ABSTRACT
How could it have come to this? To what depths can one sink? How, in God’s name, is this possible? These and comparable phrases express the despair of those who have been confronted with the images of erupting violence in Somalia, the Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, the Moluccans, Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq over the past few years. They are words of bewilderment uttered by people who have come to know about the murderous actions in Algeria, the Sudan, India, Sri Lanka, Bolivia or South Africa, words of those who see on their TV screens how Palestinian suicide squads cause death and destruction in the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or how ‘infant soldiers’ toting machine guns terrorise the streets of Monrovia in Liberia. And, naturally, on 11 September 2001, there was widespread bewilderment at seeing two hijacked airplanes crash into the Twin Towers in New York, resulting in just under three thousand dead.
