Even in a windy Somalia night, Crickets chirp and locusts
sound their soft, muffled buzzing as 36 desert boots of
number 16 platoon of Echo company trudge through the night to lay an
ambush against the Al Shabaab. The Platoon is on African Mission in Somalia
(AMISOM) mandate to sanitise Somalia from the AS extremist Islamic group and
the warm but windy early evening of February was part of the mandate. The
distance to be covered by the platoon was a mere twelve kilometres from our
base on a location intelligence had
reasons to believe was a common route used by the Islamic militants for the
collection of their logistics.
I was the point man of the platoon leading the human snake
of 36. We shuffled rather than walked on account of the heavy weights hunkering
us down. After a two hour march, the platoon
understandably was sorely tried by humping the heavy but necessary load through
the hot night terrain. Each one of us
carried a weapon; at least eight magazines and rounds to fill them. Each of us
also carried on our webbings three days packed weight of serving’s factory made
Meals Ready to Eat (MRE). Soldiers including me hate the MRE, It tastes like
cardboard soaked in mud giving you energy without filling you up.
I am the the platoon point man for this mission. Pointie
leads a group of solders headed in a compass direction in a single file. It is
the most reviled and feared position because conventional wisdom and statistics
from earlier campaigns and particularly in the Somalia theatre indicate that
the life expectancy of the pointies is normally shorter. A platoon pointie, therefore, is normally balloted for under the Sergeants direction with the
unlucky soldier therefore ruefully taking over the advance.
In the last
twelve-foot patrols, I have volunteered six times to be the platoon point man.
No big justifiable reason for my love for this position but probably is to me a
search for identity and a call for acceptance from the platoon and probably
also a conscious tempting of fate. It could also be an unconscious wish for
early death. Three tours in Somalia have sharpened my pointie skills and unlike
the other members of the platoon my sixth senses are perennially at heightened
alert.
We plod on
under my very deliberate speed, lifting my feet gingerly before putting it down
, one foot after another and the
crocodile chain follows my example, total silence save for the lifting a lowering of feet and
the sand lifting off and falling under the platoon’s relentless march. Weapons
cocked and held at the ready position, safety catches on and the index finger
extended as per training over the trigger guard.
If there is
an Al Shabaab sniper out in the front
training his rifle on me, he would
likely see a well-built, very black man
a year or two over twenty, a sweaty face
formed from thick slabs of flesh and a thick nose; a regulation style moustache
under a regulation helmet and very cold eyes. Unlikely but if the AS sniper rifle has an X-ray scope, he could see a very philosophical brain, a
brainwashed Catholic mind and overly a very austere character.
If the Al
Shabbab Sniper could see into my future where would my horoscope point out in
the next five years? Less aggressive probably as the demands of age catching
up, more accommodating feelings as fatherhood emerged, totally subdued under
the famous oral castration from the well-oiled and practised tongue of Eve?
Suddenly I stop, as I
feel rather than see that am being watched from somewhere yonder and slowly go
down on my torso, almost mechanically, the platoon follows suit and immediately
the silence of the Somali night is heard. The platoon commander, a Lieutenant
crawls forward to my position; I am not sure what is his full name is but since he reported to the platoon from the college he was instantly identified as a
serious officer since about him clung
that unmistakable aura of know-how, the strength of character and ability which
constitutes authority. The platoon fondly calls him “Prit” I don’t know the
etymology of the name but somehow it fits him. Prit looks and is built like a
product of a loving relation between a warthog and a monkey. He is short, stout
and ugly but still full of wry humour. He reaches me and scans the forward
environment with the platoon long-range night vision special scope.
I noticed that his scanning of the forward direction is
practised and spot-on, moving the entire head and not the eyes as in-experienced officers are wont to do
He nods at me,“ Tusonge,”
he whispers “ Let’s move on, ni Ngiri tu
hatua kama mia Moja…It is a mere Warthog one hundred metres ahead of .”
I smile, remembering his build. I tap once the shoulder of
the soldier behind me to convey the message back. It should take another 10
minutes or so before I receive the double-tap from the last person in the
crocodile chain. A tap that signifies that message received and we should
therefore move forward
As I wait for the double-tap to signal our forward movement;
the Catholic article of faith suddenly
runs in my mind:
I believe in God the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth and
in Jesus Christ, his son our lord, the only begotten son of God, borne of the
father before all ages. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the lord, the giver of
life who proceeds from the father and son and who with the father and son is
worshipped adored and glorified. Three persons in one God;
The three divine persons that form the super being are
supposedly all equal in all things because each is God, each is infinitely perfect, each distinct from one
another.
The idea of God not being independent and having other
spiritual beings that are equal to God and having the same powers is the main
point of diversion between the Christian faith and the Islamic faith.
Whereas differences in opinion are understandable in matters
of faith; the extremist Islamic groups especially the Al Shabaab are overdoing
it.
They want to
monopolise God.
The Jihadists have labelled the rest of humanity not
following the Islamic faith as Kuffars-
Unbelievers. Who must be therefore be forced to be converted to follow the
Muslim faith under the pain of torture and death.
Mobile footage has shown AS killing with appalling
nonchalance; holding an assault rifle to the victims head before squeezing the
trigger sending the body brutally toppling down; a scene almost reminiscent of an
abattoir. Other videos paraded in the social media also show the casual
beheadings of victims considered apostates or Kuffars with the overall aim to
terrorize the local opponents and the international community to follow the
call of their warped version of Islam.
These atrocious videos posted on social media work as
the AMISOM Soldiers biggest fear in the Somali theatre is not death from the
enemy’s bullet, which might be fast and painless but being caught alive and
made a prisoner of war.
My personal worry on the war front, however, is the quality of
torture that Islamists may inflict on me –A very Committed Christian and many
devious methods designed to make me denounce my Catholic faith.
It has been said that
the extreme Jihadists - and AS falls in this bracket - have four levels of
loathing; They do hate the Christians and Jews with passion, but their hatred
fails to go that deep, because after all these two groups are also believers in the one true God and thus,
with the Islamists are “people of the book”. The only shortcoming of the
Christian and the Jew alike is that they have yet to recognize and accept the
last testament, the Koran.
Hated above the Christians and the Jews are the atheists and
idolaters, who have no god but only, carved idols? It explains why the
extremist Muslims will or will never
tolerate the religions from the eastern part of the globe, Buddhism,
Confucianism, Hindu, Zoroastrianism and even African traditional religion and
the rest. It also explains why communism cannot be tolerated by extreme
Muslims. There is no place in Janah for
an idolater
The third higher level of loathing by the Islamists goes
even deeper. It is bestowed to the moderate Muslim. The moderates are hated
because they do not ascribe to the murderous tendencies of the Jihadists and
explain why the Jihadists perennially strive to seek to topple every
Western-friendly Muslim government by exploding bombs in their marketplaces
and killing fellow innocent Muslims.
But the highest of all loathing is reserved for the
apostate, this is the Muslim who abandons or denounces Islam, a Jihadist, who
recants the faith of his fathers. For such a fellow, forgiveness is out of the question and only death awaits.
Three persons, One in Three; Three in One. One God, one God. Deep.
Talking of persons, my thoughts veered to my village of Koru
and to Kalandide; Kalandide was the village idiot. He was tall, with a shock of
dirty and unkempt hair and loitered within the village totally naked. Good-hearted Villagers and passers-by would occasionally give him food donations
which he normally grabbed and gobbled without any sign of appreciation or
acknowledgement to the benefactor. Periodically, Kalandide would burst into bouts
of mirth laughter lasting several hours. Another time, he would wail and weep
for hours on end without any reason.
One morning the stiffened body of Kalandide was found in the
outskirts of the village. It became a big issue of concern to the village when
the pastor of the local church had emphatically declined to conduct funeral services for Kalandide arguing that
the fallen mad villager was not worthy for the church to hold a funeral service as him as he was not a “person”. A missionary and white
Catholic priest heard of this argument and conducted the funeral mass attended
by the biggest group of mourners ever witnessed in Koru village.
What then is a person? Was Kalandide a person? I wondered
deeply.
Am also reminded of a baptism conducted in the mid-19
Century by Bishop Hannington of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to his first black converts in Uganda.
Reportedly he made the following statements prior to the Baptism:
“ I hereby baptise you,
hoping that my effort is not going to be
wasted because I do assume that you
are a human being, a person with a soul and hoping against hope that you are
not a monkey”.
The two taps arrived and I slowly stood up, adjusted my
weapon and stepped out, the Crocodile sluggishly shuffled forward.
And as I walked, my thoughts wandered about my faith. Would
I denounce my faith under torture? Is it reasonable to accept pain instead of
making a verbal declaration that does not reach the heart? Why should the
extremists believe that a forced faith is binding in Heaven? Should I desert my
faith and face the resultant eternal damnation of my soul? Why should God make me suffer for eternity for a moment of discretion, shouldn’t the
punishment be equal to the crime or for the spiritual matter to the sin and
shouldn’t God as wise as he is, take all these factors into consideration?
And why should the Jihadists invoke pain for one to be
converted? And why should I fear pain? Can one describe the pain? Do the lower
animals suffer pain as much as we humankind?
I suspect the man is far
more sensitive to pain than the lower animals, partly probably because the
keenness of human pain is due in great part to its rationality, The lower
animals probably suffer in the passing instant; it does not link up with what
is gone and what is to come and is not tortured by the thought that it is a
course of grief to others. We humankind maybe suffer intensely from the memory
of what is past and from the anticipation of what is before us and
just maybe from the very longing for the end of the engulfing misery. Maybe
too, our pain is much deeper and sharp gushing from perceived feelings of
self-pity, and maybe too from the reflection of the indifference or hostility
of the people about us.
And then I wondered too about my soul, was it really
immortal as my catechism classes were wont to say, does it not exist by itself?
And if it did, does that mean it did not exist by itself before? Will it be
immortal and bound to last forever?
I suspect that the soul must exist before it knows itself;
it must know itself before it can love itself. A case of self-knowledge and
self-love. Properties that may only
exist in an eternal love we humankind call God
The Crocodile marched on. Grindingly slowly like the
windmills of the gods.
There was a sudden burst of staccato machine-gun fire and
the thump! Thump! Thump! of mortar shells landing a distance away. We had
instinctively dropped down, our weapons at the ready. The burst of fire
continued for about ten minutes, it sounded as if an attack had been
launched by the AS to one of the AMISOM bases. Our radio crackled and I heard
the platoon commander mumbling in the handset. He must have been talking to
the company Commander in the base camp. Finally, he straightened himself and
muttered:
“Pass the word,” The Lieutenant whispered” Pass the word
across; we continue with our mission, that was an attack against the Ugandans
at their Tawakal base”
“The attack has been unsuccessful and the enemy has been
beaten off” The Commander whispered again “
“We take off in ten minutes time” The whisper went down the
line
Thought provoking.
ReplyDeletewell written, and truly enlightening
ReplyDelete