What is the solution to all this mess?

As I write this, my city burns. Terror attacks in several locations in Mumbai....it is all over the news. I don't think the country has witnessed such carnage in a long time. Yes, I say long time because India has sort of gotten used to the idea of terror attacks now. Mumbai itself has been the target of several such attacks. Barely a couple of months go by when you hear about another one of these bomb blasts on TV. Few things make me feel more helpless than a terror attack. And as I write this, I am sitting several thousands of miles away from my city.

But there was something very different about what happened today/yesterday (depending on which part of the world you live in). All this while the terrorists were hidden; they planted bombs clandestinely and ran away. This time, they had the guts to walk into my city, fire at people, lob grenades, hold people hostage and gut some of the main spots in the city. What is noticeable is that these terrorists have targetted places that are frequented by westerners. Colaba is an area that has a good density of foreign tourists and the Taj hotel (where one of the bloody gunbattles are being fought) plays hosts to several foreign tourists and business delegates. This is not just an attack on India. This is an attack on all the good people of the world who want peace.

There were reports of these terrorists dragging people out of the hotel and asking for their passports to look for people from the US, UK and the like. I don't know if this is confirmed news (it was definitely aired on one of the news channels broadcasting the events, so I took it at face value).

A few questions strike me:

1. Why is it that we are not able to prevent such blatant attacks on our home? Is our intelligence system so bad that we had no clue?

2. What do these terrorists want? Perhaps we could make a deal with them if we are too scared to go out and settle scores (atleast that seems to be the case to me a lot of times, and a lot of people will agree)

3. What can we as citizens of a civilized society do to protect our interests? The cause of these terror attacks are varied in various places, but it is innocent people walking on the street who bear the brunt (and the people who go out to fight for us)

The situation in India is unique, as compared to other countries that face the threat of terrorism. We have several internal problems and have a very troubled history, marred by communal conflicts. The scars of such conflicts are magnified by terrorist masterminds who turn troubled youth into blood-thirsty monsters. In the very early days of terrorism, terrorists used to be foreigners (I will not name the country, but we all know who I am talking about). As time progressed, terrorists started to come from interiors of the country. These are dissatisfied youth, who have been affected by communal clashes, who are brainwashed by the big terrorist organizations, trained by them and sent back into our country to cause misery to innocent people.

The solution has to be two pronged:

1. Deal with the external elements who propagate the terrorist ideas and fund such endeavors. This can only be done when like minded countries cooperate with each other to end global terrorism. This is because all global terrorism is interlinked and is funded and propagated by the same set of big organizations.

2. Deal with the internal elements. Bust the sleeper cells. Throw out the hidden extremists. Enforce the rule of law so that the gullible youth is not misguided by these scumbags.

All this has to be implemented around a framework that is designed to prevent such future occurences. A working intelligence system (do we really have one?), a proper disaster management system, adequate security measures at hot spots. I know people say that it is difficult to police a country of billions. But this is the price we pay if we don't. After the serial train blasts, we installed faulty metal detectors at some stations (the ones on the entrance of CST station barely worked), and assign 2 police constables at each major station. Did that work? We never thought that the outside of the station could be vulnerable too. Perhaps we thought that these terrorists are gonna keep planting train bombs. Do we even have trained people who are capable enough to design solutions to handle these problems? All this infrastructure has to be put into place.

The last thing I want to see is these stupid political parties trying to gain mileage out of this mess by pointing fingers at each other.  I will be very very pissed off if a party calls a Mumbai bandh or a Maharastra bandh (or any such extension) to gain public attention. Such measures gain nothing and simply cause more distress to the already troubled people. I want to see some action. I need these terrorists killed. I don't want empty promises. Are you listening? Oh and if there is something I could do........let me know. Right now I am limited to watching the news, writing pissed off emails and angry blog posts.