9/11's Retail Outlets!

The sixth anniversary of 9/11, that ghastly terrorist strike at the heart of American pride which not only brought down the twin WTC towers and truncated the Pentagon but also crushed nearly 3000 lives, is before us again.  "It is war," thundered a black-faced Bush on that fateful day, "we know who did it and we will smoke them out..."

It is now six years. And the 'war', in the sense Bush meant it, continues. But  it continues, if not on the grand dramatic scale which  9/11 immortalised, at least on a  scale large and devastating  enough to shock every time.  And not in America (read US), but in countries perceived to be pro-America, or plain friendly with America, or even just contemplating ties with America. Add to them countries perceived to be possessing territories belonging to minorities of some kind, or to be persecuting them for some reason, and countries whose culture is perceived to be liberal and hence not conforming to the Book. The latest was in Hyderabad in India and before the ink on this sentence dries up, many more such attacks would have taken place elsewhere in India or elsewhere. We know who does it, but we have not been able to smoke them out.

Terrorism today has come to be regarded to be as much part of life as cyclones, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or AIDS. But what is unfortunate is that terrorism is caused by humans, on humans and through most inhuman means. Though called 'invisible war', terrorism has neither a war's predictability, discipline, nor its moral justifiability or political sanctity, leave alone its patriotic stirrings. And the most ironic part is that in most cases it has all merciful God in its centre directing the carnage and devastation!

Why terrorism? The end of World War II put paid to all major wars, and even minor wars have become redundant in an increasingly globalised world where geographical boundaries are either slowly melting or  expanding to include larger socio- economic blocs, overriding  political identities. Yet it is far from being a perfect world. Religious fundamentalism, regional chauvinism, ethnic parochialism, and such like still beset the world, fed and fuelled by rival states to settle political scores or exacerbated by humongously inane and hare-brained policies of world gendarme, the US of America. Instead of focusing on 'smoking out' 9/11 perpetrators, Prez Bush Jr. turned around and plonked into a quagmire called Iraq. After losing more soldiers to terrorist attacks than he would have lost in a full scale war, he is none the wiser. If any thing he has provided more cannon fodder to terrorism. He naively funneled millions in dollars and arms into Pakistan in order to check or exterminate the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, without realizing that his munificence was being directed into feeding  and strengthening the very outfits. Terrorism there has now turned against its mentor, as is its wont everywhere. 

In India, terrorism has been an extended arm of our immediate neighbour stirring local grouses and disaffection and helping them to grow into politically gargantuan causes - be it Kashmir, the North-East, or  the current variety of Naxalism. Communal, casteist and tribal sentiments in the country come handy to set off conflagrations any time.