Conflict Is A Business, Peace Is A Hobby

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?

Abdulrazaq O Hamzat is the President of Foundation for Peace Professionals and can be reached on [email protected]