An Essay on Terrorism Part 2

Red Earth

An Essay on Terrorism Part 2

First and foremost, I wish a very happy new year to all the people of the Earth! Also if you are reading this, let me congratulate you for surviving perhaps the deadliest year of this century. I’ll try to be a little sanguine over here and would like to point out by doing so that the year that just bid us adieu was the year of the terrorists. 2014 witnessed terrorist incidents almost every single day in its calendar. This statement may not have been apt a decade or two ago but in the world of today I may safely say that the world is ‘unsafe’. Least oxymoronish as it sounds.

2014 saw the rise of ISIS, escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Syrian war, daily car bombings in Africa, village raids, ceasefire violations, suicide bombings, abductions, assassinations, aerial attacks et cetera et cetera. The Sri Lankan genocide controversy continued. The dreadful year culminated with the most horrifying act of terrorism of them all- the killing of 145 school children in Peshawar described as the Black Day in part 1 of this essay.

If it weren’t the Ebola fighters who were and are perhaps the most active fighters against terror- a different kind of terror- at the moment, TIME magazine would have definitely gone with the Islamic State (IS). Last year, we saw ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) arise from ISIL and ultimately turn into IS (Islamic State). The Sunni terrorist state took the whole worldly organization by storm early last year and by the end of it reports of the IS head Al-Baghdadi’s killing made rounds.

The title of this write-up has nothing to do with communism. ‘Red’ merely denotes the bleeding of the earth due to terror. Terror is synonymous to ‘fear’, however, it also seems to be the latter’s magnified level. We’ll discuss about fear which is more innate to the human soul in the next part of this essay. Terror has in fact been an innate feature of the world since its inception. Terror has always been present: inspired by monarchs, raiders, priests and most commonly the concept of the Divine. Its forms have changed all these years and today it exists at an international level inspired by neighboring countries, superpowers, terror organizations (like Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, IS) and even the world peace organizations like United Nations and NATO. It may sound uncanny but it is true. The UNO, as it has proved in some situations, acts as an extension of the 

United States and other Security Council member nations; and perhaps that is the reason why other such poly-nation organizations such as BRICS are rising to put forward and share their concerns and demonstrate their world wide prominence.

The very basic point I intend to put forward is that at world level today, nations share relationships stimulated by fear and not friendship and goodwill. They only recognize the redness of human blood and its insignificance. Force has become the only agent of acquiring resources. The advanced and sophisticated society that we boast of today is a robe obscuring the primitive mindset of ours that has never grown since ancient times.