At a news conference that I saw this morning, a Pakistani general was briefing the press on the "miscreants" that the Pakistani army has been battling in Pakistan's northern mountainous border region with Afghanistan for the past few weeks. Now, I have never used the word miscreants before, although I have heard it and probably read it, but it struck me as an unusual word to use for a force of hardened Al Queda terrorists.

As I sat wondering what exactly the word meant, the impression I got was that a group of very naughty fellows, whose mothers didn't know where they were, had gone for an illicit hiking trip in the mountains where they then set about amusing themselves by sniffing the poppies that grow in abundance in the area and occasionally converting some of the blooms into heroin for consumption at giggling group parties, where local girls were enticed to perform belly dances and other adolescent frivolities, before the group, armed with AK-47s and the like, went off to take pot shots at Pakistani soldiers..

Not being able to stand the uncertainty any longer, I resorted to the dictionary to clarify my apparent misunderstanding. Alas, I was not far off the mark:

miscreant /miskreeant/ n. vile wretch; villain [synonyms: criminal, wrongdoer, felon, rogue, reprobate, scoundrel, knave, thug colloquial scamp, crook, baddy often jocular rascal slang hood, mug]

So, all along they were pursuing some vile wretches who were roguishly scampering about the border area engaging in felonious thuggery and crooked knavery. It was the goodies and the rascally baddies. A basic cowboy and Indian extra-mural activity. Essentially, a bit of harmless fun, what!

On further reflection, there may well be some subtle, nay indeed, cunning, intelligence plan in play here. By using the term "miscreants", instead of "terrorists", the honorable general, being well versed in the nuances of the language in which he chose to express himself, undoubtedly aimed to undermine the credibility of the reprobatious villains who, virtually in his backyard, were engaged in all manner of wrongdoery. What better way to diminish the power of a tiger than to call it a kitty, hey what-oh!

This very model of a modern major-general has struck the very model of a major epistemological blow against those naughty knaves who would otherwise trick us into believing that they were actually dangerous, fiendish, war-mongering terrorists.

30 March 2004

Dion Marc Delport

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