Friday, September 08, 2006

9/11 Attacks after Five Years


The 9/11 attacks created a new world political map. New anti-terrorist laws have been adopted in many countries, which were interpreted by some as a curb on individual freedom. Security budgets jumped, particularly in the USA. US policy on terror widened the mistrust between the West and some Islamic countries. Even public events like sport championships are feared to be targets of terrorist attacks, as there are frequent broadcast threats from Al-Qaeda.

These attacks have put pressure on many Muslim countries to monitor their religious activists to show the world that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. It has made many countries in the West and in the Islamic world under constant alert to arrest and dismantle terrorist groups. The world has to devise new types of defence strategies. It has to confront elusive terrorist networks who are smart enough to hide among the populations or to enjoy the protection of the locals in inaccessible areas as in the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are also smart enough to devise new attack plans, bewildering security services, despite their large and sophisticated resources.

The arrest of alleged terrorists has raised controversies about the conditions of their detentions, especially in Guantanamo Bay and other secret locations in other countries that are cooperating with the US in its fight against terrorism.

But from their past attacks, terrorists permitted themselves to kill innocent people in the fashion they considered as a Jihad against the infidel. Governments, to protect their people should devise laws and detention centres fit to their deeds. The terrorist operations are premeditated. There is no justification to engage in killing. It is hard to call for human rights in favour of such terrorists when they act in a very inhumane way, making of innocent people their scapegoats to make their points.

9/11 was an incident that triggered a chain of events whose consequences are felt on all levels. But as terrorists have support here and there, the battle seems to be going for a long time as the breeding ground is available. Fighting terrorism is the work of individual governments and not of a single powerful government dictating to the rest of the world what to do.

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