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S. Africa's Leading Analyst Warns US Against Acting Alone in Retaliation
The United States should carry the legitimacy of international cooperation if it retaliates against terrorist targets, a leading South African military analyst said on Sunday.
The United States, in taking whatever action in retaliation of the Tuesday terrorist attacks on the U.S. soil, must not act on its own, said Dr Jakkie Cilliers of the South African Institute for Security Studies.
Speaking on the South African Broadcasting Corporation's Newsmaker program, Cilliers said comments that the attacks marked the beginning of a third world war were dangerous.
"This was a symbolic attack against the United States," he said.
Asked whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States could have been said to have failed in preventing the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, Cilliers said: "I don't think you can defend yourself against this kind of attack... it shows how vulnerable the global village has become."
He said he did not see the attacks as much as a failure by the U.S. intelligence services as a "wake-up call for the U.S.A. that it must act in concert with other countries in the world".
Asked what impact this week's events would have on Africa, Cilliers said it could result in the continent again taking a lower position on the global agenda.
Meanwhile, Lubna Nadvi, a lecturer in the University of Durban- Westville's political science department, said more evidence was needed before it could definitively be said that fundamental Muslims had been behind the attacks.
She was quoted by the South African Press Association as saying that the United States should be careful before concluding that Osama bin Laden, an Afghanistan-based alleged Muslim fundamentalist sponsor of terrorism against the capitalist west, was behind the attacks.
The ruling Taliban movement in Afghanistan had said he could not have been responsible because they monitored all his movements, she said.
"I think the United States needs to respond swiftly but with justice," Nadvi stressed.
She noted that all major world leaders had said Islam was the threat but the culprits were actually a small faction abusing religion.
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