Monday, December 1, 2008

Fight Against Terrorism: What should be Our Action Items?

It's high time that we take stock of the present situation and come up with Action Items for our fight against terrorism. It's heartening to find that so many people have come up with suggestions and action items in innumerable blogs, social-sites etc. Let me summarize all these and add my two cents:
  1. Dogs not welcome: This is the first thing to be done. Dogs are not welcome anymore. Well, by dogs I don't mean the dogs literally. The CM of Kerala, when refused to be allowed to enter the house of Mr. Unnikrishnan, the father of the slain NSG commando Sandeep, has reminded us all that "Had it not been Sandeep, even the dogs won't have visited his house". He was referring to himself. Yes, the political class has finally spoken the truth that they are the dogs. Off course I don't know if it's good to demean dogs by associating them with the politicians of our country. Maneka Gandhi and the other PETA activists might take offence and they really have a point here. Dogs are much better animals than the politicians of our country. The first Action Item is to let the politicians know what we all think about them. I hope some day they really awake up and start behaving like good animals. I don't expect them to behave like humans anyway!
  2. Our lives are also equally important: Yes, we don't have any problem with the lives of PM or President. They do have the right to live. But we also do have the same right. So it shouldn't take 10 hours for the commandos to start their action at any place in India - be it Tamang or Okha, Kargil or Rameshwaram. There should be commandos reserved specifically for civilians, the same way they have been just for the politicians till now.
  3. All intelligence reports should be made public: As per RTI every quarter, all intelligence reports should be made public along with the specific actions taken by the concerned authorities. This will ensure that the governments are indeed taking actions on time and none of the warnings are just ignored. It seems that enough warnings have been provided about the terror strikes in Taj and Oberoi but still everyone was sleeping.
  4. Revoking of POTA and similar acts at federal level: Stop all debates. We just need to give supreme authority to the police and army to take any action against acts of terrorism without getting entangled in laws. People booked under these acts would be prosecuted within a few weeks. The punishments should be very severe. Even little sympathy towards a terrorist or and act of terrorism should be punished with capital punishment. The laws should be so stringent that even a facilitator of an act would think million times before indulging into any such act. And yes, there would be some misuse of such acts. But even if it's used correctly one in a hundred cases, that would be good enough. All these acts should be enforced from center without giving any state any chance to debate in their respective assemblies. The authority entitled to use POTA would be also a federal agency with branches in all states. This federal agency should report directly to the President and should be immune from any political intervention. For practical purposes this department would come under Ministry of Defence, but the Defence Minister should have no business other than just sanctioning funds.
  5. Hang Afzal: This should be done immediately. Otherwise any terrorist would think that he/she can get away so easily. There should be a number of capital punishments served to multiple people to send out a very strong message.
  6. Come down heavily on people sympathizing with LTTE: This is also equally important to send out the message that our country is dead against terror of any kind - be it Muslim or Hindu. People like Karunanidhi and others who cry for Tamil speaking people being killed in Sri Lanka should be dealt with very sternly. At the end of the day most of these people killed in Sri Lanka are LTTE sympathizers and there shouldn't be any mercy shown to them. No one should have the audacity to ask the PM of India to ask Sri Lankan government to end strikes against the terrorists. LTTE or Lashkar-e-Toiba, all are same - all the criminals.
  7. Don't pay any heed to Arundhati Roy and Shabana Azmi: This is also a very critical thing. Killing any human being is always a violation of human rights, even if we kill a terrorist. Philosophically, no one has the right to take a life when we can't create the same. So there can be debates about the human aspect of killing terrorists and a number of innocent civilians along with them. We shouldn't allow people like Arundhati Roy and Shabana Azmi to come to streets and create a scene every time a terrorist is killed in an encounter. We should accept the fact that even if 100 innocent people are killed along with one terrorist, that's much better than allowing the terrorist to flee and then kill another 1000 people later. We shouldn't negotiate with any terrorist even if that costs th ives of 100% of the hostages. This is the sacrifice that the few unfortunate innocent people have to make for the country and we all should be ready to be one of those unfortunate hostages!!
  8. Cast Votes: Finally we all should arise, awake and cast our votes and make sure that we don't place a heinous animal in parliament or assembly. We know that getting humans is tough, but at least we should try to place a dog.
There are several other suggestions like being strong on Pakistan. But I feel if we show our strength internally Pakistan would get the message automatically. 

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