08 9479 1848
Another senseless attack against a defenceless public, 129 people dead with the figure still rising. There have been many questions about the intelligence community in France and the ability of the terrorists to organise a coordinated attack such as this with little or no intervention from enforcement agencies. There are a number of answers as to why these agencies had a little or no chance but let’s consider this.
There are 64.9 million people in France with 12 million living in the Paris region which covers 4638 square miles. This equates to 56000 people per square mile. Without considering the other factors and it certainly seems there were oversights but realistically try covering that area and population with the resources available. These guys need eyes on the ground, they can’t put everyone one under surveillance.
So whats the answer? Well there is no one answer but a combination of proactive solutions is required. One of these is awareness and I don’t just mean awareness when it is happening or after the fact, it has to happen before.
We saw the French singing La Marseillaise in defiance of the terroist acts against them. 64.9 million French need to take that defiance to assist their enforcement agencies and their community by educating themselves.
Look at this map and the attack locations. Its safe to say there was a lot planning here and this takes time to review and organise. This amount of planning would not have taken 5 minutes to conduct therefore someone must have seen or heard something but they probably didn’t know what they were looking at?
The general public needs to make themselves aware of what suspicious behaviour and terrorist pre-cursor activity consists of so they can notify the appropriate authorities. We live in a different world now and whether we want to or not it is necessary that the general community becomes actively involved in dealing with this issue. Being the eyes and ears for the enforcement agencies and knowing what to do is a key contributor to stopping attacks before it happens. This is a very much an Australian problem as well, don’t wait for it to happen here. 100% certain that Monis planned and spoke with people, entered the Lindt cafe and surveyed the area before well before 15th December 2015. Someone saw him, someone interacted with him? They just didn’t know what to look out for?
The global community and Australians alike need to seriously think about their role in the fight against terrroism. We have a lot less resources here than the French so it’s important we get smart about this.