Threats and Consequences
Terrorism does very little damage to a nation's military capacity, as well as its manufacturing infrastructure, and terrorism rarely even damages a nation's political apparatus. What terrorism does do, however, is project an image of insecurity within a country. The effects of perception of insecurity that terrorist attacks bring most heavily hit a major sector of any nation's economy, tourism. The tourism sector feels negative impacts for years after terrorist attacks, depending on how the attack happened, and how confident tourists feel that adequate security has been implemented. The 2008 Mumbai attacks were devastating, but the poor reaction of the Indian authorities made the attacks seem even worse. What could have been ended in just minutes of a competent counterterrorism unit, ended up taking three days as the attackers were prepared to cause as much violence as they possibly could.
(Chandigarh, 2009) First, the attackers targeted exceptional hotels that are known to host the wealthy and the foreign, prime targets for tourism and relatively unguarded targets for attack. The Taj Mahal hotel in particular is an iconic symbol of British power in India, and was the major target of the terrorists. The second reason tourism fell is because of the gruesomeness of the attacks, with over 150 dead and 300 wounded, including the use of weapons like bombs and machine guns. Terrorism is intended to produce shock value, and the attacks in Mumbai are proof that the more grotesque the terrorist act, the more shock value comes with it. Third, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai negatively affected tourism in India because of the lack of control of the Mumbai police, and India in general. The country was constricted in…
