By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 12 Nov, 2009
IT may seem sinister but it is commonplace. Frenzied soldiers shoot
their fellow officers, also comrades, all the time. Or they desert
armies they otherwise served loyally. The more senior officers plot
military coups.
Sven Kempe and his wife Ann-Charlotte would favour desertion any day
to bloodletting. In the 1960s, the Swedish couple ran a virtual
asylum though they called it a commune for American army
deserters. It was located in a scenic spot in Uppsala, not far from Stockholm.
Sven belongs to a wealthy industrialist family and heads a textiles
business in Sweden. His burly frame and capitalist pedigree mask a
gentle, giving human being. He speaks with nostalgia about the days
when a successful anti-war movement raged from Europe to the United
States. And he became an important part of it. The commune they ran
won the couple many friends from far and near.
Among them was their last week's host in Delhi, a common friend at
whose farmhouse I met the couple over a lazy late afternoon lunch. My
interest was mainly to find out what opinions the more neutral
observers had managed to form of Major Nidal's murder of 13 fellow
soldiers at Fort Hood. What I got in return was a glimpse into the
tragic story of the US army's Major Jerry Bhagwan Das.
Bhagwan Das was an Indian orphan who somehow found himself cleaning
ships in Thailand. That was when an American naval officer and his
childless wife spotted him. They adopted the boy and brought him up
as an American patriot who would join the army. Jerry, as he came to
be called, was so good at his work that he was inducted as a member
of an elite force in Vietnam. He killed many Vietcong guerrillas and
civilians; too many, as he later told his friends.
During an R&R break in Germany in 1969, Jerry escaped to Stockholm,
which had become a sanctuary for deserting soldiers from the US army.
Often when the soldiers subsequently wanted to return home, even when
they were prepared to face the stigma and punishment (as pugilist
Muhammad Ali did for dodging the draft) they were set humiliating
conditions. They had to say their return was prompted by their
mistreatment in Sweden, which was a lie.
At the commune, Jerry befriended a Swedish girl and both were happy
together. Then, very quietly, almost stealthily, he one day doused
his body with kerosene and set himself on fire. His friends rushed to
save Jerry but he perished in hospital after a brief struggle. Sven
doesn't quite know why the young officer took his life but their
horrific deeds in Vietnam did haunt many of his guests from the
world's most powerful army.
Sven and Ann-Charlotte celebrated the desertion by the soldiers
because they were opposed to the Vietnam War. If asked, they would
also consider desertion the only proper way for the licensed killers
to atone for their deeds. The alternative is too forbidding to
contemplate. There must be so many Major Nidals lurking inside the
most disciplined armies across the world. They are just waiting to be
provoked.
It would be interesting to find out if there were peaceful ways for
Major Nidal Malik Hasan to say 'no' to a proposed assignment in
Afghanistan without being branded a deserter, an option he did not
choose. This is assuming that he is not an Al Qaeda-like fanatic,
which he is being made out to be.
Al Qaeda and Taliban, though they lend themselves easily to the
description, are not the only fanatics in the business of
bloodletting. Not too long ago it was routine for violent military
coups to be staged at the behest of powerful democracies. A lot of
innocent blood was spilt and still continues to be wasted.
Desertion and killing of fellow officers has a history. Patriots in
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh rejoice in the great sepoy mutiny of
1857 against the British. On their part, the British bribed or
coerced local chieftains to switch sides not always without a bloody
mess. There is at least one familiar instance of a Gandhian leader
who exhorted the military to revolt, albeit peacefully, against a
rival civilian despot.
The exact phrase that Jaiprakash Narayan used in urging India's
security forces to rebel against Indira Gandhi's authoritarianism is
a matter of dispute. But bereft of the semantics involved it was
nothing short of a call to mutiny. However, Mrs Gandhi found a good
ruse in the exhortation and suspended democracy before she realised
her mistake and called elections, which she lost.
In India, it is not infrequent to hear of regular soldiers and
paramilitary troopers, particularly in the punishing terrain of
Kashmir, turning their guns on fellow officers. The Sikh rebellion in
Punjab of the 1980s shook the Indian army to its core but that was
not the end of the matter. It was Mrs Gandhi's vetted security
guards, in the sanctum sanctorum of the state's authority, who
murdered her in revenge for a military assault on the Golden Temple
in Amritsar.
Pakistan of course lost a large chunk of its army when many of its
officers became embroiled in the political turmoil that led to
Bangladesh. From the 1951 Rawalpindi case, which involved officers
and communist leaders in a plan to overthrow the state, to a more
eerie assassination plot against Gen Musharraf, Pakistani soldiers
have had their share of infidelity and bloody-mindedness. Reported
desertions by Pakistani soldiers during their ongoing war with the
Taliban were probably a more agreeable statement to make than the
unimaginable horrors of bloody subversion from within.
Of all the desertions that took place in history, the First World War
saw possibly the highest toll. As the seemingly endless war went on,
desertion and mutinies became an increasing problem. To deal with the
problem, commanders began tying deserters and mutinous troops to
poles where they would be executed by firing squad. The British shot
320 men and the French 700. The Germans shot about 50, according to
one estimate.
While it will deal with Major Nidal according to its sovereign laws,
the United States has been less than generous with rebels even from
rival armies. It induced large-scale desertions from the Iraqi army
following their 1990-91 conflict. Around 4,000 Iraqi deserters were
sent back to Iraq against their will in 1992 only, according to a
Canadian document.
"Some countries of resettlement, such as the US, were sensitive about
the security risk involved in the operation and were conducting
extensive background checks for criminal elements among the
candidates for resettlement," the document by the Immigration and
Refugee Board of Canada stated. "For example, the US decided to
refuse all Iraqi army officers." Sven and Ann-Charlotte still have a
job to do. They can start refurbishing their fabled commune.
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