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Sven Kempe and his wife Ann-Charlotte would favour desertion any day to bloodletting. In the 1960s, the Swedish couple ran a virtual asylum — though they called it a commune — for American army deserters. It was located in a scenic spot in Uppsala, not far from Stockholm.

Sven belongs to a wealthy industrialist family and heads a textiles business in Sweden. His burly frame and capitalist pedigree mask a gentle, giving human being. He speaks with nostalgia about the days when a successful anti-war movement raged from Europe to the United States. And he became an important part of it. The commune they ran won the couple many friends from far and near.

Among them was their last week's host in Delhi, a common friend at whose farmhouse I met the couple over a lazy late afternoon lunch. My interest was mainly to find out what opinions the more neutral observers had managed to form of Major Nidal's murder of 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. What I got in return was a glimpse into the tragic story of the US army's Major Jerry Bhagwan Das.

Bhagwan Das was an Indian orphan who somehow found himself cleaning ships in Thailand. That was when an American naval officer and his childless wife spotted him. They adopted the boy and brought him up as an American patriot who would join the army. Jerry, as he came to be called, was so good at his work that he was inducted as a member of an elite force in Vietnam. He killed many Vietcong guerrillas and civilians; too many, as he later told his friends.

During an R&R break in Germany in 1969, Jerry escaped to Stockholm, which had become a sanctuary for deserting soldiers from the US army. Often when the soldiers subsequently wanted to return home, even when they were prepared to face the stigma and punishment (as pugilist Muhammad Ali did for dodging the draft) they were set humiliating conditions. They had to say their return was prompted by their mistreatment in Sweden, which was a lie.

At the commune, Jerry befriended a Swedish girl and both were happy together. Then, very quietly, almost stealthily, he one day doused his body with kerosene and set himself on fire. His friends rushed to save Jerry but he perished in hospital after a brief struggle. Sven doesn't quite know why the young officer took his life but their horrific deeds in Vietnam did haunt many of his guests from the world's most powerful army.

Sven and Ann-Charlotte celebrated the desertion by the soldiers because they were opposed to the Vietnam War. If asked, they would also consider desertion the only proper way for the licensed killers to atone for their deeds. The alternative is too forbidding to contemplate. There must be so many Major Nidals lurking inside the most disciplined armies across the world. They are just waiting to be provoked.

It would be interesting to find out if there were peaceful ways for Major Nidal Malik Hasan to say 'no' to a proposed assignment in Afghanistan without being branded a deserter, an option he did not choose. This is assuming that he is not an Al Qaeda-like fanatic, which he is being made out to be.

Al Qaeda and Taliban, though they lend themselves easily to the description, are not the only fanatics in the business of bloodletting. Not too long ago it was routine for violent military coups to be staged at the behest of powerful democracies. A lot of innocent blood was spilt and still continues to be wasted.

Desertion and killing of fellow officers has a history. Patriots in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh rejoice in the great sepoy mutiny of 1857 against the British. On their part, the British bribed or coerced local chieftains to switch sides not always without a bloody mess. There is at least one familiar instance of a Gandhian leader who exhorted the military to revolt, albeit peacefully, against a rival civilian despot.

The exact phrase that Jaiprakash Narayan used in urging India's security forces to rebel against Indira Gandhi's authoritarianism is a matter of dispute. But bereft of the semantics involved it was nothing short of a call to mutiny. However, Mrs Gandhi found a good ruse in the exhortation and suspended democracy before she realised her mistake and called elections, which she lost.

In India, it is not infrequent to hear of regular soldiers and paramilitary troopers, particularly in the punishing terrain of Kashmir, turning their guns on fellow officers. The Sikh rebellion in Punjab of the 1980s shook the Indian army to its core but that was not the end of the matter. It was Mrs Gandhi's vetted security guards, in the sanctum sanctorum of the state's authority, who murdered her in revenge for a military assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

Pakistan of course lost a large chunk of its army when many of its officers became embroiled in the political turmoil that led to Bangladesh. From the 1951 Rawalpindi case, which involved officers and communist leaders in a plan to overthrow the state, to a more eerie assassination plot against Gen Musharraf, Pakistani soldiers have had their share of infidelity and bloody-mindedness. Reported desertions by Pakistani soldiers during their ongoing war with the Taliban were probably a more agreeable statement to make than the unimaginable horrors of bloody subversion from within.

Of all the desertions that took place in history, the First World War saw possibly the highest toll. As the seemingly endless war went on, desertion and mutinies became an increasing problem. To deal with the problem, commanders began tying deserters and mutinous troops to poles where they would be executed by firing squad. The British shot 320 men and the French 700. The Germans shot about 50, according to one estimate.

While it will deal with Major Nidal according to its sovereign laws, the United States has been less than generous with rebels even from rival armies. It induced large-scale desertions from the Iraqi army following their 1990-91 conflict. Around 4,000 Iraqi deserters were sent back to Iraq against their will in 1992 only, according to a Canadian document.

“Some countries of resettlement, such as the US, were sensitive about the security risk involved in the operation and were conducting extensive background checks for criminal elements among the candidates for resettlement,” the document by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada stated. “For example, the US decided to refuse all Iraqi army officers.” Sven and Ann-Charlotte still have a job to do. They can start refurbishing their fabled commune.

The writer is Dawn's correspondent in Delhi.

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