Any comments on it on your part ,Ram :-)?
c-da
At 6:15 PM -0500 5/24/07, Ram Sarangapani wrote:
Of Army 'Excess'
One of the remarks made by Mr Wasbir Hussain in his column entitled
"Men with weapons must have accountability" (The Sentinel, May 19,
2007) could not help but catch my eye. A direct quote, perhaps,
would carry the right flavour: "The action of the Army, police or
the paramilitary in eliminating any innocent civilian... is
unacceptable." True, checks and balances are necessary, and
accountability on the part of the security forces must be
established and responsibility fixed. However, one must understand
that the problem of terrorism cannot be tackled gingerly, nor can it
be equated with the delicate act of delivering babies.
The counter-insurgency operations are a lethal game that entails
quickness and keenness of perception. It is a killing field where
the Army has to fight an invisible enemy, who hides amongst the
common masses and does not wear uniform. It is the terrorist who
decides when, where and how, while the soldier is at the receiving
end. In order to overcome this disadvantage, a soldier must be
swift-reacting for which lightening reactions are summoned into
actions, whenever and wherever there is an iota of doubt. By being
fast and unpredictable, a soldier garners the ability to alarm the
terrorist before the latter unnerves him. Time is not on the side of
the soldier, and he lives only if he reacts swiftly. Under this
circumstance, human errors are bound to occur occasionally.
The Army, in essence, is a well-oiled killing machine, who are
taught to annihilate the enemy. Its mathematics is simple:
''anti-national'' means ''you have to eliminate''. Ideally, the Army
is not a force to be unleashed in civilian space. When they are
marshalled into a troubled spot to help civil administration to curb
violence, a soldier does not differentiate between a foreign enemy
and a home-grown separatist. His only objective is to erase the foe.
Since the terrorist almost always hides amongst the common people,
the security forces must treat everyone with suspicion and that
keeps the soldiers on their toes. This may cause harassment to the
public, but it is the price one has to pay when the security forces
are fighting an invisible enemy. This is precisely why we get to
read the news of innocent civilians being killed mistakenly by the
Army. But then, these cases are exceptions rather than rule.
It would be worthwhile to keep in mind that the terrorists are
certainly not normal human beings who harbour sentiments such as
compassion and love. Had they been so, they would not have been able
to stand to shoot at another human being's head point-blank - that
too, that of a non-combatant civilian. And this speaks volumes of
their mental make-up.
The fact remains that brutes only understand brute force.
Kamaljit Deka,
Sugarland, Texas.
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