(In Hindsight 37/Apr 6-11, 2010)
Formerly, when you said a lady was ‘da bomb’, it was intended as a compliment. That’s not how Moscow’s security chief meant it when he fingered two female suicide bombers for killing dozens in crowded metro carriages last week. Russians are saying nyet, not da, to bombs; and Putin has vowed to drag the plotters “out of the sewer”; but bombers will be bombers, and find new ways to hide bombs.
The latest is reportedly a plan by Al Qaida to use exploding breast and buttock implants. Even if security checks at stations and airports could be made foolproof, with full-body scans or passengers’ boobs and bums being intimately inspected, there are other crowded places where headline-grabbing attacks can be carried out.
And if you single out people of a specific origin or ethnicity for probing their privates, or try to keep them out of your country, eventually they’ll recruit from less suspected groups, as in the recent case of the blonde American woman involved in a European terror conspiracy. (Or did she just have a ‘blonde moment’ and forget which side she was on?)
There have been many ‘home-grown terrorists’ operating in their native lands and beyond, including Deadly Headley whose agents did a medley across the Arabian Sea to strike Mumbai. There will always be people whose idea of God is strikingly similar to others’ idea of the devil, desiring havoc and destruction. A democratic society can never be completely safe from lunacy and terror.
In recent years, self-proclaimed protectors of most religions have developed a soft spot for a hard line. A decade ago you wouldn’t have imagined people being forced to leave India for their art, as in the case of the unshod M.F. Hussain or the unveiled Taslima Nasreen, driven out by Hindu and Muslim extremists. (Actually I’m unsure if they were ‘driven’ or had to flee barefoot to the airport.) In Sri Lanka we’ve even had some Buddhist monks behaving more like monkeys, encouraging violence.
The chief culprits are religious and political leaders, who know they wouldn’t survive without their ‘enemies’ and, in effect, usually prescribe hatred in exchange for hatred. What do you observe at a ‘peace’ rally these days? You see demonstrators noisily expressing some form of hate for other people and other ways. Where a population can’t find enough enemies they split up like amoebae into mutually hateful groups: as in the USA, where modern politics tends to be about detesting either Democrats or Republicans; or Central America where a football game once precipitated a war; and so on. Let’s not forget that even Putin used his Chechnya campaign to gain power; and now needs a distraction from recent demonstrations held against his handling of the economy.
One possible solution to hatred and violence is education (which is why the Taliban are so busy blowing up schools). Perhaps it would also be useful to assume that a large-scale leader is a liar; fabricating, fabulating, often hatemongering to keep his position. Trust none of them. Don’t go to their frenzied rallies. Let them set out their agenda, and then vote from home if you can. If anyone lectures you on how you should embrace an ideology, don’t listen. Which also means that after you’ve finished reading this column, you should throw it away and forget about it.