Weary of War

Violence around the world has been popping up a lot lately.

 Estimates put the death toll in Syria over 100,000 that makes it the most deadly global conflict at the moment; as deadly in the past 4 years as Iraqi violence in the last 10 years. Negotiations around the civil war in Syria seem to be going nowhere. Some accounts suggest that the negotiations were never more than a charade by the Assad government in the first place.  

Iraqi violence had a significant increase in 2013 with around 10,000 known casualties. Although the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 show some signs of decline in violence Iraq’s irregular periodic up ticks and down swings makes it hard to predict.

 Violence in the streets in Ukraine has led to the toppling of the government and as I write this the Ukrainian president and sections of parliamentary are resigning in mass. There is uncertainty about what is next.

 Venezuela is experiencing violence in street demonstrations started by an extreme right wing and responded to by pro-government groups. It is unlikely that this situation will evolve into a situation like the Ukraine much less the civil war in Syria but one never knows. 

Africa has 15 countries involved in wars or post war conflicts.  

American drones recently hit a wedding party in Yemen killing 12 people. American drones terrorizing the northeastern Pakistani tribal regions controlled by Taliban has led to Taliban leaders refusing to allow immunization programs to continue in one of the last places on earth still plagued by polio. Between the drones and the refusal to permit immunization this should be considered biological warfare.

 This week the UN commission of inquiry on human rights in the DPRK reported their finding of crimes against humanity in North Korea spelling out the violence that the North Korean government has been inflicting on their own population.

In spite of this outline of political violence in the world there are some small hopeful signs. However weekly symbolic North Korea recently allowed a small group of North Koreans to meet with their long separated South Korean relatives. Negotiations around Iranian nuclear development between Iran and the US lead “West” continue to move at pace. On Valentine ’s Day countries of the non-aligned movement called for a target date to be set for the elimination of nuclear weapons. On that same day women around the world participated in a day of mass action called 1 billion women rising which is a protest of violence against women.

But let’s return to the various conflicts around the world. Among these conflicts there is imperial attacks, civil wars , street fights, acts of self-defense,  violence propagated by terrorist groups and bands of thugs (who is a thug or terrorist and what is self-defense may depend on your political perspective). There are conflicts that drag on for years and violence that may be over by the time you read this. Syria has a high death count.  I hope the number killed in Venezuela will remain single digit.

The reasons for these violent conflicts are up for debate: Economics, and the control of resources, religious beliefs, and religious feuds, historical conflicts, political order, political liberty, national pride and political alliances, ideology or class conflicts? Depending on the conflict any one or several of these issues may be at the root.

From a distance I could condemn all of this violence as pointless, and immoral.  Fortunately I believe that more and more people everywhere are growing critical of political violence.  But I want to emphasize the uncertainty and ineffectualness of political violence.

Let’s just look at the Ukraine, with push from Russia, Ukraine’s president Yanukovych decided to crack down on the protesters, they fought back and the crises of legitimacy grew too great so that just a few days later Yanukovych and much of his government resigned and have fled.  Now there is a political vacuum and the forces that might fill it are sometimes opposing factions. If the country leans too far to the west some observers say this could lead to drawn out military conflicts with Russia.

The Syrian Civil war is a struggle for a country with at least three different political tendencies, and regardless of who “wins” as the country is torn apart everyone loses.  The longer the war goes on the harder it becomes to forgive and make peace.

Presumably the North Korean leadership even with Kim Jong Un, the new supreme leader has still concluded that torture, abduction, public killings, planned food withholding and prisoner work camps (all findings of the UN commission) is a way to move forward in the world or perhaps it’s just their desperate strategy for holding onto power.  

Behind the violence in Venezuela some people see US puppeteers; with US history in Latin America this wouldn’t be entirely surprising. Whatever the final results of this violence, likely political fall-out from this street violence will be further fuel for the anti-Chaves anti-Maduro propaganda machine. Engagement in the violence from either the government or its supporters only hurts its cause.  

“Well meaning” American drones are (surprise) fueling anti-American sentiments and helps to prop up the Taliban while increasing political instability in Pakistan and Yemen.

It would be nice if I could claim that the non-violent  “Orange Revolution” of  Ukraine created a fully democratic government that was responsive to the aspirations of its people even 10 years later. 

I wish I could look to the results of the Arab Spring and see clearly that its nonviolent campaigns produced the fruits that its participants were trying to cultivate. While the case can be made for that kind of success in Tunisia, Egypt has swung from nonviolent success, to electoral counter revolution, to military counter revolution each swing seeming to take the Egyptian people further from the society that the original revolution sought.

Things would be easier if Venezuela hadn’t already experienced at least one coup attempt since Hugo Chavez was first elected, if there weren’t forces actively working to overturn Venezuela’s political efforts at economic fairness.

Building a better world is often one step forward one step back and repeat. Wishes don’t always come true, things aren’t always easy. 

Maybe there are times when violence makes sense in moving forward some important political program or goal.  I don’t know how one knows when it’s one of those times.

From my perspective, even with its uncertain results, non-violence holds better promise.  I would much rather be in Egypt than Syria. The science of non-violence deserves deeper research. Even just negotiations whether with a government, a terrorist group or a political opposition hold more promises than turning to force. You might ask, “how can you negotiate with them?” My response is “could talking really be worse than coming in shooting?”

A bad immunization decision

Dr Shakeel Afridi  made a very bad immunization decision. Although his decision involved hepatitis vaccination it has implications for polio.

Eradication of polio would be a great human achievement. Only once before have human beings work together successfully to eliminate the disease from our planet. In many ways we are making progress in the efforts to eliminate polio. In January of this year India past the one-year mark for being polio free. So far this year there have only been 60 confirmed cases mostly in the three remaining endemic countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Last year at this time there had been 165 cases. 

The original plan was to eliminate polio by the year 2000. A couple of years later the war in Afghanistan made the efforts to eliminate polio all that much more difficult. Successes are often followed by failures.  In 2010 devastating flooding in Pakistan led to major outbreaks.  Many places that have been polio free become reinfected from time to time. Most of the polio cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan are in the border regions between the two countries where infections in the knocked back and forth like a volleyball. 

Although we may be closer than we have ever been to the goal of eliminating polio this last bit may prove to be exceedingly hard. There is a problem of donor fatigue. The budget for the next few years stands at just over $2 billion, nearly $1 billion still need to be raised. The 2012 world polio eradication budget is $270 million short. Even the unfunded $2 billion budget is lacking resources for funding ongoing polio immunization in areas that are vulnerable to reinfection.

Beyond the financial struggle there is the very real challenge of conducting an immunization campaign in a war zone. At times the polio eradication campaign has been seen by some communities as a Western conspiracy. One of the stumbling blocks in Nigeria has been acceptance from some local Islamic leaders. Similarly the Taliban has an uneasy relationship with immunization efforts. Some Taliban have believed that immunization efforts were really a conspiracy to sterilize Muslim populations. Even though both the Taliban and local Islamic leaders in Nigeria have more recently supported immunization campaigns, “immunization efforts” are not always innocent and free of conspiracy.

Dr Shakeel Afridi was recently convicted of espionage by the Pakistani government. Afridi was involved in CIA efforts to look at DNA samples that were acquired from immunization needles in Abbottabad. The target of that search was DNA of children of Osama bin Laden. When the CIA identified that his children were in the area that helped in confirming their belief that they had found the compound where he was dwelling.  Although this DNA search apparently involved giving real hepatitis vaccinations Dr. Afridi acted in a way that violated multiple principles of medical ethics. One might try to justify many of these violations on the grounds of stopping Osama bin Laden. Patient privacy, for instance, is broken for much smaller police investigations. 

What is particularly objectionable, is that this fraudulent campaign has the potential to undermine polio eradication efforts. There has already been some suggestion of fear of immunization by people in tribal regions of Pakistan. The concern these people have is that the immunization campaign may be a front for an effort to track down Taliban leaders. Even a small amount of nonparticipation in the polio eradication campaign could allow the virus to harbor, and later breakout. We need to be vigilant against the possibility of even a small number of cases spreading to other countries and then like dominoes spreading beyond. At this point, such an outbreak could put back the eradication efforts by years, if not even leading to the collapse of the efforts altogether. Political enemies come and go, wars do not eliminate them. On the other hand, if eradicated, polio will not come back. 

Let's do a cost comparison. According to the website “cost of war” the cost of the Afghanistan war is now over 500 billion, so the ratio between the amount spent on this useless war and the amount still needed to eliminate polio, is greater than 500:1. Let's look at it another way, the Center for Defense Information estimates the cost of a team of four drones to be about $120 million (they typically fly in teams of4) a little more than two teams would cover the unmet polio eradication budget needs for 2012.

The CIA's program that used immunization to engage the DNA of children in tracking down and killing their father may have unforeseen ramifications regarding the effort to eliminate polio. The American war machine is not much on apologies, or paying for their mistakes, but in relationship to the Pentagon budget a couple hundred million dollars is hardly anything.

a campaign promess worth breaking

The new administration deserves appreciation for some of its initial actions. It is great progress that Obama has decisively declared an end to torture, that he has committed to close Guantanamo and all of the CIA’s secret prisons. Obama’s commitment to opening up the Freedom of information process is also positive. His instruction to the pentagon to draw up plans for removing troops from Iraq is a good first step. I’m even willing to be hopeful about the appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East. All this seems in keeping with campaign promises.

Unfortunately there is one campaign promises Obama seems to be keeping that is a foreign policy boon dog. On the 23rd of January a drone plane flew into Pakistan and killed at least 15 people, possibly an al Qaeda leader, but also at least 3 children. Continuing these attacks was in keeping campaign statements he made. When debating McCain he said, “if the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out.” In my opinion this position is wrong, and this recent strike was wrong for several reasons: 1) Although governments think they have the right to kill, killing is murder. 2) Collateral damage is another term for killing innocent people, in this case at least 3 children 3) Invading Pakistan like this is not good for building relations with the Pakistani government.4) Extrajudicial assassinations make the kangaroo courts of Guantanamo look like paragons of justice. Finally 5) what this act amounts to is a continuation of the Bush policy of preemptive military action.

The Bush doctrine of preemptive attack undermines the previously prevailing consensus regarding rules of international conflict. If preemptive attacks are justified then any government can claim that their initiation of violence was actually preemptive, an attempt to protect against attack. This was the argument for invading Iraq and has been used in discussions of possible attacks on Iran. Al Qaeda of course is the ultimate boogie man, and it will be argued that since we are in war with al Qaeda we have to strike them wherever they are. But when we strike inside of a country with out that countries approval it is an attack on that country.

This principle of preemptive action can be borrowed and widely spread. I recently read a debate about who first broke the cease fire that led to the recent invasion of Gaza by Israel, but who started it is no longer the question governments have to ask since preemptive actions can be justifiable. This kind of argument makes a difficult situation even worse. As the lone superpower in the world other nations look to the U.S. for the standards of international behavior. Until the Bush doctrine is overturned virtually any military action can be justified.

It is important for those of us working for a less violent world to push Obama to reject the Bush doctrine. This will mean that he will have to go back on that one campaign promise.

Many who want peace are delighted that Obama is in office and the general direction he is moving in. I share that general pleasure. Nonetheless this does not mean that our work is done, rather our work is cut out for us. One of the most refreshing traits of Baraq Obama is that he does listen to people. Now more than anytime that I can recall, our voices do have the potential to be heard. Yes things are better, but here is one area where we need to work for more, we need to demand the braking of a campaign promise.