If only the Americans had heeded Dr Eqbal Ahmad's advice! The Pakistani-American scholar, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, had studied the terrorist phenomenon in all its all too often ignored socio-political complexities. In October 1998, two months after US missiles failed to find Osama Bin Laden, Dr Ahmad had made an insightful presentation at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Laying bare the hypocritical and self-defeating US policies, he all but foretold the calamity that was to befall three years later.

The Arabic word Jihad, said Dr Ahmad, has been "translated a thousand times" as 'holy war' but is not quite just that. It means 'to struggle' by violent or non-violent means. "The small Jihad involves violence. The big Jihad involves the struggles with self. Those are the concepts." As "an international violent phenomenon," Jihad had practically faded from Muslim history in the last 400 years. It was revived suddenly in the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan because "...the US saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilise one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the Evil Empire."

Money poured in, and CIA agents went around the Muslim world enlisting fighters for "the great Jihad." OBL was their prize recruit - an Arab, a Saudi and a multi-millionaire ready to put his own money into the venture (what a fool, must have sniggered his CIA handlers). Dr Ahmad first met OBL in 1986 on the recommendation of an enthusiastic US official in Islamabad. "There he was, rich, bringing in recruits from Algeria, from Sudan, from Egypt, just like Sheikh Abdul Rahman (the blind Muslim cleric jailed in the US for "encouraging" the attempted bombing of the WTC, New York). This fellow was an ally. He remained an ally. He turns at a particular moment."

Operation Desert Storm, 1990: US forces enter Saudi Arabia which has Islam's holiest places, Mecca and Medina. "There had never been foreign troops there....(but) OBL remained quiet" because the USA was there to help his country defeat Saddam Hussain. "Saddam was defeated, but the American troops stayed on in the land of the Ka'aba (the sacred site of Islam in Mecca)....He (OBL) wrote letter after letter saying, Why are you here? Get out! You came to help, but you have stayed on."

No one listened. This deaf-ears syndrome, Dr Ahmad identifies as the fuse which ignites political terrorism. As a minority lashes out in helpless rage, the majority applauds the retribution. Palestinians, "the super-terrorists of our time," were dispossessed of their ancestral land in 1948 by the "Jewish terrorists" turned "freedom-fighters." For 20 years, the Palestinians "went to every court in the world. They knocked at every door....(But) nobody was listening to the truth."

"Finally, they invented a new form of terror..., the airplane hijacking. Between 1968 and 1975 they pulled the world up by its ears. They dragged us out and said, Listen, Listen. We listened. We still haven't done them justice, but at least we all know. Even the Israelis acknowledge. Remember Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, saying in 1970, "There are no Palestinians." They do not exist. They damn well exist now. We are cheating them at Oslo. At least there are some people to cheat now. We can't just push them out."

Likewise, in Kashmir and with OBL. Receiving no response, he launched "a Jihad...to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. His earlier mission was to get Russian troops out of Afghanistan." Here Dr Ahmad stressed a seemingly minor detail, but really a crucial factor, so abjectly missing from the current US-UK policy of coercing OBL and the Taliban into submission. This omission could well turn crime-fighting into a "crusade."

These are, he said, "tribal people, people who are really tribal. Being a millionaire doesn't matter. Their code of ethics is tribal....(and) consists of two words: loyalty and revenge. You are my friend. You keep your word. I am loyal to you. You break your word; I go on my path of revenge. For him (OBL), America has broken its word. The loyal friend has betrayed. The one to whom you swore blood loyalty has betrayed you. They're going to go for you. They're going to do a lot more."

If Black Tuesday was the handiwork of OBL - the 'IF' is big because the court of public opinion has still not seen any convincing evidence or any refutation of the alternate theories (including 'Israeldunit') - then Dr Ahmad had forewarned the USA! "These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost. This is why I said to stop covert operations. There is a price attached to those that the American people cannot calculate and Kissinger-type of people do not know, don't have the history to know." An apt comment indeed on the myopic or motivated hawks who are pushing the US-led West to the brink of an inferno which could consume all.

Having outlined the typology and causation of terrorism and the US role in its promotion, Dr Ahmad's advice to America was:

* Avoid "selective moral revulsion" and the "extremes of double standards. If you're going to practice double standards, you will be paid with double standards. Don't use it. Don't condone Israeli terror, Pakistani terror, Nicaraguan terror, El Salvadoran terror, on the one hand, and then complain about Afghan terror or Palestinian terror. It doesn't work. Try to be even-handed. A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place. It won't work in this shrunken world....Do not condone the terror of your allies. Condemn them."

* "Please eschew, avoid covert operations and low-intensity warfare. These are breeding grounds of terror and drugs. Violence and drugs are bred there....because the structure of covert operations, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Central America, is very hospitable to drug trade. Avoid it. Give it up. It doesn't help.

* "Please focus on causes and help ameliorate causes. Try to look at causes and solve problems....Do not seek military solutions. Terrorism is a political problem. Seek political solutions. Diplomacy works."

* Military actions "cause more problems than they solve" because "You don't know what you're attacking. They say they know, but they don't know. They were trying to kill Qadaffi. They killed his four-year-old daughter....They tried to kill Saddam Hussein. They killed Laila Bin Attar, a prominent artist, an innocent woman. They tried to kill Bin Laden and his men. Not one but twenty-five other people died. They tried to destroy a chemical factory in Sudan. Now they are admitting that they destroyed an innocent factory, one-half of the production of medicine in Sudan....You don't know. You think you know....So don't do that."

* "Please help reinforce, strengthen the framework of international law. There was a criminal court in Rome. Why didn't they go to it first to get their warrant against Bin Laden, if they have some evidence? Get a warrant, and then go after him. Internationally. Enforce the UN. Enforce the International Court of Justice, this unilateralism makes us (Americans) look very stupid and them (international institutions) relatively smaller."

Contrary to Dr Ahmad's advice, the current US-West campaign focuses only on private political-terrorism rather than the far more destructive state-terrorism and its main instrument is also covert operations supplemented by overt military action. There is also no inclination to eschew unilateralism and strengthen the international law enforcement institutions. Bad signs, indeed.

Whether the West can minimise, if not forsake, its selective morality and double standards and address the root causes of anger will be tested in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya. And also on the emotive demand for debt write-offs (not rescheduling) and more liberal but focused development aid (not loans) to redress the yawning rich-poor gap.

The US and Pakistan having again embarked upon redoing Afghanistan, it seems fitting to conclude with a bizarre illustration of how their previous misadventure was launched. "In 1985," recalled Dr Ahmad, "President Ronald Reagan received (in the White House) a group of....very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans looking like they came from another century....He pointed towards them..., and said (to the press), 'These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers'. These were the Afghan Mujahideen. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the Evil Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers!"

The writer is a freelance columnist