Some of your readers are right that whilst we condemn the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and extend our condolences to the victims, we must not forget that the US too is implicated in complicity in circumstances leading to this catastrophe.

Between 1982 and 1992, more than 35,000 Muslim radicals (including Osama bin Laden) from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East traveled to Afghanistan to fight with, and for, the Mujahidin (funded by the CIA) against the Soviets. It was the first time thousands of Islamic radicals from such diverse nations trained and fought together, sponsored by the CIA.

In the aftermath of Soviet's withdrawal, the CIA-funded Afghan militants had spawned dozens of fundamentalist movements across the Muslim world. The US now blames radical Islamic militants - products of these fundamentalist movements - as being directed or influenced by Osama to strike the WTC and the Pentagon. US policy has gone a full circle, from funding and training the Taliban to now fighting them.

And yet how did this come to pass?

The expression 'fundamentalists' is perhaps not a precise one because within this broad generic term, there are diverse and unrelated movements that range from CIA-trained Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan to Anti-American ulamas in Iran, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and PAS in Malaysia (operating in a parliamentary system) to terrorist organisations like the Lebanese Hezbollah, from pro-American Saudi-Arabia to anti-American Libya with Pakistan in between.

What however distinguishes Islamic 'fundamentalists' from other 'moderate' Muslims elsewhere is the former's claim that from the Quran and Sunnah can be derived rules for all aspects of life. The modernist Muslims would restrict the authority of the Quran and Sunnah to public and private worship, personal ethics and possibly family law, leaving the rest of social life to be guided by secular ideologies such as nationalism, socialism, globalism, pluralism and democracy in terms of sovereignty of the people.

For 'fundamentalists', Islam embraces the ideology for society, and a comprehensive system for all areas of life; laws are revealed guidance of the Almighty, divined by ulamas that often rule the theocratic state based on sovereignty of God.

There is a general antipathy amongst fundamentalist groups against the United States because it is an epitome of diametrically opposed values based on secularism, hedonism, liberalism, pluralism, and even Zionism!

What exacerbates this cultural divide further is the perceived economic political military and cultural imperialism and hegemony of the US manifested in its Middle East policies, which is often viewed as corrupting the minds of other Muslims there as well as elsewhere.

Though united by common antipathy towards the US because of diametrically opposed worldviews, fundamentalists by definition are not necessarily terrorists though terrorists appear to arise from their ranks in Arab countries and Middle East because of the US policies there.

America has repeatedly interfered in the affairs of Muslims in the Middle East - whether it is for oil, Jewish lobby, strategic interest or glorified resistance of aggressors like Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, in the process of which Muslims there suffered the brunt of its fire power. Sometimes such firepower was miscalculated.

Sudanese Muslims remember that on Aug 20, 1998, much of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum was reduced to rubble by US missiles, which were wrongly fired to avenge terrorist bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 13 days earlier that killed 231 people, 12 of them Americans.

As long as there are parts of the Islamic world that are poverty-stricken, there will be unemployed young men with very little idea of what to do in their lives except embark on a ' jihad ' against perceived American imperialism.

This antipathy is aggravated further by apparent US partiality towards Israel that controls Jerusalem's Islamic holy places in the Palestinian fight for their homeland.

Is there any wonder then that when Palestinians heard about the devastation of the WTC and the Pentagon there were celebrations in the streets of Jerusalem and refugee camp in Lebanon?

It also means that the US policies in the Middle East against the backdrop of opposed cultural values between the US and Islamic Revivalism will always engender strong animosity in those regions in which fundamentalist Islam takes hold towards America from which it will continue to spawn radical extremists determined to strike at the US.

These appear to be the root causes of the hatred against the US. Given the American mood for revenge and retaliation and the apparent high moral ground of combating terrorism, the question is not if but when it will, together with its coalition partners, mobilise a massive strike most likely targeted at the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are harbouring Osama.

Besides an eye-for-an-eye retribution that must be vented and as deterrence for self-protection against future terrorist attacks, a large-scale military campaign and operations will only serve to rejuvenate the already flagging economy of the US.

Because the actual or potential 'terrorists' are faceless, difficult to trace or capture but yet ubiquitous, the likelihood is that US retaliatory strikes will, far from being surgical, are likely to be a broad swathe with much 'collateral damage' and casualties amongst civilians.

Violence will beget more violence as more radical fundamentalists incensed by a massive US attack on Afghanistan may be drawn to further wage 'terrorist' attacks on the US and her allies that may cause the US, in turn, to up the ante by reprisals on a larger scale, ad infinitum .

From a starting point of a US campaign against terrorists, it may well lead ultimately to one broadly against countries such as Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran by virtue of their alleged patronage and support for guerilla groups opposed to the US.

The US could, of course, avert an escalation of conflict and ensuing loss of lives by taking more time to investigate and capture and try those who directly conspired in the attacks, step up security across the country and improve intelligence operations.

But frightfully, that's not how the country feels right at this moment. An invocation of the sneak Pearl Harbor attack 60 years ago by way of comparison hints at the possible scale of reprisals.