Because Gino Strada collects the honor of arms
The Scratches of Damato
Thinking about it comes goosebumps, and a lump tightens in your throat. The death of Gino Strada was consistent with his whole life that lasted 73 years, spent in generosity and anger at the same time: the generosity of the doctor in the rescue, provided by the founding of his "Emergency", in 1994, to 11 million people of 19 Countries, and the anger of man unheard in denouncing the uselessness of wars. The only one that perhaps in his life he had shared, despite having physically only been able to listen to or read the stories and see the archive and cinematographic images, took place in the land where he unknowingly chose to die after yet another heart surgery and wedding with his assistant Simonetta: the Normandy of the decisive landing, in 1944, for the defeat of the Nazis.
Reached on the phone on what would have been the penultimate day of his life by his friend and director of the Press Massimo Giannini for the request for a "story" of the seven years he spent in Afghanistan, helping the victims of a war with an outcome according to him taken for granted against those who had promoted it across the Atlantic, Gino Strada did not hesitate to answer yes. The facts – between the retreat of the occupying troops and the generalized advance of the Taliban, now launched towards a Kabul similar to the Saigon of 1975 – were proving him so tragically right that that story belonged to him by right. But, published yesterday as such, with a sober reference on the front page, with the death of the author it became his "moral testament", as Giannini wrote, metaphorically updating the title.
When dead – as does not always happen, to tell the truth, but it is happening to him as a demonstration of the unique or special character of his human adventure – Gino Strada collects the honor of the weapons of those who fought him by giving him a pacifist in the sense derogatory, as of a renouncer, to the limit complicit of the bully or terrorist on duty deserving of an armed lesson. He more simply felt and declared "against war". And that in Afghanistan also had the wrong, the misadventure, call it what you want, of having been conducted as worse, frankly, it could not, and could not end. Even the timing and methods of the withdrawal proved to be wrong, with the paradox of those three thousand men that the Americans and allies are sending, after having withdrawn the 2,500 still present in January, to try to guarantee the evacuation of a Kabul that the Taliban are about to conquer.
The West pays in Afghanistan the mistake committed, in my opinion, more than 40 years ago, when it invested in an anti-Soviet function, in the bipolar world that emerged from the Yalta agreements, the Muslim fundamentalism represented precisely by the Taliban. That they would have turned against the West, after having exploited its aid, even more than they had done against the Soviets. Who had warned the danger earlier and better.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-gino-strada-raccoglie-lonore-delle-armi/ on Sat, 14 Aug 2021 06:51:48 +0000.