Guns don’t seem so offensive. Resting in the hands of the security officer at the nearest metro station we derive from it a sense of security. We feel protected from the next fanatic zealot who might be out to kill innocents. But isn’t it our naiveté, that se so choose to ignore that it’s this very gun that will take the like of a human. A human who might not realize the importance of life, which we proudly claim we do. And at the end of the day, what we are left with are the dead bodies. Bodies of both that security officer and that strayed youth. Both killed by the offshoot of a technology that some man invented, whatever reason he might have. Ingenious ways to terrorize with likes chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are being explored and tried every day.
Let’s analyze a more fundamental question that lies in the heart of matters. What is terrorism? Is it just about another idiosyncratic zealot out with his Ak -47 India TV shows us?
If yes, then what do you call the war on Iraq? Was it legitimate considering the fact that it was waged on the premise of a confirmed report that sighted Iraq as possessing weapons of mass destruction? Iraq did not have weapons. A war was waged with weapons developed on premise of defence. A nation was bombed and conquered by force and coercion by the sheer power of technological superiority. A nation was plunged in to a civil war. And people, innocent people died. Is this not terrorism? Was it not the technology that enabled such terrorism?
It would be grossly myopic to limit the definition of terrorism to such small scope and timeline.
It’s not just US with present technology; the same were repeated time and again by USSR in Afghanistan, Britain in the colonized countries, and Spaniards in the Latin America.
Throughout ages technology has been used solely to aid dominance and dominance to rule and coerce is nothing but terrorism. And by all facts technology has been used to abet terrorism.
Forget Iraq. Nearly half of African continent is submerged in a civil war. A war, which has been waging since last 50 years. In countries like Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Congo and Somalia, It’s a world where Ak-47s elect governments, buy rations and provide shelter. Even in the nooks of civilization where advancement hasn’t seeped, technology to coerce and terrorize has found its way. Its technology and terror that have complemented each other.
Let’s look at another facet of terrorism and the technology. This facet rather than being overt is much potent in boardrooms and with people holding the strings to money. The financial terrorism. Since the start of our civilization we have leaped in to the age of global markets. Money controls how people act and it has become more fluid than ever. It can be transferred from one part of the world to another by just a click of a mouse. And herein malefactors have found ways too. From one off incidents of terrorizing in the name of siphoning off bank accounts to global pressure tactics by financially strong countries its all the same terror. Hawala money transfer is used to finance terrorists in far off lands. Countries like US and EU use strong arm tactics on other countries to force them in to suitable agreements with threats of economic sanctions. Seemingly innocuous they may be, but it’s just new technology and new way of terrorizing.
A closely related technology to finance which also is the heart beat of modern age is information technology and computers. Nothing was more ingenious than the way technology was misused to abet terrorism with computers and IT. With streaming media on internet that relayed latest bigotry of hardliner islamists and Osama’s from stone age Afghanistan to every other day beheadings that these murderers filmed of their victims it had it all, hasn’t IT and computers played a role here as well?
Latest electronics, like video cameras, thermal night vision imagers to integrated circuits used in time bombs, everything that could help terror has helped terror.
From the idiosyncratic zihadi brigade, to the democratically elected governments who has not used the technology to dominate over others? To terrorize others?
Guns, Grenades, Bombs, Nuclear weapons, financial buttons and Information technology.
We live in a world where these are guarantors of peace, negotiators of policies and messiahs of freedom to fanaticism. Whether they were developed for this very use or is it our dented psyche that made us use them to destroy each other is another debate altogether.
But with the above arguments presented who can say technology has not abetted terrorism?
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