From New York and Washington, to Bali and Mombasa and Riyadh and, now Casablanca. It seems likely that probably all, and certainly most, of the recent suicide-homicide attacks on civilian targets are linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

In her study of al-Qaeda titled The Base (Simon & Schuster, 2002), British journalist Jane Corbin quotes bin Laden as having declared in 1998: "Our duty is to arouse the Muslim nation for jihad against the United States, Israel and their supporters, for the sake of God."

No doubt that is how he sees his particular calling. It's just that the past four suicide-homicide attacks have taken place in Indonesia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. On each occasion, many more local inhabitants were murdered than the combined total of Americans and Israelis.

The evidence suggests that the decision by US authorities to clamp down on terrorism after the events of September 11 has led to a situation where terrorists have decided to choose softer, non-American, targets. Both decisions are rational.

Al-Qaeda's apparent change of tactics has been an unintended consequence. Now bin Laden targets not only Westerners, but non-Westerners; not only Christians and Jews, but Muslims and Buddhists, and more besides. This provides some opportunities for the counter-terrorist cause.

Before the Bali murders, the US had been highly critical of what it regarded as the Indonesian Government's slack attitude to terrorism. Not any more. Last February, the US ambassador in Jakarta, Ralph Boyce, commented that progress on "every one" of America's anti-terrorist benchmarks had been "extraordinary" since the murders of October 12 last year. This change of attitude is recognised in the US State Department publication Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002, released last month.

Co-operation between Indonesia and Australia has been excellent since the Bali bombings. President Megawati's government has overseen the arrest and prosecution of at least some of the alleged killers and the matter has proceeded quickly to trial.

In addition, the previous attitude of denial has dissipated. Last week I Made Mangku Pastika, the police chief of Bali, said publicly that up to 30 terrorists who had trained at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan remain undetected in Indonesia.

Certainly terrorism remains a serious problem in Indonesia. But the Indonesian authorities have moved decisively against those accused of the Bali bombings. What's more, individuals thought to be associated with the radical Islamist group Jemaah Islamiah are being tracked down and Abu Bakar Bashir, JI's spiritual leader, has been charged with treason concerning alleged crimes not associated with the Bali murders. It is difficult to imagine that such an action would have been taken if the tragic events of October 12 had not occurred.

It remains to be seen whether Saudi Arabia will experience a similar awakening after last week's attacks in Riyadh. To some extent, Saudi Arabia is al-Qaeda's base. Bin Laden was born there, as were most of those involved in the September 11 attacks on the US. Officially, the Saudi royal family are allies of the US. Unofficially, Saudi Arabia's dictatorial rulers have allowed bin Laden's followers to operate in the country and to be essentially financed by fellow Saudis.

This may, just may, change following the Riyadh murders. In Washington last Friday, Adel Jubeir (chief foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah) conceded that the terrorist attacks were a "massive jolt" that had already led to a substantial reassessment of Saudi security. He added: "We will do whatever we need to do, unilaterally or with the support of our friends, to ensure this does not happen again."

Maybe. It's just that, up to now, the Saudi regime has effectively tolerated terrorism. This has posed particular problems for the US since Saudi Arabia is, formally, a US ally. American political analyst Michael Ledeen sets out the problem in his book The War Against the Terror Masters (St Martin's Press, 2002). He describes Saudi Arabia as a "country that is simultaneously our major oil supplier and the main financier of our terrorist enemies".

Now it's possible, just possible, that the regime in Riyadh will come to realise that even tolerating al-Qaeda's existence on Saudi soil will have deleterious consequences. Followers of game theory, and others besides, will not have been surprised that al-Qaeda and similar organisations appear to have changed tactics after September 11.

The immediate targets are no longer the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon but, rather, Western residential compounds, hotels and religious entities. It is likely that further attacks will follow, possibly including some within Western societies.

Yet progress has been made since September 11. The war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan - in which Australian special forces played an important role, most notably in the battle of Anaconda - has been successful in that it has denied bin Laden's forces a base to train and launch operations. This is likely to diminish the capability of al-Qaeda and its followers to launch big hits against high-profile targets.

What's more, due particularly to Pakistan's decision to support the West in the war against terrorism, a number of important arrests have been made, most notably that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpinda last March. He was the third in the al-Qaeda hierarchy and is believed to have been the military planner of the September 11 attacks.

Then there is the change of attitude in Indonesia, which is of particular benefit to Australia and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, small successes aside, the war against terrorism is likely to be a long one, possibly one of the longest in history. This is the first conflict in which civilians have been a prime target. So - in this sense at least - it is a total war. And, as the recent tragedies reveal, all men and women of all faiths and nationalities are potential targets.

US intelligence agencies are convinced that the terrorist group suspected of planning the Bali bombing, Jemaah Islamiah, remains capable of carrying out devastating attacks and is actively planning to target Westerners in South-East Asia.
A senior US Government official has told The Age that JI still has a significant operational arm and up to 500 operatives in the region.
The mounting concerns about JI last night prompted upgraded travel warnings across most of the region. The new alert, issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and covering Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, Singapore and Brunei, advises Australians to defer plans for non-essential travel. Existing warnings for Indonesia were reissued on Wednesday.
Local intelligence sources confirmed there were "justified fears based on credible information" of new terror attacks.
The US official spoke to The Age soon before the Riyadh bombings and expressed concern that JI had become a highly mobile network moving its people through South-East Asia.

"We think there are still large numbers of Jemaah Islamiah that are known to us who are planning activities that are connected to al-Qaeda," said the official, who could not be named. "There are transfers of money and there is clearly an intention, and to a certain extent, a capacity to target foreign interests in the region".
The fresh intelligence on JI came as it was revealed that one of the suspects in Monday's suspected al-Qaeda bombing in Saudi Arabia is the older brother of a former key JI operative in South-East Asia.
The Saudi Government has named one of the 19 suspects in the Riyadh attacks as Canadian-Kuwaiti Abdulrahman Mansour Jabarah, whose younger brother distributed funds for terrorist bombings by JI cells.
Jabarah's brother, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, was arrested in March last year and is now in US custody. An FBI report on his interrogation, given to The Age, revealed that the young Jabarah had attended a meeting of senior JI figures in Thailand just before his arrest where the group decided to attack so-called "soft targets" such as bars and clubs frequented by Westerners in South-East Asia.
JI's operational chief, Hambali, was still on the run but, "still has the capacity to rally troops", said the official who briefed The Age. Hambali was present at the Thailand meeting with the younger Jabarah who was a bag man for JI in South East Asia and allegedly helped finance terrorist plans for attacks in Singapore and the Philippines.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he remained, "very concerned about Jemaah Islamiah" in the region. Yesterday the US State Department updated its travel warning for Americans travelling to Malaysia because of the "continuing concern about the possibility of terrorist attacks".
The younger Jabarah is believed to have been sent to South-East Asia by al-Qaeda's third in command, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is credited with planning the September 11 attacks. Mohammed, arrested in Pakistan several months ago, is in US custody.
The US official who briefed The Age said that the interrogation of Mohammed had provided new evidence of al-Qaeda's links to JI. "We are learning more and more from him every day including (about) Jemaah Islamiah," the official said. "We have always felt reasonably confident that Hambali was the operational link between JI and al-Qaeda and everything we have learnt has confirmed that understanding."
While Hambali's whereabouts are unknown there is new intelligence that Bangladesh is becoming the latest haven for al-Qaeda operatives on the run.
At a closed intelligence seminar in Washington last week, officials suggested that up to 500 JI operatives could still be active in South-East Asia and targeting Westerners at tourist spots in South-East Asia, in particular in southern Thailand and Cambodia. But Singaporean intelligence officials have also expressed fears that shipping lanes and ports in the region could be attacked.
The fresh Department of Foreign Affairs advisories warn travellers to take care in commercial and public areas frequented by foreigners, including shopping centres, clubs, hotels, bars and restaurants. They cover popular holiday areas, like Phuket in Thailand and coastal resorts in the Philippines.

The deadly suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia serve as a reminder — if anyone needed it — that the threat of terrorism out of the Middle East is still very much with us.

The attacks, which seem to have killed at least 20 people, were aimed at several compounds that house Westerners working in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Within the walls of the compounds, non-Muslims are able to replicate something akin to the lifestyles they had back home. American expatriates see them as a means of maintaining their own cultural preferences, for free mixing of the sexes and the availability of alcohol and uncensored movies, within the strict Wahhabi religious dictates of Saudi society. But Islamic fundamentalists have always been affronted by the enclaves, and for terrorists, the compounds serve as a handy symbol of the modern Western culture they despise. Attacking them also ensures intense publicity.

The Saudi government, which relies on foreign workers to support key parts of its economy, understands that it must move quickly to root out the people who strove to make a political point by plotting yet another murderous attack. That is the obvious first step. The second must be internal reforms that will reduce the population of unemployed, angry, disenfranchised young people who connect the United States with a government that ignores their problems.

The Bush administration is already embarked on a plan to take American troops out of Saudi Arabia. That is a smart idea that will eliminate one target of fundamentalist ire, put our soldiers where they can be more easily protected and give the Saudi royal family an opening to begin making political and economic concessions to its restless people. Nothing that happened this week should deter the administration from pursuing that plan.

Many in the Western world will always view the tragedy of Sept. 11 as being about America, but to the people who carried it out, the terrorist attack was as much about Saudi Arabia. The United States is a supporting player in the terrorists' own internal political drama, which centers on fundamentalist religion, a grandiose vision of their own role in world affairs and an anger at the Saudi government's alliance with non-Muslim Western nations.

The Bush administration hopes to replace that story with a new one, involving democracy, economic opportunity and liberty. It would begin with a new era in Iraq, the road to peace in Israel and increasing democratization in other Arab nations. Right now, with chaos in Baghdad and foot-dragging by Israel, that path looks treacherous. But it is the best current chance for a way out, toward a future in which suicide attacks on innocent civilians will be understood by Muslims around the world not as a form of political protest, but as utter insanity.

Ladawi is a 16-month-old girl with twigs for limbs, blotched skin, labored breathing, eyes that roll back and skin stretched tautly over shoulder blades that look as if they belong to a survivor of Auschwitz. She is so malnourished that she cannot brush away the flies that land on her eyes, and she does not react when a medical trainee injects drugs into her hip in a race to save her life.

"She's concerned only with trying to breathe," says the trainee, the closest thing to a doctor at a remote medical center here in southern Ethiopia. "Most likely she will not survive."

Ladawi would be the third child to die of malnutrition in three days just at this one little health center, and millions of other Africans are threatened by the specter of a famine rising over Ethiopia and neighboring countries. To bounce over the rutted roads here is to feel transported back to the Biafra crisis in Nigeria or the 1984-85 Ethiopia famine, for sick and dying children are everywhere.

We've all been distracted by Iraq, but an incipient famine in the Horn of Africa has been drastically worsening just in the last few weeks. It has garnered almost no attention in the West, partly because it's not generally realized that people are already dying here in significant numbers. But they are. And unless the West mobilizes further assistance immediately to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, the toll could be catastrophic.

On Sunday morning I checked out of my hotel room at the Addis Ababa Sheraton, so luxurious an establishment that stereo speakers play music underwater in the glistening pool, and by evening I was in Awassa in southern Ethiopia, surrounded by children with glazed eyes, toothpick limbs and hideously swollen bellies.

"We've been overwhelmed by this, especially in the last three weeks," said Tigist Esatu, a nurse at the Yirba Health Center, crowded with mothers carrying starving children. "Some families come and say, `We've lost two children already, three children already, so you must save this one.' "

Since weapons of mass destruction haven't turned up so far in Iraq, there's been a revisionist suggestion that the American invasion was worthwhile because of humanitarian gains for the liberated Iraqi people. Fair enough. But as long as we're willing to send hundreds of thousands of troops to help Iraqis, what about offering much more modest assistance to save the children dying here?

"How is it that we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa that we would never accept in any other part of the world?" asks James Morris, the executive director of the World Food Program. Ethiopians worry that with attention diverted by Iraq, Africa will be forgotten. It's a legitimate fear: in the 1990's, aid was diverted to the former Yugoslavia and away from much needier parts of Africa.

So far, the U.S. and Europe have responded reasonably well — it was heartwarming to see bags of wheat marked "U.S.A." even in isolated hamlets — but the needs are growing much faster than the supplies, and children are dying in the meantime.

"Now I worry about my other children," said Tadilech Yuburo, a young woman who lost one child last month and has three left. In her village, Duressa, population 300, five children have died in the last month of malnutrition-related ailments. In nearby Falamu, population 400, six children have died. Down the road in Kurda, population 1,000, six children have died.

This famine has not yet registered on the world's conscience, and the World Food Program says no journalist had previously visited this region since the crisis began. But although this area of Ethiopia has been hit particularly hard, 12 million people around the country are affected — compared with 10 million during the 1984-85 famine.

In past African crises, like Ethiopia's in 1984-85 and Rwanda's in 1994, the international community reacted too slowly, and hundreds of thousands of Africans died as a result. This time, we can still avert a similar catastrophe, but we must act at once. "We are appalled by the lack of full rations to food aid beneficiaries in Ethiopia, which amounts to slow starvation for those without other sources of food," an alliance of aid groups warned recently, adding: "For the international community to allow this to happen in the 21st century is unforgivable."

The death toll from three car bomb attacks late Monday night that blasted apart buildings in separate residential compounds occupied by Americans and other foreigners rose to at least 20 today, with scores of others wounded, Saudi and American officials said.

The suicide attacks spread terror and confusion through the night and drew condemnation from President Bush, Saudi leaders and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who arrived in Riyadh for scheduled talks with Crown Prince Abdullah only hours after the blasts.

Mr. Powell toured an apartment complex where the entire front was blown off. There was furniture and clothing strewn about the area around a 10-foot-deep crater and nearby there was an overturned truck that had been blasted apart.

Mr. Powell seemed shaken as he toured the site, just as a dust storm whipped through the rubble and a pungent stench from the explosives hung in the torrid air.

``This was a well-planned terrorist attack, obviously,'' he said somberly. ``The facility had been cased, as had the others. Very well executed. And it shows the nature of the enemy we are working against. These are people who are determined to try to penetrate facilities like this for purpose of killing people in their sleep, killing innocent people, killing people who are trying to help others.''

Like other officials, Mr. Powell said there was no evidence that Al Qaeda had carried out the attack, but he said it had that group's ``fingerprints.''

[President Bush reacted angrily to the attack.

``Today's attacks in Saudi Arabia, the ruthless murder of American citizens and other citizens, remind us that the war on terror continues,'' he said at an appearance in Indianapolis.

The president called the bombings ``despicable acts committed by killers whose only faith is hate.'' The crowd of 7,000 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds roared its approval when he said, ``The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice.'']

Early reports by a Saudi official put the toll at 20. He said that seven Americans, seven Saudis, two Jordanians, two Filipinos, one Lebanese and one Swiss died. In addition, nine charred bodies believed to be those of the suicide attackers were found, the official said. American officials said they did not dispute those figures.

American officials said the three attacks were almost identical in method. In each case, a vehicle sped to a lightly guarded entry gate of one of three large residential compounds in the northeastern part of the sprawling capital. Gunmen shot their way past the sentries and then got inside the guardhouse to open the gate and to lower other barriers.

Then a second vehicle laden with explosives made its way into the compound, following similar routes that got them to the center where most people were retiring for the evening, before the drivers set off an explosion. A military officer at the Vinnell Arabia compound, which Mr. Powell visited, said there was a possibility that some of the perpetrators had fled at either the compound entrance or from the second vehicle before it exploded.

He said that all of the attacks took place within a few minutes of each other at approximately 11:20 p.m. and that it appeared the truck at the Vinnell complex contained 400 pounds of explosive material similar, he said.

That attackers appeared clearly to have singled out residential compounds occupied by foreigners. The Vinnell Arabia compound was home to about 500 military advisors, many retired from American armed forces, employed to help train the Saudi Arabian National Guard, which is a domestic security force.

The other two compounds were identified as Al Hambra and Gedawal, both occupied by some of the foreign community in Saudi Arabia working for businesses and trade organizations. Those compunds were home to not only to Americans and to British, but also Philippine, Turkish and other foreign citizens, as well as Saudis.

The estimates of the number of expatriots living in Riyadh ranges from 15,000 to 35,000. Some residents at the Al Hambra compound said this evening that many of their colleagues had left the country before the recent war with Iraq and had only started to return in recent weeks.

``Before the war, they asked us all to leave,'' said Jelal Berkel, 39, an employee of Saudi Snack Foods, a subsidiary of Frito Lay. ``But we said we feel secure in the compound. What a mistake.''

He said he and his wife, Elif, heard a loud clicking sound late at night, and initially thought it was firecrackers. It turned out to be automatic gunfire.

When they went to the window, he said they said they saw a huge orange light covering the sky, followed by an explosion and then intense heat. The blast blew open their windows and doors. In a videotape they made of the damage, the entire fronts of several apartments and villas had been sheered off and the contents blown about the area.

``It looks like a cruise missile or a Tomahawk or Scud missile fell into the place,'' Mr. Berkel said.

The Berkels said they were leaving Saudi Arabia immediately and they predicted other foreigners would as well, and they seemed puzzled by their own complacency until recently. Mrs. Berkel said that after the war with Iraq was over, the security gate to their compound was kept open after being closed during the war.

``You believe what you want to believe,'' she said. ``We thought it was very secure. We were just so happy and relaxed that everything was back to normal.''

It's all on again. Now that the invasion of Iraq is seemingly complete, the so-called "reconstruction" process has become the titbit over which the political leaders, the business sector, and the international NGOs have homed in on, like seagulls to a beach picnic. This is not encouraging for Iraq's future. Despite many attempts, the West has not apparently learnt the basic lessons of helping to build non-Western socio-political models in shattered societies.
In the Middle East context, the towering icon of failure is the nominal Palestinian "nation". This case sets a tragic foundation for all subsequent endeavours in the region. By all accounts, the mistakes in Palestine are about to be repeated in Iraq, as indeed they were - are - in Afghanistan.
In relation to the Iraqi rehabilitation, it is useful to consider these errors and to assess their links to the latest target of the West's largely unwanted charity.
In Palestine, the negative impact of the British mandate, following centuries of Ottoman rule, has been exacerbated by a range of cultural and historic characteristics such as: arbitrary national borders; the proximity of a valuable political commodity worth controlling (that is, the Israeli state); an easily demonised culture; a history of distinct tribal, ethnic and religious communities; --
a power-obsessed, previously exiled, political leader; and an Islamic culture that manifests often as a secular force.
The similarities with the current state of Iraq are clear.
In Palestine, the presence of these conditions has tended to undermine the support for the vibrant local civil sector and its myriad civil associations. These groups, often small and locally focused, were, and remain, at the forefront of Palestinian culture and are largely responsible for the survival of a Palestinian social and cultural identity.
But despite acting as the figurehead of the Palestinian cause, the role of the PLO in relation to street-level Palestine was negligible. The contribution of the Fatah militarist ascendancy to the civil wellbeing of the Palestinian people was mostly non-existent. For example, throughout much of the 1980s, the PLO's military budget was roughly eight times that of its education budget. What civil agenda existed was as marketing for the wider cause of Palestinian independent statehood.
In Iraq, the same course is under way. With the introduction of the US-British "interim" leadership, the cast is being set for the influx of Western values and Western culture and the construction of Western socio-political models.
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Already, many of the most inappropriate examples of US and European culture - from the American Southern evangelists to the political lobbyists and the globalisation acolytes - are jostling at the gates of Baghdad.
The vast range of indigenous organisations in Iraq are likely to be overwhelmed by the mad rush to establish inappropriate socio-political structures on the area and its people.
The strength of Islam as an integral part of day-to-day social interaction and activity across the region has engendered the development of a highly sophisticated civil sector.
The need to fly in ready-made, demountable, social and political hardware to drop on hapless "Orientals" - "for their own good" - illuminates the distinct lack of imagination at the very top of the dominant
so-called globalised elites and the inability to imagine options other than the garden-variety Western democratic state. What can't be imagined can't be controlled.
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In Iraq, again, what we are seeing is the extension of what expatriate Palestinian writer Edward Said identified as the cultural hegemony established by Western cultural elites over the Middle East region. As Said notes, this imaging of "Orientals", using the filters of Western language and iconography, says a lot about ourselves and our own fears; Orientalism has less to do with the "Orient" than it does with "our world".
This is another tragedy waiting to happen in a region due for some understanding and real assistance.
As the West raves fulsomely over the value of democracy in Iraq, we might consider not only the "the rule of the majority" in the West - where just over a third of the primary vote wins a national election, as here in Australia - but also the alternative models by which just and fair societies can be built and maintained.
The Islamic models of social emancipation across the Middle East may not be perfect. In this they share common ground with our own models. But they are right, at least in the sense that they resonate. That doesn't mean some of the more universally agreed standards of human rights need not be adhered to, but that any change, in Iraq or elsewhere, needs to go through, not bypass, the many and vital civil communities in the Islamic world.