Terror Strikes in India and Elsewhere: Whom to Blame

Who is to blame for the recent terror strikes? Tradition is to blame those who attacked. India has followed this tradition for many years. And why just India, every country who is at the receiving end of the terror strikes follows this tradition.

This approach gives the impression that the those attacked are innocent and were attacked for none of their faults.

I hold a slightly different opinion on it.

Its human nature to conquer others and expand. So it is but natural that others (henceforth enemies) would attack and overtake.

But this means that technically we cannot blame the enemies for the attacks or in recent times for the 'Terror Strikes".

In my opinion the "Terror Struck" populations are to be blamed. It is their inability to secure themselves makes any terror strike a success. The fact is that the success of a terror strike is directly related to the failure of the "Terror Struck" population in identifying the build up process of a terror strike.

So, nations and their people, please stop blaming the terrorists for attacking your borders or create terror from within the nation. The act of blaming others only creates a delusion. In fact, its your lack of security measure and intelligence, that lets the "Terror Strikes" happen.

I am not trying to suggest that Governments show enforce a very dense intelligence system and increase the budget of armed forces in order to improve intelligence information and security.

This not likely to work because the terrorists have made their way in the countries and most strikes are planned from within the country. There is no way armed forces can track those, neither intelligence agencies can keep track of all the people without creating a situation of public panic. We have example of US in front of us, where in name of securing the nation from terror strikes, the governments has increased the scope of FBI and have essentially panicked that whole country.

When enemy or the terrorists are more or less uniformly distributed among the non-terrorists or law-abiding citizens, efforts organized by the Federal governments will not work, without creating a panic in the masses and disturbing the day-to-day life in the country and most likely in the following election the government would be changed.

In my opinion the solution lies in finding a solution that is also distributed like the terrorists are. When we realize that most of the terror strikes are organized from the within, it means that success of every terror-strike is in fact, a failure of every citizens and not just that of the governments.

Had the citizens been vigilant and had the vendors who supplied logistics information and/or the raw material for the weapons and ammunition, been a little careful and had asked few simple questions, I think none of the terror strike would have been possible.

When the terrorists are among us its only a vigilant population, that can bring them out.

To reduce the probability of any further terror strikes we do not need to blame the terrorists and the countries presumably supporting them. Neither, do we need to start any special organized efforts that involve multiple nations and intelligence agencies.

As a first step we need to blame ourselves for lapses in the intelligence and security system.

Secondly, we need to secure our system by developing a better more distributed intelligence network. A vigilant population, in which every citizen is aware and conscious can already make a very effective intelligence network.

If we can drop our short term small benefits and as vendors of information and or raw material, we ask a simple question while dealing with other -- whether this exchange of material or information can in some way support a potential terror strike.

This does not mean that we start to distrust our fellow humans. Neither do I mean to say that by default assume that every single one is a potential terrorists. According to me the job of the distributed intelligence system would be sniff any suspicious activity in its local neighborhood. [More on this in a latter post]

I strongly believe that only a distributed intelligence system made of common people can bring out the terrorists hidden in the population and negate the terror plans.

What was unique about the Mumbai 26/11 terror strikes

For the first time terrorist tried to directed their attack on the rich and influential people. To me this appears as a paradigm shift in the nature of terror strikes.

For some reason none of the new media took notice of it.

Usually terror strikes occurred at places like busy train stations, market places. In such place of course it was more likely to target more people. But most of the victim were likely to be from the working class and middle class.

For the first time, terrorists in India target places like Five Star Hotels which are mostly visited by high profile, influential and typically rich people.
I think terrorist are understand there is no point in killing or terrorizing the middle class, because such a class of people rarely are the focus of government policies.

Even if a terror strike consumes lots of working class people, rather rapidly the tragedy will be forgotten. Such is the nature of the middle class, They are so engrossed in their struggle for life that even death of fellow people does not stop them from their daily struggle for money or fame or power. But if a single powerful person is killed for years that remains a part of the public memory.

So in this instance of the terror strike, rich and influential people were targeted. Of course terrorists want there terror to be alive for longer time.

I hope this will work against the terrorists and some serious actions will be taken.