Trial By Media, Error By Media

The suicide bombing that killed 35 and injured 160 in the arrivals hall of Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport on January 24, 2011, was carried out by Islamist militants from the northern Caucuses seeking to inflict damage on soft targets. In the post-9/11 world, the threat of Al Qaeda to the West has been greatly minimized by repeated skirmishes against larger groups in their home grounds, such in northwestern Pakistan, Afghanistan and southern Uzbekistan. This has resulted in a significant reduction of the extent to which the networks of terror are splayed around the globe, although also shifting the onus of executing the bloody mandates onto grassroots organizations and the shoulders of fanatical individuals.

[caption id="attachment_206" align="aligncenter" width="512" caption="People light candles and place flower tributes to mourn the victims of the Domodedovo suicide bombing."][/caption]

As more and more countries move towards liberalizing their economies and making themselves more sustainable in a world where investments increasingly dictate futures, the population size of the 'soft targets' increases, as has been demonstrated that even the strictest of dictators is not capable of protecting all her people. This happens because the local population begins to utilize its freedom, and this utility grows for as long as there is also a parallel increment in the degree of liberalization. In light of this liberalism, everybody cannot be provided air-tight security all the time; more the liberalism, lesser the chances of protecting everyone.

On August 24, 2004, there was a series of suicide bombings that destroyed two Russian airliners. After this incident, security at the Domodedovo was increased considerably to, in essence, keep the terrorist as far away from the airport as possible; even though this meant that chances of an attack on people within the airport's premises would be diminished, someone would lie outside the security bubble, thereby presenting a soft target. As has been said, since the mobility of the Al Qaeda core has been reduced, grassroots organizations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba would have found it easier to execute smaller plans and transport smaller explosives to the site of the attack. This was demonstrated during the London Underground attacks (2005) and the 26/11 (2008) attacks at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai.

The growing importance of the media also plays an important role. The purpose of these attacks is to inflict some psychological damage on the local populace, the best-case scenario of the terrorist being that these inflictions will snowball to result in a collateral damage against the economy of the state. The presence of the media, in such cases, presents two inferences: 1. people are quickly informed of an attack and can react faster and on larger scales, and 2. the media acts as a "terror magnifier", taking the impact of the attack beyond the attack-site. Even though the attacks occurred in New York in 2001, the media's obsession with it - justified though it may have been given its magnitude - kept the reality of the incident alive in the minds of all travelers. This behavior also contributes to the choice of landmarks and airports by terrorists as good targets since media attention is assured to be high; take the attempted bombing of Times Square in NY (2010), for example.

So, in conclusion, how is a liberal democratic country to secure the life of its citizens? Some solutions that immediately come to mind are protective intelligence and countersurveillance measures on the government's part. At the same time, the citizenry have to understand the importance of spending lesser time on the softer sides of security bubbles as well as be taught to increase their situational awareness.