The Island Editorial

Sleeping with terrorists

Friday 20th November 2015

 

The City of Light has been plunged into an abyss of darkness and despair. There seems to be no end in sight to its predicament with terrorists all out to carry out more strikes as if to recreate the sights and sounds of wartime Europe.

Last week’s attacks in Paris have sent shock waves throughout not only Europe but also other parts of the world. They have jolted the British cities, especially London, into adopting unprecedented security measures. One is reminded of the security purdah in the award-winning movie, The Day of the Jackal.

The IS terrorists, known for their lateral thinking, have apparently opened up another front vis-à-vis its irreversible setbacks in Syria. Nobody can predict where they will strike next, but it is widely believed they may target another European city. London is bracing for the worst case scenario. Sherlock Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) in Britain’s most watched tele series, based on contemporary adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous whodunits has this to say in one of the episodes: "London: it’s like a great cesspool into which all kinds of criminals, agents and drifters are irresistibly drained." No truer word has ever been spoken of the great wen, which has become a haven for terrorists from the developing world.

All the developed countries, attacked or threatened by foreign terror groups, have harboured terrorists masquerading as freedom fighters and flaunting various causes in justification of their mindless violence against civilians in faraway countries. In their host countries these criminals have put in place systems to facilitate their operations and the IS has benefited from these underground facilities. This points to the need for the developed countries to eliminate not only terrorist cells, on their soil, from which death-dealing sparrow units operate but also the terror infrastructure which facilitates the smuggling of arms, drugs and black money and shelters suicide bombers as well as other criminals.

Successive British governments have harboured terrorists who perpetrate mindless violence against the countries that are not considered Britain’s close allies. They have also unashamedly looked after the interests of terror backers in return for the latter’s block votes to win elections. British political leaders have, in the process, let terrorists of all sorts multiply in their main cities like rodents in underground sewers.

In the 14th Century, an explosion in the rat population in European cities preceded the outbreak of Black Death which carried off millions of people in Europe. Similarly, there has been a boom in the terrorist population, as it were, in the western capitals, especially in London and Paris. The blame for this sorry state of affairs should go to French and British politicians who are notorious for their duplicity and cherishing the delusion that terrorists they are coddling help safeguard their national security. All the nations that, as part of their national security strategy, created or harboured terrorists responsible for bloodbaths in other parts of the world have been hoist with their own petard. This has been the experience of the US, which created al-Qaeda and used other terror groups to drive out the Russians from Afghanistan.

Europe’s terrorist-friendly socio-political environment has enabled the IS to infiltrate Paris and strike at will. France has, out of sheer desperation, declared an all-out war on terror and resorted to draconian measures such as mass arrests and frantic raids. Thankfully, it has succeeded in tracking down some of the masterminds of the recent Paris attacks, but its much-flaunted civil liberties have taken a heavy beating. It is apparently scratching the surface of the problem in fighting an elusive, formidable enemy.

Britain has taken all precautions, and its elite Special Forces have been deployed in the streets of London, according to media reports. But, terrorists have to be lucky only once, as the IRA told the Iron Lady. All it takes to plunge any city, big or small, into chaos is a single blood-thirsty, brainwashed terrorist with an assault rifle or an explosive laden vehicle. The civilised world has to be lucky all the time!

But for the illegal war the US and the UK waged in Iraq on the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction which, they knew, were not there, conditions would not have been created for the rise of the IS, whose brainwashed, savage combatants remind us of the Scorpion King’s army of jackal-headed humanoids.

It is dangerous to consider your enemy’s enemy your friend where terrorists are concerned. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. But, if you sleep with terrorists, the chances are that you may never get up in one piece! Who hasn’t heard of the lady who went out straddling a tiger and returned inside the beast? Sadly, the developed countries have not realised this simple truth.

One may ask, with apologies to Bob Dylan, how many more bombs must go off in Paris or any other big city, before the Western nations shed their double standards and decide to fight, with might and main, terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations.