Decommissioning must be a real farewell to arms

One less firearm is one less instrument of death. The number of guns to be silenced may be small but it is a great leap forward in our journey for peace. All the parties involved must be congratulated.

Hopefully, the velocity and volume of the decommissioning of arms will increase in the months to come.

It is also hoped that the decommissioning will be accompanied by a total moratorium in firearm acquisition. Otherwise, any benefit from the mothballing of arms is cancelled by the procurement of more.

The same principle should apply to the deactivation of combatants. This should go together with a total stop in recruitment. Otherwise, there will be no reduction in troop strength when ongoing conscription replaces those who are retired.

It would also help the cause of peace if the nation is told of the baseline figure at the start of the decommissioning process.

Disclosing how many men and arms there are will allow us to track, monitor and compute if a reduction is really taking place for, after all, the whole exercise is about decreasing the armaments and manpower of war.

Subtraction is the only acceptable math in the decommissioning.

We cannot say farewell to arms while we welcome more troops and arms.

Finally, to institutionalize it, decommissioning should be included in the BBL in order to set a deadline and dictate the pace.