Terror Tactics

IF the bomb scare of Thursday across the Kathmandu Valley was any indication, the Maoists have apparently targeted Kathmandu Valley for their terror tactics to create fear and confusion in the mind of the people. Bomb disposal squads from the police and army rushed to several places in the three cities of the Valley in response to the local people’s reporting of suspicious looking objects in the public places. Only a handful of those supposed "bombs" were actually explosives, the rest being just fakes. The police and army personnel showed a remarkable degree of efficiency in dealing with the panicky situation by speedily determining whether they were real bombs or not, and by difusing the real ones. Most of these suspected bombs turned out to be small sacks containing sawdust, gravel or such harmless stuff without any explosives. Bombs or not, however, the sight of stuffed bundles hanging in most cases from electricity poles was enough to unnerve people coming as it did after the explosion in Baluwatar on Wednesday. Fortunately, there were no casualties while defusing the few real explosives, unlike what happened in a similar effort some days ago close to Asan in Kathmandu when a police personnel was injured.

What are the Maoists trying to prove? Are they trying to make a show of their strength, by striking terror in the Kathmandu Valley itself? Whatever their design, it is a totally reprehensible act to disrupt the common people’s normal life with threats of bombs. What have they achieved with these potentially deadly tactics? What they have earned from this bomb scare is outrage from the common citizens of the Valley as it must be so elsewhere too, like Nawalparasi where a public bomb scare in a bazaar area spread fear among the people there. The people of the Valley have responded with loathing to this Maoist method of sowing panic. Their stand against Maoist way of indulging in violence can only harden at this series of bomb scare. While the government must further tighten its security arrangements in the capital and elsewhere, the Maoists must abandon such anarchic behaviour. Not such terror tactics, but talks, can resolve national problems. They must respond to the government offer for negotiations, rather than holding innocent people hostage through such means.

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