Whenever a political or any other person becomes too irritating for their government which does not tolerate any dissenter or dissemination of views whether they are political or apolitical, they turn to some tactics and methods whose legality and ethicality are always questionable.
Historical background
The etymological background of the assassin, one who does such killings, goes to the Arabic word of hashish (cannabis ) which was reportedly for the first time used by the Nizari followers, a sub-sect of Ismailiyah Shiites.
They could not face the Abbasid and Seljuke empires openly. Rather they carried out a hit-and-run policy of murdering the prominent figures of both empires using the Elburz Mountains as a hideout for them in present-day northern Iran in the 11th century.
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It is said that these killers were given hashish or cannabis drink, before sending them on their death mission.
They were hallucinated to see the visions of paradise to whom they would go after their death in the mission.
From there this term assassin and assassination originated which means killing someone for any political, religious, social or economic motifs.
How did they carry out these?
For the execution of such murders, they use either their secret service or hire hitmen or proxies that they had already implanted a long time ago for this in their own countries in the foreign ones.
When any local or International body raises about their direct or indirect involvement in such activities, they simply point out that they have nothing to do with these activities and that these have been carried out by someone else who may have some vested interest in them.
How could they do anything like this which may encircle them with suspicion instead of supporting their stance on XYZ issue or policy?
Political assassinations and fugitives killed
The killing of dissenters or fugitives who left their country for one reason or another is as old as human history itself.
1. It was the conspiracy of senators who planned and killed Julius Caesar for his political ambitions resulting in civil wars and the end of the Roman Republic.
2. Abraham Lincoln was murdered by an actor and sympathizer of Confederates, John Wilkes Booth, just after the end of the Civil War in 1865.
3. Likewise, John Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Liaqat Ali Khan, Afghan Kings, and Miss Benazir Bhutto were to pay the cost of their stance on social and political issues through their lives.
But the political leaders and politicians were not the only targets who were hit by the assassins.
The political fugitives who were declared absconders in their home countries were ferreted out and killed.
Though their killings were sometimes owned by the targeting one, the majority were none.
1. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed in Canada by the Indian secret agents in June 2023. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a political activist working for a separate Sikh state, Khalistan, in the Indian state of Punjab which has a Sikh majority.
2. In 2018, a Saudi dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was killed in Istanbul by the hit squad reportedly sent by the Saudi government.
3. The former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, who defected to the United Kingdom and became a staunch vocal critic of President Putin was given some radioactive substance in London in 2006 resulting in his prolonged illness and death.
4. In a similar manner, Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and his associate, Ayman al Zawahiri, were killed by the US Forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Political aftermath of the assassinations
The killing of a person for one reason or another reason especially when it is for some political, strategic, and economic motive is abhorrent.
It is not only painful for the family of the deceased but sometimes it causes so much turmoil and upheavals in the concerned country that endangers its very survival.
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There may be political, economic, social, and even territorial changes after these assassinations whose separation and delineation from one another could not be done easily.
Though the pace of these transitions may be quick and visible at some times, at other they may go unnoticed and unheeded.
But in the collective consciousness, they would always remain igniting a sense of fear and uneasiness among the community who have lost their leader or dominant person from these assassinations.
1. Libya’s Gaddafi was caught and killed by insurgents in 2011 further rifted the country with civil war and ethnic tension.
2. Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, was killed in 2005 in a suicide attack for whom the Syrian government was blamed.
3. Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was killed in 2016 by a Turkish police officer in Ankara as a protest over Moscow’s involvement in the Syrian war.
4. The Crown Prince of Nepal Dipendra murdered his parents in 2001 over a family dispute.
5. The former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was killed in the city of Nara for his close ties with the Unification Church in 2022.
The 16th-century English politician, playwright, and courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, John Lily’s proverb, all is fair in love and war, is truly applied in world politics!!!!
( also published in the Global News Pakistan )