Revenge

Revenge is delivering justice. To someone who has been cruel, unjust, criminal. A court may exist to do that job. But you may lack patience to go through a trial. You may not trust the court. You may not know which court to go to. The court may not exist at all. You then take matters in your own hands. You become the judge, the jury. You argue the case in your head. You pronounce the verdict. You punish the guilty. That is revenge.

Revenge is not a two party transaction. It can be, but doesn’t have to be. X kicked Y viciously. Then Y slapped X fiercely. M swore at N. Then N insulted M. That is two-party revenge. But what happens when X murders Y? The revenge must be taken by someone else. Possibly by a court. The court may issue a verdict to hang X. The hangman hangs him. Justice is delivered. The murder is avenged. Neither the judge nor the hangman had anything to do with the murderer. Nothing personal. But they execute him.

If not the court, the victim’s brother may decide to take revenge. Or father. Or a friend. The revenge may start a feud. A vendetta. A gang war. Where every revenge is followed by another. The bloody cycle may keep on. For ever.

Revenge may be sought between individuals. But it doesn’t have to be. When a State kills, you wish to take revenge on the State. When a Religion kills, you wish to take revenge on that Religion. Things like States and Religions and Communities are abstract. But the abstract is capable of killing. Killing real people. How do you take revenge on the abstract?

Here, fortunately, the abstract is made of specifics. A State has its citizens. A Religion has its followers. These are living, breathing humans. Killable humans. You can’t kill them all, but you can kill a small portion. The way research is conducted on a sample of the population. A random sample. Any random sample you kill is likely to be representative. Or like a clever researcher, you can select a sample to produce a skewed result. Like selecting a rock concert to kill more teenage girls.

Killing innocents is a barbarian act. Callous. Dastardly. Now a loser’s act. But how are the victims innocent? They are part of a State that kills. If you belong to a State, you become part of its collective karma. You reap its benefits, and you share its flaws. You enjoy its prosperity, and you stain yourself with its stigmas. If your State kills, there is at least a little blood on your hands. Because the State is abstract, and your hands are real. You voted to elect the leaders with those hands. Leaders who throw bombs and send drones. Yes, true, we voted as adults. But why target children? Why innocent children?

Because Newton has said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Here it’s not equal in numbers, but intensely equal in spirit. We read the names Georgina, Olivia, Martyn, Alison, Lisa, Jane, Neil, Angelika, John, Michelle, Kelly. Their innocent, happy faces evoke reactions of anger at the way they died. Such a violently cruel and wasteful end to beautiful young lives. Yes, it’s heartbreaking. Heartbreaking also because we are familiar with those names. With such faces. With such lives.

Somewhere else, other people are making similar lists. Bana, Ola, Amena, Adnan, Majd, Suske, Sydu, Uri, Lely, Marwan, Burhan. Their names are written in scripts we don’t understand. Their photos are published in newspapers we never see. Their parents cry on TV channels we don’t subscribe to. These kids are not blown off by suicide terrorists. They are flattened by Tomahawk missiles. Or by a Mother- of- all- Bombs. Not men in masks, but men in uniform slaughter them. We pay the uniformed men’s salaries and honour them. The children slaughtered are collateral damage. They have no names, simply numbers, very large numbers. And we don’t pay much heed to those numbers. In our part of the world, each human has a value. In their part of the world, humans are statistics. Dozens in our media shock us. The news of thousands in their media never reaches us.

However, each Bana, Ola, Amena, Adnan, Majd, Suske, Sydu, Uri, Lely, Marwan, Burhan has parents. And siblings. Unless the Tomahawk missile has killed them all, the survivors have similar emotions. The same tears. Extreme anger. They also call their dead children innocent. Try to explain collateral damage to those parents. They also want to punish the guilty.

But surely they can’t be so cruel. They can’t kill our children to avenge the killing of their children. How barbaric and heinous. They should know two wrongs don’t make a right.

Well, only those whose children are murdered truly know what revenge means. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but one wrong doesn’t either. When a killer of a child is executed, many parents attend the execution. They express satisfaction - justice has been served. They call it “closure”.

Which court should the parents of Bana, Amena and Suske go to? To seek a closure? When a State has killed their children, someone must take revenge. If their own State is incapable of doing it, they may call upon their Religion to do it.

Can a third party pass judgment? Sure, it can. Writers and thinkers do it all the time. Without boundaries, they criticise wrongdoers with their pens. Their fingers ferociously pound on their keyboards to assault the culprits. Jihadis don’t use pens or keyboards. Their methods are more direct.

State and Religion are both abstract. For revenge, specific individuals from the Religion must be chosen to target the State. Those religious fellow-mates may have nothing to do with the children killed by the Mother-of-all-Bombs. But they become self-appointed judges. They are a court unto themselves. The trial runs in their heads. They are prosecuting on behalf of the dead children’s parents.

They pronounce a “guilty” verdict. They decide the modus operandi and place for the execution. A lower court works with knives, guns, and stolen vehicles. A superior court uses Semtex and shrapnel. These courts know the quantum of punishment can’t match the scale of the crime. Because the State is militarily far more powerful. However, revenge can be symbolic. Equal in spirit. Death for death. Semtex and Shrapnel for Tomahawk missiles. Their teenagers for our teenagers. The judges get so involved in the process, they sacrifice themselves to deliver justice.

Justice is delivered. Revenge is taken. Nothing personal.

*****

Epilogue

India and Russia

In the two countries where I’ve spent most of my life, India and Russia, many suicide bomb attacks and serial bombings have taken place. The 1993 Bombay serial bombing (12 blasts: 257 dead), 1995 Budyonnovsk hospital capture (150 dead), 2002 Moscow theatre siege (174 dead), 2004 Beslan school siege (400 dead), 2006 Bombay bombing in trains (7 blasts: 209 dead), and the multiple location terror attack in 2008 (171 dead) are some of the prominent ones in my memory. (Both in 2006 and 2008, fewer than 24 hours earlier, I had been in the locations where bombs exploded.)   

Islamic terrorism was the root of most of those attacks. Even before the identity of the suicide bombers is announced, we know the names are likely to be Muslims. And yet, most of these attacks were retaliations, an act of revenge.

The Babri Mosque demolition (1992), a completely unprovoked, absolutely senseless act by Hindu fundamentalists caused more than 2000 deaths. The 1993 serial bomb blasts were a direct revenge of that event. The 2002 Gujarat riots killed nearly 800 Muslims. The terror acts in Bombay were in revenge of those riots. The terrorist acts in Russia were mostly carried out by Chechens as a result of the Russian state mercilessly crushing the Chechen separatist movement.

The major terror attacks ceased after Hindus in India calmed down, and the Russian State left Chechnya alone (having made sure it remained part of Russia).

War on terror = War on Islam

Since the fall of communism, the USA and NATO have been at war with Islam. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Mali, Philippines, Somalia, Yemen, and of course Syria. Most of these aggressions were called “Operation Enduring Freedom”. If the USA and its allies really wanted to bring freedom and democracy to these countries, that noble cause would have been welcome. After a protracted occupation (Afghanistan), killing the heads of states (Iraq and Libya) and aggravating a civil war (Syria), not a single Muslim country has tasted freedom or peace. Their state is worse than it was before the US/NATO intervention.

Embracing the House of Saud, the monarchs of Saudi Arabia - the most evil Islamic rulers – at the same time as pretending to bring freedom to other Muslim countries has shown what a complete humbug this entire campaign has been. In all likelihood, the Middle East is the playground for the US to test its new weapons and keep its growing military establishment occupied.

Syria

This unending war has reached a farcical stage where the USA and its NATO allies can’t explain any more why they are in Syria. Bomb-dropping pilots have no idea whom they are killing. Instead of winning wars or bringing peace, the world now has an unprecedented refugee crisis.

First, there were Talibans who were bad enough. Then Al-Qaida took over. The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) now makes Al-Qaida look moderate.  Islamic terrorism has grown in direct proportion to the length of the American occupation and ferocity of American weaponry. And countries like the UK have blindly joined in this meaningless venture.

CJTF-OIR 

The USA along with its partners has formed a Combined Joint Task Force- Operation Inherent Resolve to defeat ISIL. This was formed in 2014. Since then France, Belgium, Germany and UK have experienced terrorist attacks. France and UK have conducted airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria as part of the CJTF-OIR initiative.

Make UK safe

“The UK government is pleased to announce it is withdrawing its forces from Iraq and Syria. Using the Brexit philosophy, the UK would like to focus on its internal matters, and leave the Iraqis and Syrians to solve their own issues.  As part of its peace initiative, UK hereby pledges not to conduct any airstrikes anywhere. While the UK reserves the right to defend itself against any external attack, it will not join any war or coalition that has no direct relevance to the defence of the UK territory.” 

This peace declaration is a piece of fiction written by me. But such a declaration, in my view, is the only way to stop terrorist attacks on the UK soil. Withdrawal of military forces from Syria is the need of the hour, instead of an additional deployment of 5000 armed soldiers on the streets of UK.

The alternative is to budget the loss of innocent civilians every few months. Stocks of Semtex and Shrapnel may be traced or controlled, but speeding vehicles directed at crowds can’t be.

You can’t stop all revenge-takers. Their number is infinite. It’s better to remove the reason for revenge.

Ravi