back viciously on their sponsors with occasionally devastating consequences. Both the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings and the 9/11 attacks were carried out by jihadist cells connected to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

How many of those who now warn of the dangers of 'Islamofascism' recall the days when the CIA and its Pakistani and Saudi surrogates secretly funded the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist groups that ultimately spawned al-Qaeda? The largest covert operation in US history was carried out, in the words of one of its architects, "to make Russia bleed". Russia did bleed and so did Afghanistan. The Bush administration's new allies in Iran are clearly making other people bleed and they may yet produce equally unwelcome consequences for those who sponsor them.

We should not be surprised by these alliances. No matter how much governments may abhor terrorism in public, the covert machinery of the modern state tends to define its allies in terms of their enemies, rather than their methods.

For decades, Israeli propaganda routinely reviled Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation as a bloodthirsty terrorist gang comparable to the Nazis. In the last two years, both Israel and the US have armed Fatah in order to undermine Hamas, which has now taken the place of the PLO in the pantheon of evil.

Such twists and turns are not unique to Western states, but the West has been remarkably effective in presenting 'terrorism' as a kind of morality play of good vs evil. Such presentations reinforce the false sense of innocence that is intrinsic to the 'War on Terror', with its fairytale narratives of monstrous enemies who hate us because of our intrinsic goodness.

Beyond this cosy moral universe lies a less appealing picture, in which both states and the 'terrorist organisations' they fight act in accordance with the bleakest realpolitik, not morality. If we want to understand better the savage times we live in, we should talk less about 'values' and take a more honest look at the hidden sewers underlying our international system, where Special Forces and the Jundallah find common cause.