What’s the point of killing innocent people that came from influential countries? Don’t those terrorists know the provoked retaliation might lead to their own demise? This is the country of Gandhi! Why this insanity?
Think as if you are them.
You are the leader of an absolute minority, you believe in an extreme cause with your whole life, and you are willing to do whatever-it-takes to advance that cause. What’s the most efficent way of achieving your goal?
Your problem is not the other side, but those in the middle, who do not have strong opinion on your cause and are willing to accept a reasonable compromise. When reached, your cause is defeated.
To prevent that, it is logical to generate spetacular events and force the other side to respond to your agenda. The responses first legitimizes the cause. The usual intensivity of the counter-attack will then polarize the population, drain the resources of the other side, and help you with new recruits. In a strange way, the counter-attack galvanizes the morale, legitimize the cause, and weaken the other side at the same time.
Now switch to the other side.
They (the terrorists) are forcing the agenda. Their size is puny and resources extremely limited. They got way too much attention than they deserve. They are annoying. We cannot ignore them. The public demand responses and swift actions. What to do?
The existence of annoyance is actually sometime good. The extreme terrorists justify extreme means that are convenient for stamping out oppositions or cultivating power-base. When dispensing massive amount of resources to fight against those terrorists, many friends can benefit from the process. Weak governments, strangely, need extremists to help them gain strength.
Strong governments simply destroy them in a fast stealth strike. When that is done, they tell the world that you have dealt with the problem and that’s how the next incident will be handled.
Switch side again.
Which government would you choose to provoke?