When I visited the headquarters of the Muslim Red Crescent society to talk to the lone representative of the Red Cross, the man at the desk fingered my business card and looked into my eyes with palpable fear - as if an Englishman was a potential suicide bomber. At night, in my grubby hotel, I listen for gunfire and fear the attack which so many of the guests have been predicting for weeks. We were driving down there at first light last week - ah, the relief to be away from my hotel at that hour of the morning - when the US presidential envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, came on the car radio. On the road south, we all wear kuffiah scarves round our heads now, two Iraqis and an Englishmen pretending to be tribal toughs to avoid the killers on Highway 8. In the face of much larger natural disasters such as the earthquake in Iran last December which killed 45,000 people, the people have had to rebuild their lives. In Iraq, we expect the country to establish itself against a backdrop of daily bombings and killings.In their fight against terrorism governments must co-operate and share intelligence. They must provide adequate emergency response to cope with the aftermath of terror attacks - international co-operation can help here as well. They must work in the long term to isolate extremism wherever it occurs.

This will require much more generous help for less fortunate regions of the world. Yet above all else, leaders must resist the temptation to throw away our individual liberties in the hopeless search for absolute security. Coping with terrorism is the challenge of the century.Professor Sir Tim Garden is a former air marshal and works at the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College London and at Indiana University.. The surviving Iraqi employees of the United Nations fearfully changed the plates on their white, unmarked vehicles last week.

From now on, there will be no "UN" next to the registration number. They work to reduce the incidence of such events, and over a longer period attempt to tackle the underlying causes. Similarly terrorism will not disappear in the near term, whatever governments may do. Nevertheless, there is much that can be done beyond the rhetoric of "the war on terrorism".The first and perhaps most difficult task is to treat our citizens as adults. Modern living is full of risks from both natural and man-made hazards. In that sense, we are at war.The succession of al-Qa'ida sponsored attacks around the world have sought to maximise casualties. Bombings in August 1998 of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured more than 5,000.

The civil airliner attacks on Washington and New York in September 2001 killed nearly 3,000 A year later, 180 died in the bombing of a Bali nightclub. The scale of the Madrid atrocities - 200 dead and 1,400 injured - is not out of line with the group's previous attacks.Terrorism, with the aim of high casualties, is now a very real threat everywhere Spain must meet such threats from multiple sources. ETA and al-Qa'ida can both bring random death to the streets of Madrid. Little wonder that leaders everywhere search for quick and easy solutions. The first responsibility of government is the security of its citizens. Yet, it may be time for governments to face up to the limits of their powers They cannot eliminate crime, disease or natural disasters.