View: Excuses for killing children Brian Cloughley
I had started todays article (about the profitable evils of the arms trade watch this space), when the news came in about bombings in Islamabad, Dir and Quetta. It was appalling to read that eleven people were killed in Upper Dir district...when a roadside bomb exploded near a police van [and] four schoolchildren in a passing bus were among the dead.
So I decided to write about other evil people.
The criminals who planned and directed the Dir atrocity would claim, just like the Americans after bombing tribal wedding parties, that innocent people were simply unfortunate to be in the way when they tried to hit the main target. These scum attempt to convince us that in some way women and children are themselves at fault when they are killed by lunatic bombers or almost equally deranged controllers of aerial slaughter-machines. Another line is that it is the responsibility of those whom they target because they permit civilians to be close by.
These contentions are not persuasive enough to let us ignore the innocent children and their weeping families. In fact, they are evidence of hand-washing arrogance.
People who kill children, for whatever reason and no matter in what manner, are disgusting, murderous, cowardly barbarians.
Suicide bombing is not the way to achieve paradise, but alas there appears to be nobody influential enough to make this clear to the world at large. The problem is that rabble-rousing, brutal, religious bigots use their position to persuade poorly educated (and some not-so-poorly-educated), easily-influenced people that those who die for their faith, even if that involves murdering children, are assured of heaven.
It is tragic that the real meaning of the Holy Quran and the Hadith, as well as civilised common sense, decency, and respect for human life, are thrust aside by such as the rabid Egyptian cleric Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi, who claims that Islam justifies suicide bombings.
In a BBC interview, Al Qaradawi said I consider this type of martyrdom operation [by suicide bombing] as an indication of the justice of Allah Almighty. Allah is just through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs like the Palestinians do. Islamic theologians and jurisprudents have debated this issue, referring to it as a form of Jihad under the title of jeopardising the life of the mujahid. It is allowed to jeopardise your soul and cross the path of the enemy and be killed if this act of jeopardy affects the enemy, even if it only generates fear in their hearts, shaking their morale, making them fear Muslims.
A tortuous argument, to put it mildly; and just as poorly constructed and badly delivered as the justification for the US slaughter of innocent men, women and children attending a night-time memorial service in the Afghan village of Azizabad on August 22, 2008. In that case it was at first (and as usual) flatly denied that there had been any civilian deaths.
As the New York Times recorded: The US hotly disputed the toll [of 90], claiming initially that no civilians were killed, then later revising the number up to 5-7 civilians. They also accused Afghan civilians who claimed a higher toll of spreading outrageous Taliban propaganda. They were forced to re-examine their findings, however, when video evidence of the toll went public.
United Nations officials conducted an inquiry immediately and found that 90 civilians had been killed, of whom 60 were children, but the US ignored the report, and when the Afghan government confirmed that there were scores of dead, a US spokesman called the statement outrageous.
It was unfortunate at least for the liars who deliberated concocted falsehoods about the massacre that cellphone images that a villager said he took, and seen by this reporter [Carlotta Gall, a marvellous and courageous journalist], showed two lines of about 20 bodies each laid out in the mosque, with the sounds of loud sobbing and villagers cries in the background. An Afghan doctor who runs a clinic in a nearby village said he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children and some of them his own patients, laid out in the village mosque on the day of the strike... In a series of statements about the operation, the US military has said that extremists who entered the village after the bombardment encouraged villagers to change their story and inflate the number of dead.
If there had been no independent reporting of the atrocity it would, like so many others, have been forgotten. But Washington was forced to order an inquiry. Not that there is any intention to take disciplinary action against those responsible for any aspect of the whole horrible affair, even when it was eventually admitted there were more than 30 civilians killed, because, with indifferent callousness, they pronounced that the strike was against a legitimate target.
There is a chilling parallel between the types of child-killers. On the one hand, a formal military organisation is adamant that legitimate targets must be blasted even if the deaths of children are inevitable. On the other, the psychotic savages who plan and carry out suicide bombings that slaughter innocent youngsters are convinced their atrocities are justified by a warped interpretation of their faith.
The potential victims of atrocities the ordinary innocent citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan should be protected; but this is impossible given the zeal of both types of attackers. There can be no excuses for killing children, but violence feeds violence, courtesy of trigger-happy foreigners and home-grown monsters. The terrible thing is that they have so much in common.
The writer is a commentator on South Asian political and military affairs. His upcoming book, War, Coups and Terror, will be released on October 16 by Pen & Sword Books (UK)
