A couple of days ago Iraq’s interior ministry announced that they plan to dig trenches around Baghdad and set up security check points to reduce violence in and around the area. The government also made it amply clear that they would not use razor wire or concrete walls, but the metaphor still stands. The idea of killing each other for myriad causes unknown to the common man is sad enough but what is more disconcerting is the fact that countries and cities have decided to dig moats to maintain a semblance of normalcy in their societies.History has seen walls fall and nations coming together to live in unity, but certain sensitive areas in the world even today fail to see sense behind one world for one race! Take Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir, Ireland - the painful question which we should be asking is, why they want to divide when there is so much to discover in unity, love and peace?
Let’s take a look at the consequences. On the 31st of August 2006 the total number of civilians dead in Iraq was estimated to be 39,171 to 43,846. The number of police killed till this period was 2,409. Let us not be optimistic! These figures are only abstract records in the real landscape of the once respected Muslim state. Who knows how many really have been killed and how many are being killed as you read this very line? Reports say that the Americans or for that matter any of the forces fighting the ‘Great War of Democracy’, do not keep a tab on statistics they are responsible for. To top this up the Iraqi administrative hullabaloo that seems to be more akin to a classroom full of unruly school children, only makes counting the dead even more tedious. Where is all this leading to? The dead are not even given the rights of a statistic. They are either dumped in rivers or just left to bleed. The whole of the Middle East suddenly seems like one large hit and run case. Who will take responsibility? Where else in the democratic world do you read that “130 people were slain in two days - either killed in attacks or tortured…” - on an average 2 innocent citizens dying every hour!
In response the interior ministry is absolutely right in digging trenches to surround the 70 odd kilometers around Baghdad. They should in fact fill it with water and breed crocodiles in their moats!
Because… nobody in this world will take responsibility for this genocide; no one person will be tried; no nation will stand up; the whole of humanity will be responsible equally. After all we only sit over our democratic cup of coffee in the mornings and shed crocodile tears.
The people of Iraq or for that matter Kashmir or Palestine may fail to see the long term consequences of such unrest, but these open wounds will only close to breed unknown chimeras. I shudder to foresee what will become of that child who saw his father shot dead or his mother tortured. Will he pull the trigger one day? Will he live with uncontrollable anger pent up inside him? Will he ever love? Will he ever care? Will our democratic world send counselors to Iraq ten years from now, when they have pulled out their military?
And why? Simone de Beauvoir said, “Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought” and this “category is as primordial as consciousness itself.” If only we understand, that human beings have been for time immemorial dividing and redefining societies as per their subjective principles we may at some stage remove this sub-conscious duality we harbor deep in our minds - we may be able to look at the world objectively. The Sunnis, Shiites, the Indians the Pakistanis, Democracy, Dictatorship, Black, Brown, White, Man, Woman, Love, Hate, War and Peace.
Isn’t one always the ‘Other’?
That is where the ‘Great War of Democracy’ fits in. The world has been weaned on this lofty idea for too long. No other form of thought or governance would do. Was Mr. Saddam Hussain really guilty? While we ask these questions we are faced with news reports which read, “Judge says Saddam, ‘not dictator’! What do we believe? Are we all reeling under what Jean Baudrillard called, ‘Hyperreality?’ In the same breath another person we ought to believe says that the US led invasion has been a disaster for the Middle East. Kofi Annan in his recent tour of the area relayed to the world that it is time the US pulled out of Iraq. But then what would become of this ‘Great War of Democracy’ or should I call it the ‘Great War of Capitalism’? The US is caught between the devil and deep sea. The devil being their commitment to their own tax payers and the deep sea being just too deep for them to swim. Nations are not designed, they evolve, and I wonder who in America believe that they can recreate a nation based on political ideology. And for one it is common sense that America would never want to create another America in any other part of the world. The end-result would be too self-inflicting.
It is strange how countries call their military the ‘Defense Forces’. Maybe America or Britain or any other country fighting in Iraq doesn’t realize that today they are only defending an ideology. Ideologies are defended through arguments, dialogues, debates and academic rigor, not guns, grenades, tanks, jet fighters, land mines and dead bodies. Maybe Kofi Annan is right. Maybe Saddam was right for Iraq. Maybe Iraq would have gradually adopted Democracy like most of the world did.
The trenches are a good idea. Maybe all nations in conflict will surround their states with deep holes barring geographical complications. The blood may stop flowing, but what we loose is the fundamental essence of harmony and human accord, which is also as primordial as the quality of duality or otherness’. The latter I am sure will serve us better in the long run!
Also by Hafta
- A walk in the clouds - February 26th, 2007
- Off the beaten path in Toledo - February 26th, 2007
- Lazy French Holiday - January 22nd, 2007
- Mumbai Votes - January 15th, 2007
- Full House Mumbai - December 4th, 2006