by Gleb Sidorkin

When the images of the Mumbai massacres were reproduced (instantaneously, on live TV) and I saw the young, well-groomed men carrying machine guns and rushing headlong into mass murder and suicide, I shook my head in disbelief. Every time there is a suicide attack, it raises the same question: why would these healthy people end their young lives for a dusty old Jihad spouted at them by some bearded crazies?  As Quantum of Solace shows us, the radical Muslim clerics and ex-Mujahideen don’t have a monopoly on the human technology of harnessing the anger of the young for their own, cynical purposes.

Ajmal Amir Kasab in Mumbai

Before going into the psychological similarities between Bond and his handlers and Ajmal Amir Kasab and the militant masterminds that recruited, trained and dispatched him, I want to mention another striking similarity between the two killers: their use of gadgets.

Bond’s ability to effectively infiltrate bad-guy hideouts and murder everyone in sight is based not only on his innate killer instinct but also on a direct line of communication to MI6 headquarters. With their cutting-edge IT, Bond can get the identity of a bad guy by taking his picture with a camera phone. Putting a dollar bill on a touch-screen computer surface, he traces its lineage. And, of course, a cloud of satellites with imaging technology informs his every move, giving him a kind of superhuman techno-vision.

The attackers at Mumbai were no MI6, but their consumer-level IT wasn’t far behind. They navigated a boat across the Arabian Sea using a GPS handset, and used an on-board satellite phone to call back to Pakistan. They had found the most efficient attack routes by using satellite images from Google Earth. As the attack was unfolding, they received instructions from handlers in Pakistan via internet phones (VoIP), which were impossible to trace or intercept. And the dispatchers at Home Base were watching the movements of Indian security forces on live TV, relaying the information back to the gunmen on the ground. The murderers were young, confident, and pissed off. They knew how to handle an AK-47, and were decked out in Versace. And they were prepared to die for their masters.

As Achilles mourns the death of his friend Patroclus, armor and weapons are brought to him

Harnessing the anger of the young to do the dirty work of fighting and dying in insane, greedy, cynical wars is an ancient tradition. In The Iliad, Achilles’s feud with Agamemnon keeps the great hero off the battlefield, resulting in the Argives being routed and pushed back to their ships. Neither bribes nor the subtle toungue of Odysseus are able to persuade him to rejoin the war. But when his closest friend is killed by Hector, Achilles goes into full vengeance mode and doesn’t stop until the Scamander runs red with Trojan blood and Hector’s corpse lies rotting near his tent.

Of course, an angry warrior that you have trained and armed to the teeth is an unstable substance that must be handled gingerly. If such a person’s anger gets out of hand, or he is no longer needed by the people that created him, things tend to get nasty. Both the Gods and the Greek kings are a bit freaked out by Achilles’s desecration of his enemy’s body. John Rambo is a good example of a killing machine that is no longer needed by its masters but finds no place in society for the violence inside of him. In Quantum of Solace, Bond– that invincible British Achilles– is on a personal vendetta against the shadowy organization that resulted in the death of his lover Vesper. When he gets a little over-zealous and starts leaving an indiscreet trail of corpses behind him, MI6 attempts to shut down his operation. He then goes rogue and, with the tacit endorsement of M, kicks everyone’s ass and makes MI6 look good by saving the day.

The Pakistani security services were not so lucky. In the 90’s, the Pakistanis recruited Islamic extremists– many of them ex-Mujaheddin from the Afghan War– to set up militant cells in Kashmir. For a while they were just blowing up Hindus and not causing too much of a problem. Then 9/11 happened, and suddenly Pakistan was a front line in America’s War on Terror. To appease the Americans, Musharraf had to instruct his security forces to cut off their support for the Kashmiri militants. Still fed by a powerful ideology of hatred, but no longer tied to the realpolitik considerations of a state, they sent their best boys on a boat to Mumbai. Like the USA, who armed, trained, and financed Bin Laden in the 80’s, the Pakistanis are left to pick up the pieces of their failed experiment in harnessing the anger of the young.

Quantum of Solace opened in Pakistan on November 20rd. Six days later, an Indian security camera took the photo of Ajmal Amir Kasab with his Versace t-shirt and his assault rifle carried one-handed. I wonder if he had a chance to catch the latest Bond flick before embarking on his operation? If so, what did he think when he saw M cynically using Bond’s righteous anger for the British government’s benefit? Could it have made him question his loyalty to the devious older men who indoctrinated him, handed him a gun, and told him to kill? I think not. Like the Iliad or the Old Testament, the stories given to us by Hollywood are not meant to undermine the basic structures of society, but rather to replicate them:

Abraham preparing his son Isaac for sacrifice

“If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be able to exact the same obedience from your sons.”

-Pat Barker, Regeneration Trilogy