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| Sunday, 1 June 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The tears of Babylon by Padma Edirisinghe The account given by Sri Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1930s on the atrocities committed in Iraq during the British mandatory period of the 1920s would easily click into any newspaper account today reporting on the recent happenings in this historical land between the two rivers, dubbed as the site of the World's first civilization. This passage is from the chapter "Iraq & the virtues of aerial bombing" in "Glimpses of world history", an aggregate of writings by a famous father (indulged in while languishing in a prison cell) to an equally famous daughter. That he wrote it with his tongue in his cheek as the saying goes is pretty obvious. "This method (method of aerial bombing) may be cheaper and more expeditious than the old one of sending an army. But it is a terribly cruel and ghastly method. Indeed it is difficult to imagine anything more disgustingly barbarous than to throw bombs and especially time - delayed bombs on whole villages and destroy innocent and guilty alike. There is an outcry at the League of Nations against attacking civilian population by air". The letter to Indira (later Indira Gandhi) is dated June 7, 1933 (and not June 7, 2003). Both the letter - writer and recipient are long pince of pad. Goes on the distinguished author, "The idea here is that the inhabitants of the mandated territory are not advanced enough or capable of looking after their own interests and therefore have to be helped in doing so by the great powers. "Pressing his tongue more in his cheek, he writes "The British authorities then gave a further lesson in independence to the Iraqis" and goes on to narrate how the old story enacted in India, Egypt and Syria is now being repeated in Iraq which was called Mesopatamia at the time it became a British mandate after World War 1. "Nationalist newspapers were suspended, parties dissolved, leaders exiled and British aeroplanes with their bombs established the might of the British Empire.....Finding that the people of the villages often ran away and hid themselves on the approach of an aeroplane and were not sporting enough to wait for the bombs to kill them, a new type of bomb, the time delayed bomb, was used. They did not burst on falling but ... burst afterwards. This devilish ruse was meant to mislead the villagers into returning to their huts after the aeroplanes had gone." One can only imagine the havoc then caused by the time delayed bomb. As the author says those who died instantly were the lucky ones. Others lived on to eke out the most miserable existence, maimed, limbs torn away and made perpetually sick with terrible ailments from which they never recovered as medical facilities rarely existed in these remote villages. So the tears of Babylon fattened the two rivers bordering this great country with its antecedents running to 7000 BC. Of course the land corresponding to modern Iraq in these dim recesses of time was not named Babylonia or Iraq but Chaldea according to historical sources. Among Iraq's many superlatives could be that it was a country that had undergone a variety of name changes. After the Sumers established power in the South, the lower part began to be called Sumeria. Then the Assyrians came "down like the wolves on the fold." Actually the tears of Babylon had cascaded in torrents from very early history. So many holocausts had taken place in this historical land between the two rivers. After the Assyrian invasion Ninevah (near modern Mosul famed for its oil wells today) had been the capital. The land had begun to be called Babylonia after Babylon on the banks of Euphrates had been made the capital. So the capitals themselves had played musical chairs, as in Myanmar and Sri Lanka as against England where London steadfastly remained the capital from beginnings of its recorded history. The Assyrains... the Sumerains.... Tigris... Euphrates...Babylon...Ninevah...we remember reading them in our school texts and in our University references and what charming fantasies of the past they create, especially Baghdad of the Arabian Nights, the magical city! At some juncture of history the land begins to correspond to a site that begins to be called Mesopatamia and so this old Iraq undergoing varied name changes eventually ends up as part of a large Persian empire extending from the Indian frontier into Egypt. In the 7th Century subsequent to spread of Islam the country becomes a Muslim state.. Baghdad, a household word today, the Magical city of Arabian Nights, had been built in the 8th Century by the river Tigris, to receive its severest bombing in the 21st century. Iraq remained part of the Ottoman Empire till World War 1 when the UK troops decide to expel the Turks. Subsequently Iraq becomes a British mandate but nominally remains a kingdom with its own head, a very anamolous situation fraught with many an uprising against the colonial hegemony. Feisal, becomes king, a puppet king dancing to British tunes. The puppet regime gets overthrown in 1958. And unrest and anarchy follow. In 1979 Saddam Hussein (on whom bets are placed today in our village tea and coffee kiosks as to whether he is living or dead) becomes President in 1979. The country is beset by a host of problems as the rebellion of the Kurds in the NE and border disputes with Iran and Syria. Hussein's first Gulf war is staged with Iran in 1980 and the second one is precipitated in 1991 after the US invasion subsequent to Iraq's seizure of Kuwait. The year is 1991. In this war Iraq is defeated and ceasefire terms are enforced which Saddam Hussein chose to overlook and he begins to provoke the mighty super powers leading to the third Gulf War fought only a few weeks back. So we have come down to present times. The strife is and was usually between the mighty. Perhaps Saddam Hussein is today sheltering in a mini - a palace draped with luxury curtains despite the optimistic belief of his enemies that he is dead and gone. But as in any holocaust, man - made or natural it is always those in the lower rungs who suffer the most. Come floods, come cyclones, come drought, come war it is they who suffer the most. During the '20s, when the cruelty of the British air power was in full force it was the villagers of Mesopatamia (Iraq) who ran helter skelter and returned to their huts to face ghastly deaths by time delayed bombs, "devilish ruses "as Sri Nehru called them. And on our mini screens in our own moderate comfort we have watched and continue to watch these devilish ruses in action again, scattering limbs of the the poor man and woman who shop at marketplaces and public places. As for "The Mandatory system of Britain established in Mesopatamia by the League of Nations subsequent to their using it as base of military operations against Turkey, Nehru makes this comment, "A comparable procedure perhaps would be appoint a tiger to look after the interests of a number of cows, deer". Tears of Babylon continue to swell the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates but they are tears mostly of the ordinary man and woman who is utterly in the blues about the cruel machinations going on inside the brains of those at the top leading culminating in the terrible debacle of what is known as WAR. Only three letters but how many millions have sacrificed their lives on its horrible alter ever since human civilization began! Tears of Babylon do not confine themselves to Iraq but to the whole world. |
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