The world leaders are preoccupied with a campaign against nuclear proliferation with the purported goal of preserving global peace, adopting as they do double standards in dealing with the problem. But, they have not taken cognisance of other equally grave threats to global peace far more complex and intractable such as terrorism.

The gravity of terrorism became clear to the global North, when Al Queda came home to roost in 2001. The mighty US was busy devising missiles shields in the heaven to protect itself from its enemies on the earth, at the time bin Laden made missiles of fuel laden jets to obliterate its economic icon in New York and damage the Pentagon. The London bombings of 2005 shocked the world yet another time. There has been a lull in high profile terror strike in the West––touch wood!––mainly due to extraordinary precautions which have taken a heavy toll on the civil liberties that others used to envy.

Terror attacks that small countries like Sri Lanka suffer may be taken for granted by the powerful members of the international community but Saturday’s blasts that rocked Gujarat have come as a gruesome reminder to them of the severity of the problem of terrorism. India, too, has been thinking of protecting its national security interests in terms of nukes. But, a band of terrorists carrying crude bombs has demonstrated its ability to run rings round India!

Small as such attacks may look, the increasing strike-capability of terrorists bodes ill for the future of a country like India with so diverse a society fraught with ethno-religious tensions. The problem of ethno-religious terrorism may not be so manifest in the affluent western societies where people are bonded by a common national identity deriving sustenance from their economic wellbeing. But, the day their economies slow down or cease to expand making the marginalised sections the first casualties, the disintegration of the western societies will begin and among the disgruntled people terrorism will find a fertile breeding ground as in the developing world.

Networking of terrorists across the globe poses the same danger to the world as the proliferation of nukes and biological and chemical weapons. For, there is the possibility of those weapons finding their way into the hands of terrorist groups, which no longer operate as separate entities, as could be seen from the transfer of technology and lethal materials among them.

Besides this kind of trans-border terrorist co-operation, success of one terror group provides inspiration to others. Time was when IRA became a role model for many terrorist outfits the world over. Had Britain given in to the IRA terrorism, its political wing would never have evolved the way it did to help resolve the conflict through a dialogue. If only Britain adopted the same stand on others' terrorists as well!

The problem of terrorism has become unmanageable because it has unfortunately become part of the foreign policy of some countries. Al Queda was a creation of the US to pull Afghanistan out of Russia's orbit. Later, the creature turned against its creator and found refuge in some states hostile to the US.

In Africa, if the member states of the African Union stop promoting terrorism against one another, without being driven by their desire for hegemony and exploitation of others' resources, as in the case of victim states like Congo and Sierra Leone and if the Western nations desist from backing terrorism to further their economic and religious interests in countries like Sudan and Congo, that continent may be free from the curse of terrorism.

In Congo alone about four million people have so far perished at the hands of terrorists backed by western corporations which see that country as a source of cheap coltan to keep the cost of their electronic goods down. India created terrorism in Sri Lanka, as the latter aligned itself with the US after 1977, in a bipolar world at that time. India and Pakistan are accusing each other of instigating cross border terrorism.

The so-called democratic world has also sponsored state terrorism in many countries. France continued to fund Bokassa in spite of his crimes against humanity. It even made a huge contribution to that lunatic despot's coronation as emperor. The US propped up the Saddam Hussein regime and provided him with funds and even crop spraying choppers that Iraq used for chemical attacks in its Anfal campaign which left thousands of Kurds dead.

The Chilean dictator Pinochet disported himself in bloodletting with Britain backing him to the hilt. That his much dreaded Caravan of Death resulted in the extermination of thousands of his opponents meant nothing to Britain, which refused to extradite him to stand trial, when he took refuge in that country towards the latter stages of his life. Sweden, Norway (the Quisling regime to be exact) etc. had no qualms about siding with Hitler the mass murderer.

Thus, the world is reaping the whirlwind, having sowed the wind. The continuation by countries of the wrong policy of being selective in dealing with terrorism and using it as an extension of their foreign policy will only make this world a much more dangerous place to live in.

It was the unity of the democratic nations, regardless of all their differences, that helped stop Hitler in his tracks. Ubiquitous terrorism has proved to be far more complicated and dangerous than Nazism. It has not spared even the mighty nations with arsenals strong enough to blow up the planet several times over. Hence, the need for the democratic world to join forces, the way it did during the World War II against genocidal Nazism, to remove the scourge of terror from our midst.