Saving Private Nagdawi

In resisting foreign powers, the price of life has become too cheap, writes Abdel-Moneim Said*

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The Oscar-winning film by Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan, is about a US army squad going behind enemy lines in World War II to save a soldier whose brothers have been killed in action. The moral of the film is that one life, one ordinary and otherwise insignificant life, warrants both risk and sacrifice. The film was not about the glory of war or freedom, nor about good and evil. It was about the value of human life.

Our own story is quite different. It begins on the morning of 19 August, as Private Ahmed Gamal Al-Nagdawi, and a colleague of his whose name was not carried by the media, was standing guard at a Jordanian arms depot in Aqaba. A katyusha shell landed nearby, killing Nagdawi and wounding the other man. We know nothing of the final hours of Nagdawi's life. He may have been waiting for the sunrise to get some sleep. He may have been thinking of the girl he intended to marry or the future of his family, if he had any. He may have not been thinking of anything in particular, just chatting with his fellow sentry, when the end came. We don't know. The newspapers didn't tell us Nagdawi's last words.

All we know was that katyushas were fired at two US Navy warships, missing them and killing a Jordanian soldier on shore. The soldier had nothing to do with the US vessels. He was just guarding his homeland. Nagdawi was not killed by US or Israeli fire, but by shells fired by fellow Arabs and Muslims. The "Brigades of Abdullah Azzam of Al-Qaeda Organisation in Levant and Egypt" later claimed the attack.

In later news, it was said that the two US ships were not the target but rather King Abdullah of Jordan. The attackers were members of the Iraq-based Al-Zarqawi group, according to another report. None of this matters to our story. It does not matter whether the terror attack was meant for US vessels or the king of Jordan. It does not matter whether Al-Qaeda in the Levant and Egypt or in the "Land of the Two Rivers" fired the rockets. What matters is that Nagdawi is no more. His family and loved ones know that Nagdawi just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but what kind of consolation is this? Nagdawi was on duty guarding his homeland on orders by the Jordanian armed forces. His mission was to face enemy fire, not to be fired at by compatriots and brothers in faith.

Nagdawi's story is the story of hundreds of innocent victims. Iraqis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis, Afghans, Moroccans and Algerians have all been killed by militants claiming to be fighting the US. No one asked the victims what cause they wanted to die for. No one asked them which side they wanted to be on. No one cared to consult with them. Their fate was decided by a group of their compatriots playing judge and jury. Their fate was decided by co- religionists thinking they have a mandate to create an Islamic regime across the world. Their fate was decided by men who think that the death of other people in the course of their battle is little more than an unfortunate inconvenience.

This is the root of the entire issue of terror. It is no longer enough for us to understand that we, as Arabs and Muslims, are part of humanity, with all its achievements and errors. It is no longer enough for us to shed off the skin of estrangement that makes us think that we are a unique case, a phenomenon outside history and science. It is no longer enough for us to question the moral and political legitimacy of radical militants. It is no longer enough for us to get our societies back on a path of development and democracy rather than death. None of this is enough. None of our actions is enough unless we reconstitute the value of human life, unless humanity becomes our ultimate goal and purpose, unless humanity becomes the one story -- the whole story.

* The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.