THE WAR ON TERRORISM WILL BE WON BY PEN AND PAPER NOT GUNS

Let us give credit where it is due, the world leaders have made tremendous efforts in fighting terrorism from the face of the earth. Year after year colossal amount of money is spent on this holy course so that you and I can live in a safer world where we not only have our democratic space but we can also enjoy life knowing that a suicide boomer will not explode besides us when we go window shopping or to watch Arsenal match against Liverpool at Emirates. Last year alone Billions of dollars were used to fund the fight against terror groups in the Middle East. This war has been sustained for decades yet the world is yet to take stalk of success in the fights if any, which is why I wonder, could there be a better way out of this maze?

When a cancer infection degenerates to the level of metastases a prudent doctor would not recommend surgical removal of the cancerous organ(s). Terrorism has spread in some parts of Middle East so much that some people are victims even without knowing it, to them they are in a holy fight for Allah and anybody that is opposed to their believes is as good as dead. This is especially worse for the children who grow cut off from the rest of the world; all they see and know are fire arms, deaths of their loved ones and wanton destruction of property. These children are born and bred in violence and as a result, they grow with a lot of inbuilt anger and hate that they attach very little value to the sanctity of life. The only informal education within their reach is the Madras as which are offered within the Islamic religion, and because the masterminds of terrorism have carefully veiled their ill practices with Islam, these young minds in most cases are not able to resolve the boundary between terrorism and their religion. The young generation grow so disenchanted with our fight against their perceived believes to the extent that they are ready to bear Atomic explosives in their belly just to kill one or two of us. So as the world continue to cut the tree of terrorism from the top, thousands of seedlings sprout on the ground right before our very eyes, and the more we cover ground in combating terrorism, the more we incubate these seeds of discord, hate and prejudice.

The United States of America has pledged to withdraw its troops from Iraq by 2012, not because the war on terrorism is won, but because a win on the fight is not for us to decide. You can take a cow to the river, but you sure cannot force the cow to drink. We as the world should channel all the hefty resources that are used to fund war on terrorism to opening up the Middle East and bringing it closer to the rest of the world. We should ensure that a good chunk of the allocations go to building institutions, especially those of learning so that every child born of a Middle East woman has a free access to basic education because truth be said, most people that are engulfed in terrorism are held captive by their past, and only education will set them free.