Bomb or not, we should always be ready

The explosion in Serendra has managed to rile up and unnerve not only the unit owners but also the residents of nearby condominiums in Global City. A lot of people also found it rather unnerving, if not ironic, that the blast happened once again in another Ayala property, recalling the deadly 2007 Glorietta 2 explosion that killed eight people on the spot and injured dozens. Authorities had ruled the cause to be a buildup of methane gas in the sewage — although there are still those who insist it was a bomb that triggered the explosion.

This time, the cause of the Serendra blast that ripped a huge chunk of concrete from the wall of the condominium unit — damaging nearby units and the elevators — is supposedly a gas leak. The long-winded preamble of DILG Secretary Mar Roxas, launching into a scientific explanation about chemical combustion and reaction, liquid hydrocarbons, argon, acetylene and what’s-it-called drew a lot of yawning and made it simply anti-climactic. After all was said and done, the long and short of it — it was “not a bomb.”

But whatever it was — LPG or some other combustible gas — we should always be ready for the worst especially during these dangerous times when the world is technically at war with terrorism. All countries even outside of the United States, Australia, Britain and Israel — belonging to the group of nations against the “axis of evil” — are vulnerable to certain attacks by extremist groups. 

That Friday, we were at dinner in Greenbelt with US Ambassador Harry Thomas, Israeli Ambassador Menashe Bar-On and Australian Ambassador Bill Tweddell when we were informed of the Serendra explosion. Israeli Ambassador Bar-On was informed almost immediately — just a few minutes after the explosion occurred — prompting US Ambassador Thomas to comment that Israel has in fact a very reliable intelligence network with impeccable monitoring activities even here in the Philippines.

The explosion serves as a grim reminder of the unpredictability in the world we live in today, with the problem of terrorism continuing to be a global concern. In the Philippines, we have extremists left and right. And while some progress has been made on the peace negotiations between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the situation in the south is still considerably tenuous.  The same goes for the New People’s Army with the talks left hanging.

We should all be grateful that the blast didn’t seem to be the work of an individual or terrorist group. But this recent explosion, whether accidental or not, can only be a grim reminder that the worse can very well happen. Government authorities should always be ready with all sorts of contingency measures for emergency situations especially in malls or other public places. Every time something serious happens, security becomes tight for the next few weeks and then everyone gets lax again, with guards not bothering to check the bags of people.  It was also disconcerting to know that the police and investigators reportedly had no equipment to detect the presence of combustible gases, so government had to borrow an “explosimeter” from the UP National Institute of Geological Sciences.

It is not clear who advised the President to go to Serendra immediately after the explosion, but an “unsolicited advice” from a retired US Secret Service agent commented in an e-mail that the President should have been kept away by the Presidential Security Group from the site of the explosion. If it was a terrorist attack, the US agent said, the possibility of a second bomb exploding would have been very real. If one would recall – right after 9/11 occurred and when President Bush had been informed – the Secret Service did not take him back to Washington, D.C. but instead took him to an undisclosed location.

We should never let our guard down as far as the fight against terrorism is concerned, more so now that terrorists have become indistinguishable from common criminals going by the US State Department’s latest country report saying terrorist groups are resorting to kidnap-for-ransom, extortion and other crimes to finance their activities.  These groups — Jemaah Islamiyah, the Abu Sayyaf Group and the New People’s Army — are suspected of bombing public and private facilities including mosques, hotels, and buses primarily in Central and Western Mindanao, the report also noted.

We can no longer deny that the face of terrorism has totally evolved since 9/11, with the methods and operations now totally different from the “old-school” organizations. Terrorists have become leaderless, nameless, able to operate independently as small cells, raising funds on their own, engaging in asymmetrical — not organizational — warfare, deliberately targeting innocent civilians just like what happened in the Boston Marathon explosion.

Even more chilling is the thought that terrorists are now homegrown. They could be the next-door neighbor or the ordinary family down the road.  Unfortunately, technology and the Internet have become very effective tools for spreading messages of hatred and destruction, teaching people how to make improvised explosive devices, proselytizing and winning over new converts, inspiring people to carry out their deadly cause.  These new terrorists don’t even have to use guns and bombs — now it’s knives and meat cleavers like what happened in Woolwich in London where an off-duty soldier was brutally hacked to death.

As a US official pointed out, we have to make sure that we have the tools necessary to confront the threat posed by terrorists. Terrorism can happen anytime. It happened in New York; it happened in Boston; it happened in London — and it can very well happen in Metro Manila.

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