The Scourge of Terror: the World as Victim

It is rare if a day passes without people falling victim to terror. People everywhere suffer and no one can be safe forever. India had not experienced terror before 1992-93. Since then we have had no respite from that nemesis. In last year’s attack on the local trains in Mumbai we had a painter who lost his arm that helped him to paint pictures and get his livelihood. He was among the many that lost their lives and limbs and living. There is no end in sight.

The manifold suffering includes apart from death and mayhem, migration and displacement. A police constable killed in Mumbai has a wife and children who find it difficult to maintain establishment in the metropolis, they either go back to ancestral village or eke out existence by little moiety from the government. Personal and family loss of the dear one killed is all the time numbing the brain with excruciating pain of loss. Even hope seems to be gone with the wind of terrorism that is blowing across the world.

Hope revived some months ago that in the inferno of Iraq at least soccer was the saving grace. See the image of the boys and adolescents celebrating Iraq ’s victory over South Korea on Wednesday July 25, 2007. They have taken off their shirts and are waving them as flags rejoicing at the win. Their placards are neatly printed and clean from any speck of dirt. The heroes of their national team are all in smiles on the placards. There is neither schism here nor sectarian divide. And yet minutes later bombs went off killing at least fifty people, among them must have been some of the innocent boys and adolescents celebrating the victory. What is the source of their suffering? It is the inhuman monster of terrorism that is stalking through the streets of Baghdad and moving down the Tigris where thousands of dead bodies have been fished out and buried.

Making holes with the electric drill in the skull or knees of victims and letting them bleed to death in the hospitals and mortuaries of Baghdad is a daily sight.

John Howard is in Bali, Indonesia . The meeting on July 27, 2007 between the Australian Prime Minister and his host, the Indonesian President assumes significance in the ongoing terrorist activities around the globe which show no sign of ebbing. The victims of the Bali attack some years back were mostly Australian tourists. Tourists of different nationalities have been targeted for different reasons. The reasons in Turkey are different from Middle East . Bali and Kashmir have different causes of sources of suffering and revenge. The world suffers and yet it has not sufficient motivated drive to end the suffering. The only unipolar power was the US but it is mired in the war on terror which is threatening to create more than end it.

Myopic vision and skewed perception are also the disastrous effects of terrorism. In much parts of the world the religion of Islam is in focus. In particular Wahabism is blamed and yet the staunchest Wahabis are the Saudis who are also victims of the same scourge. Colour blindness is in evidence when people blame the Tablighi Jamaat and bundle it with the Wahabism. One is content with its other worldly focus and the other requires a very demanding and literal meaning of the holy book here and now. From the roll call of Justice P.D.Kode’s sentencing the ’93 serial bomb blast perpetrators none seems be either a Whabi or a Tablighi. They were more latitudinarian as they came from the precincts of the Mahim area enjoying the vicinity of the dargah there.

Religion itself of all the things after human life is mute sufferer and agonized victim. Bali Hindus lived cheek by jowl with the Muslims and had no record of communal disharmony. But from out of the blue came the scourge of terror. The blasts that rocked the tourist hive of Bali Island in mid October 2002 killed 300 and maimed as many more. The attack was blamed on al Qaeda because two years ago on the same day the USS Cole was hit in the Gulf of Aden , Yemen .

The choice of Bali for the terror strike is both simple and difficult to explain. Bali is predominantly (93%) a Hindu province in a Muslim majority country. Thousands of temples dot the “islands of Gods”, but the majority of visitors are Christian Westerners. The President of that time Megawati Sukarnoputri was imbued in Indian culture as she was brought up here; even her name is a witness of the fact. She was most secular minded too. It is interesting to remember that Indonesia and the US did not hold each other in high esteem. When the US embassy was attacked on September 23, 2002, the Indonesians were not convinced about America ’s list of suspects. President Bush had earlier said that his patience with the Indonesian government was wearing thin as it was not cooperating in his war on terrorism. David Wright Neville of Monash University in Australia , who had studied the terrorist network in Southeast Asia , out rightly dismissed the claim that the Bali blasts were meant as an ominous signal to the US . He thought the attack was “archipelagic” in nature, and the perpetrators wanted to show that they could strike at will on any part of the Indonesian island.

Most remarkable is the terror in Jammu and Kashmir . I stayed in Srinager for more than a fortnight in 1988-89 with my family. That was the beginning of terror in the valley. We prayed in the famed Hazratbal mosque. Overwhelming number of people was of sufi type. After Friday prayers they would turn their faces and stand and say a hymn in praise of the sufi saint Abdul Qadir Geelani. There was neither any Tablighi jamaat there nor Wahabis. Kashmiri Islam was unique to us. We found to our consternation that the males would wash their penises in the Dal Lake water in full view. That was part of ablution. Nowhere else would you found such a puzzling practice? One day my wife went to buy socks and mentioned that we were from ‘India’. The shopkeeper asked her not to mention India there! Much of what happened since then has become history.

Subsequently I attended a month old refresher course in Defence and Strategic Studies of the University of Pune . I put my humble thought that let alone religion or caste or a sect, the real cause of terror was poverty. There were great and learned people from the different parts of India, some were ambassadors, high ranking defence officials including the Admiral of the Navy, and of course strategists and professors. They were convinced that there was some truth in my assertion.