Violent Groups And Terrorism
By Kamala Sarup
We all know that violent groups or terrorists are targeting and killing small children. Children die by being "in the
way" for the killing of adults by terrorists. From the news, it seems that lots of innocent people are in the way of the
combatants or are deliberately targeted by violent groups. These include grown men and women as well as children, if
they accompany parents. Like in Iraq or Afghanistan many children were targeted by violence and war. Like when the
violent groups kill children and adults. Violent groups kill innocent adults.
In the U.S., the policy seems to be to protect the most vulnerable public places, and these are gov't buildings,
utilities, schools, etc. I don't see any concentration of protection for U.S. children. With regard to them, American
also need more protection against U.S. pedophiles and U.S. crazy gunmen and gun children.
Since human behavior is a combination of genes and environment ("nature and nurture"), your proposed solutions might
help the environmentally induced aggression, but not our genetically induced aggression. Therefore, aggression will
always be with us, not matter what environment is established. However, considering the latter as a way to at least
reduce aggression somewhat, consider that asocial behavior of all kinds is a consequence of the combination ignorance,
aggression, and greed, formal education partially helps employment partially helps good parenting helps but nobody pays
any attention to that source of our problems, so what you propose are only partial solutions. As for "good government",
that would help all three problems indirectly by promoting employment, education, parenting, etc., but that concept must
be translated into specific programs to be meaningful.
Violence as "the murder of innocents", i.e., non-military, non-police, and non-politicians. Army is used by the
government to protect the general population from foreign and domestic aggressors.
Armies and police can defend the country against violence, but are ineffective against isolated attacks. Outside the
country, an army can assist to defeat terrorism, but cannot accomplish that alone because terrorists are not found in
armies. Only way to defeat terrorism and violence is to assist police and intelligence. However, it will take a long
time.
These groups can survive longer if they become immune within a country. That is why it is important to bring them to
justice. The deaths and the property losses after attack cannot be restored completely no matter how much money other
countries send.
We certainly can defeat violence and terrorism if we spend lots more time, and create awareness on peace to do so over a
long period of time. Whether or not we will be willing to make these sacrifices to achieve these objectives is
indeterminable at this time.
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Nepali Journalist and Story Writer Kamala Sarup is an editor of peacejournalism.com. She is specialising in in-depth
reporting and writing on Peace, Anti War, Women, Terrorism, Democracy, and Development. Some of her publications are:
Women's Empowerment (Booklet). Prevention of trafficking through media (South Asia, Nepal Book) Efforts to Prevent
Trafficking in for Media Activism (Media research). Two Stories collections. Her interests include international
conflict resolution, cross-cultural communication, philosophy, feminism, political, socio-economic and literature. Her
current plans are to move on to humanitarian work in conflict areas in the near future. She also is experienced in
organizational and community development. A meeting of jury members held on 21 March in Geneva has decided to attribute
Kamala Sarup, with a Honorable Mention of International Award for Women Issue.