CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

20.3.2009 von Thilo Nordmeyer.

By Rebecca M. Jackson

Mt. Vicotria; NSW.  Twenty Four hours have passed and I don’t feel any better. I thought a good nights sleep would soothe some of the trauma of what I saw, calm my nerves, even take away the horror I witnessed. Alas, I feel perhaps even more disturbed by the images on my television and I don’t know quite what to do with these emotions. Beside me as I write, sitting in this trendy café sit two very handsome human beings and one, with long blonde hair and refined speech talks about her role in a new Australian drama, while the other sits facing her with full attention, both impressed and attracted. A thought darts through my mind that creating fictional dramas on television is wholly unnecessary when we only need to step outside and see that our world is full of very real dramas, occurring on mass scale. It makes me sad that this society misses the point entirely as though we’re running in the wrong direction, feeding what isn’t real and making it real in order to keep fear at bay, to avoid the pain of what is really going on.

Twenty four hours ago I was tuned to Dateline on SBS, hosted by the Investigative Journalist George Negus who had sent one of his reporters into a remote village on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, to report on the effect that the Taliban, The Pakistan Army and the American Government are having on this region. What I witnessed on this program seemed to blow my world apart in one instant. As the scenes and story moved from barren lands to officers in uniform to refugee camps, I watched in horror as a child, no more than five years old, faced the camera screaming, imploring, begging for the pain to stop. This was a scream that reached in and grabbed my soul, shook every cell in my body and I sat crying, disbelieving, horrified as men in white coats held her down and stitched her small head together after a mortar attack had blown it apart, as well as her home village. She clearly had no pain relief for this procedure. I can still hear her cries of the deepest anguish and her face distorted and desperate. I didn’t know what to do with the pain I felt. What are any of us supposed to do with images and realities like this one? How is it possible, that the most important people in the world, the true innocent, our future generation, are subjected to a daily, hourly and even moment to moment nightmare?

At Peshawar, a UNHCR refugee camp (UN Refugee agency) on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the ordinary men and women talk to the camera. They tell the story of their reality, their lives, fraught with uncertainty, upheaval and serious misfortune while simultaneously, in far off air conditioned comfort, men in white shirts and black suits debate and discuss strategies to deal with the Taliban. The Taliban; who publicly whip their own countrymen who dare to defy them, like a ritual humiliation they relish – so much a part of who they’ve come to be that they cannot help themselves. The Taliban, who publicly behead these men ~ men who dare to be different and rally for freedom, these same men that have small children and leave them behind in their quest for human rights.
The people of Peshawar, like this young girl, are ordinary humans with no way of defending themselves. Yet they are targets, hapless victims in the cross-fire between the Pakistani Army and the Taliban and even the American military. The Taliban are growing, constantly recruiting more to their cause, the Afghan Taliban are uniting to become the Pakistan Taliban, and the Pakistani Army are getting nowhere in fighting their offensive. Yet, says Faratullah Barbar, the spokesmen for the Pakistani President claims that America’s involvement is futile, and if anything, is fuelling the fire and providing sympathy to the Taliban cause. The US military are instructed to perform “Drone Attacks”, which fire missiles at ‘high-value’ targets inside Pakistan. This has been going on for some time, yet although the Pakistani president has pleaded with the current administration under the leadership of Barack Obama, to cease these air strikes, and in fact remove themselves from this area, Obama has refused, and continues to attack in the hope of bombing the Taliban. The horrific reality is that these attacks are doing nothing more than landing on civilian soil, and innocent lives are continuously lost or maimed, and the Taliban grow ever stronger. The Pakistani Government are outraged that these US military attacks continue and so am I. They want to handle this problem within their own nation, with their own government and in their own way and they believe they can. It begs the questions, which have been on my mind since Obama took office: “Is Barack Obama as intelligent as he appears, when he continues the age old rhetoric, loudly and emotionally about fighting terrorism across the globe? Does he really know what he is talking about or is he merely singing the same song of all the others gone before him? When will the killing of innocent lives matter? When all oil has been sucked dry from that continent? Why is it that each president has continued the fruitless hunt for “terrorists” in this region? Is it oil? Because there IS no doubt about it: Pakistan and Afghanistan will run out of oil, so the West will have to find another solution If oil is not his agenda, then why is he refusing to listen to the pleas of the Pakistani president? Or at the very least, why can’t the US and Pakistan Governments come to an agreement to change tactics against the Taliban?

My question to the people at large is “What the hell is going on here?”

As George Negus stated so succinctly in an interview with Tony Blair (who is the new Middle East Envoy) “When the humanity of a situation is as powerful as this, politics becomes almost irrelevant”. Yes indeed. Has bombing the life out of any nation ever led to peace, to unity, to success? No, so why should it in the future? Perhaps there is a time coming when the egoism of politics will become obsolete, if it is not already.

For Christmas 2008 I was given a small book entitled ‘The Declaration of Human Rights’. These are a set of 30 statements, or declarations designed to protect the rights and dignity of human beings worldwide and were acknowledged in 1948. While they are not legally binding, they are a standard by which all humans should be able to live their lives. Article 5 states:

“No-one shall be subjected to torture, to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

Then why are millions experiencing such a fate? And when, when are mere words on a document going to be transformed into a vast reality for our planet and its people? Should those who care really hold onto hope when there are men who form organisations like that Taliban, men who care not for the suffering of others and if anything, delight in practices of torture?
I am so disgusted with the world I live in. I seem to be living on an intelligent planet run largely by an insane community who have no real ability to empathise with the misfortune of others.

These words are dedicated solely to this one child, this child whose name I wish I knew, who reached in and grabbed my soul. I wanted  to reach out and take her, hold her, tell her that there would be no more pain, that she was safe to stop crying and to run outside and play, and that all the bad men with guns had gone. I can only hope that as a child she will bounce back, forget her horror on that day, and grow up having no more uncertainty or trouble. It is no doubt a vain hope, nevertheless, I am called to act, and this one child showed me the way. There is little else I can do for her than to write how I feel and what I witnessed.

Article 1 of the declaration states:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They’re endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards each other in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Therefore, it is my greatest wish, for all the Christmas’ to come, and all those that have been, that this planet comes alive with this very spirit of brotherhood, sisterhood, absolute unity. While our planet suffers as it does, I shall never give up on this wish.

Geschrieben in Freunde | Drucken | Keine Kommentare »