AS THE Caribbean anxiously awaits the official death count of its own nationals from last Tuesday's mind-boggling destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and attack on the Pentagon in Washington, it is also coming to grips with the consequential negative financial and economic impact from what is viewed as an "act of war" by unidentified terrorists against the world's superpower.

The USA was already in a state of economic recession when the world was shaken by the unprecedented tragedies resulting from the suicide squads that had hijacked four of America's own national carriers within 15 minutes to execute their acts of infamy.

By that shocking display of the forces of faceless terrorism, the USA has experienced the impotence of power with suicidal hijackers using, with daring precision, three commercial aircraft to create the tragedies, the panic and humiliation of the most powerful nation amid its plans for a massive 'star wars' missile defence system.

Now small and weak economies like ours, particularly those depending heavily on tourism and trade with the USA, are worried about the implications of a worsened economic recession in the USA and at a time of high unemployment, criminality and social discontent in the region.

The tourism industry's spokespersons, including the Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), Jean Holder, have been speaking of the serious consequences of the terrorists’ war on America, considering that the USA accounts for approximately 50 per cent of the region's tourism business, including the entertainment and restaurant sectors.

Of immediate concern, of course, is trying to ascertain how many nationals of the Caribbean region would be among the thousands of dead and seriously injured from the destruction of the 110-storey World Trade Center complex that provided jobs for some 50,000, with about 20,000 housed in its twin towers that were ripped apart by the suicide hi-hackers.

Latest reports at the time of writing, suggest that the toll could be between 60-100, including nationals of this country, who were among at least 20,000 workers in the twin towers of the Word Trade Center when apocalyptic disaster struck.

What the unimaginable, unthinkable horror unleashed against the USA by the assumed disciples of race hate and religious bigotry have demonstrated, is the impotence of power in what was an unprecedented, single most soul-wrenching act of terrorism in post-world war history.

Vulnerability
As the outstanding symbols of America's financial and military might came crashing down in Hollywood-style devastation with thousands dead and injured, we in the Caribbean were, like the rest of the world, gripped by that nightmarish reality of our vulnerability to the executioners of terrorism.

Movie images of America's invincibility and superiority have been shattered and the USA will not be the same again - for a long, long time. Despite, that is, the satisfaction it may gain from the ferocity and extent of its planned revenge against the terrorist perpetrators it is planning to hunt and destroy.

There are more than a few out there, in various nations, with their hatred for the economic and military aggression suffered at the hands of successive governments in Washington.

But no wrongs can justify, or must ever be condoned, for the bizarre terrorism, the stuff of Hollywood movies and fictions of writers like Tom Clancy and Frederick Forsyth, committed against the USA.

If the USA, the world's most formidable military-industrial complex could have been so devastated and humiliated within an hour of the execution of a remarkably well-kept secret of a terrorist plan, then no other country is immune from stunning major crimes of terrorism.

If the intention were to shock, humiliate, cause confusion, panic and outrage, the terrorists - whatever their nationality, race or religious faith - have succeeded in a manner that neither the USA, the victim, nor the rest of the global family will want to ever forget as we lament and mourn the horrendous loss of innocent lives and share the agony of a very great nation.

The fingers of accusation were pointing out of Washington and some European capitals since Tuesday at Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East, and governments like Iraq and Afghanistan in particular that provide them sanctuaries. Ethnic profiling seems the order of the day.

And while the Palestinian authority quickly joined in condemning the war of the terrorists against America, shocked and outraged Americans were more concerned with the relatively small number of Palestinians celebrating on the streets, than the fact that, with the notable exception of Iraq, the Arab world of some 250 million people, have openly sympathised with the USA and pledged cooperation.

Worrying Concern
Topping the list of prime suspects even before the official count of the dead and wounded had started, was the much-feared, and despised advocate of hatred against "America, the evil", the Saudi Islamic militant, Osama bin Laden, believed to be somewhere in war-torn Afghanistan.

A most worrying concern, even as this column was being written, is that we may be about to witness yet another savage devastation of innocent lives as America retaliates against those it believes were responsible for the infamy of `Black Tuesday’, a horror that has been compared with that of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour 60 years ago.

The outrage of Americans, both against the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the failure of their country's massive, most sophisticated communication technologies and intelligence systems, is understandable to people like us in small, poor and developing states.

But how many more innocent people must die - be added to the thousands of victims of terrorism tragedies in New York and Washington - in America's war of revenge against the assumed terrorists and their protectors?

The pride of the world's leading democracy has been severely wounded. Retaliation has become its defence of honour. But there are others to remind America in their own pleas for realistic, discriminating responses, that nations that have suffered, some repeatedly and in different ways from US-instigated and financed acts of terrorism, also know of the cost, hurt humiliation and bitterness of such outrageous crimes

Tit for tat in the criminal game of terrorism has solved nothing in lands that have become synonymous with acts of terrorism -Northern Island, Spain, Iraq, Algeria, Afghanistan. Nor has race hate and religious bigotry brought peace and comfort to any tribe, ethnic community or nationality, including the Caribbean.

In the massive hunt for the perpetrators of the tremendous devastation, loss of lives and immeasurable indignity suffered by the USA, the question therefore, that recurs is: How many more of the innocent must die, be sacrificed, to right a very horrible wrong.

There seems little that the Caribbean can do to help beyond expressions of condemnation of the crimes and solidarity with the USA as it joins also in mourning the thousands of dead

But Cuba, the Caribbean island that continues to suffer from some forty years of official American hostility and aggression, has made known its own outrage and pledge "full willingness to cooperate", within its modest means, with its health institutions and any other medical or humanitarian organisation in treating, caring for and rehabilitating the victims of last week's tragedies.

Response from Minister Rohee
** Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation, Clement Rohee, sent me a note last week in response to my last Sunday's column in which I discussed the anomaly of his writing a regular weekly column in this newspaper. For what it is worth, I share this excerpt:

"I doubt whether the media houses would be favourably inclined to cover such polemical issues (as he has been addressing in his weekly column) in press statements or at press conferences.

"In any case, when it comes to conventional means of getting our views, as Government Ministers, across to the public, you must know that the media is under no obligation to: attend all our press briefings/conferences; report all of what we have to say; publish our press releases in their entirety; or cover the issues we consider to be more important".

There you have it from the Minister himself why he is writing a weekly column that I had discussed as the 'Rohee media anomaly".