Active Stocks
Thu Mar 28 2024 15:59:33
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 155.90 2.00%
  1. ICICI Bank share price
  2. 1,095.75 1.08%
  1. HDFC Bank share price
  2. 1,448.20 0.52%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 428.55 0.13%
  1. Power Grid Corporation Of India share price
  2. 277.05 2.21%
Business News/ Opinion / The new normal in terrorism
BackBack

The new normal in terrorism

Three countries have been reminded of the cost of letting down their guard

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

When serving as the US national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, once famously remarked, “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."

In a world rent by terrorism, the resonance of this statement is even greater as governments have to be on their alert at all times. Even a moment of laxity can be deadly. Last week, three countries—Tunisia, France and Kuwait—were reminded of the cost of letting down their guard.

In Kuwait, a suicide bomber led an attack on a Shia mosque killing 27 people on Friday. Kuwait is a Sunni majority country. In Tunisia, a gunman killed at least 38 people at a seaside resort. Most those of who were killed were Europeans. In France, a Frenchman was beheaded by a terrorist. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait. In the French case, the suspect, Yassin Salhi has been arrested and confessed to the beheading. Salhi, whose affiliation with terrorist groups is yet to be ascertained, has been investigated in the past for his alleged links with Islamist militants. Each of these cases demonstrated some systemic weakness that a single organization, IS, was able to exploit. Whether these were coordinated attacks is not clear but they point to a degree of planning.

For these three negatives on the ledger, there was a solitary gain.

On Saturday, Britain claimed to have foiled another IS plot to detonate a bomb at an armed forces parade in south London. In what turned out to be a rather unconventional counter-terrorism operation, the attack was thwarted after an IS member, Junaid Hussain, unwittingly hired an undercover reporter of The Sun, a UK tabloid, to carry out the attack. The Sun claims that, “Junaid Hussain, who fled to Syria from Britain, trained our man to build the bomb, but we alerted police."

If not, then there is much reason to believe that the UK would have also been added to the list of countries that became victim to terrorism just as the Islamic State celebrated one year of its formation on Monday.

And this is really the crux of the problem: acts of terrorism have gone from being sporadic events to alarmingly regular ones, and the ability of countries to prevent them seems to diminishing or weak at best.

Tunisia, located between Algeria and Libya is battling militancy on both borders. The situation is worse on the Libyan front, as the country is increasingly coming under IS influence. In March, three IS terrorists attacked a museum in capital Tunis and killed 21 people, again mostly European tourists. Friday’s attack follows a similar pattern. Yet, the country was unable to take preventive measures. Tunisia is making a slow, rocky transition from dictatorship to democracy following the Arab Spring. Its inability to focus efforts on counter-terrorism efforts while understandable leaves it an attractive target for IS in an area which is part of its imaginary caliphate.

If Tunisia has weak anti-terrorism capabilities, Kuwait, nestled between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, has largely remained safe from the scourge of sectarian violence that has come to mark West Asia. Friday’s attack might be the first indication that any protective barriers that Kuwait thought it had may be weak. While its ability to counter terrorist activities is greater than that of Tunisia, it is worth noting that the country is one of the several Sunni-majority countries where terrorists have been able to exploit sectarian fissures with deadly results. The impunity with which a Saudi Arabian national was able to enter using Kuwait City’s airport, strapped explosives to his body and blew himself up at a mosque, raises uncomfortable questions about local support.

France, which saw a second terrorist attack in six months, was already on high alert after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, yet a terrorist managed to carry out a horrific outrage. The three countries display a spectrum of weaknesses: from poor border controls and weak policing at the basic level (Tunisia) to weaknesses in intelligence on terrorist attacks (Kuwait and France).

The trouble with countering terrorism is that it requires a spectrum of behaviour changes that run against our liberal instincts. The demands to counter terrorism follow a predictable pattern. They rise to a pitch in the wake of terrorist atrocity and then go down very rapidly (in proportion with the memory of the event). Terrorists and terror organization know that and plan their strikes accordingly. Anyone following events in France and Tunisia between January and now can discern that.

The only way to end this cycle of violence is for governments to invest considerable sums of money on their intelligence infrastructure—both human intelligence and electronic intelligence gathering abilities. Otherwise the world has to be prepared to learn to live with the new normal of terrorism.

Can the world be rid of terrorism? Tell us at views@livemint.com

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Published: 29 Jun 2015, 04:04 PM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App