Are We Not All Human Underneath?

The events of the past week have reignited the debates on immigration and racism whose embers have been glowing for some time.  The brutal murder of a British soldier in Woolwich was purportedly revenge for the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In response to the attack, the English Defence League sent out a rallying cry to its members, galvanising them into organising anti-Islamic demonstrations across the country.  Viewed from some angles, the Woolwich murder and the subsequent EDL protests might suggest that white westerners and Muslims are further than ever from understanding one another, masking the more hopeful reality that extremists on all sides represent only a minority opinion.  Today’s Britain is a truly multicultural society, yet tensions between the myriad cultures are omnipresent.  Thirty-five years after Edward Said’s seminal work was first published, is it pertinent to ask whether Orientalism is alive and well in 21^st century Britain?

The central tenet of Said’s Orientalism was that Western discourse about the East (the Orient) was, and always had been, inherently prejudiced and based on a false assumptions.  Said defined ‘Orientalism’ as a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”, describing the Orient as an almost “European invention…a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said, Orientalism, (Penguin, 1978), p.1-3).  Said argued that a European or American studying the Orient could not escape the fact that “he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second” (p.11).  In the third and final chapter of Orientalism, “Orientalism Now”, Said asserts that “human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with ‘other’ cultures” (p.204).

Discussion of Orientalism resurfaced in 2011, with the arrival of the Arab Spring.  It appeared that, contrary to the expectations of the western experts, the people of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were taking their future into their own hands. The results have been uncertain, chaotic and far from perfect – everything that is to be expected of emerging democracies.  The recent high turnout for the elections in Pakistan, including large numbers of women, despite threats and violence by the Taliban, should be a lesson for us in the West not to impose our own values on other countries, nor to assume them incapable of shaping their own civil society.  Pakistan’s fledgling democracy is being built by Pakistani people.

Said touches on the dangers of “self-congratulation” when representing your own and “hostility and aggression” when representing another (p.325).  Immanuel Kant believed that “partiality, the tendency to make exceptions on one’s own behalf or one’s own case” was “the central human weakness” from which all others flowed, and that this could be applied to nations too (quoted in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p.2).  Human beings also appear to have a predilection for defining themselves as different to the ‘other’.  Indeed, it has been argued that a sense of British identity was forged following the Act of Union, joining Scotland with England and Wales, in 1707 on the basis of being 'Not French' (Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (London: Pimlico, 1992).  These concepts – warped love of one’s own nation and seeing oneself in contrast to the other – sit at the heart of the EDL’s twisted ideology.  The same can be said of Islamic extremists.  And our response, in no uncertain terms, should be to reject Said’s assumption that we will never truly understand one another.

Despite being an atheist, I can appreciate the values enshrined in Martin Luther King’s interpretation of Jesus’ command to love your enemy.  “It is love that will save our world and our civilization," King said; "love even for enemies” (Montgomery, Alabama, 17 Nov 1957).  King went on to add in a speech on Christmas Day, 1957: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights unequivocally define a common humanity, recognising that “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”  There are many different ways to see the world, but none of them excuse the mistreatment of others; subjugating women, persecuting minorities, or resorting to violence and murder.  Education has a role to play in teaching us about other cultures, in bringing the people of the world together, and in combatting Orientalism in all its guises.  Western capitalist democracy, with all its overindulgences, is certainly not the only way, nor indeed is it the best way.  There are many things we can learn from the other – from all others – which will enrich our world views, but there are other lessons, of cruelty and oppression, that we should abandon by the wayside on humanity’s journey toward enlightenment.  The values we share are far greater than those on which we disagree.  Universal tolerance will be humankind’s greatest triumph over extremists of all shapes and sizes.  In 2013, this goal is a distant dream, but the more people believe it to be achievable, and refuse to fall prey to the call to arms, the sooner we will accomplish it.

One nation...in isolation?

Thursday’s local election results have an eerily familiar ring to them.  An electorate dissatisfied with the establishment, in the throes of an economic crisis, looking for someone to blame, votes for the party which claims to represent the frustrations of the average citizen.  In the 1930s, when Germans were pushing their life savings around in wheelbarrows just to buy a loaf of bread, a vote for the National Socialists seemed like the only way to make a change.

Outsiders make easy targets for election campaigns.  Why can’t you get a job?  Because the foreigners are taking them.  Why are your benefits being cut?  Because the government is handing out houses and healthcare to immigrants.  What’s the solution?  Send them back and cut loose from the control of the European Union and the floods of workshy scroungers that come with our membership.

It’s an argument that goes down well with people frustrated by a seemingly endless recession perpetuated by a remote and duplicitous political elite.  In taking an average of 25% of the votes in the seats in which it stood, UKIP registered itself as a serious force on the British political landscape, sending a clear message to the old guard.  A vote for UKIP was a protest vote – but a dangerous one.  As purveyors of “I’m not racist, but…” ideology, UKIP’s leadership know exactly how to target the susceptible.  Though not explicitly racist, political parties which advocate intolerance as a solution to economic difficulties, can conduct a creeping and far more worrying advance into the national psyche.

UKIP, by putting the United Kingdom in its party name, plays on misplaced notions of patriotism.  Patriotism in itself is not necessarily a negative concept, but when it spills over into nationalism, it becomes a dangerous force.  Albert Einstein called nationalism “an infantile disease.”  What are nations, after all, but arbitrary lines drawn on maps?  Imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson once argued, created by man as a method of controlling others.

Immigration, sometimes on mass, sometimes in small groups, has taken place voluntarily (and not so voluntarily) throughout history.  Immigrant communities have brought their own cultures, mixed them with local customs, and created unique new traditions.  They have become part of the landscape, absorbed into the national character, no longer questioned.  Things change.  Populations move.  Communities shift and adapt around them.

Peering out from behind Rawls’ ‘Veil of Ignorance’, one might ask why anyone should be denied the right to settle where they choose.  After all, it is generally acknowledged that a person should be free to move wherever they choose within their own country.  Joseph Carens, in making his influential case for open borders that would have Nigel Farrage choking on his celebratory pint, argues that this should be applied on a global level; after all,  “whether one is a citizen of a rich nation or a poor one, whether one is already a citizen of a particular state or an alien who wishes to become a citizen” is just as morally arbitrary as your sex, race or class (Joseph H. Carens, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics,  Vol.49, (1987), p.256).

Free movement across borders would not necessarily signify the erosion of national character.  I like to use football to support this theory.  I like football.  I support West Ham United.  I do not live in West Ham, and never have done.  I support West Ham because my Dad does.  He’s never lived in West Ham either.  He supports West Ham because his father did.  My joy at West Ham’s successes and despair at their defeats is not diminished by my distance from the East End of London; nor is it detrimentally affected by the presence of rival team supporters living in the area.  Over a hundred years since the team was formed, the players still play in claret and blue and the supporters will be forever blowing bubbles.  Why can this principle not be applied at the global level?

Membership of the European Union is not the poisonous domination of our laws and national freedom that UKIP and many Tory backbenchers would have us believe.  In this day and age we need greater integration, not isolation.  Isolationism, as a foreign policy strategy, hasn’t worked all that well in the past, as the US learnt in catastrophic manner on 7 December 1941.  As Signor Ferrari asks in Casablanca, Hollywood’s most iconic critique of the White House’s isolationist policies, “My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?”

This is true more than ever.  In an increasingly globalised world, to withdraw from the European Union would be a foolish move.  Eric Hobsbawm warned that “nothing stimulates nationalism on both sides as much as international conflict” (Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (CUP, 1991), p.91).  At the most pragmatic level, greater integration prevents wars.  Nations are less likely to declare war on nations with which they are politically and, most importantly, financially entangled.  The EU is not perfect; it’s a work in progress.  But human history is, despite how it might appear, on an upward trajectory.  Less than 70 years ago the nations of Europe were at war with one another.  The key to maintaining the upward trajectory is to move towards greater openness and integration.

The Conservative Party will undoubtedly run to the right on immigration and the EU to win back its supporters from UKIP.  Labour, wishing to avoid being seen as soft on immigration, will toughen its stance too.  The Westminster clique would do better to come down from on high, stop fiddling their expenses and granting privileges to the highest bidder, and learn how real people live.  Leading by example and preaching a little tolerance would be a good start.  We can only hope that calmer heads, and perhaps, cynically, traditional British apathy, will prevail.

Srebrenica Remembered: Peace Keepers or Peacemakers?

"The Smurfs", as Bosnians called the UNPROFOR troops

On 16 April 1993 - twenty years ago this week - the UN Security Council passed Resolution 819, declaring the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia a 'Safe Area'.  Just over two years later, in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the enclave, meeting little resistance from the UN Peacekeepers stationed there, and massacred around 7,000 Bosniak men and boys.

Over twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Fukyama’s ‘End of History’ is nowhere in sight.  With nation states still splintering off around the globe, the coming decade is set to see more violent conflicts than ever.  Yet it is unlikely that we will ever see a UN operation the size of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) again.

Despite the Security Council resolution, Srebrenica was anything but safe.  The Bosnian safe areas (Srebrenica was the first of five) were an untested peacekeeping concept, which has never been attempted again.

It seems appropriate, therefore, on this anniversary, to ask whether or not the UN still has a role to play as peacekeepers.  Could and should UN troops be authorised to use force to impose a military solution on conflicts?

Once war broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, between the Bosnian Serbs, who wished to remain part of Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Croats, who wished Bosnia to be absorbed into neighbouring Croatia, and the Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, who wanted independence, Srebrenica’s geographical location, just a few kilometres from the Serbian border, placed it firmly within the territory of the Bosnian Serbs.  Before the war, the Bosniaks had constituted a majority in Srebrenica - around 70 percent of the population - but during the first few weeks of the conflict Bosnian Serb paramilitaries drove the Bosniaks out and took the town.

A series of victories by the Bosnian Government forces (ARBiH) during 1992 recaptured the town, but by March 1993, Srebrenica was once again being heavily shelled, and the town’s population had swelled dramatically with Bosniaks fleeing from the outlying villages as the Serbs advanced.  It was at this critical moment that General Phillipe Morillon, UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, managed to force his way through Serb lines to the besieged town.  He stood on the bonnet of his white UN Jeep in the town centre and declared that the population was “now under the protection of the United Nations.”  (The Death of Yugoslavia, Episode 5, ‘A Safe Area’, (BBC2: 1995-96)).

The UN Security Council had no choice but to respond by passing the Safe Area Resolution.  The resolution was politically expedient – it showed that the international community was doing something to help, whilst at the same time using language so vague that in reality it did little to make Srebrenica truly safe.  The mandate was so ambiguous that the UN troops on the ground were able to interpret it how they saw fit, in most cases tending towards the least risky interpretation.

The member states lacked the political will to follow through on the sentiments invested in the safe area resolutions.  The Security Council required peacekeepers to play a war-fighting role, whilst failing to provide them with the weaponry or manpower to do so.  They assigned UNPROFOR a mandate which, even if only symbolically, aligned them with the Bosnian Government, but expected them to continue to rely on Bosnian Serb consent to deliver humanitarian aid.

The fall of Srebrenica in July 1995 was crucial in bringing about the end of the war in Bosnia.  Without the troublesome pockets in eastern Bosnia, the international community was finally able to force a settlement militarily upon the Bosnian Serbs.

From 1993 onwards, the UN had been authorised to use air strikes in response to BSA attacks, but had chosen not to employ them, due in part to a desire to maintain their neutrality, and partly due to fear of reprisals against civilians and peacekeepers.

Their fears turned out to be well-founded.  When General Rupert Smith, UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia from January 1995 onwards, called in air strikes in response to Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) attacks on Sarajevo, hundreds of UN peacekeepers were taken hostage in retaliation.  Smith then tried a different tack.  His opinion was that  “if you stand in the middle of someone’s fight you must expect to be pushed around; and if you do intervene, decide if you are fighting one or all of the sides and get on with it – and be prepared to risk the forces allocated to achieve the object.” (Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force, (Allen Lane, 2005), p.359) 

After the hostage crisis, the idea of a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) began to take hold and the decision to deploy it was made in early June 1995, though the guns were not in place until mid-August.  Eventually, due to a combination of ARBiH and RRF offensives, the international forces in Bosnia were in a position to impose a military solution on the conflict.

An attack on a marketplace in Sarajevo allowed Smith to employ the UN’s “dual key” arrangement with NATO.  Operation Deliberate Force was launched on 30 August.  There was no new UN Security Council Resolution passed – UNSCR 836, passed in June 1993, was used.  The BSA surrendered in a matter of weeks.

Without a clear a political aim, military advisors and commanders erred on the side of caution and neutrality.  In response, the warring parties tested the limits of UNPROFOR’s mandate, often using the UN troops as pawns and treating them with little respect.  Knowing that the international community would not risk taking sides, which, as well as being politically contentious, could result in the deaths of their own troops, the ARBiH, BSA and HVO (Bosnian Croat Forces) felt free to continue the war, despite the presence of the blue-helmeted peacekeepers.

It seemed that the international community had learnt it lesson by 1999, when forceful and decisive intervention in Kosovo forced the withdrawal of Serbian forces in less than two months.  There were no international casualties of the fierce bombing campaign.  However, this intervention was by the planes of NATO, and not the ground forces of the UN.

Is it therefore the case that a different approach to UN peacekeeping, or rather peace making is required?

MONUSCO, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been authorised to "use all necessary means" to carry out its mandate, but this is qualified by the addition of "within the limits of its capacity".  This is the same vague language used in Srebrenica Safe Area Resolution.  The mission, under its previous guise of MONUC, and in its current guise, has been in the country since November 1999, but its presence has not deterred the warring factions.  Millions have died and there is daily violence.  In South Sudan, 5 UNMISS peacekeepers from India were killed on 9 April whilst escorting a UN convoy.  They were not the first casualties amongst UNMISS troops.

There have been thousands of Srebrenicas since 1993.  There will be thousands more, unless something changes.  It has been demonstrated that when western governments have the political will, military success can be achieved relatively easily, as in Iraq.  What comes next - rebuilding states and shaping democratic futures - is the real challenge.

Graffiti in Sarajevo (2012) 

There are some conflicts in which international military intervention would prevent countless senseless deaths.  It may be that there is a moral necessity for the UN to play the part of peacemakers and send fighting forces into conflicts where human suffering can be alleviated by taking a decisive military stance.

The UN is the only organisation which can claim the legitimate consensus of all nations (with some notable exceptions, of course).  Whilst NATO's member states will inevitably be some of the main force contributors, it is a dangerous precedent for an elite group of nations to play world policeman.

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia, once said that "humanity is not pacifism at all costs."  If peacemakers are endowed with meaningful mandates, and careful consideration is given to what happens after the battles are won, it could ensure that the horrors of Srebrenica, and of many more towns like it, will never be seen again.

When is it acceptable to speak ill of the dead?

Baroness Thatcher is proving to be as divisive in death as in power.  Eulogies from the right have been countered by condemnation from the left.  As they lowered the Union Flag to half mast over Number 10, there were street parties breaking out in Brixton.

Many Labour MPs chose to stay away from yesterday's debate

Born in 1987, I am a child of the Thatcher era and have no personal memories of her government, but have read enough to know that I disagree fundamentally with every policy she implemented.  Am I a terrible person if I detail the reasons why?  I would not have been four days ago.  I probably won’t be in four months' time. But is this week the right moment to be launching diatribes against her legacy?

Thatcher may have angered many of my parents’ generation, who hold her personally responsible for their financial suffering, but she was not evil.  A great number of people did - and still do - believe she was doing the right thing for the country. Her death does not mark the end of an oppressive dictatorship. She has not been in power in this country for over twenty years.  Democracy has had it say on her leadership and her party. There is no need to be popping champagne corks at her passing.

George Galloway invited harsh criticism when he tweeted "tramp the dirt down" in response to the news (a reference to an Elvis Costello song attacking the former PM).  The Daily Mail called it a "stunningly unpleasant tweet."  Galloway also added, regarding Thatcher's stance on Apartheid, "may she burn in hellfires."  There have celebrations in cities across the UK and it has been reported that the funeral may be interrupted by protesters.

The outpourings of hatred from some quarters has been described as ghoulish. Others feel that to hold back would be hypocritical.

To rejoice in another's death is macabre, despite what Owen Jones and others like him say. There are grieving friends and family to consider.  It is especially hypocritical for those opposed to the Thatcherite philosophy on the grounds that it lacked compassion.

Some Tories called the Labour boycott of yesterday’s debate an act of disrespect. But to portray Thatcher as a national figure, above politics and party, is both blatantly false, since she embodied partisanship, and highly offensive to the large proportion of the population who did not share her views.  Speaker John Bercow is reported to have been "taken aback" at the request to recall Parliament, particularly since similar action had not been taken in response to the death of James Callaghan, the last former prime minister to die during a recess.

It was absolutely fitting that David Cameron should have been able to pay tribute to a woman who served her country and whom he admired, but this could have been done on Monday.  Setting aside seven and a half hours to debate the motion of considering tributes, when the longest such previous session was 73 minutes (this for Ted Heath; Winston Churchill was given only an unassuming 45 minutes), could be seen as an abuse of free speech and an inappropriate use of the House of Commons, our nation’s most auspicious debating chamber.

However, under the circumstances, a boycott was the right thing to do. Ed Miliband had wanted as many of his MPs to attend as possible, but there were many who would not have wanted to “honour her personal achievements” or “pay tribute to her historic significance”, as Miliband and Shadow Public Health Minister Diane Abbott did, and to do so would have been hypocritical; the equivalent of rolling out those euphemisms reserved for the funerals of unpleasant elderly relatives. But nor was it right for Labour politicians to use the occasion to air vitriolic critiques of Thatcher, as backbencher Glenda Jackson did.

The Labour MPs who boycotted the debate made the correct decision. Tributes should be left to genuine admirers; criticism for another time. To stay silent is a mark of respect for the death of an individual; it does not have to signify respect for her record or her leadership.  Yes, it is acceptable to speak ill of the dead, especially when they were a public figure who made contentious decisions which had such a far-reaching impact on the lives of so many, but not at this juncture.

There will come a time when it is appropriate to debate the Thatcher legacy, but for now, her critics should stay silent and save the champagne and street parties for the moment when every person in the world is in possession of their human rights.