Island Editorial

Reaping the whirlwind the Indian way

Those who sponsor terrorism must remember one thing: It comes back home to roost sooner or later. The US created Osama bin Laden to do its dirty work. He proved to be a pliable tool capable of churning out death and destruction to further the American interests. The US also created Saddam, the dictator and turned a blind eye to all his crimes including dastardly chemical attacks on Iranians and Kurds. Both monsters in the end turned against their master. Saddam was given a bad name and hanged and the other one is on the run being pursued by the creator.

Now we hear India is bolstering its airpower in the South in anticipation of terror attacks on its nuclear facilities. Ironically, those threats emanate from an outfit which it fathered—the LTTE—to promote its interests in the 1980s! Rajiv had to pay for promoting terrorism in Sri Lanka with his dear life. But, India refuses to fully cooperate with Sri Lanka to help clear the mess it created and continues to eat a lot of humble pie at the hands of the LTTE, which abducts Indian fishermen and captures their vessels.

India’s foreign policy towards Sri Lanka has apparently come to be fashioned not in Delhi but in Tamil Nadu, where shots are called by LTTE sympathisers. The Central Government has manifestly failed to put the kibosh on the LTTE arms smuggling operations via Tamil Nadu. Pledges are made to prevent the Indian soil being abused by the LTTE, but they never get translated into action. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh entertains hirelings of the LTTE in the garb of parliamentarians thus making a mockery of India’s avowed commitment to the preservation of Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity!

India is hoist with its own petard. We are witnessing karmic forces at work. As ye sow, so shall ye reap! The frantic efforts being made to enhance India’s defence readiness vis-a-vis threats from a small guerrilla group in a neighbouring country should serve as a lesson to all the nations that sponsor terrorism or take it for granted. Terrorists no longer have to acquire nuclear capability or at least the so-called dirty bomb to cause widespread destruction. All that they require to make the world revisit Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a light aircraft fitted with crude bombs to be dropped on a nuclear facility. It is not only Prabhakran who doesn’t give a damn about consequences of his actions. There are many others of his ilk, hell bent on unleashing terror, come what may. The end, they believe, justifies the means.

Terrorist threats have assumed such alarming proportions that today not even liquid food is allowed aboard most flights as it was recently exposed that Al Quaeda was planning to blow up aircraft in mid-air with liquid explosives. The world is becoming increasingly paranoid due to the innovative thinking of terror masterminds. Civil liberties have become the first casualty of the stringent measures being adopted to prevent terror attacks. The so-called free societies that used to look down upon the terror stricken small nations for curtailing civil liberties to facilitate counter terror operations, are the worst affected today. They are on the fast track to becoming police states, thanks to their anti-terror laws.

With the new trail that the LTTE has blazed for the terrorists the world over, the day may be not be far off when the sight of a light aircraft might make many take flight. The situation is bound to be far worse in the industrialised countries where small aircraft are a dime a dozen. Terrorists may not want crude bombs or combustible targets to cause havoc. Even an agro chemical laden small aircraft used on a farmland could become a potent weapon in the hands of terrorists bent on killing people. Remember it was crop spraying helicopters from the US government that Saddam Hussein used in his brutal Anfal campaign, where thousands of Kurds died in chemical attacks.

Tuberculosis has made a come back, resistant to drugs, as we were lulled into complacency. The deadly virus of terrorism has gone the same way. Powerful nations let the grass grow under their feet over the question of putting up a united front against global terror. They all waited until the Twin Towers and the Pentagon came under attack to react to the phenomenon. Surprisingly, they don’t still seem to be fully awake to the real dangers of terrorism and are differentiating between ‘our terrorists’ and ‘their terrorists.’ They prescribe negotiations as the way to deal with others’ terrorists but don’t hesitate to unleash hell from heavens on even elementary schools in foreign countries in a bid to search and destroy their terrorists. If they continue to sow the wind this way, there will be no end to their reaping the whirlwind, as is evident from India’s experience. For, terrorism transcends geographical boundaries like environmental pollution or pestilences.

Sri Lanka, which is battling terrorism almost single-handed, is lucky that it doesn’t have nuclear facilities. But, those powerful nations that put a spoke in Sri Lanka’s wheel whenever her war against terror reaches a crucial phase, to peddle their hidden agendas, do have a large number of them to protect against terrorist attacks. Their duplicity is succour to terrorists sans frontiers.

They don’t seem to realise their folly.

That is the tragedy.