Thy Neighbour, the Murderer
When ordinary citizens become extraordinary perpetrators
This post is a reproduction of an earlier article on LinkedIn.
In the annals of warfare, the names that dominate headlines are those of high-ranking officials and political leaders. Yet, lurking behind these dominating figures is a more insidious and troubling phenomenon: ordinary citizens who travel abroad to fight in foreign conflicts and become perpetrators of heinous crimes against fellow humans.
These individuals, often driven by a mix of ideological fervour and misguided adventurism, blur the lines between combatant and civilian. They challenge our perception and understanding of warfare and force us to confront uncomfortable questions about human nature and the thin veneer of civilisation that separates us from barbarism.
A Toggle Switch Transforming Civilians to Criminals
Picture a lively urban quartier, or a quiet suburban street. Somewhere here there lives a young man or a woman leading a relatively nondescript life. They might be your neighbour, your coworker, or even your best friend’s fiance. You see them while you’re out for a stroll. Or at work in the cafeteria. What drives these individuals to leave behind the dignity and conscientiousness of a civil coexistence and instead find their calling in acts of unimaginable violence against people in a land far away?
Is it the allure of a cause they believe to be just? ‘Victims’ of some ingenious propaganda, seeking meaning in an increasingly fragmented world?
Or is it the promise of adventure, the romanticism of war gleaned from movies and video games?
Or is it the lure of financial security in societies ravaged by unemployment and inequality?
Regardless of their motivations, these ordinary citizens – often ill-prepared for the brutal realities of war – wade willingly into extraordinary circumstances that bring out the inhuman, the bestial in them. One moment they are just another fellow citizen. The next moment they are a murderer on the loose. The transformation is swift and jarring.
The Descent: Lusting after Atrocity
As the fog of war descends, the moral compass that once guided these individuals through their civilian lives begins to crumble. Or are they swiftly discarded?
In an environment of heightened tensions and a hate-driven agenda, one can suddenly do no wrong. Every act of violence is laboriously justified. Peer pressure, dehumanisation of the enemy, and that intoxicating sense of power that comes with wielding weapons in an environment of lawlessness and promised impunity ensure that the slightest of misgivings are thown to the winds.
It is in this crucible that ordinary people commit extraordinary acts of cruelty. Villages are reduced to dust, entire neighbourhoods are razed, civilians are targeted, and unspeakable violence is unleashed. The very individuals who may have once decried any and all atrocity suddenly find themselves raring to go and revel in drenching their selves in the blood of innocents.
The Aftermath: Second Life or Justice?
When all is over, the dust has settled, and the international institutions feel confident to turn their gaze to the aftermath of such barbarism, these citizen-turned-combatants often slip through the cracks of justice. Unlike high-profile war criminals, they toggle back to their earlier state as they quietly blend back into civilian life, maintaining a rehearsed silence about their sudden disappearance.
Those who don’t manage to escape the porous net of a justice system, become unwilling subjects of a public study of the complexity of human nature as they are dissected and laid bare on a stage called the courtroom.
As Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" tells us, the capacity for horrific acts lies not in the realm of monstrous aberrations, but within the mundane reality of ordinary individuals. It is this very ordinariness that makes the phenomenon of citizen war criminals so profoundly disturbing and shocking.
In the context of Gaza, where foreign citizen mercenaries are on the rampage, we must introspect and ask ourselves uncomfortable questions. What safeguards exist within our own moral frameworks and societal norms to prevent such a mass slide into barbarism?
The story of ordinary citizens transforming into war criminals is not just a tale of individual failings, but a mirror held up to our collective humanity. It challenges us to remain vigilant, to educate ourselves and future generations, and to work tirelessly towards a world where the horrors of war crimes, committed by anyone, can become a relic of a distant past.
I think that in the case of Palestine for one, the truth is even much more disturbing than this. The "ordinary" people who go there to fight are radicalised. When Shamima Begum went to fight for a foreign terrorist organization it made world headlines; and yet when these men and women radicalised into extreme violence by a Jewish supremacist ideology, go to brutalise women and children in a foreign country, they have complete immunity from justice. This needs to end, and every single one of these people needs to be held to account. I find it deeply disturbing that such people could live next door to you or I, or that I may rub shoulders with them every day.
One of the most important precepts in the rule of law is equality before it. British subjects, or those from any country holding itself as governed by the rule of law, who assisted Israel must be prosecuted for war crimes. Alternatively the relevant country must disavow the rule of law.