Since the middle of the 1990s, national security and counter-terrorism experts of the world have been discussing about the dangers of what has come to be known as the new or catastrophic terrorism, how to prevent it and how to deal with it if the preventive measures fail.

Since 1995, there have been about 300 seminars on this subject organised by different think tanks, an equal number of Congressional committee hearings in the US and parliamentary debates in other countries, nearly a dozen blue ribbon commissions or study groups, governmental or non-governmental, in different countries -- at least three in the US alone -- which had studied this subject either partly or exclusively, about 15,400 articles/papers written by eminent experts, any number of exercises to identify terrorist attack indicators, at least two counter catastrophic terrorism "war" games per annum, the last of them in the US under the code name "Dark Winter" in June,2001 etc.

All these seminars, hearings, commissions, study groups, articles, papers and "war" games were of no avail in preventing about 50 determined terrorists from getting together and blowing up the World Trade Centre in New York and part of the Pentagon in Washington DC.

Thousands of innocent people have died at the hands of terrorists all over the world, not because there has been a lack of thinking or ideas as to how to deal with them, but because of lack of action on the part of the States -- action which is as determined and ruthless as that of the terrorists.

Thousands of innocent people will continue to die at the hands of terrorists unless and until the international community draws the right lessons from the tragedy of September 11 and acts on those lessons without ambivalence or mental reservations.

• Lesson No. 1: Terrorism is an absolute evil and should be fought absolutely, whatever be the objectives of the terrorists, their nationality, the nationality of the victims, etc. One cannot have one kind of language to deplore acts of terrorism in New York or Washington DC and another to deplore terrorist attacks in Srinagar, Jerusalem or elsewhere.
  
• Lesson No.2: A State-sponsor of terrorism is an equally absolute evil and should be ostracised and punished absolutely whatever be the so-called strategic importance of the State and its actual or potential role as a strategic ally.
  
• Lesson No.3: It is high time to discard cliches of the past such as "one nation's terrorist is another nation's freedom-fighter" and "one nation's terrorist State is another nation's strategic ally " and so on.

When the debates on catastrophic terrorism began in the middle of the 1990s, it was viewed principally as likely acts of terrorism involving the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The definition was subsequently expanded to include catastrophic acts of cyber terrorism, which may cause serious damage to the economy and acts designed to create mass panic such as seizing control of nuclear reactors/power stations and threatening to blow them up or actually blowing them up.

Of late, the definition has been further expanded to include even acts involving use of conventional weapons, if they are designed to cause large casualties or serious damage to the economy and vital infrastructures.

Experts are now veering round to the definition that catastrophic terrorism is any act, whatever be the weapon used, that causes or is likely to cause fatal human casualties of more than 1,000 and/or serious damage of a medium or long-term nature to the national, regional or global economy and vital infrastructures.

During these discussions of the 1990s, five States of the world had been cited by many experts as worrisome, from which acts of catastrophic terrorism were most likely to emanate, either because they were harbouring or soft in dealing with terrorist groups which would have no qualms in using catastrophic terrorism or because were consciously using such groups as a weapon to achieve their strategic objectives.

These countries were Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Greece. Greece was cited not because of any complicity with the terrorists, but because of its weak counter-terrorism apparatus.

The report of the bipartisan US National Commission on Terrorism, headed by Mr. Paul Bremer, former head of the Counter-Terrorism Division of the State Department, submitted to the Congress on June 5,2000, specifically cited these countries and stated as follows: "U.S. policies must firmly target all states that support terrorists. Iran and Syria should be kept on the list of state sponsors until they stop supporting terrorists. Afghanistan should be designated a sponsor of terrorism and subjected to all the sanctions applicable to state sponsors. The President should impose sanctions on countries that, while not direct sponsors of terrorism, are nevertheless not cooperating fully on counterterrorism. Candidates for consideration include Pakistan and Greece."

A report of the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, which is ideologically close to the Republican Party, prepared in the middle of last year, had also recommended that the Taliban Government of Afghanistan should be declared a State-sponsor of international terrorism and a warning should be issued to Pakistan that if it did not co-operate in dealing with Afghanistan-based terrorist groups, it also stood the danger of similarly being declared.

In fact, since 1992, the annual reports of the State Department on the Patterns of Global Terrorism have been citing in increasingly stronger language the activities of Pakistan-based terrorist groups. President Clinton, after coming to office in January, 1993, had placed Pakistan in a so-called watch list of suspected State-sponsors of international terrorism, but removed it after six months on the ground that the Nawaz Sharif Government had satisfied US demands for the removal of Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and some other senior officers.

There were three or four instances in which the military-intelligence establishment in Pakistan had co-operated in arresting and deporting terrorists threatening or who had acted against US interests such as Mir Aimal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef etc. Apart from this, it had avoided co-operating in respect of other terrorists and their organisations, which were being used by it against India.

It resisted US pressure to ban the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM--formerly known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) and to co-operate in the arrest and deportation of Osama bin Laden and other members of the brain trust of the International Islamic Front For Jehad against the US and Israel.

This Front and bin Laden had been repeatedly talking of their religious duty to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons, to protect their religion. The Afghanistan-Pakistan based components of this Front were the only terrorist organisations of the world which were openly advocating resort to catastrophic terrorism.

The State Department's annual report on Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2000 released by Gen. Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, on April 30,2001, gave the following detailed account of Pakistani involvement with the terrorist groups in J & K and Afghanistan:

• "The Government of Pakistan increased its support to the Taliban and continued its support to militant groups active in Indian-held Kashmir, such as the Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM), some of which engaged in terrorism.
  
• "Islamic extremists from around the world--including North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Central, South, and Southeast Asia--continued to use Afghanistan as a training ground and base of operations for their worldwide terrorist activities in 2000. The Taliban, which controlled most Afghan territory, permitted the operation of training and indoctrination facilities for non-Afghans and provided logistics support to members of various terrorist organizations and mujahidin, including those waging jihads (holy wars) in Central Asia, Chechnya, and Kashmir.
  
• "Throughout 2000 the Taliban continued to host Usama Bin Ladin despite UN sanctions and international pressure to hand him over to stand trial in the United States or a third country. In a serious and ongoing dialogue with the Taliban, the United States repeatedly made clear to the Taliban that it would be held responsible for any terrorist attacks undertaken by Bin Ladin while he is in its territory.
  
• "Massacres of civilians in Kashmir during March and August were attributed to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) and other militant groups.
  
• "Pakistan's military government, headed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, continued previous Pakistani Government support of the Kashmir insurgency, and Kashmiri militant groups continued to operate in Pakistan, raising funds and recruiting new cadre. Several of these groups were responsible for attacks against civilians in Indian-held Kashmir, and the largest of the groups, the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, claimed responsibility for a suicide car-bomb attack against an Indian garrison in Srinagar in April.
  
• "In addition, the Harakat- ul-Mujahidin (HUM), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, continues to be active in Pakistan without discouragement by the Government of Pakistan. Members of the group were associated with the hijacking in December 1999 of an Air India (author's comment: it was actually the Indian Airlines) flight that resulted in the release from an Indian jail of former HUM leader Maulana Masood Azhar. Azhar since has founded his own Kashmiri militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and publicly has threatened the United States.
  
• "The United States remains concerned about reports of continued Pakistani support for the Taliban's military operations in Afghanistan. Credible reporting indicates that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance, and military advisers. Pakistan has not prevented large numbers of Pakistani nationals from moving into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. Islamabad also failed to take effective steps to curb the activities of certain madrassas, or religious schools, that serve as recruiting grounds for terrorism. Pakistan publicly and privately said it intends to comply fully with UNSCR 1333, which imposes an arms embargo on the Taliban.
  
• "In South Asia, the United States has been increasingly concerned about reports of Pakistani support to terrorist groups and elements active in Kashmir, as well as Pakistani support, especially military support, to the Taliban, which continues to harbor terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan."

Even on the basis of the assessment of its own experts in the State Department, the Pakistani military junta is as responsible as the Taliban for harbouring and assisting international terrorist organisations, which caused the horrendous acts of catastrophic terrorism in the US on September 11,2001.

Instead of acting firmly against the junta and insisting on its dismantling the terrorist infrastructure on its territory, the USA has chosen to reward it by removing even the existing sanctions and projecting the junta as the USA's strategic ally in the "war" against terrorism.

Instead of controlling terrorism, this unwise policy would only further aggravate the threats from Pakistan and Afghanistan-based terrorists to the rest of the world.

Despite his pretense of co-operation with the international community in its fight against terrorism, Musharraf follows his double-faced policy of covertly supporting terrorism to achieve Pakistan's strategic objective. This is evident from the horrendous act of terrorism by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad outside the building of the Legislative Assembly in Srinagar on October 1,2001, which resulted in the deaths of 40 innocent civilians. His modus operandi has been exactly the same as before: first, to describe the terrorists as freedom-fighters; then, when he finds the rest of the world condemning it as an act of terrorism, to allege that the Indian Security Forces committed the act in order to discredit the "freedom-fighters".

So long as he and his junta feel confident that the international community would not act against them, they would continue to use terrorism to achieve their objectives and New York--September 11 would not be the end, but only the beginning of the depredations which the terrorists from this epicentre would repeatedly cause in the heart of the US.