Targeting urban terrain
N. MANOHARAN
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The urban landscape facilitates terrorists in realising their goals
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Significantly, modern day terrorists have increasingly concentrated their attacks on urban areas. For instance, all the 15 major previous terrorist attacks in India have taken place in cities. Terrorists are rational in their choice of terrain and targets, evaluating strengths and weaknesses and costs and benefits. In this regard, urban terrain holds significant advantages for terrorists. As is the characteristic of urban areas, population is not only high, but also dense
. Unlike in rural areas, inhabitants in cities and towns are more heterogeneous that gives more space for anonymity. It is this posture of anonymity that enables the terrorist fish to swim easily; an excellent place for camouflage. For terrorists, logistical support like arms, medicines, food, and lodging are readily available in an average urban area. Manoeuvrability of terrorists is guaranteed by the presence of public and private transportation facilities that are both dependable and unobtrusive. In urban areas, a terrorist group may find it easier to recruit prospective terrorists in a predictable manner, for it is the city that nurtures dissidence in general.
Undermining credibility
Cities are the nerve centres of a country. It is in urban areas where targets are most varied and abundant: laymen, officials, foreign nationals, corporate heavy weights, government buildings with symbolic/strategic value, bus stands, railway stations, airports, markets, foreign embassies, communication centres, etc. By attacking high profile symbolic targets, the terrorists wish to make a point that if a government fails to protect these, it is obvious that it may not be in a position to protect the normal ones. As a result, the credibility of the government of the day is undermined. Since the quality and quantity of terrorists’ ‘defined enemy’ is high in cities, the impact of a destructive act is more widespread. This also gives an added advantage to the terrorists to prevent any kind of indiscriminate counter-terrorist operation by the state that could maximise collateral damage.
Propaganda by deed
For the same reason, the use of aerial bombardments against the terrorists becomes difficult. Urban operations for terrorists also often demand less in the way of brute physical strength and endurance than do operations in mountainous or rural terrain. And they do not need sophisticated, long-range weapons to inflict the desired damage. The attention seeking goal of the terrorist is well served in the urban environment where the immediate audience is greatest and where representatives of the print and electronic media are readily available and quite eager to report.
Such coverage also magnifies the fear-generating capabilities of terrorists and thus the objective of a terrorist group may have been achieved. The urban landscape facilitates terrorists in realising their goals: maximum damage with minimum risk, hyper media attention and subsequent disappearance.
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