It’s been seven years since the dreaded Terrorist attack, which shook the world. The most powerful nation’s pride was reduced to the rubbles of the World Trade Center. The famous tourist spot of WTC turned into Ground Zero.
Today as we enter 11th September 2008 there is a need to analyze the situation and to what extent we have been able to curb the chances of yet another such attack. USA since 9/11 has been pursuing these terrorists with a single-minded objective of finding them and killing them. The war in Afghanistan was a right start according to me but it got distorted when Iraq’s invasion began. As we stand today even the Bush administration knows that Iraq was not needed. Instead getting a strong foothold in Afghanistan was necessary. Today the Taliban is making a strong comeback and that has caused Washington to sit up and take notice of the root cause of this development.
What will always remain surprising to me is why in spite of numerous CIA reports president Bush was more than happy to keep Musharraf as his ally? From his sources he must have known the reason behind Taliban’s regrouping. Yet Pakistan was Bush’s major ally. Barrack Obama recently claimed that much of the aid US gave to Pakistan has been utilized by the later in preparing itself for a war against India!! Close on the heels of this statement the US army launched an offensive against terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan.
So what we can see is a sharp change in the perception of who really is behind the menace. But what about Terrorism itself? What have we done to reduce it? According to me there are two ways to reduce terrorist activities. One is towards identifying the cause and one is towards preventing it from causing havoc with efficient handling.
If we need to identify the cause we have to understand the situation under which a human can resort to such work. Why is that certain organization with evil intentions are getting men who are prepared to die fighting against nation states? Poverty, lack of opportunity, long lasting hatred against his/her own country can be some of the main reasons. Its time we look into these issues.
The other way is to handle terrorism with strict hands like what USA has done. Why the US was able to do it? Because it feels that it has given everyone a chance to live happily, earn money. Than whosoever will work against it, it will crush them to death. Our country cannot adopt such a stance because we realize that we have not exercised the first option at all. Have we given J&k the kind of development, which a state like Maharashtra has seen? Have we allowed the people of Jammu & Kashmir to dream big staying at their homeland? I am afraid we have not. Same is the case for the north eastern states.
We have matured in our handling of terrorism and shown a lot of restraint against countries that promote such activities but with this maturity I expect that Terrorism should be treated as a problem of the nation just like other social problems like education, employment etc. The target should be to cut the supplies of these militant outfits by pulling away of youths from joining them.
I do hope that such incidents of 9/11 do not happen even again and our next generations can live in a world free of Terrorism.
Today as we enter 11th September 2008 there is a need to analyze the situation and to what extent we have been able to curb the chances of yet another such attack. USA since 9/11 has been pursuing these terrorists with a single-minded objective of finding them and killing them. The war in Afghanistan was a right start according to me but it got distorted when Iraq’s invasion began. As we stand today even the Bush administration knows that Iraq was not needed. Instead getting a strong foothold in Afghanistan was necessary. Today the Taliban is making a strong comeback and that has caused Washington to sit up and take notice of the root cause of this development.
What will always remain surprising to me is why in spite of numerous CIA reports president Bush was more than happy to keep Musharraf as his ally? From his sources he must have known the reason behind Taliban’s regrouping. Yet Pakistan was Bush’s major ally. Barrack Obama recently claimed that much of the aid US gave to Pakistan has been utilized by the later in preparing itself for a war against India!! Close on the heels of this statement the US army launched an offensive against terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan.
So what we can see is a sharp change in the perception of who really is behind the menace. But what about Terrorism itself? What have we done to reduce it? According to me there are two ways to reduce terrorist activities. One is towards identifying the cause and one is towards preventing it from causing havoc with efficient handling.
If we need to identify the cause we have to understand the situation under which a human can resort to such work. Why is that certain organization with evil intentions are getting men who are prepared to die fighting against nation states? Poverty, lack of opportunity, long lasting hatred against his/her own country can be some of the main reasons. Its time we look into these issues.
The other way is to handle terrorism with strict hands like what USA has done. Why the US was able to do it? Because it feels that it has given everyone a chance to live happily, earn money. Than whosoever will work against it, it will crush them to death. Our country cannot adopt such a stance because we realize that we have not exercised the first option at all. Have we given J&k the kind of development, which a state like Maharashtra has seen? Have we allowed the people of Jammu & Kashmir to dream big staying at their homeland? I am afraid we have not. Same is the case for the north eastern states.
We have matured in our handling of terrorism and shown a lot of restraint against countries that promote such activities but with this maturity I expect that Terrorism should be treated as a problem of the nation just like other social problems like education, employment etc. The target should be to cut the supplies of these militant outfits by pulling away of youths from joining them.
I do hope that such incidents of 9/11 do not happen even again and our next generations can live in a world free of Terrorism.
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