This week I thought I would try my hand at writing some fiction. The story centers on an imaginary country which I will call “Ruyastan.” Ruyastan is a large, beautiful country and an important member of NATO. Its leaders just agreed to help the United States fight jihadi groups in the Middle East, although Ruyastan seems to have supported those same jihadis in the past. It still openly supports, among others, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Shams. That’s part of what makes my fictional plot line so interesting, you see. The real twist comes when instead of actually attacking the jihadis, Ruyastan launches its military forces against a native group in the area. What reader would expect that?! The plot twist even catches the Americans by surprise!
The main political party and militia of the natives is secular and extremely egalitarian on gender issues, fielding both male and female fighters and leaders. The native forces are also the jihadis’ worst enemy, inflicting the only significant military defeats against them over the last couple of years. The story gets really complex at this point, however, because these native groups are also the terrorist bad guys, outlawed in Ruyastan and in conflict with Ruyastan’s noble state for a long time. The natives claim to be democratic, but no one knows for sure since they have never been given a chance to play the legal political game. Oh, and these bad guys also protect different minorities in the area, such as Yezidis and Christians, from the jihadis.
Ruyastan’s leaders tried hard to make peace with the natives, but never agreed to talk to them and steadfastly refused to pass any amnesty law allowing them to disarm safely or leave Ruyastan without getting arrested. Then Ruyastan’s leaders had an election that did not go as well as they hoped. Unhappy with the result, they used a minor incident to destroy a ceasefire and re-launch a full-out war against the natives’ militia and political parties.
In the course of the war, the natives’ ruthless terrorists limit almost all their attacks to Ruyastan’s military and police forces. They release their captives after a short time. They never mutilate the bodies of hapless security forces they kill. In other words, they are complex bad guys, which are the best kind in fiction.
As for the Ruyastani good guys, they are also complex. They are protecting the state, the law and society. They thus put whole cities under curfew for weeks at a time, cutting electricity, communications and food deliveries. If we count all the numbers of “disappeared,” “accidents” or regular people eliminated by the state (but then labelled “enemy terrorist fighters),” Ruyastan over the years probably killed a lot more civilians than anybody else. Fighting bad guys sometimes calls for drastic measures and dirty wars, you see. It is all for the greater good. Ruyastani soldiers also occasionally mutilate or strip naked those they kill, of course, and take photos of the result. Although we only have the photos that get out, natives in the area claim it happens all the time.
In one case during the latest flare-up in fighting, they shoot a 24-year old native filmmaker 28 times, then videotape themselves using their police vehicle to drag his body through a native city’s streets while they curse at him and congratulate each other. When a photo emerges of the scene (but before the video tape surfaces), Ruyastani leaders claim it is all a native “propaganda.” When the video tape emerges, their newspapers claim the filmmaker had a “rocket,” and that his body was dragged this way in case it was “booby trapped.” “In fact,” they say, “dragging bodies like this is routine practice throughout the world as a security precaution.” One of Ruyastan’s top leaders finally makes a quick statement that such things are “unacceptable” and “will be investigated.” Oh, and just to make sure something like this does not happen again, Ruyastan bans newspapers from reporting on sensitive issues and arrests, threatens, beats or kills those journalists who do not listen.
On second thought, this plot line is too depressing. No one would believe it anyhow. The West isn’t interested in things like Ruyastani good guy policemen dragging bodies around city streets – they want stories they’re already familiar with and that moviemakers have easier access to.
And I’m no good at fiction.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
