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The week that was horror

Menka Shivdasani

ONE week on, as the world waits to see what the US will do next, the shock and horror are giving way to words of caution. Should US allies provide unstinted cooperation, whatever President George W. Bush may decide to do? Should this become a battle agai nst Islamic forces worldwide, or focus on flushing out one man who has committed un-Islamic acts in the name of religion?

On BBC World, Mr Qazi Hussain Ahmed in Lahore was talking of the need for fortitude and tolerance and suggested that the US contemplate the reasons behind the terrorist attack. On CNNs Q&A, the Islamic scholar, Prof Bernard Haykel, said that the US shoul d de-legitimise Osama bin Laden by conveying to the world that his acts were un-Islamic and get Muslims to issue fatwas against him. On Ms Barkha Dutt's We the People, three ambassadors from France, Palestine and Sudan were cautioning against allowing th e US carte blanche in terms of military action. Mr Bernard de Montferrand, the French ambassador, pointed out that while they would certainly provide support to the US, it would have to be preceded by ``good discussions''. Mr Abdul Mahmood of Sudan said: ``We caution restraint against indiscriminate action'', and speaking of an ``appropriate response'' rather than the sort of revenge that would result in a religious backlash and ``open a Pandoras box of violence''.

But the US, is clearly in no mood for such placatory words. It is talking of swift and harsh action. As one analyst said on BBCs Dateline London, this is the ``most dangerous and most frightening moment for the world''. CNBC on Power Lunch warns of how A merican people are being told to prepare for a global fight that will not be quick or easy.

As security at airports is tightened and people are cancelling plane tickets, the impact on the world economy is also sinking in. Mr Norm Minet, transportation secretary, talks of how life has changed dramatically, with commercial airliners being deploye d for the first time in terrorist attacks. Aviation and tourism are among the first to suffer. One report spoke of bookings being down by a third the world over and of how roughly every dollar out of five spent in Britain came from American tourists.

With a war in its backyard imminent, and its close business links to the US jeopardised in these troubled times, India is bound to feel the backlash. We were in trouble to begin with, anyway, as analyst Mr Joydeep Mukherji suggested on CNBC, commenting t hat long before Osama bin Laden had declared jihad on America, Indian politicians had declared jihad on projects such as Enron. Mr Anirvan Banerji of the Economic Cycle Research Institute in New York also felt that while there would certainly be a sustai ned recession, it would be important not to attribute the downturn entirely to the terrorist attack.

Still, there is no doubt of the direct impact of the tragedy. CNBCs Digital Revolution looked at the impact on the IT sector, India's great hope in the last few years, and had senior industry executives such as Dr Lalit Kanodia pointing out that while bu siness would eventually revert to business as usual, the fact that traffic between India and the US had already slowed down was not good at all, considering that the IT industry depended on face-to-face interaction with clients. On the same show, Mr Deep ak Ghaisas of i-Flex Solutions spoke of the difficulty of getting visas in a situation where US confidence had been affected. One of the big advantages India had, he said, was that it could send IT personnel to the US quickly -- something that could chan ge now.

Will India's offer of support to the US benefit us in any way? The only really smile I saw in a week of grim visuals was on the face of Dr Sreedhar of the IDSA. He told CNBC that this was a golden opportunity, that we need not do anything right now but w atch, because Pakistan was in one of the worst dilemmas it had ever faced.

India is for the first time in a situation that anything Pakistan does or does not do will help us, he said. His enthusiasm did not seem to be shared by other analysts. Pakistan seems to have already won this game of one-upmanship in its support to the U S, despite the huge backlash it faces internally as a result. And like Mr J. N. Dixit put it on Reality Bites, just because India had supported the US, to believe that the US would totally support us in return would be very optimistic.

Still, there were times when you had to put cynicism aside, especially while watching the rescue workers do the best they could, and empathise with those who had lost, or seemed to have lost, their near and dear ones. There were some amazing stories that came out, such as the narrow escape that 3,700 employees of Morgan Stanley had thanks to their quick action, and the close escape of Mr Ashok Rajan, who was featured on STAR News. Mr Rajan was three blocks away from the World Trade Centre when it was hi t, and by a bizarre coincidence, had also been in the same building on the 63rd floor the last time it had been attacked some years ago. ``I am in denial'', he said on STAR News, expressing a state of mind of many in the US and around the world.

As the US prepares for battle, this state of denial will not be allowed to last long. One can only hope that as the US finally realises the need to fight terrorism, it does not create more problems than it solves.