Artists and Peace
What role do artists play in the quest for peace? A large one, says a Pakistani comedy troupe that thinks they can help the peace process.
Mishi Khan is all for more cultural contacts between the two countries that are slowly dismantling stereotypes and making peace a real possibility. "Artists, singers and actors have no boundaries. Nothing is impossible if we set our heart on it," says the actor, who is looking forward to a taste of real India in Delhi's Chandni Chowk area, eating, shopping and talking.
Kazi, too, believes in the power of creative people to dissolve boundaries.
"Art, music and theatre fosters a better relationship and helps in demolishing prejudices," says Kazi, for whom her passage to India is a provocation to rediscover her roots in places like Aligarh, Rampur and Surat that still house members of her extended family.
Conflicts between states are usually conflicts of two groups of people. Often, they have different cultures and different languages. They understand little about the other's history or traditions.
Artists can bridge that divide by bringing society's conflicts down to the individual scale. A poet's words, revealing a small portion of herself, could perhaps connect with someone on the other side of the wall. A picture can tell an emotional story that resonates beyond cultural boundaries. Artists can take conflicts at the grand scale, along with all the stereotypes and prejudices that come with countreis at war, and reduce them to one-on-one interactions.
But this is also the great failing of artists. They interact with their audience, and perhaps break down cultural stereotypes, but they do little on the grand scale. One of the tenets of sociology is that groups act differently than individuals. So even if an artist reached every person on every side of the border, the groups of individuals could still hate one another. Maybe it's an artist's place to start the discussion, and the politician's role to finish it.
Northern Ireland
The peace process in Northern Ireland has been the most successful of any entrenched conflict in recent history. Of course, that isn't saying much. But the change in the politics of the country, particularly in the mindset of republicans, has been remarkable -- going from the embrace of violent means of resistance to hope that the future lies with the ballot box, not the bomb trigger.
While the two sides remain at a stalemate as to the N. Ireland government, which was suspended after allegations of IRA spying, much of the terrorist violence against the British and Protestant police forces has stopped. However, that does not mean N. Ireland is a peaceful place. The IRA has come under steady attack over the last weeks and months for their alleged involvement in a bank heist and barroom murder. Their reputation has gone from being the heroes of the armed resistance to nothing more than thugs and murderers.
Sinn Fein, the IRA's alleged political wing, is now under enormous pressure to cut ties with and even disband the paramilitary group.
In 35 years of armed conflict, as the IRA fought the British security forces to a bloody stalemate, de Faoite would not have dreamed of criticizing the IRA. But now, he and other republicans -- hardline nationalists who believe force is justified to remove British influence from Ireland -- are saying openly what for them was once unthinkable.
''It's time for Sinn Fein to break from the IRA," said de Faoite, a 65-year-old construction company executive from the southern city of Tipperary. ''Politics is the only way to go now. That break should be made."
The lessons of N. Ireland certainly do not comport with any pacifist agenda. The injustices of British rule were met with violent resistance. And violent resistance, paradoxically, led to a semblance of peace.
But what is most interesting, and hopeful, is that the ballot box is now the stronger alternative to violence. Given a chance for participation in meaningful democracy, people committed to the violent overthrow of a government will, and have, accepted politics as the better solution. And despite all the problems with the Good Friday agreement and the stalled peace process, it is that mindset that gives me hope that true peace will come to N. Ireland.
The Politics of Fear
The first pages of Seymour Hersh's book Chain of Command give a horrifying look inside the bureaucracy of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- the meetings of high-level officials, the memos exchanged, and the promises that something will be done. It is a disturbing, though not wholly unexpected, glimpse of the disconnect between the conditions of prisoners and the cool discussion of what to do about it.
But instead of making me outraged or determined to do something about it, the book forced me to remember the circumstances that allowed such atrocities in the first place. We've seen the images hundreds of times -- the planes plummeting into buildings, grey dust covering Manhattan, the collapsed wall of the Pentagon. And because we've witnessed these horrors again and again, we forget one very important thing -- on Sept. 11, and for days and weeks and months afterwards, we were scared. We knew it could have been any one of us on those planes or in those buildings. We didn't know why we were being attacked. And we didn't know what was going to happen next.
That's the funny thing about being afraid of something: you want someone to protect you. Our government tried to fill that void, armed with the PATRIOT Act and promises of more and better security. They had a willing populace, people who were ready to give over just a little bit of their civil liberties to make sure they were safe on airplanes and in cities. And then they were willing to give up a little more. Just to make us safe.
That's the funny thing about being safe: you never really are. But you believe you could be. So to stop that little tremble that runs through you even time you see a plane fly low, you nod your head when they ask if they can wiretap the phones of terrorists. Or drop bombs on Afghanistan. Or question prisoners who may know exactly where and when the next attack will come.
So we can rail against the administration for Abu Ghraib and shake our heads for the injustices of Guantanamo, but there was certainly a little part of me, perhaps of all of us, that would have let the government do anything after Sept. 11 to make sure that I and all the people I loved were protected. I certainly feel somewhat complicit in what my governement has done in my name. And now I'm not sure what to do to take back that little piece of power I gave up when I nodded my head and said, "Protect me. Please."
Somalia's Anarchy (And Other Things I Never Knew)
Somalia was without a government for 13 years. Warlords ruled bits of the country for most of that time. Families lived (and still live) in the buildings once devoted to schools and hospitals.
A new government was elected last year, and peacekeeping troops from Uganda and the Sudan are on their way to restore order to the more dangerous parts of the country.
I'm not sure this is exactly a success story for peace. Going from anarchy to a government is certainly a stabilizing force in the region, and one hopes that the tide of refugees flowing from Somalia will be stemmed by a return to order. But how did a country go without a government for so long? And what kind of government will be in place now? Only time will tell, I suppose, but the need for a structure -- any structure -- does not often result in an ideal government.
But here's the more pressing question: did anyone know about this place? Did anyone know that Somalia has been in a state of anarchy since 1991? (For most of that time, it was the only state in the world without a government). There were the pictures from Mogadishu in 1993. And then the place vanished, with no mention of what has happened since. I find my lack of knowledge about this area incredibly disturbing -- that my only awareness of this country came from the horrific deaths of Americans who went there.
On a larger scale, my ignorance of Somalia is indicative of the bigger picture that Americans have little knowledge about the world in general. Part of the reason for this blog is to help to correct that -- to bring information about these parts of the world to light. Information about the world in which we live is essential for peace. Without knowledge of each other, of the true state of the world, we have little hope of defusing conflict or attempting to promote peace throughout the world. I don't know how to accomplish this goal. As I find out more about my own ignorance, I am overwhelmed by the amount of things that I don't know. And I am overwhelmed by the task of informing myself.
We are asking difficult questions on this blog, questions that require patience and wisdom to answer. Here's the big one for today: Will we ever learn about each other (other countries, other people)? Will we ever be able to effectively promote peace if we don't?
The Past and the Present
Two stories from this week:
The new Holocaust museum opened in Israel.
A video projected on a wall at the entrance shows daily Jewish life in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, while visitors can see victims' personal artefacts, including braids of hair cut by a mother from her 11-year-old daughter, before the girl was deported from Germany to her death.
"We gave the victims an identity. We gave them a voice. We gave them a face," said curator Yehudit Inbar.
The names and photographs of some of the victims recorded in a three million page collection of testimonies are displayed, surrounded by a watery abyss, in the museum's Hall of Names.
The estimate of deaths from illness and starvation in
Darfur has soared from 70,000 to 180,000. Amnesty International roughly estimates an additional 50,000 people have died from violence.
A UN report earlier this year concluded that while the killings in Darfur did not amount to genocide, killings, torture, enforced disappearances and sexual violence were carried out on a widespread and systematic basis and could amount to crimes against humanity.
The BBC's Susannah Price at the UN says the latest reports from Darfur say lawlessness and attacks by the Janjaweed militia continue to blight the lives of civilians.
The Janjaweed attacked villages, targeted an internally displaced peoples camp and burnt abandoned homes to discourage those who wanted to return, she says.
Please take action to stop this genocide. Call your Senator or Congressman and ask them to support the Darfur Accountability Act, which would impose focused sanctions on the Sudan and support the expansion of the African Union force. Do what you can to give these victims an identity, a voice, a face.
The Value of Life
A thesis has been advanced time and again over the last few years: large-scale war between major states is obsolete.
One possible theory (among many) for this notion is that the costs of war have simply outweighed the benefits. For developed nations with a large amount of intellectual capital, the loss of individual life which accompanies war is no longer outweighed by the marginal societal benefits of winning power struggles. Increasing standards of living (lower birth rates, higher levels of education, more societal investment in each citizen) results in a value system driven by individuals. When parents know they will not lose half of their children in the first years of life, they allow themselves to love each one to the full capacity of the human heart. When society places an emphasis on free and public education for all, it begins to invest in each individual, putting time, money and thought into giving each person a chance for success. When the loss of each life becomes painful for a country, when numbers of military casualties in the hundreds are just as unacceptable as numbers in the hundreds of thousands were in the past, then governments will begin to take their decisions to begin war (particularly war with other developed countries which have massive destructive capabilities) much more seriously.
Could this kind of thinking represent a new path for the spread of peace throughout the world? While it is important to argue for nations and groups to avoid violence as a solution, it might be just as important to bring up the standard of living so that the cost of conflict becomes so prohibitive that the idea of war for material gain becomes untenable.
People all over the spectrum (not just on this blog) struggle with the definition of "peace" in real terms -- is it merely the absence of conflict or the betterment of all of mankind? Even if peace is narrowly defined as the former, this kind of analysis shows that achieving the latter is paramount to any kind of success.
(thanks to TMQ and AJK for this idea)
