Conflict is a business, peace is a hobby
By Abdulrazaq O Hamzat

War is a business, a multi billion business. Peace is a hobby, a none
lucrative hobby.
By nature, a profitable business venture attracts large patronage;
while the none lucrative one only gets few adherents. This is what is
playing out between conflict and peace

Major players in war and conflicts get direct or indirect benefits
from it. The benefits they derive could be monetary, rank, position,
fame, praise or other worldly things craved by man.

Peace builders on the other hand hardly make any direct or indirect
benefits from their peace pursuit. Very few peace personalities are
known and respected in the world.

War mongers are the heroes, whose stories are told over and over again
with so much glitz and fanfare. They are the conquerors and the
legends of this world. Stories of great Empire’s and Kingdom’s are the
stories of war and war mongers. These are people, who disdain peace so
much that whenever they hear about any peaceful kingdom in any parts
of the world, no matter how far away the Kingdom is located, nothing
gives them joy than the wish to invade such kingdom to disrupt its
peace and stability. They invade it without reason, causing so much
bloodshed, pain and sorrow.

It was as if they were born to covet bloodshed and destruction. But
these are the people we celebrate.

In our history books, it is those individuals, who inflict more
damages on humanity that are being celebrated. We call them all sorts
of beautiful names. While we all claim to abhor a world where might is
said to be right as practiced in those ancient periods, we still
relish the thought of being like those war heroes we had depicted as
gods in our history books.

We want to conquer and dominate like them. We want to reign over men
and wealth like them. We believe in ourselves, our ideals and we want
to force it on our fellow country people or even those across the
globe like them. And because of our quest to dominate and reign over
men and wealth, we find the accomplishment of these ancient war
mongers very interesting, motivating and a source of inspiration.

The peaceful leaders in ancient time are relegated and accorded no
space in our history; they are not talked about, nor remembered. They
are not worthy models for our kind of pursuit.

A world that is celebrating Achilles, the so called hero of Trojan War
and the central character of Homers Lliad, whose most notable feat
during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan hero Hector cannot
claim to desire peace.

Where is the stories of those who are oppose to wars in that period?
To me, they are the real heroes.

A world that is celebrating Hercules, the son of Zeus who was branded
hero simply by killing a lot of people, including his own children,
cannot claim to love peace.

A world that has idolized Julius Caesar, a war general and cunning
politician, who became hero simply by being the first Roman general to
cross both the Channel and the Rhine, when he built a bridge across
the Rhine and crossed the Channel to invade Britain.

Again, a world that has idolized Alexander, who spent most of his
ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign, while invading
cities after cities, leaving sorrow, tears and blood behind cannot
claim to be committed towards peace.

We cannot continue to celebrate war and war mongers and claim to be
yearning for peace.

By celebrating war mongers in our history books being taught to the
younger once, we are corrupting their minds and teaching them to covet
destruction in pursuit of their personal ambition. If we are
celebrating those who caused so much pain and agony in our history
books, those reading them want to be celebrated like them, hence the
seed of lack of peace.

To promote the culture of peace, we must, as a matter of necessity
take off history books that are celebrating war mongers from our
various shelf's. We must feed the younger once with positive images of
peace and project positive accomplishment through peacefulness.

We must transform peace from being a mere hobby, to a business that is
lucrative. Just like war, we must make peace attractive and lucrative
to dissuade people from trooping to the path of war and conflict.

Until we transform peace to a business, not a hobby, until we make it
attractive and profitable, until it is celebrated and compensated,
until we accord it the right time and attention, our chase for peace
may still remain further away.

Militants are being called to negotiating table, insurgents are being
called for dialogue, what are we doing to appease the peace loving
people who will never take to violence, yet with more valid reason to
be dissatisfied?

As we give the violent agitators attention and listening hears, what
is being done to the peaceful majority who continue to be law abiding?

asiri

you are right my brother, also a world that celebrated "ANNABI MOHAMMADU" as a prophet after killing thousands of people to people propagate his religion.

Hum