The sheer horror of the aerial assaults on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon by suicidal hijackers at the helm of commercial airliners represents an astounding escalation in the intensity of mindless terrorism. The drama - not even Hollywood could have envisaged it - is replete with ironies.

Who would have thought that in the year that Timothy McVeigh was put to death by the American justice system for the heinous bombing of the US federal building in Oklahoma City in which 268 people died that terrorists would strike in New York and Washington on a scale that dwarfs his crime.

Even more ironic is that just over a decade after helping Afghan rebels - including Taleban elements - bring the Soviet Union to its knees and drive its troops out of Kabul, the United States is unmistakably preparing to strike with hammer blows at Afghanistan and its terrorist guests who are encamped on the soil of this tortured land. President Bush himself has said it. No distinction will be drawn between the terrorists and those harbouring them.

And if that wasn't enough, Russia - eager to rein in the threat that armed Muslim fundamentalism poses in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and its own soft underbelly of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia - might actually co-operate with the Americans in this exercise.

Second by second it becomes clearer that the man and group in the cross hairs of the US sights is Osama bin Laden and his shadowy outfit al Qaeda and those in Kabul who have provided him with the base from which he has apparently initiated terroristic strikes.

The mission that the United States has now embarked on is quite different from the one that President Bush's father initiated against Saddam Hussein when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

The terrorists are hidden in the crevices and cracks of the forbidding and hostile landscape of remote areas of Afghanistan which for centuries have thwarted invaders more than weapons and soldiers. They are not reposed as Saddam was in Baghdad at the nerve centre of a sprawling military/industrial complex that provided an easy target.

How this first war of the 21st century will be executed remains to be seen. What is clear as it was in the Gulf War is that the US is eager to build a coalition of allies to crush or at least severely incapacitate this monster of terrorism that has struck with such deadly force.

American public opinion has already swung decisively behind Bush in this fight. World opinion, though shocked and sympathetic to the American cause, will need to be convinced by the US that it is quite sure it knows who was behind the odious attacks and that it has sufficient evidence in its grasp of this.

Further, Washington will have to be doubly sure of how it will go about successfully rooting out this threat. Saturation bombing of Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq so battered Saddam's offences that the "ground war" that followed was merely a fast-paced drive by American armour victoriously into a land of vanquished soldiers. This would hardly work in Afghanistan and there is a stronger likelihood that ground forces - with the higher risk of casualties - would have to be an early option.

Under tremendous pressure, Pakistan - the original backer of the Taleban - has pledged its support but with reservations over the use of its land and airspace for attacks on Afghanistan. Its decision will anger the Taleban who have threatened to fight an "imposed war" with any neighbour from whom attacks are launched on Afghanistan. These are fighting words indeed as the Taleban must now realise that if Osama bin Laden is the prime suspect and they don't surrender him and his entire network soon to the Americans, the very existence of the fundamentalist, hardline government in Kabul is at risk.

The West has grown increasingly intolerant of the Taleban and this new war being planned could provide the perfect opportunity for the complete undoing of the Kabul government. Ever since the end of the Gulf War, the Americans have been dogged by criticisms and self-doubts over not finishing the job. Having driven Iraq out of Kuwait, the task arguably remained incomplete as a weakened Saddam was permitted to stay in power and in the years that followed he proved what a menacing thorn he was in the side of the Americans ever jabbing and flirting with the line drawn in the sand. Gulf War veterans and strategists are heavily involved in the planning for this campaign and the Saddam experience will be at the back of their minds. With even fewer friends than Saddam had, the isolated Taleban faces a clear and present danger.

However events play out in the coming weeks, it is apparent that a global alliance against terrorism is needed. The multitude of countries mourning losses in this atrocious attack is symbolic of this. Revenge there will be for the World Trade Center bombing but that will hardly bring an end to the problem. There must be a global network aimed at fighting it day in, day out - most appropriately under the auspices of the UN - with an ever increasing number of countries enlisted in the fight. No country, not Guyana, not any other will be immune to the ravages of this threat. Anti-terrorism experts estimate that Osama bin Laden is at the helm of terror cells established in forty or more countries. This is the scale of the threat that the world faces and must array its forces in matching strength against. There are numerous dimensions of the scourge that have to be tackled such as state-sponsored terrorism, sources of funding, weapons and training, money laundering and mobilisation of terrorists. Only by the full sharing of information between anti-terrorism nodes worldwide will there be a perceptible diminishing of the resources available to these predators of human lives.

New York having suffered this massive blow to the icon of America's financial power and dominance lends itself as the likely nodal point for this fight.

The alliance that is being built now to respond to the September 11 suicide attacks must be made into a permanent structure to fight the daily threat of terrorism in every part of the world.