Grim reaping

There's an expression, isn't there, about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind? I fear we are seeing its truth in the world today.

The West (and yes, I suppose I mean our government and its allies, encouraged by public compliance) has persisted in presuming to know what's best for other sovereign nations, especially but not exclusively in the Middle East. Parties of both the left and the right have waded in where angels fear to tread. And so in our name the government launched a war (with our big American brother) on Saddam Hussain's Iraq; then we encouraged the Syrian rebels to rise against President Bashar al-Assad and provided air-cover for the rising against President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.... Well, I'm not so sure it does now. Now IS is carrying on its bloody business not so far from Europe in the chaos that is Libya. The trouble is, as Egypt's president said, is that we leave unfinished business - which extreme jihadists willingly complete, with dreadful results.

We do have a fanatical belief in Westminster-style democracy as the fit-all for every political situation. It's arguably the least worst model, but it's clearly far from perfect. Shakespeare shared the Elizabethan fear of usurping the throne from the monarch. It was like dethroning the sun from the sky. It's a tradition which went back centuries. Respecting the emperor was something Paul enjoined on the early Christians, even though Roman emperors were as corrupt as the worst of modern dictators and not known for their benevolence towards the peaceful Jewish sect. The reason is what we read in the news every day - that, whenever you create a power vacuum, all sorts of contending forces come and try to fill it; and the ensuing chaos is hellish.

Even in Ukraine where we weighed in on the pro-European side the result is proving counterproductive, provoking the Russian bear and dividing a previously united nation. What is hard to understand is the lack of imagination of our policy-makers. One question should not be too hard for them to ask themselves, and that is this: "What would we, as the British people, feel if China or Saudi Arabia were to tell us how to run our country and then do all in their considerable power to bring about the change they prescribed?" No doubt what the answer would be.

Hopefully 2015 won't be the year of the whirlwind.

Cameron's War

So we are going to get involved in, or above, Libya. I have to confess that I agreed with Simon Jenkins' scepticism about military intervention. He argued that once you get involved you are inevitably sucked in further and further, because failure is not an option. "That Britain has been fighting and not winning two wars already in Muslim countries seems to teach nothing in Libya.... If the rebels win it should be their victory, emerging from a new balance of power inside Libya. If they fail, they must fight another day. There is no good reason for us to intervene. However embattled they feel, Obama and Cameron should find other paths to glory" (Guardian 9th March). That was until Thursday when I heard the Syrian writer and broadcaster, Rana Kabbani.

Rana Kabbani

She was contributor to that day's Letters to the Arab World on Radio 4. It was a series in which five writers from North Africa and the Middle East considered the momentous events that are reshaping the Arab world. As the political and cultural landscape shifts around them, these authors and thinkers use open letters to reflect on the consequences for the region and for its people. She addressed hers to the 81-year old Riad al-Turk, a Syrian dissident artist and activist who after 20 years of imprisonment by the Assad régime is now in hiding. For me it was an eye-opener. She talked about the reality and brutality of the oppression by the dynastic régimes of the Arab world, describing the inhumane conditions Riad had to endure. Contrary to popular western belief, Arab people are not apathetic under tyranny. The north African uprisings this year have not come out of the blue; they are the culmination of a harshly suppressed longing and working for freedom. She used, I think, the phrase, "the prison cells which are our Arab nations". Now they are at last breaking out. It's a moving and revealing piece. Rana Kabbani's letter  


I'm not sure quite how it changed my attitude, but I think it was to see that this whole thing is important, and that actually it's to do with freeing prisoners unjustly held in captivity, as well as preventing the slaughter of innocent lives. Maybe it will go down in the UK as "Cameron's War" (and in France as "la guerre de Sarkozy"), and at the moment it seems to have got off to a good start with the announcement in Libya of a ceasefire - not that I'd trust the wily old fox Gaddafi. However to give M Sarkozy his due he did stick his head above the parapet in denouncing Gaddafi, recognising the rebels in Benghazi and rattling his sabre, and David Cameron came on board fairly soon on the diplomatic front - as Sir Humphrey might have said, a courageous decision. 

Typhoon: lined up against Col Gaddafi's forces

Of course this isn't the end of the story. In all the twists and turns that Muammar Gaddafi will undoubtedly perform in order to retain power, I am sure there will be more blood to be shed. And then, if he ultimately is toppled from power, there will still be questions hanging over us, notably where will we stop? Bahrain has imported (our ally's) troops to suppress their "prison-cell" breakers. Yemen has fired on theirs. We've seen unrest in many of "the prison cells which are... Arab nations": Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia (who, incidentally, are lined up for our most advanced combat aircraft, the Typhoon). Will we be as assiduous in support of their uprisings as we have been in Libya? Simon Jenkins has a point. We need to pray for our politicians.

To end, a quote I recently came across: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it” (Helen Keller).