Sanjay (Xonzoi) Barbora
March 2012 has been a tragic month. In the early hours of the morning of March 11, 2012, a United States army staff sergeant, Robert Bales went out on a killing spree in three different locations in Kandahar province of Afghanistan. He was first said to have left his army base in Panjwai and attacked sleeping Afghan families in the villages of Alkozai, Najeeban and another settlement that the BBC referred to as “Ibrahim Khan’s Houses”. Between the early hours after midnight and just before sunrise, Sgt. Bales killed 17 people, including 9 children. Survivors and eyewitnesses to the ghastly murders say that there were helicopters flying overhead and challenge the American insistence that this was the handiwork of one, deranged and unstable man. Sgt. Bales has since been taken into custody, flown out of Afghanistan and is being held in solitary confinement in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His attorney, John Henry Browne, says that Bales has little recollection of what happened during his night of terror in Afghanistan. After a few weeks of intense scrutiny, the American media has now moved on to other matters related to President Obama’s healthcare bill.
Thousands of miles away, a young French-Algerian man had begun his own macabre war against those he perceived to be his enemies on the very same day. On March 11, 2012 Mohamed Merah is alleged to have lured a young French paratrooper of Moroccan descent, Sgt. Imad Ibn Ziaten into his death in Toulouse, France. A few days later, on March 15, he is again alleged to have shot and killed two other French paratroopers of North African origin – Cpl. Abel Chennouf and Pvt. Mohamed Legouad – and left a third paratrooper, Cpl. Loic Liber, in a state of coma, following an attack on them as they were leaving a bank in Montauban. Merah is then alleged to have committed the calculated murder of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Gabriel and Arieh (aged 4 and 5, respectively), and Myriam Monsenego (aged 8), who were at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish School in Toulouse on March 19, 2012. On March 22, Merah was gunned down after a 30-hour standoff with the French police. With his death, there will be no answers to some of the embarrassing questions that have emerged in connection with Merah’s visits to Afghanistan and lapses in the government’s surveillance.
In both instances, the crimes that the alleged perpetrators have been accused of are truly monstrous. The response to both killings have by and large been condemned by most media and political opinion, after all, no one in their right minds can condone the killings of children and defenceless, unarmed persons. Yet, as one has seen in the case of Sgt. Bales and Mohamed Merah, the outcomes of their acts defer. One waits in jail, even as his wife and family try and talk about the humane aspects of the accused person. Mohamed Merah’s brother is in custody and the French President has gone on air to ask Merah’s father to shut up about the killing, since he ought to be ashamed for having fathered a monster.
Ultimately, one has to recognise the difference between power and violence in our societies. In our fragile, imperfect world, violence is only useful in reminding us of the imbalances in power. All violent acts need an audience. Even the last act of defiance of the bullied against the bully has an intended audience. If Sgt. Bales is found guilty, we can only assume that his primary audience in Afghanistan will be convinced about their powerlessness to prevent such acts from happening again. The Afghans will not sing paeans about American justice; they will instead resent the fact that the injustice happened at all. His American audience have already moved on to other matters. Mohamed Merha’s audience are equally indifferent about his supposed motives. In the eventual analysis, it is not clear if such spectacular acts of violence are able to change power structures. Without sounding cynical, it would seem as though they help reinforce power in the hands of the oppressors. For those who feel that violence can be redemptive acts of resistance, there is an urgent need to find an appropriate political vocabulary that reflects the universality of the fight for justice.
Sanjay (Xonzoi) Barbora
xonzoi.barbora@gmail.com
