Coerced into War
Yemeni mp
Ahmed Saif Hashed
There was a keen effort from the leaders of the military college and the Ministry of Defense to ensure a minimum representation of provinces among the enrollees in the college. Particularly, the youth of Aden were the most hesitant to join, with only a few exceptions. This reluctance might stem from their civilian disposition, which does not lean towards a military career, or perhaps because most of them do not find the military to be a promising future worth pursuing.
On my first day, as I prepared to shave my head, I witnessed three groups of students surrounding three young men from Aden, coercing them into shaving their heads to a zero length. This shaving was one of the fundamental prerequisites for joining the military college, and the oppressive nature of this act reminded me of a painful experience I once endured.
The difference was that the enforcers in the college targeted their heads for shaving, while my painful experience targeted the soles of my feet as a means of punishment to prevent me from escaping school again. The commonality between the two acts was coercion.
I witnessed this pressure with my own eyes, heard the anguished cries of those forced into submission, and felt pained by the sight of young men being compelled to join the military college against their will. It is akin to being forced into a marriage with someone one does not love, or perhaps even with someone one detests. Hearing their cries, filled with anguish, echoed my own screams when I was a student subjected to corporal punishment.
It is unjust to be compelled to accept what one does not want, to drink from what one detests, especially upon reaching maturity. Any system, authority, or even head of a household that disregards the primary individual’s will and issues decisions about choices that are intrinsic to their life—choices that pertain to their future or aspects of it—commits a grave injustice, particularly when such authority ignores the desires and preferences of those directly affected by its decisions.
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Many parents have predetermined certain life choices for their children regarding education, work, or marriage. However, many of these children have ended up failing, stumbling, or achieving far less success than was hoped for or expected. Sometimes, they even rebel against the choices imposed on them by others or by the circumstances of reality that forced them into paths contrary to their desires and aspirations.
Some spend years pursuing choices that do not align with their true ambitions, only to later seek their authentic selves and the desires they once wished for but could not attain. One could say that those repressed in their choices live constrained by their reality, and the outcome of such choices often yields little satisfaction.
It is a grave mistake to impose beliefs and choices on people through the force of authority and dominance, rather than through convincing them and cultivating awareness that supports those beliefs and choices. It is disastrous to impose your convictions, perceptions, and choices on those who do not see as you do, or to enforce what you believe to be a model or example when it clashes with reality.
You must persuade people of the validity of your perspective, and raise their awareness if they do not understand your viewpoint or are unaware of their own interests. Do not use your repressive power and bureaucratic methods to impose your will and maintain it at the expense of people’s desires and convictions.
Many coercive and bureaucratic measures that have distorted reality and led to forced displacement and integration between groups or nations have ultimately failed, wasting significant effort, time, and resources. They failed because they attempted to impose oppressive theories on reality, relying solely on repression and coercion to execute unjust policies, which inevitably leads to failure—often a catastrophic failure that turns great hopes into a cultural regression by any standard.
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As for the coercion we have experienced in war, it has become glaring, terrifying, and multifaceted. It is a subjugation, coercion, extortion, humiliation, and oppression borne from the weight of the war we have endured for seven long years.
I have long lived and continue to live the tragedy of our afflicted people, suffering from their rulers, the war, political elites, and warlords. Today, our people’s rights are being violated, and they want to force our representative to participate in what he detests. They extort what remains of my rights to compel me to join their war, to rally towards its infernos. I will not, even if they cut off my water and air.
During the war, while what remains of the Sana’a Parliament flees from any accountability for corruption and punishing the corrupt, they resort to rallying in exchange for scraps of our usurped rights in a blatant extortion. Corruption evades the demands for accountability by pushing our people into the abyss of destruction and the flames of war.
Today, my skull is filled with the torment of relentless hunger accumulated over seven lean years. The lords of abundance extort people with the hardship of living and the crumbs of charity. Half of a salary at the beginning of the year is worth less than a tenth of it, with the other half gone by mid-year. Between ebb and flow, a tide extends, and a hell expands. They disperse crumbs after struggle and committees as if their task were to “uncover atomic radiation.”
“Salary” in the year you yearn for… your eyes fixed upon it… your greed engulfs it like a flood… you try to fend it off from view… you hesitate and waver… you ask yourself: Should I spend it?! You delve deeply into thought, as if you seek to cross the boundaries of the universe… the crumbs of your salary require a microscope to be seen.
The crumbs of your salary that you begrudge us and extort from us… you bleed and ooze over it, bestowing it upon us throughout the year… eyes that consume us and weep for it… they cry out in regret: “How abundant it is… today we need it… our situation is tighter and our needs are greater… the urgency of need intensifies… we are the rightful ones, and we deserve it more…” The crumbs of your salary appear to the miser’s eye to be exceedingly ample.
The extortion of excess blocks out the sun… and the crumbs of “salary” you dispense in a year have lost all weight and significance… you have robbed life of its wasted rights… the wooden hand of stinginess dispenses charity… and if we demand more, we must rush to the front lines on all fours… and at the front, the urgency of death tells you: Die as a martyr, and do not boast to God about your death… you struggle for God.
Where has all this stinginess come from?! From where does this appalling miserly nature arise?! Stinginess is truly ugly… you take trillions and more, yet you give not a crumb each month to a teacher who nurtures the generation… why do you trample on education?! Why do you want ignorance to prevail?! Why do you insult the free and seek to enslave them?! Then you tell us, “There will be no humiliation from us.”
You collect trillions and give not a scrap… and if you do give crumbs, it feels as if your heart has been torn from your chest against your will… hell itself would be ashamed of what you do… is this stinginess, or an excess in stinginess, or the excess of tyranny?! The torture continues, and I never thought I would endure this torment for seven lean years, witnessing this terrifying stinginess and the sadism of this tyranny.
Excuse me… excuse me… forgive me thrice and more, O Hell.
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And if you are a judge, rejoice in a half salary… this victory came after clamor and grinding… it arrived after labor and difficult birth… a labor that extended into a salary that barely crawls and creeps… how generous they are, woe to stinginess! Where do you live, O scale of justice, as you judge with a half salary whose power has diminished to the point of becoming mere crumbs lost between teeth?
How do you think?! Where do you live?! Thus, your universe has become a rhinoceros or less… half a salary no longer suffices even for a sheep. Has justice become a spoils of war?! Has fairness become so cheap in your eyes?! Is justice now a mere auction? Is this madness or a joke? Like today, we find ourselves in the “worst of circumstances, what makes one laugh.”
Is this a “salary” or a corruption you impose with half a salary? You force it upon them by extending a hand… you push them towards bribery against their will… you corrupt them with intent and deliberation… justice has lost its dignity; you insult it and trample on it from head to toe. This is not justice; this is complete corruption.
Have you heard of a judge who survives on air or salt to live? You do not seek justice; you want a hungry, submissive judge… a needy, destitute judge… a judge who begs you for his daily bread. Half a salary is not enough for rent… you want to be his lord of bounty, commanding and directing him as you please… a judiciary that has lost the minimum of its essence, independence, and neutrality.
You want a weak judge and a weak judiciary… you want a judiciary of humiliation… a judge whose livelihood is soaked in disgrace. In the land of Islam, we no longer have refuge in justice. Isn’t it enough shame that you open the door for a failure and deny it to those who deserve it? Failure has seized justice, and the poet said:
“O sheikhs of the Arabs, O salt of the land,
Who will reform the salt if it spoils?!”
* * *
Today, poverty surrounds me… it wraps around my skin like the hide of a donkey… it suffocates me… and stifles my breath… this priesthood feeds on my livelihood and salary… it grows fat from my hunger… swelling and distending from every angle… its skin decays from its fatness… it erupts with corruption like a carcass… how foul it is!! You can smell its stench from beyond the boundaries of the universe, if the universe has boundaries… you starve while your stomach vomits the emptiness it contains.
Crocodiles and hyenas and beasts tear us apart… we have become shreds among the fangs… in the name of God, we die on the front lines, and in the name of God, we die of hunger… in the name of God, you live in abundance while we die and starve… God does not extort us or push us to die against our will for power… so why do you extort our blood for a morsel of bread?! And herd us like cattle into the absurdities of war.
Why the coercion to what we despise… you humiliate us with scraps and salaries that are smaller than the meagerest charity… how miserly you are, O miser of woes… we are in seven lean years with no respite or relief… a year of famine passes, and another approaches, heavier and more burdensome… foreheads have devoured wealth like hell itself, even more ferocious than it… excuse me… excuse me… forgive me thrice and more… we have wronged you, O Hell.
* * *
I told my friend: The situation has tightened beyond what you know… it has become narrower than the eye of a needle… try to open a vent, even with the width of a finger… perhaps I can breathe in a sea breeze to refresh me from this tightness… the atmosphere is very gloomy, and decay competes with itself… carcasses surround me and crowd the space, and the air here is damp and foul.
My friend replied: And where can we find a sea breeze to revive us when the universe has become congested, and its congestion is greater than itself… decay surrounds us like hunger… there is no escape from it or migration… your path is blocked by decay and hunger, and by a precipice from which you might fall… outside lies confusion and the terror of falling.
* * *
Today, a thousand corruptions gather against the glimmer of light… they attack every ray to engulf it in darkness… corruption crushes us from bone to bone… we remain afflicted without end… ruled by carcasses that feed on our insides… surviving on the corpses of the dead and pools of blood… the space is no longer spacious… it has become tainted with carbon… the universe is congested, O people… the universe no longer has expanses.
Every area has shrunk, and all spaciousness has vanished… war devours us from the beginning, and hunger consumes what remains of us… war pursues us with its dreadful destruction and devastation… hope has faded and dissipated… the blessed dream has become a mirage… we have no refuge… no escape or reprieve, except through a revolutionary awareness that uproots the tyranny of injustice, and the covenant remains faithful… to live and thrive with dignity.
Today, war kills us, and the crushing weight of hunger crushes us… and corruption like a flood… and a priesthood that turns its back on every horror, pursuing a child who dances and tries to wrest joy from the face of hunger and overwhelming death… failure like the sun… and a priesthood that concerns itself with the lives of thighs and their development, obsessively thinking about what lies beneath the navel… a paradox that speaks of afflictions and the tragedy of the mind… a catastrophe needing resurrection.
The history of priesthood is governed by dominance… submerged in the depths of an ocean of blood… the rot of history intensifies and accumulates its decay… dragging with it a past that ended a thousand years ago. It seeks to govern this era with calcified thinking and rusty elites, yearning to return to the primeval times of subjugation through force and dominance… a consciousness exiled in a desert of a thousand absences and losses… a compass broken from an ancient time, and a mind locked away without a key.
* * *
My patience has worn thin, and my tricks have run out… a riyal has plummeted to the depths, becoming worth more than itself. How can a fleeting mist, dissipating at first glance, quench the thirst of someone scorched by the sun? The lords of bounty and the powers that be continue to threaten us with a famine more devastating than what has already come.
When the stomach starves, it consumes its own insides… my intestines gurgle in agony, and from my throat emerges a broken moan, sharp and fiery with pain… starvation feasts on my mouth, tongue, and throat until my voice, pained by hunger, is silenced. The situation intensifies, and we become the scattered remnants of injustice and siege… then, without shame, he complains of the siege of strangers while he swells with fat. People die in war and die of hunger… seven lean years have consumed us, repeating this cycle for the thousandth time without satisfaction.
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As for the war we have endured for seven long years, I have learned bitter, bloody, and terrifying truths: that there are political and economic interests that take precedence over all other issues, primarily human rights.
These are merely files used to support those interests, and extortion is employed whenever needed according to what those interests and policies demand, driven by the selfishness of those nations. The same can be said about “democracy” and other issues… and thus we can explain the double standards in dealing with various matters, measuring with different scales, with many examples and details too numerous to elaborate on here.
Many issues are approached based on what serves the interests of states, meaning that economic and political interests take priority, while other considerations are secondary. These are hierarchies that do not prioritize rights, humanity, or justice, but instead elevate the political and economic interests of this state or that.
This is the foundation of the current international system, and on this basis, international law is interpreted as I have learned over seven bitter years of war in Yemen.
Today’s international system is one in which we find ourselves as nothing but hungry, oppressed, exploited, and powerless. It is a system that, in every sense, is unjust and inhumane, filled with hypocrisy, pretense, and lies. In its essence and core, it is grotesque and terrifying.
We will remain dreamers of a world where humanity and justice take precedence, ensuring at least a minimum of free and dignified living. We do not know when that will come, in what era, or in which generation.
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