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