Prudence or paranoia

The war in Marawi is over. The city has been liberated. But what a cost it had been to achieve the victory and what a cost it will be to try and put the pieces back together, if it can even be put together at all despite the huge amounts of money being promised for its rehabilitation. If there is one true measure of success that might be salvaged out of that unfortunate city, it can only be the possibility of learning what hard lessons might be learned from the tragedy.

Marawi was not simply a unilateral attempt by ISISinspired terrorists to take over and establish a caliphate in that city. It was also, to a large extent, a failure of intelligence that tragically neglected to take into account what many, on hindsight, now consider to be a screaming eventuality. And then, more importantly, (and I say this without any intent at insensitivity) Marawi was also the result of what might be called the "unintended complicity" of the very people of that city.

It is very difficult to believe that the May 23 incident that started the five-month siege happened in all innocent spontaneity. For the Maute group to attain the ability to carry out a savage and protracted war, it must have taken many many months of planning and actual building up of manpower and firepower, activities that surely must have attracted some kind of attention.

But attracting attention and actually doing something about it are two different things. Since it has to be a given that some people may have known about the build-up activities, the question now is why these people who noticed something was afoot never bothered to report what was going on to the authorities. Had they been more pro-active in their civic responsibilities, there is a big chance none of this would have happened, at least not to the extent that it did.

But everybody kept quiet. Now it could be due to fear of reprisal. And it would be difficult to take that against those who knew. Looking back, though, it may be worthwhile to ask if fear in itself does not guarantee far worse consequences. Clearly, this must be what must be foremost in the minds of many people in Marawi at this moment -the "what if" situations no one can ever live through and experience again.

These are the lessons that must be confronted and learned today. It is a changed world that we live in now. There is no more escaping the reality of extremist terrorism. What happened in Marawi can happen in any similar neighborhood anywhere in the country. It can happen as a huge conflagration as in Marawi, or in short and sudden flare-ups of small attacks, labeled in the west as lone-wolf incidents on soft targets.

Any suspicious activity needs to be reported right away. That some sense of kindred or affiliation might be involved or get in the way is understandable. But one can always look to the Marawi experience to see if hedging and hesitation is truly worth the consequence as we now know it. And if there is still any doubt on the course of action to take, remember only one thing. The state always protects itself. And it is always better to be on the side of the state when it does.

The need to be vigilant is nowhere more acute than now. Warnings of possible retaliation by groups sympathetic to the one that launched the Marawi caper cannot be overemphasized. They speak of a very urgent and clear truth. In these times, prudence dictates that people take stock of their surroundings. They might want to know what the neighbors are doing. Call it paranoid, but name calling does not cost a cent. Better that than the terrible cost of Marawi.

‘What happened in Marawi can happen in any

similar neighborhood anywhere in the country’