Blind
Rage Directed At Britons On Tunisian Beach
Saeed Naqvi
The big burly peasants from Ganganagar
in Rajasthan, guns slung over their shoulders, embarked on vendettas which
lasted generations should their due share of water from Gang canal which had
made the desert bloom, be overdrawn by owners of contiguous fields.
Systems of revenge and vendetta are part
of cultures among the tribes of Afghanistan, clans of Somalia, Sicily, Arab
lands, Latin America and part of the world not in our regular focus.
Nations have embarked on vendetta to
teach opponents a lesson, exactly the term used by Deng Xiaoping to teach
Vietnam a lesson in 1978. It turned out that he got something of a black eye at
the battle of Langson. For having been cheeky at Pearl Harbour, the Japanese
faced President Trueman’s wrath at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Such thoughts have crossed my mind over
the past few days here, in London, watching news shows about the outrage in
Tunisia.
On page one of the Independent is the
smiling, almost benign face of Seifeddine Rezgui, the alleged perpetrator of
the horrific outrage. Prime Minister, David Cameron has promised a “full
spectrum” response.
Rezgui is already dead so we do not know
the ones who are encompassed by Cameron’s “full spectrum”. Recent history of
western “response” is replete with collateral damage on an unspeakable scale.
Accidental killings alone would account
for hundreds of thousands of Afghan, Pakistani and Arab lives. Even the
official figures of those killed in military action in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Libya, Syria is in millions.
The horrors of Guantanamo Bay, Abu
Ghraib, Bagram, house to house searches, soldiers urinating on dead bodies,
torture, rape and worse – and all heaped upon a hapless people for no fault of
their’s. Three totally functional, efficient dictatorships, Iraq, Syria, Libya
were willfully dismantled.
My first memory of West Asia was Beirut
in 1970 where even the first secretary at the Indian embassy, Barakat Ahmad,
was a man of the highest culture and erudition. Paris moved to Beirut in the
winter – everything, from Rudolph Nureyev, Marcel Marceau, to the crazy Horse Casino.
In any case, all that glittered in Las Vegas, acquired an elegance at the
Casino de Liban.
Edward Said, Iqbal Ahmad and Faiz Ahmad
Faiz were only one of the many intellectual groups dotted along the coastline
and the lovely mountains. Beirut was good for skiing and swimming within the
space of an hour. And, was there a rendezvous for the finest minds, better
located than the St. Georges hotel? The coming of the Ayatullahs in Tehran in
1979, the transformation of Nabi Berri’s Amal into Hasan Nasrallah’s Hezbullah,
the horrors of Sabira and Shatila, refugee camps, the 1982 invasion by Ariel
Sharon, dismantled the world’s most elegant metropolis.
Cairo’s intellectual life revolved
around Nasser being interpreted by Hasnain Haikal every week in the Al Ahram.
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were softer places, conditioned by the cooperative
socialism of the Kibbutz. Fa Giladi, the Kibbutz in the shadow of Mr. Hermon,
was one of the world’s most exquisite locations for meetings and reflection.
But it can be functional only in conditions of regional peace.
Baghdad, Damascus and Tripoli were
intellectually suffocating because they were closed societies. But they were
efficient in every sense, including intelligence. Every detail of the meal I
had had quietly in Nablus was trotted out by Saddam Hussain’s Director of
public relations, almost as a demonstration of his virtuosity.
Hospitals, schools, colleges, Institutes
of technology, were all manned equally by men and women in Iraq, Syria and
Libya. The 1,000 mile highway from Amman to Baghdad was like an endless
billiard table.
Religion was at a discount in Baghdad
and Damascus. In Tripoli, Mullahs were taboo. The most educated man in the
neighbourhood could lead the Friday prayers. World’s first military academy for
women was built by Muammar Qaddafi. His two body guards were women. The cradle
to grave welfare system was incomparable.
And you went and recklessly destroyed
these societies on trumped up charges of weapons of mass destruction and a
seering desire in western hearts to build democracies everywhere except Riyadh,
Amman and Rabat. David Cameron should be brought before TV cameras along with
former Army Chief David Richards with whom he had bruising encounters on the
invasion of Libya, which is at the heart of the problem plagueing Cameron.
What Rezgui did was horrible and can
never be condoned. But do recall the discussion in the House of Commons when British
intelligence was found meddling in Libya. Should not Prime Minister David
Cameron be suitably exposed once again for having pushed the country over the
precipice in a North African theatre which has bred anger and rage in the likes
of heaven knows how many Rezguis yet to be brought into focus as bleak and
shoddy villains of history.
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