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When world history is rewritten, even after a thousand years, the 9/11 attacks, the fifth anniversary of which falls tomorrow, will be remembered as the event that changed the face of world politics. It will be remembered as the one single terrorist attack that claimed the most number of innocent civilian lives, but as a spectacular terrorist act that broke the impregnability of an arrogant superpower.

Until 9/11, it was the United States that was wreaking havoc in target countries. Since the end of World War II, the United States had taken military action against or had been militarily involved in Korea, East Germany, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Cuba, Panama, Granada, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the former Yugoslavia. And it was indirectly involved in the suppression of Palestinians by providing economic and military aid to Israel and using its veto power to protect the Zionist state from the international community's collective action through the United Nations.

While in a few cases its involvement was seen as justifiable intervention and in the case of Korea and Iraq (the first Gulf War in 1991) it had the UN sanction, most other cases have gone into history as adventurism or muscle-flexing by a heavyweight against a weakling. The situation worsened after the collapse of the bipolar global order during which the Soviet Union acted as a counter-balance and offered protection to states threatened by US imperialistic design.

During the cold war era, American and Western propaganda machinery projected Communists as godless evil and the Soviet Union as an evil empire. In the light of what is happening now, most people may agree that a godless evil empire which had an ideology that spoke of sharing the global resources equitably for the good of humanity is better than a greedy imperialist hell bent on gobbling up the rest of the world's economic resources.

There was a crying need for a balance of power during the post-Cold War era which saw the rise of the United States as the sole superpower. There was no power on earth to stop the sole superpower's unilateral military adventurism. So when 9/11 happened, billions of people all over the world, especially those who were directly affected by US action or inaction, felt that what had visited the United States was what the Untied States had been visiting upon other countries since the end of World War II.

Especially in West Asia, people on the streets were exchanging SMS messages sharing their elation. That was the initial reaction to 9/11 by some people. But others, including those people who did not like the manner in which the United States had been conducting its international affairs, expressed their disapproval of the terrorist attacks. Nearly 3,000 innocent people died in the attack. Among them was a Sri Lankan Muslim woman. She was a passenger in one of the hijacked planes. The Muslim terrorists did not mind that one sixth of those killed were Muslims. In fact the terrorists did not discriminate.

Within hours, the Bush administration identified the terrorists, as members of al-Qaeda, a group led by Saudi Arabian millionaire and Afghan war veteran Osama bin Laden and wanted the rest of the world to say aye. Many countries jumped the US bandwagon when US President George W. Bush said that "either you are with us or with the terrorists", while a few who felt that there was something rotten in the whole affair said "we are neither with the terrorists nor with George Bush".

Five years on, questions remain as to who committed this dastardly and barbaric terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Bin Laden is the prime suspect. On Thursday, the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera telecast a video showing bin Laden with some of the 9/11 terrorists. As usual, every bin Laden tape raises more questions than it provides answers to hundreds of questions surrounding the mystery of the 9/11 attacks. There is no bin Laden to confirm or reject the authenticity of the tape, which could be the work of anybody with digital technology savvy. Where is he and why is he still at large? The sooner the Americans or the NATO troops who are combing the mountainous areas of Afghanistan's northern border with Pakistan capture him the better. Is he being kept alive and let loose so that the war on terror can go on and on and the Bush administration and its neocon cabal could mislead the American people and invade country after country in pursuit of its capitalistic and imperialistic goals?

We are not sanitizing a terror group. There may be hundreds of conspiracy theories on the 9/11 attacks, but the fact remains the attacks were carried out by an Islamic group or groups. They carried out the Madrid train bomb in 2003 and the London terror attacks last year. They are also active in Iraq, precipitating a sectarian war and contributing towards the perpetuation of the US occupation of that country.

True, the stringent measures the Bush administration has taken in tightening homeland security have prevented a second attack, but they have failed to win the war on terror. One reason is that the lopsided US foreign policy and America's unstinted support for Israel even as the Zionist state commits the worst types of war crimes in occupied Palestine and more recently in Lebanon are pushing more and more misguided youths towards the ideology of al-Qaeda.

The second reason is that this war has been highly politicized. There is no universal approach to the question of terrorism. The measures the West adopts in the fight against terrorism are largely aimed at the so-called Islamic terror. As far as terrorism without the Islamic tag is concerned the West appears to endorse the hackneyed definition that one's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Even the UN effort to draft a comprehensive convention on terrorism is bogged down in definitional squabbles with Arab and Islamic countries demanding that state terrorism should also be included in the definition.

The third reason is even the war against the so-called Islamic terror has lost its vigour. With hindsight, it can be said that the war on terror offered a cover for the Bush administration to invade Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks or al-Qaeda.

The fourth reason is the behind-the-scenes involvement of Big Business in the war on terror. Oil giants such as UNACOL, Shell, Chevron and Mobil and military suppliers such as Halliburton, Bechtel and Martin Lockheed have been recording billions of profits.

The fourth reason is the war on terror is being promoted as a war against Islam by rightwing evangelists and Zionists. The Born-Again US President, too, in a slip-of-the tongue remark described the war on terror as a "Crusade", though he subsequently withdrew it when the Muslim world objected.

Five years on, bin Laden is still a hero in Afghanistan, in certain parts of Pakistan, and among hardline Sunni Muslims in the Arab and Islamic world, largely because they see him as a person who is leading a campaign against US hegemony. But more and more Muslims also detest terrorism as a political weapon.

Many Muslims applaud the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah and draw inspiration from its valiant 34-day battle against mighty Israel. They believe the war on terror is winnable, not by military means but by corrective political action. If a just solution to the Palestinian problem could be found with the United States acting as an honest broker in word and deed, and the United States withdraws from Iraq, ninety percent of the battle would be won, as such measures would leave the likes of al-Qaeda without a slogan to recruit new cadres for their war against the West.