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Friday March 29, 2024

Murders and incidents that somehow changed the course of history

October 23, 2018

Sabir Shah

Following Saudi Arabia's admission that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its Consulate in Istanbul, one might see history changing its course once again as many friends and foes of the oil-rich kingdom are expressing concern and doubts over Riyadh's explanations in this context.

American President Donald Trump has said he was not satisfied with Saudi account of the newsman's death, Australia has announced it was withdrawing from an investment summit hence joining a growing boycott that includes the US, British , Dutch and French finance ministers, Turkish investigators believe they have audio and video evidence that shows Jamal was killed by a team of Saudi agents inside the consulate, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the Saudi explanation of Khashoggi's death "inadequate," the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has stated that many questions "remain unanswered" and the UK Foreign Office has described it as "a terrible act" and asserted the people behind the killing "must be held to account." Although Saudi Arabia has so far arrested 18 of its citizens, besides sacking its deputy intelligence chief, Ahmad al-Assiri, and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Jamal Khashoggi's gory and broad daylight assassination might have a dramatic impact on national and international politics, as did many historically pivotal murders and episodes, which had gone on either shake a particular country or even the whole world in some instances! Here follows a brief list of such high-profile murders and sudden incidents that had sent chaotic shock waves with eyebrow-raising results:

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States was murdered by an actor. The immediate effect of the murder of Abraham Lincoln was an outpouring of grief and indignation of a kind rarely if ever experienced in the United States. The emotional impact of the crime was heightened by the fact that it occurred almost immediately after the Civil War had ended. History shows that Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, was not competent to carry on his work. A political turmoil greeted United States as Johnson had engaged in a hopeless and self-destructive struggle with his opponents--the Republican Congress over the readmission of the southern states and the treatment of the liberated slaves. He opposed the Republican plan for Reconstruction of the South, including provisions designed to guarantee the civil rights of black Americans. Consequently, in 1868, the US House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 (with 17 members not voting) in favor of a resolution to impeach President Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors.

In 1881, Emperor Alexander II of Russia was a victim of a murder conspiracy. Members of a left-wing organization attacked him with bombs as he waited in his carriage. The assassination sparked major suppression of civil liberties.

In 1881, President of the United States, James Garfield, was shot twice in a train station less than four months into his term. He died of infections and internal bleeding. Garfield’s death had spawned changes in how the US Constitution dealt with presidential succession and reforms in the civil service dispensing of federal positions. Garfield’s death also had a significant impact in solidifying the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain. Before Garfield’s death, the Anglo-American relationship was a strained one. The United States was emerging as an economic world power, creating competition and inspiring some resentment across the Empire. And in the United States, British ambivalence regarding the American Civil War had created suspicions about British motives on the world stage.

The 1901 killing of another American President, William McKinley, had resulted in a backlash against anarchists and the introduction of the Secret Service guarding Presidents.

The shooting of Archduke, Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in June 1914 in Sarajevo had sparked World War I, which had drowned Europe in blood. This heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was shot dead when he was inside a car with his wife. The 1951 murder of first Pakistani Premier, Liaquat Ali Khan, had triggered instability and Army's influence in politics just grew manifold. As many as six prime ministers — Khawaja Nazimuddin, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Chaudhry Mohammad Ali, Hossain Shaheed Suharwardi, I.I. Chundrigar and Feroze Khan Noon were somehow shown the door between October 1951 and 1958. Five of these Premiers, barring Feroze Khan Noon, were sent home by governor general Ghulam Muhammad, a former bureaucrat, using immense powers that his office gave him. According to US State Department documents, appearing in 2017 was murdered because of his refusal to use his office for securing oil contracts in neighboring Iran for US corporations.

The documents said Liaquat Ali Khan had also called on Washington to vacate air bases in Pakistan which the United States was using against the Soviet Union, upon which then-US President Harry Truman threatened the Pakistani PM of dire consequences. John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States was assassinated in 1963, while riding in a presidential motorcade. Lee Harvey Oswald was named the killer, but conspiracy theories persist to this day--as to who was actually behind his untimely demise. The "CNN" had stated: "He was the first American president in the Cold War to talk about the Soviet Union as an adversary with whom the United States should peacefully compete, rather than an enemy to be defeated militarily. Kennedy was the first president to understand the Sino-Soviet split. At home, he proposed a tax cut, not as a result of a budget surplus, but despite a budget deficit, in order to stimulate the economy. Kennedy's defenders argue passionately that, protected by a big re-election win in 1964, he would have withdrawn American troops from Vietnam."

The 1967 killing of the captive guerrilla leader, Ernesto Che Guevara, in Bolivia on the orders of the CIA, had made him a real hero in many countries. The Argentina-born Guevara is one of the most recognizable and influential revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. Mostly revered and occasionally reviled, this major figure of the Cuban Revolution is passionately characterized along the entire continuum as everything from a heroic defender of the poor.

Guevara remains a "beloved national hero" in Cuba, almost a secular saint to many on the Caribbean island, where he is remembered for promoting unpaid voluntary work by working shirtless on building sites or hauling sacks of sugar. To this day, he appears on a Cuban banknote cutting sugar cane with a machete in the fields. The Cuban state has continued to cultivate Guevara’s appreciation, constructing numerous statues and artworks in his honor throughout the land; adorning school rooms, workplaces, public buildings, billboards, and money with his image (References: The Time magazine, the Economist, the Huffington Post, the New York Times and the BBC News etc)

In 1968, Martin Luther King Junior, the American civil rights leader was shot in Tennessee State. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots across the United States. On March 25, 1975, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot point-blank and killed by his half-brother's son, Prince Faisal bin Musaid. It is theorized that the prince was avenging the death of his brother. Slavery did not vanish in Saudi Arabia until King Faisal had issued a decree for its total abolition in 1962. It is a commonly-held belief in Saudi Arabia, and the wider Arab world, that King Faisal's oil boycott was the real cause of his assassination, via a Western conspiracy.

The "Washington Post" had written: "But since mid-1975, when the assassination of King Faisal brought a new ruling team to power, Saudi Arabia has moved from that passive and reluctant posture to an active, outward-looking stance. Saudi foot-prints now turn up in regions and on issues they once would have skirted." After King Faisal's murder, an era had dawned in Saudi Arabia where ruling monarchs and their families had paid a lot of emphasis on their personal securities. The killing of a Moscow-backed Afghan President, Nur Muhammad Taraki, on orders of his arch rival, Hafeezullah Amin, in October 1979 had persuaded a Russian leader, Leonid Brezhnev, to order the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of the same year. Hafeezullah Amin was also resultantly killed due to this invasion. The West believes that it was actually this particular incident that had provoked the "militant jihadi campaign" of the 1980s.

The 1984 murder of Indian Premier, Indira Gandhi, had led to killing of thousands of Sikhs in retaliatory violence. Operation Blue Star had wider impact on politics in India as many Sikh youth joined the Khalistan Movement. She was killed by two of her bodyguards in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, the Indian Army's June 1984 assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which had left the Sikh temple heavily damaged. The Sikh sensibilities were also offended at the alleged entry of the army personnel with boots in the temple complex and the alleged destruction of Sikh scriptures, manuscripts in the temple library that was burnt in the firing during the course of operation. We all know that the August 1988 accidental death of Pakistan's military leader, General Ziaul Haq, had somehow brought back democracy for a period of 11 years. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had clinched power twice each between 1988 and 1999, when General Musharraf had again halted the democratic stint for a decade.

Mystery still shrouds General Zia's plane crash near Bahawalpur. The assassination of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian Islamist leader in 1989, had led to the rise of Osama bin Laden, and thus opened the door to the world-shaking September 11, 2001 incident and all that has since followed. Also known as the "Father of Global Jihad," Abdullah Azzam was killed with his two sons by a car bomb in Pakistan. Azzam controlled the jihadi forces that had fought in Afghanistan and opposed the extension of the Islamist war to targets in the non-Islamic world.

According to the "BBC News," Azzam was a teacher and mentor of Osama bin Laden. He had persuaded bin Laden to come to Afghanistan and help the jihad. As the war drew to an end, they both established Al-Qaeda. In 1991, while campaigning, India's former-Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was greeted by a woman carrying a bomb, which exploded and killed them both. The attack was blamed on a militant organization from Sri Lanka. India had just ended its involvement in the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Key Indian newspaper "The Hindu" had maintained: "The killing, masterminded by LTTE (Tamil Tigers)' chief Prabakaran, had more than a symbolic impact. It ended the popular support Tamil militants had enjoyed in Tamil Nadu. India scaled down its active involvement in Sri Lanka, and adopted a passive approach to the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. Prabakaran's strategic blunder ultimately cost him his life: Sri Lanka, helped by India, crushed the LTTE in the fourth round of the war in 2009." In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian secret service, had accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of poisoning him after he felt sick suddenly and had to be removed to the hospital where he could not survive.

  Alexander had taken refuge in the UK. An investigation found that he was suffering from lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. Subsequent investigations by British authorities into the circumstances of his death led to serious diplomatic difficulties between the British and Russian governments. In 2007, Pakistan's two-time former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was shot as she exited a car at a political rally in Rawalpindi. She was hit in the neck and chest and died in hospital. Demonstrations took place throughout Pakistan and over 100 people died in related incidents. Just months after her death, her political party had won the general elections and her husband Asif Ali Zardari was elected as President of the country as a sympathy wave had engulfed the whole of Pakistan. And in December 2012, we all heard of the rape and brutal assault of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi. The victim later died from her injuries, but her death had sparked massive public protests in India and led to a renewed focus on gender-based violence.