Now that Osama bin Laden is being named by official American sources as the author of last Tuesday's outrages, everyone assumes that Afghanistan will be the target of an attack - even, it seems, the Afghans who are evacuating Kabul with a fatalism born of 23 years exposure to non-stop war. The last time Islamic extremists struck with such vengeance (although not anywhere near so devastatingly) was in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and on that occasion President Clinton slaked the popular thirst for revenge with some ineffectual cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan. In fact, in the case of the latter country, the strikes were not only ineffectual but also, it would seem, misdirected. But this time it is different. This time an angry people will not be satisfied with token responses.

President Bush has promised the nation a war against terrorism, and has also asked Americans for their patience, because it will be a lengthy one. What exactly this means in practical terms is not altogether clear at this stage. What one hopes above all else, however, is that before the US takes any military decisions, it looks at the matter of long-term policy first. It is one of the tragic ironies of history, for example, that the current Taleban regime was helped to power by American money, because the US could not see beyond its short-term interest of backing anyone opposed to the Soviets and the communist Najibullah. It has also been reported that Osama bin Laden himself was trained by the CIA. But the issue of terrorism, which indeed needs a sustained 'war' - although that word does not necessarily have to have only military connotations - is an immensely complicated one. In the first place, while moderate Arab opinion might possibly tolerate an attack on bin Laden himself - assuming that is militarily feasible - it is less clear whether it would not accept a ground invasion of Afghanistan with the Taleban as the target, (although given the Soviet experience, that is unlikely to be militarily feasible). Sustained air strikes, which would hurt a civilian population and do little damage to the Taleban, who preside over a country virtually devoid of infrastructure in any case, would certainly be useless and might even be counter-productive.

In addition, a distinction would probably be made by the Arab world between those groups like al Qaeda, associated with bin Laden, and those like Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Hizbollah, which confine their attacks to Israel, and are perceived not as terrorists, but as liberation fighters. The first free television news station in the Middle East, which transmits from Qatar, has been broadcasting footage of the intifada to a range of Arabic-speaking countries over the past few months, and those images have inflamed passions among all classes over the Palestinian issue. Needless to say, these are passions which make the autocratic rulers of the Middle East nervous. Be that as it may, the United States and the West in general can ill afford to draw their battle lines between the western countries and the entire Islamic world; down that road lies the unthinkable. And nor, one might have thought, should they be in a hurry to destabilise the regimes of some of their Middle Eastern allies.

And then there are the nations which support terrorism, either directly, or indirectly. Again, the United States has to step cautiously. Countries like Iran, for example, which is an Islamic state although not an Arab one, is inching its way on its own to a more open society. It is the sponsor of Hizbollah, which has bases in that part of Lebanon within Syria's sphere of influence. Dealing effectively with Hizbollah, Hamas, etc., depends in the first instance on a Palestinian-Israeli solution. That would not eliminate those organizations either completely or immediately, of course, but it would begin the process of marginalising them. Part of the reason for the failure of the Rabin-Arafat agreement, was that the terrorist acts against Israel continued despite the deal.

Nevertheless, lasting peace was possible at one stage, but opportunities were simply tossed away - first by the Israeli people voting in Mr Netanyahu who promised both what was contradictory as well as what was impossible, and then by Mr Arafat releasing some of the leading militants from jail and not seizing the opportunity to sign a pact with Mr Barak. The advent of the bellicose and unimaginative Mr Sharon to government is just the logical outcome of these earlier failures. An Israeli-Palestinian settlement would have cleared the way for an Israeli-Syrian deal, an essential piece in the peace jigsaw which at the same time would have taken Syria out of the terrorist loop, and possibly, Iran too in due course.

Whether the situation can be retrieved now, is doubtful, but efforts have to be made. The United States has to address its responses to Israel, so that its Middle Eastern policy is not dictated by the actions of its ally. It has allowed the Israeli government, for example, to systematically undermine Mr Arafat, making a peace deal even more difficult than it was already. If Mr Arafat loses all credibility, how many years will have to pass before Hamas, for example, decides it is ready to negotiate? And in the meantime, Mr Sharon is busy prosecuting his own war under cover of the American tragedy. That too, is likely to have consequences which are not in the interest of the US.

While the settlement of the Palestine-Israel problem would make absolutely no difference whatever to the activities of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, who are engaged in a war with the West, it would, as said earlier, in the long run cause groups like Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to be pushed beyond the pale, and it would reduce the numbers available for recruitment to extremist groups in general. In brief, the American government needs to be more pro-active on the Middle East peace issue, and in addition should devise sophisticated long-term policies for dealing with a range of Muslim countries, whose forms of government, interests and foreign policy goals vary considerably.

Of course, it has already been indicated that the shackles have been removed from the CIA, and we will be reverting to an earlier era where that agency's activities are concerned. The West, at least, will clearly evolve better strategies for co-operation on the matter of controlling terrorism, and even some Arab countries may be prepared to look more closely at the kinds of financial transactions which might have their origins with terrorists like bin Laden. And we must assume that bin Laden himself at some stage will be the goal of some form of military operation. Military options on their own, however, cannot solve the terrorism problem, and in the current circumstances they have to be carefully weighed so they do not make the situation worse, rather than better.