Eight years after WTC attacks:

Terrorism more dangerous than organized crime

Wijitha NAKKAWITA

It is eight years since terrorists attacked the New York World Trade Centre Towers, the Pentagon and attempted to attack the White House with hijacked civilian aircraft killing nearly 3,000 people in the United States of America during the George W. Bush administration. The devastating act of terrorism blamed on the Al Quada by the US authorities brought in the realization in the West that terrorism manifested in horror and ruthlessness was more dangerous than even organized crime introduced to the modern world by such dangerous killer machines like the Mafia.

On that occasion when a group of 19 terrorists hijacked aircraft to be used as missiles to wreak havoc and cause unimaginable destruction to life and property within few minutes after 8.30 in the morning of a working day in the bustling business center, the Pentagon and attempted to hit the US President’s official residence, the White House, the powerful US and the Western nations began to realize that traditional security systems and the Armed Forces and the arsenal of nukes or ICBMs were of little or no use against the planned attack of terrorists who used methods that could not be imagined by the most sophisticated military or other security establishments. Of course the sympathy of the entire international community of nations was expressed in unison and we too in this country who had by that time had the experience of facing the bloody attacks of the most dangerous terrorist group the LTTE, had more than normal sympathy for the poor victims of the 9/11 attack.

organized terrorism

Terrorism though a new word in the English lexicon could be compared to most of the evils that human society had spawned even before man had come out of the jungles and started creating society and its rules to preserve and protect society. Even in ancient societies there had been terrorists of sorts but organized terrorism motivated by religious, racial or national causes or even pretenses of our times had no comparison in the past. The George Bush administration that invaded Iraq after the 9/11 attack on an imaginary mad dog hunt called some of the West Asian nations the ‘axis of evil’. Bush sounded more like a religious preacher on that occasion than a statesman but it was no secret that the Bush administration was not a company of angels. Still the innocent thousands who perished in that attack, a vast majority of them civilians paid with their lives for no crime they committed and the sympathy of all sane people everywhere went out to them and their families.

Still we in this country have experienced much more suffering than the people who were the victims of the 9/11 attack and for almost three decades from the mid 1970s the terrorist killer machine manned by a pathological murderer with megalomania systematically killed more than ten thousand Sri Lankans in separate attacks made on more than 100 occasions on villages, places of worship, buses, trains or other civilian targets yet it was rarely that the powerful nations that had helped Sri Lankans to defeat the terrorist outfit but there were several if not scores of occasions when such countries attempted to raise human rights issues or ask the governments in power whether the country was governed under the rule of law.

Powerful countries

Perhaps even our democratic form of government that we had protected since we regained independence from the British for more than half a century also came to be probed by some powerful countries while our people were living in fear and facing the attacks of terrorism and one could not recall any powerful country of the West that had actively cooperated with our country to eradicate the menace of terrorism. Yet there were ample examples of various activists, apologists and even international spokesmen of the LTTE terrorist group being harboured in those countries collecting funds to buy arms for the terrorist group and trying to justify it. In simple words could be called double standards but one would like to call it lack of standards.

It may be an irony of fate that the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration that called Iraq also a country in his ‘axis of evil’ list caused such anguish and suffering to the people of that country in the offensive launched by US troops not only attacked and defeated the Saddam Hussein regime but also killed and maimed civilians and violated human rights of the Iraqi people like those who were arrested and brought to the Guantanamo base for interrogation.

Colombo city

Eight years after 9/11 our nation had succeeded in dismantling the killer machine of the world’s most dangerous terrorist group, the LTTE and only a some of its sympathizers and perhaps some cadres are now living under cover though when Prabakaran was living, the LTTE too attempted to attack Colombo city and its vital positions with propeller driven mini-aircraft that were hit by the Armed Forces and destroyed.

However one thing is common to all nations that have terrorists on their soils is that all nations or regional groups of nations should cooperate across borders to prevent such dangerous fates like those on 9/11 befalling people of any country and the people of the world should sympathize with the victims and their families but more importantly cooperate in preventing terrorism.

[September 11, 2001]

Location - New York City; Arlington County,

Virginia; and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Date - Tuesday, September 11, 2001

8:46 am (2001-09-11T08:46) – 10:28 am (2001-09-11T10:29) (UTC-4)

Attack type - Aircraft hijacking, Mass murder, Suicide attack

Death(s) - 3,017 (including 24 presumed dead and 19 hijackers) Of those who died 200

jumped out of the burning World Tower and were killed

Injured - 6,291+

Perpetrator(s) - al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden

Courtesy: Wikipedia