DHAKA TO SYDNEY, A MISSING LINK IN TERROR NARRATIVE

Failure to call out the resurgence in Islamist violence isn’t helping. Recent incidents in Australia and Bangladesh aren't linked, but there’s a common reluctance to confront the threat head-on

- MAKARAND R PARANJAPE

THE horrific mass shooting at Bondi beach on December 14 during a Hanukkah celebration claimed at least 15 lives and wounded dozens more.

Sadly, the perpetrators have an India link. We used to believe that Indo-Australian relations were defined by cricket and the Quad, not to mention Anglo-cosmopolitanism. But now, a new and disturbing element has been added to the mostly pleasant relations between the colonial cousins.

The Sydney terrorist massacre was perpetrated by a father-son duo, Sajid Akram, a 50-year-old Indian national from Hyderabad, and his 24-year-old Australian-born son Naveed. Sajid was shot dead by the police. Naveed now faces multiple charges. To my mind, however, the news coverage and analysis that followed were far from satisfactory. How is it that this father-son pair of killers carried out such a massacre without the state agencies intervening? Worse, how is that even after being disarmed so bravely and spectacularly by Ahmed al-Ahmed, Sajid was allowed to return to the bridge, join his son, rearm, and even kill a Jewish senior who threw a brick at him? Where were the police? Was there a laxity, if not intelligence failure? After all, the Akrams were already under state scrutiny if not surveillance. Surely, the attack is only the tip of an iceberg. There is likely a bigger group, with an international network and support system, behind the attack. The Philippine authorities have denied that Davao City, where the Akrams visited for nearly a month this November, had a role to play.