Peshawar’s children deserve an answer

The time has come to mount an allied global offensive against terror

The inevitable conclusion is that terrorism today, unlike the political violence of the ’60s and ’70s when it was a means to achieve a political goal, is an end in itself

Thirteen years after the “war on terror” was launched, it is clear that terrorism has won. After the slaughter of 132 school children in Peshawar by the Taliban, it is useless to pretend the world is a safer place. Estimates show that terrorist attacks worldwide have quadrupled each year since 9/11.

A glance at globalincidentmap.com which tracks terrorism and other suspicious activities worldwide on a real-time basis is revealing. Each of the six continents shows some form of terrorist activity. The terror trail knows no boundaries.

According to The Global Terrorism Database, an open-source information base on terrorist events around the world, 20 years ago, the five countries most affected by terror were Turkey, Algeria, Northern Ireland, Colombia and South Africa. In 2013, this list is completely different and reads Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and the Philippines.

The inevitable conclusion is that terrorism today, unlike the political violence of the ’60s and ’70s when it was a means to achieve a political goal, is an end in itself. With the Taliban turning on Pakistani children, presumably most of who were muslims, the religious underpinning has turned hazy with terrorism itself becoming a religion subscribed to by hoodlums, thugs and malcontents.

Let’s be under no illusion. There are madmen all around us and no religion or grouping is free of its loonies.

All communities need to look within and critically identify the factors in their faith that allow monstrosities of this nature to be perpetrated. But the world can no longer stand around and wait for this change from within. The time has come to mount an allied offensive against terrorism. What happened in Peshawar this week is the blowback from the soft approach to terror that even affected countries like Pakistan have taken. What is needed now is the kind of resolve and determination to fight together against evil.