{"id":43020,"date":"2026-02-07T10:23:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/?p=43020"},"modified":"2026-02-07T10:23:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:23:26","slug":"why-were-they-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/?p=43020","title":{"rendered":"Why Were They Taken?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Poetry: M. Jahangir Khan<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Why were they taken\u2014<br \/>\nin the hour before dawn,<br \/>\nwhen nations still breathe<br \/>\nbetween sleep and fear?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Why does the sky remember<br \/>\nthe sound of helicopters<br \/>\nbetter than the names<br \/>\nof treaties broken quietly?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They say <em>law<\/em>.<br \/>\nThey say <em>justice<\/em>.<br \/>\nBut the sea knows oil,<br \/>\nand oil knows blood,<br \/>\nand blood knows the old maps<br \/>\ndrawn with knives instead of ink.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They speak of drugs\u2014<br \/>\nyet forget the ships,<br \/>\nforget the banks,<br \/>\nforget the flags that never land<br \/>\non the battlefield<br \/>\nbut always collect the spoils.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A president is not a shadow.<br \/>\nA wife is not a bargaining chip.<br \/>\nSovereignty is not cargo<br \/>\nto be flown across oceans<br \/>\nunder the excuse of order.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I have seen this script before.<br \/>\nIt wore French boots once,<br \/>\nthen spoke English with confidence,<br \/>\nnow smiles behind screens<br \/>\nand calls abduction <em>procedure<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">From rice fields to jungles,<br \/>\nfrom villages erased to villages reborn,<br \/>\nhistory whispers the same lesson:<br \/>\npeasants remember longer<br \/>\nthan empires rule.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A book is raised\u2014<br \/>\nnot a gun.<br \/>\nA memory is sharpened\u2014<br \/>\nnot a missile.<br \/>\nGuerrilla ink stains the page<br \/>\nwhere generals fear to read.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Simon\u2019s sword does not rust.<br \/>\nIt waits.<br \/>\nHo\u2019s footsteps do not fade.<br \/>\nThey multiply.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Call it kidnapping.<br \/>\nCall it capture.<br \/>\nCall it whatever calms your conscience.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The earth knows the truth:<br \/>\nwhen power fears an idea,<br \/>\nit chains the body.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But bodies pass.<br \/>\nIdeas march.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And somewhere\u2014<br \/>\nin fields, in barrios,<br \/>\nin villages the cameras never visit\u2014<br \/>\nthe question survives louder than answers:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Poetry: M. Jahangir Khan Why were they taken\u2014 in the hour before dawn, when nations still breathe between sleep and fear? Why does the sky remember the sound of helicopters better than the names of treaties broken quietly? They say law. They say justice. But the sea knows oil, and oil knows blood, and blood &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,388],"tags":[22804,1709,22803,2990],"class_list":["post-43020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-slide","tag-taken","tag-they","tag-were","tag-why"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43022,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43020\/revisions\/43022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}