Eclectic Grounds

From Gideon Levy, columnist for Haaretz:

Why is it permissible to talk to Hamas about the fate of one captive soldier and another several hundred prisoners, but forbidden to talk to them about the fate of two nations? Never has Israeli logic been so distorted. Now, when our hearts look forward to the deal’s implementation, when every human heart should look forward to Gilad Shalit’s release – and yes, to the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, some of them political prisoners for all intents and purposes, not just “terrorists with blood on their hands” – now is the time to finally rid ourselves of some of the foolish prohibitions we have imposed on ourselves and the entire international community. [...]

Yes, we are conducting what we are denying to ourselves: negotiations with Hamas – and the sky hasn’t fallen. Whether direct or indirect, there are talks; whether or not we recognize Hamas, there are negotiations. For us, as usual, the method that should come first waits for last. Only after we try all the rest – killing and destruction, war and starvation – do we turn to the direct route: negotiations. [...]

A free Gaza undergoing rehabilitation will be much less explosive. A Hamas busy rebuilding will behave differently, especially if it is also offered a political horizon. It will have much more to lose, something that is hard to say about Gaza today. So after we finish crossing our fingers for Shalit’s release, we have to open the same hand and reach out to Hamas in peace.

The notion of a “global war on terror” has always been nonsense. It has manufactured a threatening picture of an alleged global ideology of hatred for the western world. But the “global war” image obscures the fact that every crisis zone has its unique context and that most people who join or support insurgent groups do so for their very personal reasons which are far from ideological.

This still seems to be a perspective shared by but few officials in the US military:

Matthew Hoh, a senior US state department official and former marine who was based until recently in Zabul province [of Afghanistan], explained his resignation on 10 September 2009 by referring to his experiences in the Korengal valley and elsewhere. These, he is reported as saying:

“taught him ‘how localised the insurgency was. I didn’t realize that a group in this valley here has no connection with an insurgent group two kilometres away.’ Hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups across Afghanistan, he decided, had few ideological ties to the Taliban but took its money to fight the foreign intruders and maintain their own local power bases. ‘That’s really what shook me,’ he said. ‘I thought it was more nationalistic. But it’s localism. I would call it valley-ism’” (see Karen De Young, “U.S. official resigns over Afghan war“,Washington Post, 27 October 2009).

Found here.

- two often-debated questions in Germany after the recent federal elections. Following the victory of the conservative-liberal coalition, it is customary for the head of the smaller coalition party (the liberals) to become vice chancellor and foreign minister.

The head of the liberals is Guido Westerwelle. Now, in my opionion, there is a lot that is wrong with Westerwelle becoming FM: Be it his inexperience and previous indifference to international affairs, his political stance and style, as well as his apparent gaucheness on the international stage.

The more central question for many commentators, however, seems to be whether Westerwelle as an openly homosexual political can represent Germany as a Foreign Minister in Muslim countries.

Why wouldn’t he?

Diplomacy is probably the most pragmatic policy field. Quite regularly, countries or groups who are in the midst of the fiercest political conflicts, still maintain diplomatic relations. Just think of the close political contact of the US and the USSR throughout the Cold War, despite their existential ideological battle. You see the point: diplomacy is rational, not symbolical, an therefore mostly blind to ideology.

Why would that be any different with two countries that maintain friendly relations like, say, Germany and Saudi Arabia? Simply because of the sexual orientation of one country’s representative? Should the Saudi foreign minister be criticised at home for shaking the hand of a homosexual, his answer would simply be: do you want to jeopardize trade relations with one of our most important partners?

A statement from an official of the Turkish foreign ministry seems to confirm this. He told the Turkish paper Milliyet that, while there is no rule of protocol in case Westerwelle as German FM would bring his partner, “a middle way will be found”.

So far, Westerwelle’s sexual identity has been a non-issue in Germany, and I think Germany can be a little proud of that fact. Why should this situation of normality be questioned, now that it is reflected internationally?

As much as I disagree with Westerwelle representing my country from a political point of view, I would love to see his appointment create some cracks the foundation of the alleged Gay/Muslim faultline.

I recently saw a panel discussion involving Dutch sociologist and politician Paul Scheffer. In 2000, Scheffer published an influential article called “The Multicultural Drama“, in which he criticised the system of migration in the Netherlands and Europe in general. Indifferent ‘pillarisation’ of societies, he argued back then, leads to segregation and conflicts between migrants and settled society.

Now, Scheffer has published a book called “The Unsettled Land” which offers a comparison of the process of migration and its consequences in several countries of Europe and North America. He argues that, besides different systems and different responses in all these countries, the process of migration is quite similar. According to him, there are three steps that can be identified:

Step 1: Avoidance. Initially, the arrival of new immigrants causes “white flight” and segregation, until open conflict breaks out.

Step 2: Conflict. At this stage, the receiving society starts to question its own values and cultural identity to be able to cope with a reality that has outlived the society’s self-conception.

Step 3: Accomodation. Societies develop mechanism to cope with the new demographics. Examples of accomodation include symbolic politics and recognition (monuments, arts, etc) as well as more egalitarian social politics (such as role of religion in policy-making, etc).

What’s remarkable in my view is that Scheffer develops a very sober, almost mechanic, analysis that he deems to be generalizable. First, this perspective removes fear and hysteria from the debate. Migration is seen as a social change;  and while change naturally causes conflict which can be painful, it will eventually lead to a new social formation that is workable. On the other hand, it emphasises strongly our ability to manage this process by finding our ways to come to an accommodation, which, according to Scheffer, will necessarily happen.

In the process that he describes, conflict that migration causes will always lead to the receiving society questioning itself. If we want to integrate newcomers, we have to become clear into what they will be integrated. Migration can therefore also be seen as a reflection for a society

Scheffer’s book was criticised as banal in the discussion I witnessed, but I think it is useful as it sets a ‘frame’ to view the debates in that are fought daily in newspapers and discussions. Surely there are weaknesses, like overgeneralisation and a strong emphasis on the nation-state. Yet, it points to the importance of ‘management’ to be able to accommodate and emancipate newcomers within societies, and it gives a hint as to how societies benefit from it simply be reflecting upon its core values and by redefining what makes up the community that people live in.

 You can find Scheffer’s presentation of his thesis and the following panel discussion online. While the debate was in German, the presentation was in English. It starts at around 2:15. Since I still haven’t figured why I can’t embed external videos here within the blog, please click here for the video.

Several experiments in social psychology have tried to find out about the effects that arbitrary stereotyping and discrimination or privilege and power has on individuals. The most famous of these were the Zimbardo experiments.

Another one of those experience was conducted in a primary school by teacher with herclass of third-graders. To make the kids understand racial discrimination, the teacher split them up according to blue and brown eye colour. One group was defined as superior, the other as inferior.

I recently saw a Frontline documentary about the case filmed 14 years later, in which the former pupils describe the profound effects that the experience had on them. Quite ordinary, white people from a provincial town in the US state Iowa describe the humiliation, anger, demoralisation and hatred they felt at their own personal discrimination – and the feeling of (unfounded) power they got when they were in the dominant group.. 

“A Class Divided” – find the documentary here.

It’s quite intense to see the distress and violence that the participants describe, which resulted from entirely arbitrary faultlines. Experiments like those certainly help us understand the impact of ethnic, religious or any other out-group stereotyping. When talking about “blacks”, “Turks”, “Muslim” or “women” in a discrimatory manner, we usually internalise our role – discimated and disciminators alike. Documenations like the one here can shake us up a little about our everyday behaviour.

Thanks Nayano for digging it up!

When Barack Obama’s support platform “Change.Gov” asked supporters to submit queries to the new administration, the most popular question turned out to be whether Obama would appoint a special prosecutor to “independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping.” Obama’s team ignored answering the question. Obama himself, being forced to respond during a TV interview, said he would rather move forward than look back.

Dealing with the past

It seems widely accepted today that the Bush administration systematically committed war crimes in the “war against terrorism”. “Extraordinary renditions”, the Guantanamo prison, or authorised “enhanced interrogation techniques” speak clearly.

This leads to a wider question: if such an investigation was to find evidence of systematic war crimes, would it makes sense to convict the political leaders responsible? There is a vast amount of information available in the field of peace research on how to deal with crimes committed by states, and on how to best achieve justice and reconciliation concerning human rights abuses by past political regimes. From cases such as post-communist states, authoritarian regimes in Latin America or Europe after WWII, historical patterns have been identified and comparisons have been drawn that may help the US administration to decide whether or not to investigate or even to punish former government officials.

To punish or to pardon?

Many of the 76,000 people who voted for an investigation into war crimes by the Bush administration to be Obama’s top priority were likely guided by a feeling revenge. I can’t say that I don’t feel the same way. After seeing the videos I linked to above, it is hard not to have a sickening feeling. Yet, emotions of this kind aren’t always the best guiding principles for political action.

There are two key questions when addressing state crimes. One is the question of acknowledgement: should past crimes be addressed, or should they rather be swept under the rug for the sake of “moving forward”, as Obama would put it. The second question is the one of accountability: Should sanctions be imposed on perpetrators or not? Here, too, the principle of looking backward or looking forward comes into play, because there is always some trade-off between justice and reconciliation.

Sending Bush and Cheney to prison?

There are some good reasons to punish political leaders if their personal responsibility can be attested. The central one is that it allows for a morally just order to be established. If respect for human rights and the rule of law are basic tenets of a society (as any US American would be eager to assert), then violations against these principles should be punished. A second reason is that punishment for state crimes stands symbolically for a change of regime. Obama based his message of “change” on being different from the Bush regime. A prosecution of Bush’s crimes would consolidate the trust people in the US and internationally have in the new government to embody a genuine break with the past.

It is questionable, however, if the “ghosts of the past” can really be chased away by means of retributive justice. As Raoul Alfonsin, first Argentinian president after the military regime, said: “In the first analysis, punishment is one instrument, but not the sole or even the most important one, for forming the collective moral conscience.” One important element in this is an independent judiciary. Who, after all, will have to sentence former leaders? It can be stated that the democratic principle of the separation of powers suffers when courts are used for political decision-making (and political it would be, considering that Bush has represented one of the two main parties in the US). Seen from that angle, also special prosecutors with the task to “independently investigate” easily become instruments of partisan vengeance.

Generally, punishment is not always a productive or functional way of solving social conflicts, even when justice would require punishment. Where civil society is fractured and divided between supporters of the previous regime and supporters of the new regime, “tolerace” might achieve more for human rights in the long run than further divisiveness. In the US case, Republicans could see it as an attack on their own conservative beliefs. In the worst case, former Bush voters – as well as bureaucrats and other officials – would feel alienated, creating the grounds for a destabilising backlash against the new administration.

The process of collective amnesia

What would an alternative be? Simply moving on? There have been many cases of state crimes where that happened, Spain being one of them (though it may be argued that the collective trauma in Spain after Franco can’t be compared to the US after Bush). For societies with past atrocities, amnesia is a tempting and psychologically almost normal reaction. On a collective level, this may happen unconsciously, like in Spain. But denial may also take an organised form whereby state institutions attempt to rewrite history. The Turkish atrocities against the Armenians are a powerful example of this.

Criminologist Stanley Cohen has identified a pattern of how governments react to allegations of human rights violations. The reactions normally have three elements: 1. Nothing happened (“We did not not torture”). 2. Something happened but it was no human rights violation (“It’s not torture”). 3. What happened was for the morally good (“We saved peoples’ lives with this”). Knowing that, it is worth lhaving another look at the interview with former CIA director Tenet.

To look forward, know about your past

Now there’s a problem with this kind of amnesia, which those who want to reconcile – like Obama – need to have in mind. Without truth-telling, there can’t be reconciliation. It is impossible to achieve reconciliation if parts of society refuse to acknowledge that there was ever anything wrong. Truth is a value in itself that would justify conscious dealing with the past, but there are other reason for this. They have to do with the victims, deterrence and the rebuilding of political structures that facilitated torture, and deterrence for potential perpetrators in the future.

New Yorker’s Lawrence Weschler has argued that torture victims’ demand for truth is usually greater than their demand for justice and punishment. This is mainly due to the “double problem” of torture victims: They are accused of being liars those by who do not want to acknowledge that torture happened (e.g. officials like Tenet). Thereby, their dignity is taken a second time after they have survived torture. Only by acknowledging victims’ suffering they have the chance to regain their dignity. Recognition creates a more positive identity for them: They cease to be victims and now become survivors.

Rebuilding political structures

Truth-telling is a key act of prevention as it may weaken potential support for any future repetition of abuses like torture. Imagine a commission set up by the new US administration to investigate war crimes and human rights abuses. If it described  in detail that atrocities were committed, who was responsible, and that universal principles were breached, then those who did support the Bush regime would likely feel a collective shame. It would make it harder to push an agenda of torture in the foreseeable future. This process would need to include a wider discussion and “moral cleansing” within society, where acts of torture will become clearly outlawed and not secretly tolerated or even admired, e.g. in pop culture.

There is also a need for a more immediate look at structures that facilitated torture. Regimes of torture develop laws, bureaucracy, language, rituals and justification. These structures need to be rebuilt, people involved need to be re-educated. Within the military and the bureaucracy, limits of obedience and the duty to intervene must be established. Social conditions under which crimes of obedience were possible need to be identified and reversed. Truth-telling is integral to mobilise the resources and the political will for this difficult task.

Striking the balance between justice and political prudence

Everyone can agree that crimes should not go unpunished. Still, as I have pointed out, sometimes there are good reasons for not punishing state crimes. The fundamental question is whether a criminal trial is the right legal strategy in the political realm? Here, arguments that warn the state not to ignore its moral principles and issue a blank cheque to future leaders stand against those that caution new regimes not to alienate supporters of the old regime and drive a wedge through society.

This does not mean though that “moving forward” is the right strategy. Dealing with the past is necessary to de-victimise former torture victims, to deter, and to rebuild structures that facilitate torture. The new US administration would be well advised to look into previous crimes in order to make a credible break from the past and make sure that the US will not descent into torture in the future.

The case of the US differs from all previous examples of state crimes in one respect. Here, human rights abuses did not happen within a society. Bush had built up a global system of torture where victims were not US citizens, and “extraordinary” renditions made use of global power to make other countries comply with these policies. Amnesia is tempting for US Americans because victims are far away and not part of their own society; but it’s a prerequisite for renewing American diplomacy. A public investigation into the Bush administration’s war crimes would be the first case of a global process of truth-telling.

For more information see:

The US Institute of Peace
The Project on Justice in Times of Transition
“Transitional Justice” by N. Kritz
“State Crimes of Previous Regimes” by S. Cohen (in Law and Social Inquiry)
“A Miracle, a Universe” by L. Weschler

Jörg Lau (in German) made an interesting recommendation to Europeans interested in what’s going on in the Middle East. He’s been watching Al Jazeera during the ongoing Israeli invasion in Gaza and brings up interesting points why the channel might be a positive addition to the media landscape. Al Jazeera has been the only news channel with a correspondent in Gaza from the start of the attacks, and it presents the conflict in a totally different light as compared to what we are used to.

These are the principal observations that he makes:

•  The framing is set differently: It is “War on Gaza” as opposed to “War against the Hamas”
• The civilian casualties of the invasion are at the centre of the coverage. 
• At the same time, the reporting is not populist or unfair: The Israeli government is being interviewed and confronted with questions about war crimes in Gaza.
• Al Jazeera is not a propaganda medium for Arab governments. Spokespersons from Hamas, the Israeli government and Arab leaders all get their share of airtime.

Lau concludes that a counterveiling power has been established when it comes to framing the Israeli-Palestinina conflict. Al Jazeera in his opinion is a credible and relevant news source that could rock the boat of “Western” media hegemony.

I definitely agree to this. But I would go further even. I think that Al Jazeera also has opened up a space for dialogue that has not been there before. By giving airtime to Hamas and the Israeli government, it creates new communication channels between groups who refused to talk directly and thereby it also undermines the propaganda machines that work best when there is no dialogue at all. It presents an Israeli perspective to an Arab audience, and at the same time it can legitimately ask critical questions to the Israeli government that the “Western” media seem to refuse to ask. Another aspect: for me as a non-Arab and non-Muslim it is new to listen to Hamas spokespersons directly as it’s not something that I usually get to hear. 

Lau says he finds Al Jazeera coverage of the war in Gaza too one-sided, and he laments that Hamas power in Gaza is a blind spot in the coverage. I agree. But it is not really the point, because this not a matter of presenting the news in a way that an please an Arab, an Israeli and a Western audience. It can’t be done. It is primarily a matter of all sides listening to each other and – while expressing concerns, grievances or even hatred – to at least recognise the other side as human beings and as potential partners in dialogue. That would already be a step into the right direction.