Both cause suffering to innocent people, but the perpetrators don’t escape uninjured either. Here there also two kinds of terrorism, but the difference between them is mainly one of method. I will call them ‘hands on’ terrorism and ‘terrorism at a distance’. Most terrorist acts by oppressed people are ‘hands on’ action: cutting someone’s throat, planting bombs, even turning yourself into a bomb. On the other hand, both kinds are found among the varieties of state terrorism.
Either way, the perpetrator becomes a victim: s/he will suffer the consequences of their action for the rest of their lives. We have seen how many of the land occupiers of 2000 or the violent ‘election campaigners’ of subsequent years are now in need of help from psychiatrists or n’angas. But how, you may ask, does a ‘terrorist at a distance’, such as an American pilot dropping ‘smart bombs’ on Iraq or Bosnia from 15km up in the sky (and inevitably hitting a lot of wrong targets) suffer from his action? He doesn’t suffer from identifiable ngozi; you need to get close to your victim for that.
But he probably wouldn’t take the job if he hadn’t already been isolated from most human contact, living to play violent computer games in which the player kills enemies in various nasty ways or destroys cities at the press of a button. That’s a game, but it’s exactly what he is doing in his plane 15km above Bagdad, only this time it’s real and he doesn’t know the difference. I pity him.
On the other hand, the ‘hands on’ terrorist knows who he is killing, torturing or raping. He gets real blood on his hands and that’s why one symptom of his trauma is a constant urge to wash his hands. He can’t avoid facing up to his actions, unlike the bomber pilot. Both of them have been manipulated by some higher-ranking people who are often just as careful as you or me not to get other people’s blood on our hands, but when I see some of the examples we have here in Zimbabwe of ‘hands on’ terrorism, I can only say the people who devised some of these torments are diabolical.
Who taught our local thugs to kill by stabbing your victim in the guts with a screwdriver? That tears the victim’s intestines open, guaranteeing that s/he will die of peritonitis, which means maybe 3 days of unstoppable infection, fever and great pain before actual death. The added devilry is that the one who stabbed this victim had to get really close, close enough to get faeces on his hand as well as blood. He’ll never forget that.
However much mbanje his minders give him, he’ll only be able to do this for a few weeks before he cracks up. The comfortable chef who planned this merely looks for new dupes next time. I find it hard to imagine what sort of hell is bad enough for someone like that.
And what can we say about those who send their minions, after driving women and children from their homes, to hound them from one refuge to the next, without rest? Or those who send their thugs to follow injured victims to hospital and finish off the job there? Pigs and dogs don’t stoop that low, and you make your followers more bestial than them.
Post published in: Opinions