Terrorism is a hydra-headed monster. It does not work on any established norms. It can hit here, there, and anywhere. This is the reason why the collective consciousness of humanity must rise against the spectre of terrorism. Its latest theatre was Washington DC, where two young Israeli embassy employees were shot down near the Jewish Museum. The demand raised by the assailant Elias Rodriguez at the venue where a congregation of diplomats took place was, “Free Palestine.” There’s no guarantee to life even in the high-security US capital.
The United States has been the principal, but not the exclusive, victim of terrorism. The epoch-making attacks on the World Trade Towers and other high security zones in the United States on 9/11-2001 sent shivers down the spines of not just the Americans but people around the world. The West Asia region has been a theatre of terror for decades in fights between the Palestinians seeking a home of their own, against tiny Israel that is well-entrenched with able support from the West, principally the United States. India and the entire subcontinent is faced with the spectre of terrorism, mostly exported from Pakistan, while the Islamic nation and the adjoining Afghanistan are struggling from the sway of terrorist mayhem. Syria and Iraq were other theatres of Islamic terrorism, not to mention China that is battling it in its western region through incarceration of hundreds of thousands of suspects. So did Russia. Islamic terrorism was preceded by others like the Irish National Army (IRA) that sent shivers down the spine of the United Kingdom. So too with the LTTE, in Sri Lanka. Indonesia and the Philippines batted with home-grown terrorists in the past, all of which have now been on a tight leash. India’s north-eastern states too had their own struggles with militancy, as did the rest of India through the Left-Wing Extremists or Maoists.
Point to note is, the world has to live with acts of terror in one form of another. Terrorism cannot be eliminated even with the latest technology, which can however, with effective use, control it. To an extent, India has been able to restore peace in the Kashmir Valley, but it bled heavily again a month ago through killings of innocents by a Pakistan-trained gang of terrorists. It took India and Pakistan closer to a full-scale war, raising fears of a nuclear explosion to decimate entire landmasses and their peoples. While the military engagement abruptly ended, reports on Thursday were that a terrorist sleeper cell has been dismantled in capital New Delhi with the arrest of two persons with Pakistan-links. This pointed to involvement of ISI and some connected diplomats, their target being the national capital. It prompted a fresh warning from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bikaner in Rajasthan that Pakistan, its military and its economy would pay a heavy price for every terrorist onslaught on India hereafter. The task of neutralizing terror on Indian soil remains unfinished.
