Paul Cornish, Chairman of Chatham House's International Security Programme, published a very interesting BBC commentary on the Mumbai attacks yesterday. In "The age of 'celebrity terrorism'", he focuses on how effective the terrorists were in achieving their aims, which he defines right at the beginning of the piece:

"Quite apart from the scores murdered and the hundreds injured, what the Mumbai terrorists really wanted was an exaggerated - and preferably extreme - reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion.

In these terms, the attackers received as much attention as they could possibly have hoped for, and the Mumbai outrage can only be described as a very significant terrorist success."

He then continues to explain how such major media attention was achieved on relatively little means: "...small arms and hand grenades are not hard to find, boats are scarcely specialised equipment, and Mumbai is a vast, open city with more than enough soft targets."

Indeed, the ratio of impact to effort seems astoundingly high.

But I wonder about the word "success". Was this really a success for the attackers? They received massive media attention, sure, but this -- like so many terrorist attacks of recent years -- achieved nothing for their cause in political terms (however one chooses to define that). No states have fallen to jihadists at any point in recent years. They've not won control of any resources. They've not convinced any significantly sized group of people to rise up on their side.

It seems to me that, in the past, those committing terrorist acts at least had some kind of affiliated political wing aiming to achieve the same goals through peaceful negotiations or the normal political process. Today, this pointless slaughter really is just pointless slaughter, and the attackers proved little more than that they've seen a lot of Hollywood films and understand what it takes to keep mass audiences glued to their screens.

The media and the public will probably never be able to resist dramatic violence and fear-mongering, but that doesn't mean that spectacular terrorist action "works".
If media attention alone was all they wanted, the Mumbai attackers have no notion of effective communications. Media is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

Of course, if they spark an over-the-top reaction by governments, then they will have achieved something real. But that is not in their hands at all; it is in the hands of governments, which will hopefully act rationally and in the best interests of their people, who certainly would not benefit from an unnecessary war or radical restriction of civil liberties. The lessons of the recent past in that regard ought to be clear enough.

 

 

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