India, May 17 -- I have consistently maintained that organised terrorism is a complex low-cost war and not a crime of rage or passion. Terrorists kill unarmed civilians by stealth and deception. They abuse wider trust among communities. They seek to degrade the identity of victims and destroy the faith of people in the ability of their state to protect them. Terrorism seeks to paralyse and cripple the all-round potentials and capacities of a state and society. But a deeper examination suggests that it is also a potent weapon of geopolitics.

Hence, neither the conventional military means nor the routine criminal justice system is in a position to eradicate the threat of terrorism in a definitive time frame and that too at sustainable mate...