Walking on downtown Yonge Street in mid morning, I saw businesses being closed up. People, including many Guyanese living in Canada's largest city, were scared of copycat attacks.

They rushed home to be with their families. They fled to watch the TV news to try and make sense of the unpardonable acts which would claim nearly 3,000 lives.

Now, as we near the first anniversary of that terrible day, there are still many questions Guyanese and peoples worldwide are asking.

Why did it happen and how can we prevent such an uncalled for tragedy from re-occuring, are probably the main ones.

The perpetuators are said to linked to the fundamentalist Muslim Al Queda network of Osama Bin Laden.

The main enemy of this group was "the USA". They attacked the "heart of the beast", as they say, for the Muslim cause.

But did they gain anything, politically or otherwise?

Serious political opinion such as the respected U.S. analyst Noam Chomsky points out that it is the right wing in the U.S. which benefitted.

Fred Halliday, Professor at the London School of Economics, argues that the WTC bombings did not weaken the oppressive theocratic, even fascist-like regimes in some of the Muslim countries (See "New World, Same Old Disorder", Observer, 10 March 2002).

Tellingly, the reactionary conservative elements in the U.S. used the WTC terror to whip up nationalistic jingoistic hysteria to justify their subsequent leading role in the Afghanistan invasion.

Similar to the present argument in high places that a U.S. strike is necessary to preempt Iraq from launching nuclear/germ warfare missiles, the Afghanistani people and their mud houses were attacked in the hopeless task of capturing Bin Laden.

The Middle East, as indicated by the Statistical Review of World Energy, is part of the area from West Africa to Indonesia which by 2050 will have 80 per cent of the world's oil and gas reserves.

The WTC terror was an excuse for the stirring up of anti-foreigner sentiments.

Even in Canada. In Hamilton, just outside near Toronto, a Hindu temple was torched.

While in Canada, I heard on the news some people with Middle Eastern looks, Hindus as well as Muslims, were insulted on the street by a small minority of misguided people.

Terrorism, targeting as it does innocent civilians, should be rejected as a form of fightback by all those who profess to struggle for and lead the people.

The majority of those who died at the WTC were not oppressors but working people.

The WTC towers, the terrorists may argue, were symbols of U.S. corporate evil which exploits many developing countries.

But such material loss and lives, as well as the resulting economic ramifications, including the loss of 1.8 million jobs across the U.S. by the end of this year, is, though undesirable, expendable in the U.S. context.

While the terrorists may have been happy at looking forward to spending their time with the many virgins in heaven which their religion reportedly bestow upon such "martyrs", they simply played into the hands of those they condemned.

American political analyst Sam Webb points (see "PWW", 20 October 2001) to five challenges to stop terrorism.

One is to unequivocally condemn all terrorism and to capture and try terrorists.

"(We must depend on) international law and not reprisals. We must exercise reason and restraint, not hysteria; justice, not revenge."

Second, we must have an organising force to combat and eradicate terrorism. "This is the United Nations, especially the General Assembly. Terrorism is a global problem."

Third, we must reject the campaign as one between the "civilised world against the uncivilised world" or the "Judeo-Christian world against the Moslem world."

All the world's peoples have their achievements, perhaps at varying degrees and different areas.

Fourth, there must be a settlement of outstanding conflicts, particularly those in the Middle East where the Palestinians must have their own homeland, in accordance with UN resolutions.

As outlined by former Guyana President Dr. Cheddi Jagan in his Appeal for a New Global Human Order, there must be major institutional changes and mutual understanding to eradicate hunger and poverty among the other sufferings of the world's peoples.

Fifth, there must be a worldwide movement that insists that all governments and states reject the use of force as a means to settle conflicts. "Violence begets violence", argues Webb.

These are all reasonable measures, but, alas, may not be readily understood or agreed to.

Webb concedes, and it probably still holds during this month's anniversary, that the consciousness of ordinary Americans will understandably still have a type of reflex that yearns for security.

Such an outlook makes it difficult to differentiate between the ordinary Muslim and what Webb calls the "organizing element" that blew up the WTC.

In Guyana, where people are naturally anxious about the level of crime, most reasonable minded people understand the "organizing element" in the crime spree here.