ON PUBLIC EXECUTION BY JUVENIILES





One can understand why film footage of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in their concentration camps at Auschwitz, Dachau, Belsen and Buchenwald during the Second World War was never shown to the general public. It would have driven, as Mark Antony once said, 'hearts and minds to mutiny and rage'.


It was only during the trials at Nuremberg of Nazi leaders held culpable for crimes against humanity that the films taken by Allied camera-men at those infamous camps were screened. Images flickered in the darkened courtroom of bodies being bulldozed into a common grave, their limbs flailing like brittle sticks caught in a thresher. There were simply too many corpses to be afforded the dignity of a separate burial.


No-one watching those films in the mid 1940s could have imagined that less than sixty years later, videos of even worse atrocities would be circulated with the insouciance of home movies.


The first one I saw recently showed a public execution of a Pakistan Ranger. He sat cross-legged on the ground and made to confess his crimes before the camera and an unseen audience. Behind him stood three teenagers, one of holding a large knife with a curved blade. Before one could steel oneself for what one feared might happen, the man was pinioned to the ground, with one boy sitting astraddle across his torso, another pinning his legs, while the third with a loud 'Allah O'Akbar' slit the throat of the helpless Ranger.


Relentlessly the camera observed the victim's death throes, and then recorded the attempts of the young butcher to sever the head from the body. It might have been a scene from a local butchery where an inept novice was being made to learn his trade, except in this case, it was not an animal but a fellow human being who was being slaughtered and then decapitated.


And yet, in a sense, it was a young novice being taught his trade – the newest trade in selective murder, targetted genocide and callous killing that has become the hallmark of terrorists.


The second video was equally disturbing. An emaciated unwashed man was the victim, squatting blindfolded, spared the sight of his executioner who was no more than eight, at the most ten years old. Egged on by his elders, the boy pointed his pistol at his victim's head and pulled the trigger. He looked off screen for approval, and on being encouraged further, he pumped more bullets into the supine body.


One could not help recalling the image of a similar-style execution during the Vietnam War, when Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan sauntered up to a captured Viet Cong prisoner Nguyen Van Lem and without so much as a prayer, shot him in the temple at point-blank range. The difference between that picture taken by a professional war-photographer Eddie Adams and the video shot by an amateur cameraman in Pakistan's FATA region was more than the fact that the Adams photo won a Pulitzer prize, whereas the other will hardly find a buyer. It was more than the age-difference between the assassins. It was the impact each had on its audience.


Adams' photograph caused an uproar in the civilised world and evoked a strong denunciation of the Vietnam War. The FATA videos did not deter its Pakistani audience from gorging on meat kebabs immediately afterwards.


It is most unlikely that the four boys will ever, like the South Vietnamese General Loan, find refuge in the United States or find employment like he did selling pizzas in northern Virginia. It is equally unlikely that these will be the last murders such boys will be made to commit, or to be filmed when doing so. Their lack of concern, of basic humanity, makes one wonder how inured our society has become to such brutality.


To the average Pakistani, FATA is a foreign land. The 1,116 deaths of Pakistan Rangers are as lifeless statistic, the 2,659 wounded a number from a hospital roster. And yet, these were persons whose lives may have been lost, but should not be allowed to go waste.


Each side – whether it is the US / NATO troops or the terrorists – is resorting to target killings. The US forces use the technology of obedient Drones to source out their targets amongst the Al Qaeda commanders, and then strike. The terrorists identify local tribal leaders, and then eliminate them. Each is hoping to decapitate the leadership.


The presence of Arabs and other foreigners in the FATA region is an additional complication. More than 5,000 Saudis, 4,500 Chechens, many Yemenis, Egyptians and Algerians are known to be supporting the terrorists. Charity may begin at home, but in this war it is an exportable commodity. At the moment, there are at least 35 Arab charities known to be operating with less than altruistic zeal.


Gradually it is becoming all too clear even amongst cynics that the war against terror is not some-one else's war. The blood is that being spattered across our national visage is ours, the dead our own. Liberals may be vocal but are they as lethal as their opponents? How many divisions does a liberal command?


Wars are not waged by countries. They are waged by people who feel impelled into action to defend their system of values, their convictions, their beliefs. Our security ought never to be subcontracted. Only the Pope can take that risk with his Swiss guards. For us, the involvement of the public needs to be enlarged and our consciousness sharpened and heightened by better, timely information. Videos such as the ones circulating of these assassinations may make poor propaganda. In an environment of argumentative silence, their horrific and frightening images speak louder than words. Which Mark Antony do we need to tell us that we are not wood, not stones, but men?





[DAWN, 22 November 2008]