september 2001 attacks

The world did not radically change on September 11. The reasons for that act of terror lie in the shift in the geopolitical balance of power in the past quarter of a century. The contrasts that already existed are hardening into segments of inclusion and exclusion.

A sense of history should help policy-makers in India and Pakistan to put into perspective their respective expectations of the US - as in any relationship among unequals - as the latter pursues its longterm global battle against 'international terrorism'. Our past experience provides ample grounds for caution.

Significantly, the focus of the mass upsurge against the US war on 'terrorism' although visible across the whole Muslim world is in the countries which have large oil reserves or provide a passage for the transport of oil but which continue to be poorly developed. With almost no working class movement, the masses are rallying round the traditional 'ulema' who can understand the mass injustice only in terms of traditional religious symbolism.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 hold major messages for the US, the rulers of Muslim countries and for terrorists who speak in the name of Islam.

At 8.48 am on September 11, 19 Arab men changed the nature of US life. These men, from Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, brought their various frustrations on to four planes, three of which struck the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, both symbols of US hegemony. The 19 men ended the American sense of remove from the world, the feeling that violence and terror take place elsewhere and not on the home front.