Escalation of terrorist violence must push Beijing to address root causes

Last week, an SUV careered along a pavement in front of the portrait of Mao Zedong to the north of Tiananmen Square, ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames, killing three occupants in the car and two pedestrians, and injuring some 40 other people. After two days of silence, the authorities said it was a terrorist attack that had been "carefully planned, organised and premeditated" by several people from Xinjiang . The perpetrators had been identified as the three occupants of the car, Usmen Hasan, his wife and his mother. A petrol container, an iron rod, two machetes and a flag imprinted with an extremist religious message were found in the car. Within 10 hours of the car crash, the police had caught five suspects in connection with the attack. Although Beijing tried to play down the ethnic identity of these Xinjiang people, their distinctive names draw a clear link to China's Uygur ethnic minority. The Tiananmen attack signals that Chinese domestic terrorism may have reached a new dimension, in terms of the devastation and impact it generates, for three reasons.First, it was the first terrorist attack in Beijing. To make things worse, the attack occurred on the verge of Tiananmen Square, the very heart of the capital city and the nation's political centre. The symbolic intent of the attack cannot be understated. Terrorist violence had previously been confined to Xinjiang in the far west, but authorities had long been apprehensive about an attack in the heart of the nation. Now that the day has come, the Chinese government may feel a compelling need to prevent copycat actions by tightening security not only in Beijing but also in other eastern population centres. Second, it was probably the first successful suicide attack in China. A similar case was the horrendous - albeit low-profile, for complicated reasons - suicide bombing plot targeting a Beijing-bound passenger plane in 2008. If that had not been foiled, it would have caused a catastrophe. By any means, the Tiananmen attack can be categorised as a suicide attack, generally a phenomenon that occurs outside China, in the context of the global jihad waged by militant Islamists. Suicide attacks are usually carried out by an individual wearing an explosive vest or driving a vehicle filled with explosives. Today, terrorist organisations around the world rely increasingly on such attacks, because they are lethal, inexpensive, accurate, secure and shocking. Suicide bombings are terrifying; a mere rumour of an impending attack can cause great panic and paranoia. It is for these reasons that they have spread from the Middle East to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Russia, the United States, and now to China. Third, the suicide attack involved female bombers, whose participation signals a dangerous trend, if not a turning point, with regard to the security situation in China. The wife and mother in the Tiananmen attack, together with the 19-year-old Uygur woman plotting to bomb the Beijing-bound plane, bring to mind the female Tamil Tiger warriors in Sri Lanka and the "black widows" of Chechnya. In an interview, Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled political leader of the Uygur community, chose to justify the Tiananmen attack, saying that the Uygurs might have done it out of desperation "because there is no channel for the Uygur people to seek redress". In the US, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to call the incident a terrorist attack, and reaffirmed American support for Uygur human rights. Apparently, both women tried to avoid condemning what is believed to be a terrorist attack. Although terrorism is understandably difficult to define, there should be a minimum consensus that any deliberate attack on innocent civilians is unacceptable. Terrorism is the common enemy of all the people and the countries in the world. The UN General Assembly has stressed on many occasions its unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes. In a nutshell, nothing can justify terrorism. Owing to the escalation of terrorist violence, Chinese citizens expect their government more than ever to protect them, but counterterrorism is not an easy job. The reality is that no society is immune from terrorism, just as nobody is immune from cancer. As a rule, suicide attacks are not the desperate acts of lone outlaws, but are undertaken by motivated individuals in broader social conditions that breed terrorism. For the government, the right response is not to fall victim to the psychological paralysis that suicide terrorists aim to achieve, but to take concrete measures to address the breeding conditions.