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Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
February 4, 2015
What is the point of condemning this heinous crime? From beheadings to a bonfire of the cruelest venalities leaves the world stupefied and not even capable of offering meaningful support to a shocked nation and a disbelieving family of a pilot who was following the orders that men in uniform follow. His was not to question why but to do and die. Only, not like this. They denied him a soldier’s death. They denied him the basic courtesies afforded to prisoners of war. And they made a martyr out of Jordanian air force ace Moaz al-Kasasbeh.
These atrocities cannot be just dismissed with expressions of regret and reaffirmations of some sort of action being taken. Then, after a few days it all fades away. And we await for the next atrocity. Then we condemn that and move on to the next one.
These assaults on human dignity, on the tents of faith itself and on civilized people everywhere can only be brought to a halt if the world comes together as an entity and creates a shared pool of intelligence and gets on the same page to put an end to such extremism. This cannot be achieved by one or two nations but by everyone. How many more deaths do they have to be before we acknowledge they are not going to stop.
If the UN has ever acted as the staging point for a global initiative this is it. This is the time to grow some muscle and show it. Otherwise all it amounts to is an exchange of meaningless expressions of horror that count for nothing.
Fly on the wings of a prayer Kasasbeh, you were a soldier to the end… in that must your family and your nation take pride through their anguish.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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