Genius is a word with vast meaning and broad scope. Human history has produced some extraordinary men whose name alone is sufficient to portray the picture of a genius. Vo Nguyen Giap, popularly known as General Giap, is one of them. He was one of those legendary heroes who impacted, inspired, motivated and mobilised the world with their bravery, sagacity and commitment. He has left the world but not without leaving indelible marks on the history of humankind. Some call him the hero of Vietnam. I believe he is a hero for the whole world. His unprecedented achievements on the battlefield and his phenomenal feats in the art of guerilla warfare blurred all boundaries and reached every nook and corner of the world. During the 1960s, the peak period of the Vietnam War, I was a schoolboy from a tiny village about 10 km away from any road or rail link where no newspaper reached. However, the charisma of ‘General’ Giap reached even there and had an immense influence on my heart and mind. In fact, during the 1960s and 1970s, General Giap became a household name not only in Pakistan but in almost every country of the world. Every nation, particularly the oppressed ones, revered Giap along with their own folk heroes. This all happened in an era of very little free media. Some analysts describe him as “one of the greatest generals of the 20th century” but he deserves a place among the greatest of all time. Most great generals throughout history have led the armies of the state/kingdom with all resources at their disposal while Giap had wisdom, skill, love of the land, faith in the people and commitment to the cause as his only assets. He collected poor, weak, hungry, barefooted and empty handed men and women from Vietnam and turned them into a united, unbeatable fighting force. More importantly, the man doing all this had himself no formal military training while opposing generals were accredited by the finest academies of the world — academies whose bare names would suffice to send shivers down the spines of many. Guerrila war has always been a weapon of the weak but Giap took it to unprecedented heights. Generally, guerrilla tactics would be used to engage, weaken and threaten state armies. Vietnamese guerrillas, under the command of General Giap, completely and comprehensively defeated two imperial powers, three if we include the short-lived occupation by Japan, one after another. France and Britain were the two most powerful and the most savage imperial powers of their time and, at the peak of their power, they occupied and ruled most of Asia and Africa. All the supremacy and superiority of France was shattered and all its arrogance brought to its knees at the battlefield of Dien Bien Phu at the hands of Giap-led Vietnamese guerrillas. It was a second Waterloo for the French ‘conquerors’. In fact, it was more humiliating and decisive: in Waterloo, France faced another empire, the British, which was equally as powerful while at Dien Bien Phu their forces were defeated and destroyed by the ‘wretched of the earth’, the Vietnamese workers and peasants. Dien Bien Phu proved to be the beginning of the end of the French empire. As the declining French empire left, the emerging US empire stepped in. In place of long-stretched, tired and exhausted French forces came the fresh US armies, enthusiastic about proving their prowess and eager to test their military might and display their technological superiority and political domination. On the other side, the Vietnamese had to continue the fight from where they had left off against France. The US had the support of NATO countries and the backing of all the capitalists, kings and military dictators of the so-called third world across Asia, Africa and Latin America — it was a fight between two unequals. The Vietnamese were no match for the US, militarily and economically, but they were compensated with patriotism, freedom and peace, accompanied by the inspiring and innovative leadership of General Giap under the guidance of the Vietnam Workers Party. As the war progressed, the US found itself trapped in an unwinnable situation, meeting unforeseen challenges. Out of frustration, the US started targeting the civilian population with carpet bombings of ports, agriculture fields and suspected guerilla hideouts using napalm bombs and chemical weapons, forgetting all the lessons of human rights and moral values the US wants to teach others. Despite this, the war reached a stage where international observers/analysts started wondering how long the US could sustain the loss of very expensive B-52 bombers. In fact, the ‘mighty’ US had made the Vietnam War a point of ego and wanted to win it at any cost. However, despite crossing all limits of humanity and international law, it could not win the war even at the cost of 58 thousand ‘precious’ US lives and more than two million ‘not-so-precious’ Vietnamese lives. It failed to break the spirit and defeat the determination of the valiant Vietnamese and the US had to leave with a broken ego and wounded soul. Even after US soldiers left the land of General Giap, this war continued to haunt them like a frightening nightmare. Many war returnees encountered mental disorders and psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists found extended business. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq had also, among other things, a psychological aspect. It was an effort to get rid of this haunting nightmare and an attempt to restore and rebuild the broken ego. How much the ‘sole superpower’ succeeded in this endeavour is another question. Vo Nguyen Giap was a teacher before becoming a general. As a teacher, he taught his pupils how to live a dignified life and, as a general, trained his people how to embrace an honourable death. Earlier he lectured on how to live for a cause, later he demonstrated how to die for a cause. He made guerrilla war an art as well as a science and became a romantic figure for the youth of the 1960s and 1970s. A prolonged war between right and wrong, the just and the unjust, the oppressor and the oppressed, the exploiter and the exploited has been going on since time immemorial. The US has seen many a battle but the Vietnamese one was unique. It was the rarest of rare encounters where the most powerful imperial power in human history was decisively and comprehensively defeated by an oppressed and occupied nation holding the weapon of truth and justice. It was unique and exemplary because it simultaneously solved the two biggest contradictions of society: the national question and the class conflict. That is why the Vietnamese struggle has acquired the status of a Bible for oppressed nations and the suppressed masses of the world. Along with Ho Chi Minh and Li Duan, General Giap has a role. This role is the legacy of that great man, holding a message for coming generations. The message is: military might is not the deciding factor; willpower, commitment, determination, faith in human values and confidence in people’s power are winning weapons. The writer is Chairman of Jeay Sindh Mahaz and can be reached at khaliquej@hotmail.com