Terrorism – Will It Ever End?

Terrorism has, on today’s date, become a world wide phenomenon. After 9/11 there is no country on this planet which can sit idle and hope that nothing wrong shall happen to them. Preventive and precautionary measures have been taken by most countries. These measures have helped stop many terror attacks in the recent years, the most significant being the attempt to blow aeroplanes in the UK airports.

As has always been said, prevention is better than cure, but what happens when in spite of all the attempts to stop such an event an act of terrorism actually succeeds. As we have seen during many of the Israeli retaliatory acts and the US War in Afghanistan after 9/11, the victim state does not take it lying down. The entire state machinery is put together to avenge the killings of their people. And in most cases, it is the state which has the initial success, but the question is “does it end there?”

If we take the example of the War in Afghanistan, if we look back a few years we will see how the Talibanswere driven out of Afghanistan, how the Al Qaeda along with their leader, Osama bin Laden had to flee their safe havens and go to some unknown place. It all seemed too easy, with the Taliban defeated and the Al Qaeda gone, a democratic government was set up in Afghanistan. Victory was declared but it took the Taliban and the Al Qaeda only a few years to build back there lost strength and start fighting back. Suicide attacks and bomb blasts started once again and even on today’s date, eight years down the line there is no peace in the region. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are still rampant in the region.

So what should be done? We cannot sit back and let the perpetrators of such heinous crimes against our people roam free and plan and execute more such attacks. Definitely we cannot, but blunt headed vengeance is not going to help us in the long run. Killing the Talibans is not the solution. The only solution is an overall development of the region, of its people. We need to show them the light that we call civilization. The areas on the Af-Pak border are perhaps a thousand years backwards than the rest of the world. Until and unless they realize what modern civilization is all about, unless proper eduction is imparted upon them this menace of terrorism is not going to stop. The only solution is education and overall development of the region. The poverty and the lack of modern eduction are the reasons why the religious fundamentalists are being able to drive the youth into this path of hatred and violence.

A peaceful world is perhaps a dream, perhaps it will never become a reality but the day when man stops believing in this dream will be the day which will mark the start of the inevitable end of human kind.