insurgency is no laughing matter

insurgency has always been an issue that can get me all fired up. remembering the places I've been to and the people i have met, i can't help but hate the communist rebels and the people that supports them.

whenever i see news articles or hear news stories of clashes between the government forces and the rebels, i always find myself praying that no one from the government side was hurt. as cold and cruel as it may sound, i don't care what happens to the rebels.

whenever i hear militant groups claim that those who died in the encounters are innocent civilians, it makes my blood boil. whenever i hear and read about the injustices done by the rebels with seemingly no reaction from people who are always quick to scream 'human rights violation', it makes my blood boil. but this is all normal. they have always been like this anyway. what else is new right?

but you know what i hate hearing the most? people who knows almost nothing about the real magnitude of the insurgency problem making some smart-ass remarks about it. i hate it when i hear this people say that everything is staged by the army. i hate it when i hear these people make fun of the whole thing like it is something to laugh about.

yes, my temper is that short when it comes to this topic.

you see, when you have been to places known as 'red zones' and see how difficult life there is because government aid can't reach them easily and when you see the fear in the eyes of the people who are too scared to even mention 'NPA' in a sentence, only then will you realize that this is no laughing matter.

if you have lived in the city all your life and has never been to any remote areas of the country, you will never understand this. if you have never seen how difficult for progress to reach those communities because of the presence of Maoist rebels, you will never understand. if you have never talked to children who should be in school and playing with their friends but instead are in evacuation centers, displaced by the war and traumatised by the violence they have seen, you will never understand this.

i get angry not because the rebels did anything to me directly because they did not--at least not directly. i get angry because their atrocities have gone on for a long time. i get angry because people seemed to care more when comrades of these monsters die than when they abuse and kill people. there are a lot of things about them i get angry about. but most of all, i get angry because i saw innocence snatched from children exposed in war.

when you have looked in the eyes of a child scarred by violence and when you have heard the stories they have kept buried inside them, you will never look at the world the same way again.