It's our Retaliation They Want

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There are hardly any parallels to what happened in Ahmedabad- in terms of terror attacks, IEDs and suicide bombings, never has a hospital been targeted in the cruel and completely inhuman manner the Civil hospital in Shahibaug and the LG Hospital in Maninagar were.

Hospitals are always the centre of action after any attack- it's perhaps the first time they have become the scene of the attack itself. ( I say perhaps, because there have been a few incidents of bombs near hospitals like the one near the Mallya hospital in Bangalore a day earlier, and others in Baghdad also near hospitals).

If terror is a war, then what kind of war is this - that tries to kill the wounded, to maim those already suffering, and to destroy the healers? Agreed, we are all pawns and possible targets of these groups, but are there no exceptions?

On July 7, Kabul saw another unwritten boundary crossed-when two diplomats were among 41 killed at the Indian Embassy. In the worst of the attacks in Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh those unwritten laws have always meant doctors and patients, diplomats, and children aren't directly made the target.

Yet there at the trauma centres of the Civil Hospital and the LG Hospital, terrorists struck - with some estimates that the act of planting bombs may have been done as much as three days before. Three days to think about the havoc they would rain, three days to call it off.

But perhaps the worst part of the plan- that the blasts at the hospitals were timed to be among the last of them all - 80 minutes after the first bomb went off, 40 minutes after the first round ended - at the very hospitals where most of the injured would be taken. A diabolical plan that killed a hardworking doctor and his pregnant wife, that murdered little children visiting an ailing grandmother, and so many others. What kind of mind can work out something like that?

Has the terrorist hit a new low in savagery? Or is it a new desperation? Is the "Indian Mujahideen", the group that claims it planted the bombs in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Varanasi, and other soft targets across the country only looking to frighten us?

If it was, the group has probably learned that bombing markets, temples, mosques, cinema theatres and bus stands doesn't actually serve to scare us away. Most of the markets are full again a day later, and so are all the other spots, simply because most of us don't have a choice but to go to those places. Or as a friend of mine fatalistically put it, "if it's dangerous to go everywhere, then why be afraid to go anywhere?"

It's therefore more likely that what the terrorist really wants is our response- hard, fast, strong in force, but low in intelligence. The Indian Mujahideen wants crackdowns, mass arrests, the use of state force, and if possible, the explosion of public anger.

The group lies when it says the blasts are in revenge for events of the past - it's the revenge of the future that they aim to create. It's not our fear they're looking for, it's our retaliation they want. And that's something to think about, as we plan it.