WITH the Taliban routed and Pakistan rounding up zealots to avert a war with India, here comes a timely tome from guerrilla and terrorist warfare expert and former soldier Peter Harclerode.

He explains in detail how the West has systematically trained and equipped 'freedom fighters' from the end of the Second World War right up to the conflict in Afghanistan.

His fascinating account of how terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your stance, have been funded - especially by the US - is an eye-opener. There were covert deals in the Balkans in 1949, then Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Oman, Indonesia, Indo China in late Fifties, Sixties and Seventies - including the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos - to the present day against Osama bin Laden.

We in the West have trained them and often found ourselves taking up arms against them when they become so oppressive after winning power and setting up in government.

Covert operations from the West's special forces have always been in the thick of shady arms deals; some successful - such as Britain's SAS forces against terrorists in Oman - and some embarrassingly shameful and shaming such as the US's secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia in the Seventies.

In most recent eruptions the 'freedom fighters' were given training and access to the latest Western weapons of destruction including deadly Stinger missiles, along with billions of dollars of funding.

Harclerode shows how, with the ever-available help of political chicanery, we have created a Frankenstein-type monster.

So what can we learn from countless wars, insurrections and atrocities?

There seems to be no way back... just keep fighting dirty as millions of innocents around the globe are killed or become displaced.

Fighting Dirty is a detailed, disturbing, yet compelling read. Man's inhumanity to man moves on... leaving injustice and misery in its wake. And massive arms deals, of course.

Updated: 14:02 Wednesday, January 16, 2002