay on in Afghanistan indefinitely, as indeed they have started saying. That gives their security specialists full scope to motivate and guide the general staff to serve the ends they think need to be achieved.

Standing on the Afghan promontory, so to speak, the US (and UK) can exert effective influence on - a few steps short of telling others what to do - former Soviet central Asian republics with their still untapped resources of oil, gas and other minerals. It will be so much easier as many of these republics will already be in the loop of the 'war against terrorism'. The old Great Game between Russia and Britain of the 18th and 19th Centuries has been resumed - in a new setting with only China notionally opposing the US and UK, while Russians will be thankful if the US continues to allow IMF, and encourage EU and Germany, to bankroll President Putin's government. This US presence in Afghanistan will push China, notionally, back from the area. It will be several steps closer to being encircled while, at any rate, can remain hopeful of retaining its trading and FDI advantages. Which is why it may not resist or even compete in central Asia. The US means to become, and looks like becoming, the boss who manages most of Asia.

There are other advantages that US strategists are sure to expect from the war. It has brought both India and Pakistan into the same loop. Insofar as Pakistan is concerned, it is a hooked fish with so many bases in the use of US military. The Indians are only too eager to become coordinate with Pakistanis. Both can be, conceivably, parts of an integrated US power structure, centred on the Gulf sheikhdoms - if they stay in the loop. At any rate, India is an easy possibility while Pakistan is a secured asset for the US. That opens up many possibilities for American diplomats, backed as they are by troops nearly, to talk about Pakistan's nuclear and missile programmes especially after promising some ministerial posts in the future in Afghan government.

They can give concessions to India in Kashmir such as Pakistan applying sharp brakes on the Jihad. Doubtless all these are still fancies in the minds of American experts. But they can soon be on the agenda - that is to say if the going remains smooth for the allies. Don't these things show it is not our war; it is more an American strategists' war.

Reverting to the idea of change in attitudes, the process is relentless. Matters in real life are however mixed up. As for fighting terrorism, one cannot refuse to cooperate. But what is terrorism and how has it arisen in its malign modern form? Isn't a Palestinian nationalist a terrorist for Sharon? Many Americans, given the clout of the pro-Israel lobby, dare not disagree with Israelis and the Administration is, more or less, a hostage to pro-Israelis. Just ask how do South Indians view the LTTE suicide bombers, though the Sri Lankan establishment hates them as terrorists. Same is true of cross-border-terrorism in Kashmir, with Pakistani Right regarding them as Jihadis while Jaswant Singh calls them terrorists. This is also the case about Osama, Al-Queda and Taliban; Islamic Right in many countries takes them to be Jihadis and anti-imperialists.

Let's face it: no one can define terrorism in a way that will be universally acceptable. Doubtless there are many people like us who refuse to accept violent ways of achieving any political, social, economic or cultural purpose. They rely on human reason and tolerate all views, wanting to settle matters being settled by rational argumentation. But real world also contains so many governments, powerful vested interests and malevolent knaves with plenty of resources. It is possible to see, if the evidence available to Bush, Blair and Musharraf is really convincing, that Osama's hosts needed to be forced to make over Osama. I could conceivably have approved of a strictly limited police action, provided it was confined only to the specific purpose.

But larger questions are involved. Is military force the best instrument to change a mind set - of a terrorist? It is ideas in his brain that make him a terrorist by pulling him away from peaceful methods. Shouldn't we go to the roots of the ideas and situations that shape a terrorist? The true need is thus for a humanistic education that inculcates values of respect for human beings, their equality and fraternity and a rational and scientific way of thinking. But that is a long haul aim. Even so, in such matters, cutting corners can be dangerous.

But don't think governments cannot also do many useful things. Take those Arab boys who hijacked four American airliners and rammed them into three buildings on September 11 last. Why did they do what they did? Weren't they protesting against the Arab people being kicked around, insulted and exploited for so long? This was as much a protest against the despotic Arab regimes the US keeps propped up. So long as these Sheikhdoms toe Washington's line they are safe. They risk being punished the way Iraq is being punished if they defy. To most people in Pakistan those terrorists, despite the commonly perceived error of their ways of action, were protesting against the foreign and economic policies of the US, Israel and other developed countries. People on this side of Suez are outraged at what men like Sharon, Netanyahoo and Begin were and are doing in the Israeli-occupied areas to the Palestinians. This seething anger is also aimed at the US for its no-holds-barred support to the indisputable state gangsterism of Israel. Are revenge killings by Israelis any the less terrorist? The discomfort and occasional hurt to Israelis by stone throwing Arab boys is to be regretted - but only if it can be shown they had been given full opportunity to make their case with an Israeli Authority that was ready, conceivably, to rectify the manifest wrongs they were complaining against. Suicide bombers of Hamas are of the same genre as those who killed over six thousand in New York on September 11 - and for the same general reason. Governments can and should make the international order more law based and morally better. That will eliminate terrorism.

To any intelligent teenager a manipulative and exploitative political order among nations - founded on, and reinforced by, a similar manipulative and exploitative globalisation - is the biggest source of terrorism. The latter can only be fought against with longer-term patient steps. Among the relatively shorter term specific problems is one of Afghanistan. One is not too sorry, in the given circumstances that Pakistan's role as its functionally paramount power has been terminated-and it is for good. But no decent person like you will approve of the Anglo-Americans experts and generals becoming its new super masters.

You will agree it is time the Afghans were treated as normal human beings with normal human rights like everybody else. True, they have hitherto lived in a tribal and feudal society. But that is no reason why they should be sentenced to remain socially underdeveloped and politically at the mercy of their cruel warlords, tribal chiefs and armed Mullahs. Let us all push for the UN General Assembly to be give full charge of Afghanistan. Let it save the Afghans from perpetual anarchy and conflict. Let it take over, administer it for five to seven years, disarm all combatants, organise a crash economic revival programme, allow the media freedom and hold a free election. Let the powerful of the world stand aside and allow Afghans to be sovereigns of their own land-otherwise be ready to face frequent eruptions of desperate terrorism in many places. Most of the running sores in the world need to be treated democratically and morally if terrorism is to be prevented.