America is perpetually at war – yesterday it was Saddam and Iraq, today it is Afghanistan, but the real war that we should be waging is in understanding how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’ are created and then ensuring that those manufacturing factories are found and destroyed – otherwise this war will never end.
Umar belonged to a rich family and was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He studied in a British style boarding school meant for the very rich and the influential. He went to College in London and lived in the lap of luxury – not in the college hostel or dormitory, but in an apartment, rented by his dad, in an elite area of the city. He travelled widely and was exposed to all the luxuries of life.
He did not come from those impoverished backgrounds were kids cannot have two proper meals and were they are taught by radical mullahs in ‘madarsas’, an environment that is tailor-made from where the mullah’s recruit their suicide bombers. It seemed that he was far too suave and sophisticated to fall under the sway of such people – alas it was not to be.
So what are the lessons to be learnt from this to prevent more Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from terrorizing our country? Terrorist recruiters of the Al Qaeda and other groups regularly peruse websites, to scout for potential candidates for their nefarious activities. Farouk’s pro-jihad’s sentiments that he regularly posted on the web, his familiarity with the west, his fluency in the English language and more importantly his ability to travel to US at will, found in him an outstanding candidate for their terrorists activities. His trips to Dubai and his joining an Urdu language school in Yemen were the turning point were the young man’s life took a menacing turn. Suffice to say, that had he stayed away from these people, his full of potential life would not have ended the way it has.
Had the bomb that he was carrying in his underwear gone off that fateful day, it would have brought the plane down and along with all the 288 people on board. Luckily it didn’t but the next time we may not be so lucky.
Sentencing him to a life behind bars is all right and certainly deserved but we must look for and find that manufacturing factory, before they find another confused, lonely, gullible, vulnerable Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – like I said, “ next time we may not be so lucky.”