It has often been said that sport and politics do not mix but we now live in a world where much of what we do, and in whatever realm, is intertwined and decisions by those elected to lead us trickle down inexorably to the sporting arena.

So we mix, yes we do; sometimes like oil and water but modern history mandates that the spaces between the connecting dots of politics and sport grow smaller, not farther apart.

This week came the decision that the Pepsi World Cricket League Division Three tournament has been moved from Uganda for security reasons in the wake of news almost a fortnight ago that an alleged terrorist plot had been thwarted in the capital city Kampala.

Terrorism did not just start yesterday. We have lived side by side with it for as long as I care to remember. But what the Western world determined to do about it came to a head only when the jihad — a holy war against infidels undertaken by Muslim radicals in defence of the Islamic faith — was brought to American shores as it had never been done before.

In advance of September 11, 2001, which we in Bermuda will feel for ever because it took from us two of our own — Boyd Gatton and Rhondelle Tankard, who had the bulk of their lives ahead of them — terror invaded our personal space in dribs and drabs.

Some of it fell under the guise of military action, such as the American servicemen killed while on duty in Somalia in 1992, while others were blatant acts aimed at the defenceless — the civilian.

In 1995, there was a reported plot to bomb trans-Pacific flights emanating out of the United States.

In August 1998, the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were bombed, killing 301 and injuring more than 5,000. (Bermuda’s cricket team had played in Nairobi four years earlier and often frequented the area of the US Embassy.)

In 1999, there were reports of an attempt to bomb Los Angeles International airport. Simultaneous with that threat was a terrorist plot to carry out actions against American and Israeli tourists visiting Jordan for millennial celebrations.

Post 9/11, before and since US Special Forces hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, in his Pakistani hideout three years ago, few parts of the world have been immune to terror.

The list appears endless:

• Oct 12, 2002: a series of bombings targeting foreign tourists on the Indonesian island of Bali kill 202 people.

• Oct 23, 2002: Chechen rebels seize a Moscow theatre and take about 800 people hostage, 120 of whom are killed (Sochi hosted the Winter Olympics this year without incident despite being on high alert and Moscow will host the 2018 football World Cup).

• Aug 19, 2003: a bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, the UN headquarters in Iraq, kills 24 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello UN Special Representative in Iraq.

• Aug 29, 2003: two car bombs detonate outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, Iraq, killing more than 100 people, including the Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a Shi’ite spiritual leader.

• March 2, 2004: a total of 271 people are killed in a series of terrorist explosions in two mosques of Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims in Baghdad and Karbala.

• March 11, 2004: at least 198 people are killed in commuter train bombings in Madrid, Spain (Bermudians travel to Spain regularly on vacation or to watch football).

• Sept 1, 2004: more than 1,000 people are taken hostage by terrorists at a school in the town of Beslan of North Ossetia in Russia. At least 333 people die.

• Feb 28, 2005: some 125 people are killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the Iraqi city of Hilla.

• July 7 and July 21, 2005: explosions in London Underground trains and aboard a double-decker London bus kill 56 people and injure more than 700 others (hundreds of Bermudians either live in Britain or regularly visit the British Isles; more so since the White Paper of 2002. London remains on the highest level of alert.)

• Sept 14, 2005: four suicide car bombings rock the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing at least 114 people.

• July 11, 2006: a series of powerful bombs rip through crowded commuter trains in Mumbai, India, killing at least 190 people.

• Aug 2006: plot to explode trans-Atlantic flights originating from Heathrow is thwarted (the threat assessment level on trans-Atlantic flights is subsequently raised to its highest level — “red” — for the first time and stringent new security measures are enforced in the US and in Britain.)

• Nov 23, 2006: a series of apparently co-ordinated bombings kill at least 200 people in Sadr city in eastern Iraq.

• April 18, 2007: a series of bombings and attacks across Iraq kill more than 230 people, nearly 190 of them die in Baghdad.

• Aug 14, 2007: co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks in northern Iraq kill at least 500 people.

• Oct 19, 2007: suicide attacks on a rally of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed 140 people. Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, survives the attack but dies in an explosion in her election rally on December 27.

• Nov 26 and 27, 2008: armed terrorists launched co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, killing at least 195 people, including the head of Mumbai’s anti-terrorist squad. (The England cricket team aborted their tour but returned to India a week later).

• Oct 25, 2009: two suicide bombs tear through downtown Baghdad, killing at least 132 people.

• May 10, 2010: bombers and gunmen kill 114 people in a wave of attacks on markets, a textile factory, checkpoints and other sites across Iraq.

• July 11, 2010: suicide bombings are carried out at two locations in Kampala, Uganda, where the World Cup final is being screened. Seventy-four are left dead and 70 injured.

• May 22, 2013: Lee Rigby, an off-duty soldier, is attacked and brutally murdered in broad daylight in front of stunned onlookers in Woolwich, southeast London.

That the attack was carried out by two black Britons was further proof that terrorism is neither colour-blind nor restricted to pockets of the world that “are beneath us”.

Statista, the statistics portal which charts statistics and studies from more than 18,000 sources, reports that 41,522 lives were lost to terrorist acts between 2011 and 2013.

“This is the new way of life.”

That quote was taken from Arleen Malec, a 60-year-old from Chicago, who was visiting London at the time of the Heathrow alert and had her journey delayed by the new emergency measures.

Kampala is a victim, much like Mumbai, Bali, Madrid, New York and London, but it is right that the International Cricket Council makes alternative arrangements, even for a tournament that in the grand scheme of things would register merely a flicker when it comes to terrorists making a statement.

Had the alleged threat not been extinguished, as was the case at Heathrow, we would have had a fair bit more to be concerned about. But we continue to fly in and out of Heathrow, and Ugandans and foreigners in Kampala are today going about their everyday lives, much as I stepped on to a Tube in the days after 7/7 and boarded a flight out of Heathrow weeks after the “liquid bomb” threat was averted. To not do so is to not live.

In essence, trouble is around every corner, whether it be a radical sympathiser in a faraway land or a gun-toting lunatic right on your doorstep who thinks it is appropriate to use 17-year-olds as target practice.