The Game Is Afoot

Keep on telling tales, Aliaksandr.

I love it when Lukashenka begins to pepper his speech with figures. First of all, it is beautiful. Secondly, it is funny. Thirdly, it organizes your leisure time very well: in a tram, or standing in a line to the supermarket cash-desk, you start adding and multiplying these figures to find some sense and spend your time wisely.

And I have spent my time very well as well. The other day Lukashenka said that every rural council should have the people's militia, "not many, about 50 people, but they must have their arms somewhere in the depot". An excellent idea, thank you. And now let's do some numbers.

There are 1,365 village councils in Belarus. To arm 50 men in each, that's 68,250. All right, let's ignore 250 for the sake of even counting. Somebody's got to get sick, die, or go out for a beer. Let's make it a round number. 68,000 armed villagers. More than the Belarusian army. And the cities and towns are not included here, whereas we want grenade launchers in capitals, regional and district centres, too. So we keep counting. The rural-urban ratio in Belarus is 22:78. That is, if the state arms 68 thousand of the rural population, it is only 22 per cent of the people's militia. And the urban population, by the way, is to be armed as well. Otherwise, it would be unfair: the enemy is advancing, the villagers are fiercely defending their village councils and not letting the enemy in. And in the meantime, what will the townspeople be doing? Hide in the smoothie and shisha bars while the enemy marches through the streets, because they, the townspeople, have no weapons. But the militia means that everybody defends the homeland. And a city man, even if he drinks mojitos and rides a longboard, has the same right to arms. Let us count: if 68 thousand are 22 per cent of the people's militia, then the full 100 per cent set is 309 thousand Belarusians. Accordingly, the share of the urban population in the people's militia is 240 thousand people. Here is the formula now.

So, with an army of 65 thousand we are going to have a people's militia four times larger than this army. And that's without taking into account the promised five thousand armed hunters under the command of Ihar Shunevich (at least, he promised Shunevich: "You will be the commander of this corps or a brigade. Five thousand trained men is strength") and two thousand armed firefighters. Personally, if I were a professional soldier I would prefer to take sick leave and crawl into the infirmary. For any military man would understand: he has nothing to do here, he has to save himself.

Ukrainians were joining the territorial defence because the enemy had attacked. There were long queues and not everyone could get a gun, and the motivation of Ukrainians was such that one could only admire. And even in their case anything could happen - with the level of consciousness above the clouds. A woman from Zhytomyr region was telling me: "When they distributed weapons, we women would hide at home in the evenings, for men would gather and start shooting in the air. And these are Ukrainians, disciplined, experienced, living in conditions of combat of varying degrees of activity for eight years. And now imagine 240 thousand armed Belarusians - angry, hating the authorities, wounded by 2020. It is not for nothing that Lukashenka prefers to fly over them in a helicopter rather than walk in the same streets. Even he understands which way the barrels will turn.

However, he always pulls figures out of a hat, just like his ideas. Because, to be really honest, in what village council can one find nowadays 50 healthy, non-drinking men of call-up age who could be entrusted with firearms? In Drazdy maybe. But it is unlikely that the inhabitants of Drazdy will rush to collect weapons at the request of the military registration and enlistment office. At the first rustling of a summons, they will rush to the Cote d'Azur, wiping off sweat and whispering curses addressed to those who went and voted back in 1994.

By the way, when did Lukashenka personally visit the village last time? Or did he recollect himself, when he was a director of a state farm, young and full of vigour? Well, no one would entrust him with a gun, that's for sure.

On the other hand, people forget the bad things with the increase of years, their own features seem significant and even heroic in old black-and-white photographs, as do the native places, where tired agrarians gather in the club during the summer harvest and read Byron to each other till the dawn. We can rest assured, in this wonderful country nothing will happen to grenade launchers and automatic rifles in the village storehouse: Pakhomych, the watchman, will never open the gun-chest for a half-litre bottle, and the villagers themselves will never go shooting at the bastard chairman in the night after reading Byron's verses.

Keep talking, Aliaksandr. I wonder how it will all turn out in your imagination? I, for one, would suggest a parade of hunters under the command of Ihar Shunevich. Shunevich in his NKVD uniform, as usual, and the hunters in short trousers, white shirts and Tyrolean hats with a feather - like that hunter from the film "An Ordinary Miracle". It's a fairy tale there and a fairy tale here. But ours is more beautiful, in my opinion.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org

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