Boy Soldier

 

We ran for hours, deeper into the forest. The path had ended, but we kept running until the sky swallowed the sun and gave birth to the moon...

This must be one of the most harrowing real-life stories I have read so far.

It is about a twelve-year-old boy who loves reggae music, dancing, and hanging out with his friends. All of a sudden his world is turned up side down by an armed gang that attacks his village. The villagers scatter and run for their lives, leaving the boy gets separated from his family. While trying to escape a civil war, he ends up getting forced into becoming a combatant himself - part of a gang of teenage boys wielding machetes and AK-47s, marauding villages, killing innocent people as a form of revenge, or simply for fun - the oppressed becoming oppressors themselves.

I stood holding my gun and felt special because I was part of something that took me seriously and  I was not running from anyone, anymore...We were simply told to follow the path until we received instructions on what to do next. We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with fari, sniff cocaine, brown-brown, and take some white pills...

A few years later, while this war of attrition is still dragging on, a UNICEF vehicles roll into their camp. The younger boys are taken away to a rehab centre where most of the children are just not able to adjust to a life without drugs and guns. Most of them revert back to fighting, but one, somehow escapes because of one dedicated, thoughtful nurse. This is is the story of that one boy - Ishmael.

"None of these things are your fault", she would always say sternly at the end of every conversation. Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member - and frankly I had always hated it - I began that day to believe it...

Ishmael Beah's memoir, "A Long Way Gone", is centred around Siera Leone of the 1990s. A country with a population of just over 8 million, and an area that covers double the size of Kerala. Here the mistrust between various tribes and political factions boils over into a full blown civil war. 

Mourning the dead wasn't part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive...Little did I know that surviving the war that I was in, or any other kind of war, was not a matter of feeling trained or brave...

This is the story of just one among the 300,000 children across 20 countries who end up as soldiers on the frontlines of war. According to the UN, up to 40 percent of these are girls. Come to think of it,  perhaps it is a miracle that even a few of them manage to get back their childhoods, and return some semblance of a normal life.

This book is a small but vital window opening into a world we do not know much about. A place where brutality is on a loop, and where peace is an aberration, an abnormal state of affairs. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* UNICEF - Children recruited by armed forces or armed groups - https://www.unicef.org/protection/children-recruited-by-armed-forces

* Sierra Leone on the CIA World Factbook - https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/b0a107fb587d45dbfc17e74a6dd39c4f/SL-summary.pdf

* HRW - Child Soldiers -  https://www.hrw.org/topic/childrens-rights/child-soldiers

* UN -  https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/2015/02/4-10-child-soldiers-girls/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone

Down the Road to Chaos?

Once again, Afghanistan has hit the headlines; once again for all the wrong reasons.

Unlike my earlier post which was written after the most recent attack on Kabul University, this one is triggered by a global event - the withdrawal of USA and its allies after over 20  years in Afghanistan. The withdrawal has enabled the Taliban to sweep across the country with almost daily reports of deaths in bombings, attacks and counterattacks. A sense of uncertainty about the country seems poised to spread across its borders, to the rest of South Asia and the world.

As someone with a bit of experience in Afghanistan(2018-19), I have been approached by friends for an opinion on how things are going to unfold in the months to come. This was my response in a WhatsApp group a few days ago:

Ethnic and tribal loyalties are becoming more important than the "Afghan" identity for surviving this crisis.

Did you see that clip where a Talib asks a man if he's a Hazara and then shoots him dead? The Hazaras will avenge that. The 22 commandos who were killed after they surrendered; the Afghan ambassadors daughter who got abducted in Islamabad today... these too will be avenged, and at the tribal level all this will fuel old blood-feuds on both sides of the Durand line.

About ~$10 billion of annual aid that drove the Afghan economy is now the turning off... resources are limited... people are losing jobs, schools and small businesses are closing down, families are getting split and displaced...a whole new generation is dealing with the jehadis and their insular, medieval mindset.

So far there is no sign of a strong unifying national leader,  so the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras (Shias) will fight against the talibs (mostly sunni Pashto)...and the Pashtos tribes will fight each other to control the border posts (tax revenue) and poppy fields.

The Pakistanis will of course try to push more of these displaced jehadis into Kashmir/India.

Sad days ahead 😞

I hope my rather simplistic assessment is wrong. I hope an amicable solution will be found to prevent a repeat of the devastation that visited Afghanistan two decades ago. I hope all the good work done by the UN and other international agencies - especially in primary education, infrastructure and agriculture - will not go down the drain.

And yet, an interview I saw recently seemed to confirm that this is going to be another long bloody struggle. A retired Pakistani general, Tariq Khan, a Pathan officer who led a government offensive against the "Pakistani Taliban" or TTP, seemed quite sure that the Taliban will take over Kabul in a few weeks because the city is already under a "soft siege" because supplies to the city - especially of fuel - is already being disrupted. While this may be true it is not clear if the Taliban have what it takes to dominate the rest of the country - especially non-Pashtun areas.

Unlike the Soviet occupation era when the mujahids had a strong backing in terms of armaments (USA) and petrodollars (Saudi Arabia), things are a lot more complicated now. This time, money is not so easily available; there is some in Afghanistan's biggest exports - Poppy - but the Taliban is known to be against it;  the non-Pashto groups are better armed and may not give up the cities without a bitter fight, and there seems to be little in terms of common ground between the countries that have a direct interest in the final outcome -- Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, USA, Turkey, and India.

If the Taliban continue with their refusal to share power with people who represent half the country, what they ultimately get may be a Pyrrhic victory, and the peaceful silence of graveyards. This may not come as an explosion of a grenade with a missing pin but as a slow, painful descent to chaos. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES:

* 26 July 2021 - Turkey eyeing a new sphere of influence in Afghanistan - https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/868701-turkey-eyeing-for-new-sphere-of-influence-in-afghanistan

* 18 July 2021 - Gen. Tariq Khan's interview - https://youtu.be/Tb8hMrqBXP4

Compromise Managers

"Angamaly Diaries" is a fabulous movie.

A 2017 crime-drama film in Malayalam, directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, it tells the story of internecine conflicts, and gang-wars in a small town in Kerala. What makes the movie outstanding is the way it brings out the color and celebration of life - eating, drinking, singing, dancing - with the darkest of out instincts, of murder, vendetta, and strikes a fine balance between the two.

It is the last part that really caught my attention here - especially the role of individuals who are designated as "compromise managers" by the warring factions.  These are people who are allowed to step in when the cycle of murder and retribution reaches a stalemate where there can be no winners, or when it is clear that if the fight were to continue into a war of attrition, the winner would be an "outsider".

The one person designated as the Compromise Manager is an insider, a person who, despite being identified with one gang, has over a period of time, won the trust and confidence of the rival gangs as well. From this precarious position, he tries to make the key decision-makers, often the most violent individuals, recognize their own long-term selfish interest in agreeing to a compromise formula.

Thanks to this arrangement, the role of the state law-enforcement agencies and its ponderous legal system gets sidelined in favor of solutions that are more local. Money and business opportunities stay within the community, and the focus shifts from settling scores in the neighborhood, to putting up a joint front for challenges that come from outside.

Needless to say, CMs can be effective only when the costs (including bribes, jail-terms) of using the official legal system are much more than the benefits. In this case the town does have an active police officer, but the CM understands that in increasing crime-graph reflects poorly on the career of government officers. Similarly, the lawyers find it more lucrative to extract fees for striking a compromise rather than legal charges.

If the small town or village represents a microcosm, the UN perhaps represents the defunct legal system that is simply not in a position to resolve conflicts. This movie makes you wonder - who would be best positioned to be a compromise manager in conflict between nations-states?

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LINKS

* Movie - Angamaly Dairies (2017)

* Director - Lijo Jose Pellissery - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijo_Jose_Pellissery

Kashmiri Summer

One of the most enduring pictures in my mind is that of children splashing about gleefully under the fountains of the Mughal gardens of Srinagar.

How many generations have grown up like this, soaked in memories of sparkling waters and clear blue skies?

Emerald green paddies, towering poplars and chinars lining the banks of Jhelum. Women busy in the fields and orchards. Nearly a thousand years ago when Kalhana sat down to chronicle the "Rajatarangni" (The River of Kings) stretching back another thousand years, he would have seen the same mountains and valleys, the same motely mix of good leaders and pathetic ones.

In Kalhana's time the Vaishnavite-Shaivite conflict or the Buddhist-Hindu friction may have been no different from the Pandit-Sunni faultlines we see today. The aspirations of the Tibetan Shaivite warriors riding down from the Zoji-la pass, via Kargil, into the valley would have been no different from those of the Pakistani soldiers cowering on Tiger Hill, waiting for the next 155mm shell to crash in.

Surprisingly, I saw a lots less of the army than I expected. Apart from isolated pickets overlooking the road to Gulmarg it is the long convoys of troop-trucks returning from northern Kashmir that told you about trouble brewing in other places. Bullet-proof APCs, canvas covers pock-marked with bullet-holes, soldiers perched atop truck with their fingers on LMG triggers and heads covered in motorbike helmets.

The little girls splashing about in Shalimar Bagh may not have heard of a disabled queen named Didda who once ruled Kashmir with an iron hand. Perhaps a few summers down the line they will look at the world through the peepholes of a hijab, or may be they will toss it aside and seek a world without diktats.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Sen, Shailendra (): Ancient history and civilization -- GoogleBooks -- https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Wk4_ICH_g1EC&pg=PA341&lpg=PA341&dq=sankaravarman+kashmir+utpala&source=bl&ots=4-u56FxP8m&sig=-IqZAbWLViyf-U45YCcXu2AZKIo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBmoVChMIl4j0kfnQxgIVAlqOCh1AiQ-W#v=onepage&q=sankaravarman%20kashmir%20utpala&f=false


* Kalhana's Rajatarangini (MA Stein's translation) -- https://books.google.co.in/books?id=KzxTkI9iAxkC&pg=PA416&lpg=PA416&dq=rajatarangini+place+names+now&source=bl&ots=u3erUgOvlA&sig=4soymOEK7y2Tj9WY-faH1PMqXNQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAWoVChMIn4zKj_rQxgIVBtSOCh2LdALf#v=onepage&q=rajatarangini%20place%20names%20now&f=false

* Wiki - Rajatarangini - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajatarangini

War - What is it Good For?

Why did Yugoslavia break-up?  According to a Croat "...we had lived in peace and harmony because every hundred meters we had a policeman to ensure that we loved each other very much".

Ian Morris's latest book takes this line of thinking way beyond the alleys of the former Yugoslavia to an analysis of war and conflict across history, and comes to a startling conclusion. According to him, War is good for humanity.

Large-scale, organised violence apparently makes way for extended periods of peace and prosperity. It encourages trade and economies of scale. At their height, the greatest of empires - the Roman in the West, the Han in China and the Mauryan in modern India and Pakistan - each covered about 1.5 - 2 million square miles, governed 30-60 million people.

For some reason, the technology that drove organised violence seems to have grown much faster in Eurasia than in the Americas. Sticks and stones gave way to swords, spears, war-horses, chariots, the composite bow, and then the great jump to cannons, fire-arms and missiles. Morris seems to agree with Jared Diamond's argument about latitudes in Guns, Germs and Steel.

Somehow his arguments seem to fall apart when it comes to explaining how warfare will evolve in the present context. How long can the American globocop control the world through its grip on the internet, and drones raining hellfire through joysticks held in Arizona?

As always, hindsight is 20:20.

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LINKS

* Amazon - Ian Morris - http://www.amazon.com/War-What-Good-For-Civilization/dp/0374286000 

* Review in the Telegraph -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10786021/War-What-Is-It-Good-For-by-Ian-Morris-review.html