I am writing in response to CH Loh's letter ('Afghan conflict - stop the hypocrisy', Oct 24). Firstly, I do agree that having suffered a horrendous terrorist attack, the US has every right to retaliate. This does not mean, however, that the current military actions taken against Afghanistan is automatically justified.

If ever one care to observe the unfolding of the current conflict, one of the things that stood out is the fact that the Talibaan never refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. And they set two very important conditions for this: first, that the US (or anybody for that matter) present clear and irrefutable evidence that Osama really was guilty of the terrorist acts, and secondly, that he be tried by an Islamic court in a third country.

May I ask whether our readers find these demands to be unfair or unacceptable? And if yes, why?

Surely one could not possibly accuse anybody else of a crime without evidence? With what we have been hearing these days from people the world over, one would be forgiven to think that the maxim "presumed innocent until proven guilty" is mere rhetoric and should be selectively applied.

Put yourselves in the Taliban shoes: you are entertaining a guest in your home (a relative in fact, in this case, and one that had helped in your time of need - remember those Russians?), then suddenly the neighbourhood bully comes hammering on your door, demanding that you kick the guest out of your house, ASAP. He says that he wants to "settle some scores".

Knowing the bully, he will kick the stuffing out of your guest (like he did to a neighbour some time ago) if he can get away with it. So what would you do?

I tell you what you should do: You ask the bully why you should hand your guest over, and what exactly are the scores that need to be settled. This is the only sensible thing to do since you are ultimately being asked to decide on your guest's fate.

And you might also like to invite the bully inside to resolve the apparent conflict through negotiations and open dialogues like all civilised people do (Incidentally, this bully has a habit of boasting to everybody that he's such a civilised person, and his house the most civilised there is). Then go see the local magistrate if need be.

But if the bully refuses to do this, and then goes on to threaten you with violence if you do not co-operate, then I think you should stand firm on your principles and not let him to get the better of you (which is what the host chose to do in our case).

But what we have now is the bully, suspecting that your guest is somewhere in the house (he has no way of knowing exactly where, you see, despite all his fancy gadgets), is slowly but surely obliterating your house with the backing of similar-minded bandits.

While all this is happening, cowering in fear in the corners of your house are some 7.5 million members of your family, most of them are sickly and certainly all are starving. You see many of them die every single day, while at the same time the bully's wife gleefully remarks that, "Never mind, they're what we call 'collateral damage'. You wait until the whole house come tumbling down, then we're sure to get our target!"

You suffer quietly inside because you also know you have no means whatsoever to get your family out of harm's way, innocent as they obviously are.

Sympathetic neighbours - paradoxically, many are relatives of the bully - try to help you but are roughly kept away, and some of them are killed in the process as well. This is what you're suffering, and you try your best to defend your house and family. Suddenly out come these strangers from afar, obviously only choosing to believe the bully's side of the story, and informed by the media hostile to your family and what your family stands for (for reasons of their own), suggesting that you have brought this to yourself! That you chose "to receive the brunt of retaliation". Imagine!

Now, with regard to the second condition set by the Talibaan, one must now take into account of their Weltanschauung, their worldview according to the Islamic way of thinking, a way of thinking which many of us, Muslims or not, are sadly not familiar with. I am not suggesting, however, that I might be an exception to this.

Each and every one of us must make the effort of really trying to understand our subjects, especially before making judgments and jumping to conclusions. Does anybody really know what the Taliban are like, other than what is portrayed by the media (Western or Eastern alike)? Has anybody ever tried to hear their side of the story, objectively?

Please, can anybody raise his or her hand if he or she hasn't the slightest doubt, not even an iota, that Osama was behind the Sept 11 attacks?

Further, do you think you have the right to decide what is good for Afghanistan, assuming you know what it was like during the King's reign, or when she was helplessly raped and plundered by the Russians, or what (presently) the Northern Alliance and other factions did after the Russians were shamefully defeated and driven out?

We should also check our facts: in the World Trade Center bombing of February 1993, there were actually six civilian casualties, not the hundreds as some pseudo-journalists would have us believe.

Back to the Talibaan (and their second condition): these religious students, brought up in madrasahs scattered near the Pakistan-Afghaani borders, must have been indoctrinated with what I should term as "radical" Islamic thinking, so radical in fact that nobody in the Muslim world nowadays could recognise it as Islamic.

Take, for instance, that the reason they insist on a neutral country to try Osama by an Islamic court is because they believe that one should "judge only by what God has revealed". Now, Muslim brothers and sisters, fellow readers, please-oh-please tell me that this obviously runs 'counter' to Islamic concept of tawheed and your own conscience.

And our non-Muslim readers must be able to appreciate the fact that, far from seeking and exhausting all available avenues to get Osama to be tried first, the Bush administration curtly and promptly refused the latest offer of hand-over from the Taliban (the two conditions set as before).

Significantly, it was also made clear that they wanted to try Osama in a US court, not by an international one, despite the fact that the attacks had also claimed the lives of many citizens of other countries as well. (The US never believed in the International Court anyway: the case of Nicaragua vs the USA is instructive.)

And we haven't even touch on the subject of America's highly hypocritical dichotomy with regard to foreign and domestic policies. Need I mention Palestine or Haiti or Cuba or even Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Finally, I am not trying to defend the Talibaan nor am I trying to attack all that is American. What I believe I am trying to do, however small and feeble this gesture might be, is to save the lives of the millions of innocent people. They need ordinary people like us to speak out for them. Isn't this, at the very least, what all of us should do?