Robert Fisk

We are witnessing this weekend one of the most epic events since the Second World War, certainly since Vietnam.

They make alliances, the men who are clandestinely trying to change the Middle East. They break the rules of every intelligence agency, outfox the CIA and Mossad; they are the nightmare of every security man and every sub-editor.

When the Iranian army massed on the western border of Afghanistan in 1998 and prepared to storm across the frontier to avenge the Taliban slaughter of its diplomats – and its Afghan allies – in Mazar-i-Sharif, it received a message from the Taliban leadership in Kandahar.

If only Mullah Mohammed Omar had read Sir John Squire's mischievous poem of the First World War, he might have put things a little differently. "God this, God that, and God the other thing," God heard the combatants appeal to him in the poem.

It wasn't meant to be like this. The nice, friendly Northern Alliance, our very own foot-soldiers in Afghanistan, is in Kabul. It promised – didn't it? – not to enter the Afghan capital.

So far, he hasn't put a foot wrong.

"Air campaign"? "Coalition forces"? "War on terror"? How much longer must we go on enduring these lies? There is no "campaign" – merely an air bombardment of the poorest and most broken country in the world by the world's richest and most sophisticated nation.

Armoured warfare schools, signals headquarters, artillery ranges, military museums, cavalry lines, infantry battalion compounds... every few hundred yards in every city, you come across them. Driving around Pakistan is like touring a barracks.

Mullah Mohammed Omar's 10-year-old son is dead.

After Osama, "Godfather of Terror'' – our very own cliché – comes Osama, "Saviour of the Muslim World'', Osama, the "New Saladin'', Osama "V Mahdi''. Amid the blue moped fumes of the Peshawar bazaar, his face beams out of a hundred bookshops, turbaned, wise, half-smiling, disembodied.

22 yıldır savaşı yaşayan Abdüsselam Cemalziya artık kaç kez Afganistan'dan kaçtığının sayısını hatırlamıyor. 14 yaşında öğrenciyken, Sovyetlerin Kandahar'a giren ilk birliklerini gördüğünü, kendisine bunun"uluslararası terörizm"e karşı yapıldığı söylenmiş.

Colin Powell Pakistanlı General Müşerref'e Keşmir sorununun çözümlenmesine yardımcı olacağını söylüyor. Tony Blair, Yaser Arafat'a Filistin Devleti vizyonu sunuyor. Fakat onların bu sözlerine inanmalı mıyız?

How kind of the Americans to suspend bombing on Fridays. Will it, I wonder, be halted on all Muslim sabbaths? For the festival that marks the ascent of the Prophet Mohamed to Heaven? For Ramadan?

Was Sulemain Abu Gheit's statement a code? No wonder the Americans asked the Arabic Al-Jazeera channel last night to censor the group's statements off the air. Or was it just a strident appeal? Or a declaration of war?

Messrs Bush and Blair may tell the world they are going to win the "war against terrorism" but in the Middle East, where Osama bin Laden is acquiring almost mythic status among Arabs, they have already lost.

A few months ago, my old friend Tom Friedman set off for the small Gulf emirate of Qatar, from where, in one of his messianic columns for The New York Times, he informed us that the tiny state's Al-Jazeera satellite channel was a welcome sign that democracy might be coming to the Middle East.

Dünya üzerindeki en güçlü askeri kuvvet şimdi yine dünyadaki en fakir, en harap olmuş müslüman ülkeyi bombalamaya başladı. Attığımız bombalarla kim bilir ne kadar ekmek somunu insanların ellerinden yerlere saçıldı, bunu bize teyit edecek bir müslüman var mı?

The United States Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, heads for the Middle East and President George Bush discovers that, even before 11 September, a Palestinian state had been part of his "vision" of the Middle East.

"America's New War," is what they call it on CNN. And of course, as usual, they've got it wrong.

While covering the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, I would, from time to time, drive down through Jalalabad and cross the Pakistan border to Peshawar to rest.

Radio New Zealand - Wednesday September 19th 2001

So it has come to this.

President Bush is talking about a "crusade'' ­ it would be difficult to find a word more likely to enrage Muslims ­ but if he plans to wage it in Afghanistan, the United States faces a military campaign more fraught and potentially even more costly than Vietnam.