Terrorists Thwarted by Luck

The recent terror attack on the London tube made me wonder: how can the same Western capital be hit by terrorists over and over again, just in 2017?

On the other hand, you don’t see Delhi or Mumbai getting hit (touchwood) with such ease, do you? Even when an attack does happen, security gets ramped up such that the next attack doesn’t happen for a long time. At least not in the same city. The same holds for Israel. How is it that India and Israel can protect their major cities while the Brits can’t seem to protect even their capital?

I ran into a few examples of terrorist attacks that didn’t go through in India and Israel:
1)      Ashish Kulkarni wrote about the time a planned terrorist attack on IIM, Bangalore, timed to coincide with a seminar didn’t happen because the attacker “got caught in a traffic jam, and the seminar he was supposed to attack ended before he could get there”!!
2)     In the same article, Kulkarni says that an attack on the PES Institute of Technology in Bangalore was aborted because “because there was no easy escape route available”!
3)     In 1999, Israel switched from Daylight Saving Time. The Palestinians refused to live on “Zionist time”; so they refused to switch. At 5:30 pm on Sunday, two car bombs blew up killing the terrorists transporting them. Here’s what had happened:
“The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.”

This would have been so funny if the topic weren’t terrorism. I would like to believe the reason for fewer attacks in India and Israel is that the security agencies are very good. And sometimes, like the instances above, they just got lucky.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarSeptember 19, 2017 at 4:40 PM

    Interesting.

    Being a common man, I would like to pray, "May the innocent people be protected and may the venom of desire to go the terrorist way be eradicated from the minds of uncaring people who have chosen the wrong path for themselves". They won't escape the 'karma fruit' of it coming to them, but then, let's not wander in unknown spiritual domains, even if there is some consolation in that. We want something concrete here and now.

    I don't mind if successful defense against the inhuman acts of terrorists happening by incidents, defeating the terrorist's malignant plan like these examples. I also welcome right actions by governments, timely intelligence information coming to aid, and, the security personnel performing to meet the dire need. May it happen.

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