Mumbai and Oslo are two very different cities. Apart from being the financial centre and the international face of their respective countries, they have little in common. Mumbai is a city of nearly 20 million people, where billionaires vie with some of the world's poorest people for potholed road space. The Norwegian capital is a tiny city with less than one-tenth the people in Mumbai, low-rise buildings and world-class infrastructure where most places can be reached on a bicycle.
More starkly, Mumbai lives with terror every day. In the past two decades, it has lost at least 726 lives to bomb blasts and shoot-outs. Oslo is an incredibly safe city where just one life was lost to terrorism in four decades.
But this July, the two cities were united in grief. Even before the wounds of the November 26, 2008, attacks could heal, home-grown terrorists snuffed out 23 lives in three bomb attacks in some of Mumbai's most crowded places. Within days, Norway was shaken by the rampage of a mad man whose twin attacks killed 91 people.
Suddenly, the world seems more dangerous than ever before. Will this ever stop? Is there no place safe from terror anymore? How did all the world's greatest armies and sophisticated police forces fail to stop the maniacs? Where did all the trillions of dollars earmarked for security go?
And finally, have we lost the war on terror?
The answers lie somewhere in the collective experience of the global society from the Americas to Europe to Asia, as we endure terror attacks each year. Surprisingly, they are not where we currently look for them.
Just as terrorism is a global phenomenon, the forces that lead to its rise and fall also work across boundaries. It is possible not only to codify these 'laws of physics' that define the world of terror, but also use them to predict and prevent future attacks.
Strategic Foresight Group (SFG), a Mumbai-based think tank I head, has sifted through data on virtually every terrorist group in the world and studied them for common patterns, motives and strategies.
Our findings have demolished some of the common myths about terrorism that largely dictate not only the response of the common people but also the often fruitless counter-terrorism measures of nations. In place of these old shibboleths, our research has thrown up at least 10 edicts that govern the way terrorism really operates, irrespective of its labels.
An understanding of these fundamental laws is the first step to ending terrorism.
Statutory Warning: Reading this essay any further could be injurious to your bigotry. Proceed only if you can handle the truth.
Sundeep Waslekar is the president of Strategic Foresight Group (SFG), a think tank that advises governments and institutions around the world. Terrorism is one of the five critical global challenges studied by SFG. Waslekar's team has studied every terrorist group and its patterns of attacks across the world.
SFG helped organise a series of roundtable meetings since 2004 between Western and Islamic nations in collaboration with the League of Arab States and the European Parliament. Waslekar also serves as a resource person for premier defence colleges in India.
Edict 1: Terrorism is a game for power. Religion and ideology are just pawns on the board.
Take this quick counter-terrorism quiz:
Al Qaeda is an Islamic terrorist organisation
True False
Prabhakaran was a champion of the Tamil cause
True False
Naxals believe in Maoism
True False
The answers are obvious, right? Or are they? Did you mark 'true' for any of the questions? If you did, you have just failed the basic counter-terrorism test.
Most common people, and even governments, go after religions and ideologies as being the cause of terrorism. Little do they realise that they are falling into the trap set by terrorists. For vested interests out to create trouble, religion or ideology is just a tool to be used and thrown.
The sponsors of terrorism need a glue to bind the demand and supply together. Faith is an easy vehicle to achieve this because people are emotionally aroused by it. When it is no longer useful, the masters will throw it away and move to another ideology.
Take Al Qaeda. Early in his career, Osama bin Laden was open to negotiating with everybody from the Americans to the Afghans to the Pakistanis. He was in the marketplace for terror and anybody could have struck a deal with him.
It so happened that the Americans and Pakistanis propped him up to help Afghan refugees take over Afghanistan. It was simply a power game and Islam had no role in it. But when Osama wanted to mobilise foot soldiers, he needed a motivating force. Others had already mobilised refugees on ethnic or secular grounds. Osama chose religion to be different from them.
That was why Osama created the Islamic International Front in 1996. It didn't start with religion. It started with the intention of taking over power.
In fact, the role of religion as an excuse for terrorism is overrated. Of the 191 terrorist groups that have been active in the recent past, only a fourth claim religious connections.
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