Manchester and beyond

THE sight of troops outside Buckingham Palace and the Westminster building must be enormously satisfying to those who inspired and motivated the suicide bomber to kill himself and 22 others, including children and teenagers, in Manchester. These professionally brutalised terror-managers aim to unsettle the settled societies and provoke fear and apprehension among ordinary citizens across various lands. Britain is in the grip of a sense of vulnerability. The British authorities, on their part, have reason to believe that another attack could be imminent and feel obliged, understandably, to call out troops on the streets to cope with a “critical” level threat. It will be sometime before Britain would regain its breath — and, its sense of English equanimity. 

Condemnation and sympathy are aplenty after Manchester, as are the expressions of determination to defeat the terrorists. Ordinary citizens and community leaders have put up a brave face. The Manchester police have zeroed in on Salman Ramadan Abedi, a 22-year-old man of Libyan lineage, as the dead suicide bomber. The British authorities have reason to believe that the suicide bomber was not acting alone and was definitely associated with one of the many Islamist groups, practising and preaching the use of terror. The investigative agencies would do their professional, pain-staking job of keeping a tab on all potential Abedis, all so malleable and all so vulnerable to online indoctrination. This is a new challenge all open and multicultural societies have to confront. 

Manchester happened a few days after President Donald Trump had travelled to Riyadh to impress upon the Islamic countries to take steps to root out extremism and radicalism from their lands. This deadly game has been finessed for more than three decades, with the unsentimental strategists in the West backing on terror group against another; it was deemed as a sophisticated exercise in hard-headed realpolitik as long as the conflict, violence and destruction took place in faraway places. Since “9/11”, the monster is all over — New York, Paris, London, and now Manchester. Time has come for a new thinking and a new game. These games continue to be played even now; good terrorists are sought to be rewarded and patronised.