Decades

Prelude to the Bombs

            None of us were sure if the bombing was going to occur. The government held a tight lid on information and did not acknowledge it until it was all too obvious. The government officials decided to keep their citizens in the dark. They even passed an Information Law which was essentially a law against information.

The year prior to the air strikes was marked by continuous clashes that involved government forces and separatist terrorists. To us, through the state media, the terrorists were depicted as heroin and gun smuggling rapists and kidnappers; a handful of bandits and criminals. The problem was that there were more than a handful of them and they were causing serious damage. They attacked the police and the army forces on numerous occasions.

Our armed forces were in a dismal state at that point since the civil war ended a couple of years prior. The state media downplayed the conflict with the separatists to such a degree that many were not even aware of the severity of the clashes. It was a full out war. The government forces were not facing bandits but a fully-fledged militia that had been preparing for an armed conflict for a long time. They had official military uniforms, guns and equipment were smuggled into the country, and they had the financial backing from the heroin drug lords.

The truth about the conflict only trickled back to the general population through soldiers and police officers who were battling the terrorists. They would be sent home from the frontlines for a week or so and were genuinely in shock at how little people knew about what was going on. They were met with uneasy smiles, confused faces, elusive eyes, and disapproving head shakes when they spoke about their experiences. Most people were convinced that they were over exaggerating and making up stories.

A couple of months later, one of my classmates didn’t show up to school for several days. The teachers didn’t mention anything about it but the rumour soon spread that he was absent because his father had died. His father was a local police officer but was sent to the conflict zone because the government forces were so understaffed. His father had a lot of experience on the force and was promised a promotion if he completed a tour of duty.

I was daydreaming when my desk-mate informed me about the rumours:

“Do you know what happened to his father,” he asked me with a serious look in his eyes. I knew it was something terrible.

“What,” I asked.

“His convoy of three police vans was ambushed by the terrorists and shred to pieces. They hit them with everything, including bazookas.”

My heart shook as I visualized the scene of the massacre.

“The memorial service is on Saturday,” my desk-mate continued. “His family won’t be able to hold an open casket funeral because his body was ripped up horribly.”

The story shook me to my core. It’s then that I knew without a doubt that flames of war were real. They were not directly visible to my naked eye but they are burning in that part of the country, the black smoke was rising up in the distance and heading towards us. The casualties were trickling back to us.

The war turned ugly as the number of civilian casualties started to rise. It quickly became a continuous cycle of revenge. News footage of mass graves was broadcast worldwide and the international community was outraged while everybody had collective flashbacks to the scaring images of Nazi mass graves.

Our government was quick to talk about and show the crimes of the terrorists through the state media but they failed to show and talk about their own. They went to great lengths to cover them up from us but somehow they were dumb enough to allow foreign media to record evidence of their crimes. The Military Alliance of Western Democracies decided to get involved and soon gave our government an ultimatum. The government had to negotiate with the separatist leadership and come to a mutual agreement. The talks were going to be mediated by the Military Alliance. The negotiations quickly fell through and the unanimous opinion was that our government was the party at fault. After some last minute talks, the Military Alliance decided to send a formal declaration of war that went unmentioned on state television.