Where is humanity?

opinion

This week You! takes a look at an ordinary person’s perspective on the war on terrorism...

Time and again I have felt frustrated seeing innocent people dying. Unfortunately, I am just an ordinary person who cannot change this world but can only feel sorry about everything happening around me.

I grew up in Pakistan and moved to USA in 1997. I remember as a child I heard stories about Pakistanis going to Kabul for vacation and how much fun it was. But then Russians decided it was important for them to invade Afghanistan. The other super power, USA, decided to jump in and involved Pakistan in it too. End result was destruction of Afghanistan and Pakistan is still facing the consequences of Afghan instability. The war brought in refugees, violence and drugs to Pakistan. It also started a trend of suicide bombings, killing Muslims and non- Muslims.

Everyone seems to criticise Pakistan and Afghanistan regarding extremism, but people conveniently forget that the training of these extremists was started by USA government's approval.

We saw the same mistake being repeated with the invasion of Iraq many years later. After the 9/11 tragedy, US news channels gave news after news about the weapons of mass destruction hiding in Iraq preparing the ground for Iraqi invasion. We saw pictures of people rejoicing at the fall of Saddam Hussain's government. It was portrayed in the media as if by removing him, the world would be better off.  Unfortunately, Iraq has been an unstable country since then. Many American soldiers have lost their lives as a result of war in Iraq, others have been crippled or suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The next target for a similar tragedy was Libya. I do not admire Saddam Hussain or Gaddafi but know the fact that the power vacuum in these countries have led to instability. The powerful leaders of this world are still not learning and are busy creating more instability in the Middle East. I firmly believe that if the powerful and educated nations had not interfered in these countries, then we would not have so many places for extremist groups to exercise their power.

The fact is, any change in a country that happens by the struggle of its own people eventually leads to a better outcome. However, change brought by an outside force does not work the same way. The idea of security at the expense of destruction of other countries cannot work long term.

During the recent years, we have also seen this propaganda that terrorism has something to do with Islam. There have been many mass shootings in the USA that were carried out by Christians, but we were told that all these mass shooters were suffering from psychiatrist illnesses. And the Muslims, who carried out a small number of killings, were labelled as terrorists and the fact that they might have had a troubled past was totally ignored.

These same 'jihadi groups' have killed more Muslims than non-Muslims but we do not see this in the media. Although, it is being portrayed that Muslims are the bad guys, history states otherwise.

Suicide bombing has not been invented by Muslims, it has been used by other religious and political groups to cause fear and unrest in population. One example is of Tamil Tigers, a Hindu organization that has been using suicide bombings for years now. As far as I know they have carried out more than 100 attacks.

The current trend of media and politicians to paint Islam as a religion which teaches terrorism is dangerous too. I am not defending Muslims as there are many Muslim groups that are involved in the acts of terrorism, but we need to remember that other religious groups have caused similar crimes. I will just give a few examples. First one is Hitler who killed and tortured Jews for their religion. Does anyone remember the genocide of Muslims by Christians in former Yugoslavia? More recently, Buddhist followers in Burma have been responsible for the genocide of Muslim population. Therefore it is not fair to criticize the religion as no religion teaches its followers to commit such atrocities.

At present, majority of Muslims are watching this trend with apprehension as they are now forced to live under fear and are worried about the future of their children. Furthermore, the government and political leaders have chosen to create this divide between Muslims and non-Muslims.

So far the leaders of this world have practiced double standards. They are only interested in protecting their so-called interests and in the process have built deadly weapons that can kill hundreds of thousands of people in a minute. Some are not even interested in their fellow countrymen's welfare. They just want to work on whatever agenda they have. Some want to rule this world and destabilize other countries. Others want their countrymen to hate the neighbouring country so that if needed, they can wage war or occupy other countries to justify their existence as the great leader of the nation. 

Peace loving people like me wonder why world leaders chose the path of violence instead of love to attain their goals. Why do they want to kill people instead of saving their lives? Why ISIS is bad and why the Buddhist killing Muslims is not bad. Why Israel has a right to exist and Palestinians do not have a right to exist and so on? When are we going to care about the life of all humans? When will we stop hating each other on the basis of colour, race and religion? When will the media stop propagating their agenda to make money?

The time has come to solve these issues. If we do not make sincere efforts to resolve issues now, I do not think we can reduce violence. There are organizations like 'Doctors Without Borders' who are serving humanity without passing judgement on people. Same approach is needed by politicians. They need to make sincere efforts to protect people living on this planet. Nobody is going to benefit by promoting bloodshed or hatred.

*The writer is a Doctor of Medicine and is based in Maryland, US.