We cannot allow the terrorists to manage the ensuing chaos

The Paris terrorist attacks continue to grab global attention, eliciting condemnation and thoughtful commentaries about what it all means and how to contend with the terrorist menace now and in the future. The dogged attention is not that the bloody aftermath is only now beginning to be better appreciated, just because it is “Paris”. In so far as there have been human grievances there always have been people who think the grievances are worth dying – and killing – for. And, as existing models demonstrate, terrorists don’t have to be rational or require central command to effectively consummate their deadly attacks (see “Understanding terrorism through mathematics”, The New Times, January 03, 2015). In the well-known justification for terror, as observers continue to point out, a successful strike is not one that does the most damage, but one that draws the most attention. As a New York Times blog post, titled “The War ISIS Wants” avers, in the military reprisals following Paris attacks, “the greater the hostility toward Muslims in Europe and the deeper the West becomes involved in military action in the Middle East, the closer ISIS comes to its goal of creating and managing chaos.” We in the region have heard of this line before, by way of the Al-Shabaab attacks on non-Muslims in Kenya aiming to pit Christians against Muslims. The terrorists have not succeeded. Nor should they be allowed to “manage the chaos”. Many will have read or heard of the poignant defiance by Antoine Leiris that has been in the news and retweeted many times on social media. Antoine lost his wife – and his young son a mother – at the Bataclan concert hall in the Paris attack. He penned a letter to the gunmen brazenly telling them, “You will not have my hatred.” The ringing defiance touched many, and served to firm our collective spirit. “I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you,” Antoine wrote. “You want it, but to respond to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.” No terrorist deed is justified. Yet, the trends are grim if one reads the recently launched third edition of the Global Terrorism Index that provides a detailed analysis of the changing trends in terrorism since 2000, for 162 countries. This year’s edition, released before the Paris tragedy, observes that in 2014 the total number of deaths from terrorism increased by 80 per cent when compared to the previous year. This is the largest yearly increase in the last 15 years. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the study notes, there has been over a nine-fold increase in the number of deaths from terrorism, rising from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,658 in 2014. It says that terrorism remains highly concentrated with most of the activity occurring in just five countries – Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. These countries accounted for 78 per cent of the lives lost in 2014. But this is how individual terrorist groups fared in 2014, going by the number of deaths according to each group: 6,644 deaths were meted by Nigeria’s Boko Haram claiming the top position, followed by ISIS who claimed 6073 lives. They are followed by the Taliban with 3,477 followed by an emergent Nigerian terrorist group calling itself the Fulani militants with 1,229. Al Shabaab claimed 1,021 lives in Kenya and Somalia, making the top five. The Global Terrorism Index says that the economic costs of terrorist activity also dramatically increased, with the estimated cost reaching its highest ever level in 2014 at US$52.9 billion. This is a 61 per cent increase from the previous year and a ten-fold increase since 2000. The world may have to contend with the loss, both economic and of innocent lives, but Antoine’s contemptuous words to the terrorist ring in my ears: “You want it, but to respond to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.”

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We cannot allow the terrorists to manage the ensuing chaos