Only the names of the characters in this story are fictitious, the events are true. The day, month, year and the time of the occurrence are of no consequence. So is the locale. It is a commonplace story. It relates to the town or city of your dwelling, town and city of my dwelling, town and city of our friends and foes. Such events take place everyday around us in each village, each town and each city of Pakistan.
Terrorism with an objective consists of calculated acts of violence for settling account with an immensely strong wrongdoer who insults, humiliates and rubs salt in the wounds of the afflicted weak
PREAMBLE: We remain so engrossed in our social, political and economic rat race that we hardly take notice of dubious developments taking place in our immediate proximity. Saplings do not transform into tall trees overnight. Skyscrapers are not raised instantly. No one is born a terrorist. Significant events are cultivated on insignificant happenings over a period of time. Fully nurtured incidents ultimately culminate into socio-political fiasco, leaving us baffled. We wake up from slumber only to identify the evildoers, and the hidden hands we conveniently hold responsible for the dreadful outcome of the detested events. We disown our own creation.
An act of terrorism without an objective, without a cause, without a purpose is carried out only by a psychopath, a demented person, a mentally sick, or a berserk person. Killing in the name of religions is madness. Terrorism with an objective consists of calculated acts of violence for settling account with an immensely strong wrongdoer who insults, humiliates and rubs salt in the wounds of the afflicted weak.
The acts of terrorism are carried out against the powerful usurpers, land grabbers and the conquerors. Intense feeling of revenge, hatred, aversion, helplessness and acute frustration on the part of the vanquished weak breed acts of terrorism. In extreme cases, the frustrated person doesn’t hesitate to kill himself along with the innocent persons to register his wrath against his oppressors. In battles and brawls between the strong and the feeble, it is the innocent men, women and children who are unceremoniously exterminated.
In December 1941, Japanese warplanes targeted American warships at the Pearl Harbour and devastated an invincible armada. It immediately prompted entry of US in the Second World War. When not being able to contain Japan continuously for four years in the war, US retaliated with contempt and dropped Atom bombs on populated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6, 1945, and killed, wounded and incapacitated hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children. The terror of the Atom bombs on civilian population was so frightening that Japan surrendered. Germans laid down arms. Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The Second Word War came to a bleeding end.
Atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a savage act of terrorism that can only be parallelled with barbarous acts of Genghis Khan, Halaku and Attila the Hun in not so distant era in history.
What moral right or prerogative the US and UK had in assaulting Iraq? After all, it was an independent country. For many years Saddam Hussain was the blue-eyed boy of the various US presidents. They used him in bullying neighbouring Muslim countries in the Middle East. On their prompting, Saddam virtually destroyed Kuwait. He terrorized Iran. Because of American backing Saddam, a military dictator drank from a devil’s bowl of arrogance, expanded and he converted into a demigod. It is hard to believe that the US attacked Iraq to deliver the oppressed people from the clutches of Saddam Hussain, their own product. The world is not that naive.
We, the ordinary people, do not know what went wrong between a friend and the masters. Had our very own dictator Field Marshal Ayub Khan been alive today, he would have divulged the secret! After visiting the US and shaking hands with John F. Kennedy, he had authored a book, Friends, not Masters. It is a matter of placing a comma. The entire concept of the phrase alters. Read it, ‘Friends not, Masters’. It doesn’t require a philosophic dialogue to establish that equitable friendship cannot flourish between the rich and the poor, the almsgiver and the alms receiver, the strong and the weak, the conqueror and the conquered, and the lamb and the lion.
The clumsy reason the US dished out to the world after massive attacks on Iraq was not convincing. So what if Iraq was developing nuclear potential! Who has bestowed divine right on the US to peep into the domestic affairs of independent countries! Aren’t the US and their allies — the UK, France, Germany, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan — busy in effective deployment of nuclear technologies? Why bother about Iran’s nuclear programmes? Iran is a sovereign country. They have their own priorities. They are not a colony of the US or the UK. Would the US and the UK someday issue corrigendum to the citizens of independent countries regarding what to think and what not to think! What to read and what not to read! What to eat and what not to eat!
In case the US is haunted by the nuclear holocaust it inflicted on Japan 60 years ago, then let it be the first country to set an example, and scrabble and eradicate its entire nuclear programmes. Then alone they will have cheek to tell others to abandon their nuclear plans and the projects.
