Are reprisals justified?

A travesty in any conflict is that aggressor believes knocking off somebody from the other side fulfills the count.

During the days when Karachi was still the capital of Pakistan, Egyptian diplomats held a film week on the lawns of their embassy. Most of the motion pictures were not very eventful. But two were quite memorable for rather different reasons. Bain el Atlal was an old-fashioned tear-jerker, which starred Imad Hamdi and the beautiful Faten Hamama, who wept so much as her teacher lay dying in his attempt to complete his epistle of love, that there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience. But it was the scene in the other film, which somehow or other, I have not been able to erase from my mind. An Egyptian soldier loses six of his comrades in a skirmish with the Israelis. He picks up a discarded machine gun, walks into the gloamin’ and fires into some shadowy figures. The audience hears a few yelps and curses in what sounds remarkably like Yiddish. Turning to the camera, the soldier announces with a note of triumph, “I have avenged the deaths of my comrades. Long live Egypt.”

One of the great travesties in any kind of international conflict is that the aggressor believes that when he knocks off somebody from the other side, he is not only satisfying an urge for revenge, but fulfilling the count — irrespective of whether or not the victim is even remotely connected to the initial aggressor. He might forcibly seize an enemy’s goods or subjects, or use political or military force without actually resorting to war. Call it what you like — retaliation, retribution or vengeance. The point is that the people of a country are not homogenous. They don’t think, react or speak with one voice, one political belief and one conscience. By killing one foreigner, you are not necessarily upsetting another compatriot. During military aggression, like the drone operation, the aggressor hardly ever gets the person he is targeting, so long as he polishes off some of his neighbours. Instead, a lot of people, especially women and children, who have absolutely nothing to do with the conflict, get killed or injured. It is not very different in peace time. Take, for example, what happens when some miscreant in the West makes a nasty film about the Holy Prophet (pbuh) or draws cartoons ridiculing Islam. Violence, often of the most extreme kind, is unleashed in all Muslim countries and there are also demonstrations in lands where people of the Islamic faith are in a minority.

In some Muslim countries, the reaction is spontaneous. In Pakistan, however, it is invariably politically motivated. Now I ask you, who is going to compensate the poor entrepreneur whose uninsured car, shop and goods were burnt to a cinder during the recent fierce anti-video riot in Karachi, which witnessed the worst kind of militant vandalism? Who will shed a tear for the poor souls, who had been killed, who had never even heard of film-maker Steve Klein? The frustration might be against the current inept government. But the violence is directed against one’s own people. In fact, the history of hostility in Pakistan is replete with unanswered questions. Like, why did former president Pervez Musharraf take three days to quell the rioting that ensued after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto? And why did the present government stand aloof and let the carnage and bloodshed continue after the protest against the hateful video? What were the Rangers and the police doing? Selling tickets to get a grandstand view of the looting and arson? It is at times like these that the country badly needs a president who thinks of the masses and not his own self-preservation.

Please note: “Gloamin’”, colloquial for gloaming, is a popular love song written by Sir Harry Lauder in 1911.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2012.