BY: DEEKSHA BHARDWAJ
MORE THAN earthquakes, its terrorism that shakes mankind. The forces of nature are blind and as such indifferent to human suffering. The earthquakes occur just because that is how nature functions. Man seems to be the most dangerous enemy of the earth who ravishes it, its resources, and monopolizes and devastates everything on its surface. Now, the greedy humanity is eyeing the moon, the planets and beyond. But, these things aside, a section of misguided humanity has a different perspective of the world inhabited by its own limbs, i.e. the other fellow beings. They have converted themselves into terrorists and their religion is terrorism.
The scourge of terrorism is universally endemic barring a few countries for some reasons. Like a double-edged sword, it hacks right and left indiscriminately or like a blind mad elephant kills anything and everything that comes in the way as it marches on towards its target.
At present, it is more frightening than the likelihood of the third world war, which is more calculating and sane than in the past. It could be Al-Qaeda, LTTE, Maoists or any other fundamentalist or politically motivated groups. Among the terrorists that kill in the name of religion, the structure is minus one. Leaders of the first and the second wrung two. The technical hands/experts are the third slot. The ground forces, the executors of the evil plans. The so-called leaders or the planners do their nefarious work from secret and safe hideouts or from places with front camouflaged establishments. Of all, the worst type belongs to the fundamentalist groups. The suicide bombers belong to this group. They are programmed to kill like unfeeling robots. They are incapable of possessing any conscience and are devoid of rationality.
To most, ignorance is bliss. I would quote an incident that made me itch to consider what is happening in our country. It was when a group of university students in Delhi shouting anti-government slogans demanding that laws stricter than Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) should be applied to terrorists. A journalist asked the mike holding student leader to elaborate POTA. He started beating about the bush giving foolish, irrelevant explanations and finally shying away with an embarrassing smile. Pity surged forth for this young man and numerous others like him. If university students can be so naive and ignorant, what could be said of terrorists?
Obviously, they are just programmed like robots and they can do only one thing and that is to kill and destroy. Creating anarchy, affecting a nation's economy, demoralizing and destabilizing governments and causing panic among the masses are some of their motives.
Those they kill include Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Parsis, and anyone. Men, women, children, the good and the bad are all bundled together and are killed, for powerful blasts or indiscriminate shooting do not have the intelligence to distinguish between human species.
Governments around the world acknowledge this modern cancer that pesters the civilization, but they are hindered in their efforts to counter it. There is distrust of each other in international relations. Narrow national interests, exposure of their vulnerability to the other nations, their sense of inadequacy in dealing with terrorism etc are a few of the things that the world doesn't fight terrorism as a united front.
No country would like to share expertise and technology with other nations to fight terrorism, which unfortunately is still not recognized as a common enemy. The security agencies and intelligence gathering network suffer from inadequacies in many aspects. People are also not much cooperative as they fear harassment at the hands of the police more than an injury in an attack.
In Stalin's era when the notorious KGB (KGB was a Russian organization with a military hierarchy aimed at providing national defence) men knocked at a door, nobody dared speak up. It was feared more than a devastating fire. When there was in fact a fire, someone would shout, "Neighbors, it is only a fire in the neighborhood not the secret police."
The government wakes up after the harm has been done. Then a red alert is declared. Security is beefed up. Then TV channels show handbags or purses of ladies being searched as classic examples of the very alert police. The oft- repeated clichés of red alert or beefing up of the security or posting police men at the site of the blasts look more a mockery than anything of any practical use. These activities are actually mere futile exercises and are always hard to sustain by the insufficient police. The bomb blasts in Mumbai are the latest example that epitomize the slackness on part of the government that was supplied with a warning but to no avail.
The need of the hour is for the governments to sincerely treat terrorism as a global problem faced by the entire humanity and not by any given nation and discuss all its aspects in detail to find ways and means to effectively deal with it. Patchwork, here and there, is no solution and the cancer will keep spreading its tentacles with immunity.
