'The Little Ones': The Making and Unmaking of Child Soldiers

There is a reason your childhood years are referred to as ‘formative’. We do not come into this world with well-formed personalities or moral structures. That which we come to know as right and wrong, we learn from our environments, friends, and, first and foremost, our parents. It is not a quick process and it is in development until we are adults. We start with a blank slate and the genetic footprint of our parents’ genes. As we all know, children can be remarkably cruel and remarkably kind without fully knowing what either condition is. They are testing out their moral legs, seeing what is acceptable and what is not. Children are not moral or immoral, they start off amoral. This is why when they are stolen from their families and forced into an environment killing and survival they often make the most ruthless of soldiers.

There are around 250,000 child soldiers used in combat zones all over the World, but never so prominently as in Africa. After 30 years of war and over two million lives lost, the Sudanese government has come to a peace agreement with the Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army in the south of the country. Under pressure from the United Nations the SPLA has agreed to free its child soldiers. The children of Southern Sudan are coming home. Expectantly, there have been many problems. Many of the children have fled their villages to return to the barracks from which they fought, others have killed people in their communities. Once these children have been transformed into amoral killing machines, the job of re-integrating them back to the homes is a long and difficult task.

The process of making a child soldier occurs in what sociologist Erving Goffman called a ‘total institution’. Western examples that use such institutions in forming their members include the military, the police, and the prison system. In such places, the world to which the trainees are exposed is a world in which they have no control over their lives. Time and the sequence of indoctrination periods is controlled by the authorities. All trainees are made to look alike. Uniforms are used in this function. Exact obedience to the rules is enforced with severe consequences. Work and discipline are used to exhaust the trainees. In the case of child soldiers, brutality can be added to the list. Extremist cults use the same set of rules. The goal is to break down the individual personality of the trainee until you have a blank slate on which the new collective identity of the institution can be written. When doing this with adults, the authorities have difficulties. Adults have well-formed personalities and morals that need to be broken down or altered. The case with child soldiers is different. Children are only in the process of learning when they are kidnapped from their parents and brought to camps to learn the profession of killing. They are already blank slates and they learn and adapt quicker than adults. They are taught to see their fellow child inductees as brothers and the authorities as ‘older brothers’ who will protect them from the brutality, feed them, clothe them, and teach them new things. There are harsh punishments for those who would flee or disobey. They are rewarded when they obey and beaten or killed when they do not.

As the ultimate survivors, children adapt to this environment and take to learning such new skills as weapon cleaning; disassembly and reassembly; and target practice very quickly. The late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who spent years in Africa observing conflicts, remarked that some of the children’s early ideas remain with them. Adults, he noted, knew to fire at the enemy from well-covered positions. Children are less informed about the sheer danger of a firefight and the wide variety of firearms used can come across as toys. The children charge headlong into battle without fear. Many are used as cannon fodder. Those who survive and learn quickly become excellent soldiers. Romeo Dallaire, who has an active role in advocacy for child soldiers’ rights, has said that the young fighters who take to their roles and survive are capable of complex military action. This includes leading adults in attacks, reorganizing for counterattacks, and carrying out ambushes.

Child soldiers have little capacity to understand the gravity and magnitude of killing someone. Their moral understanding of the world was interrupted and reformed in an inescapable cult setting. Sadly, many of the worst and bloodiest massacres in the Rwandan war were carried out by these children, as their ‘older brothers’ cheered them on. Without a well-formed sense of empathy and mercy and with a well-formed sense of the importance of killing for the cause, these soldiers are ruthless in their killing efficiency. Africa’s countless wars and warring factions have made horribly pragmatic use of this fact.

The children are spending their formative years in combat; killing or avoiding being killed. They become creatures of war instead of just soldiers. Thus, when the conflicts end and efforts are made to reintegrate them back with their home communities and parents, severe problems arise. They have known only a family of violence where their ‘older brothers’ kept them alive and fed. When coming back to peaceful communities that they have not seen for years, they are coming back to alien worlds. Many simply flee back to the barracks of the armed groups. Others are violent and anti-social in their dealings with civilian life. These children have been taught problem-solving skills in an insulated environment. The essence of these skills: that killing will solve their problems. Murders have been committed by these returnees. They are simply doing what they know best in the hopes of solving problems. Re-integration is a slow and painful process in which the children must re-learn everything. Right and wrong must be taught again. But the years in which empathy may have been infused into their characters with ease are gone. They were stolen. The United Nations and various NGOs are involved with these efforts to repatriate the children. Their success rate is limited. More intensive support is desperately needed.

The use of child soldiers is an atrocity as great as the killings that these children carry out. They are taken from the love of their parents and transformed into something less than human. When we tally up the dead and mutilated from these conflicts it stretches far into the millions and we are appalled. When faced with the child soldiers we are face with dead souls. They have undergone a living death in the cauldron of war. In the war in the Congo (often called “Africa’s first World War” due to its size and the various countries fighting) child soldiers were used extensively. They were called ‘Kadogos’ meaning ‘Little Ones’. The use of such a term of endearment is a horrible irony. How many children die on the field of battle and how many more die only to continue to live?

Ijtihad versus Jihad: Thoughts on the proposed building of a mosque near Ground Zero

Let me be clear from the off-set, this is an outsider’s article. I am not a Muslim, nor even a particularly religious person. Consequently, this is an article by someone on the outside looking in and making observations. Nevertheless, I do consider myself to be a somewhat informed outsider. I have read extensively on this issue: from journalistic dispatches and essays to critical analysis of the Qur’an to a biography on the Prophet Mohammed. I have travelled in the Muslim world. I have beheld the austere beauty of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca and have been overwhelmed by the spirit and mystique of the holy city of Moullay Idriss. I hold as one of my dearest principles that we are all human first, before we are Muslim or Christian, homosexual or straight, black or white, etc. I shall try to be as informed and balanced as possible in the following, but am especially open to comments on the issue from Muslims as they provide a perspective I cannot.

The proposed building of a mosque three blocks from the 9/11 site has opened a firestorm of debate. While listening to CBC radio one morning, I heard the voices of some of the protestors against the building. They were the usual ineloquent, hateful and paranoid comments of racists: “They’re [the Muslims] taking over”; “Obama is probably a Muslim”; et cetera ad nauseum. Unfortunately, according to Sheema Khan, one of the guests on that broadcast, the voices of a group of 9/11 firefighters had not been included in the sound bite. They were apparently eloquent and stated that while they respected religious freedoms they believed the building of a mosque to be “too confrontational”. The very fact that there was a protest highlights a disturbing fact: many blame Muslims as a whole for the 9/11 attacks instead of Al-Qaeda terrorists.

The landscape of Islam is as varied as the landscape of most major religions. A Shia man in Tehran may, and most probably will, have a completely different worldview from a Sunni in New York, just as a Baptist Christian in the American South will differ greatly from an Orthodox Christian in Ethiopia or a Druze in Syria. To make Islam and Muslims monolithic and thereby assign blame is like blaming all Christians for the Waco standoff or the abuses of Catholic priests in residential schools. It doesn’t make sense and it shows nothing but ignorance. This is exactly why a mosque should be built near the 9/11 site.

There is of course a more basic argument to be made. It was highlighted by Barak Obama while speaking to a group of young Muslims at the Whitehouse. He stated that the right to build places of worship was part of the American spirit and law. Put simply: it’s not only legal but in keeping with American tradition.

There is a deeper issue that is coming to the forefront as well: the war within Islam. There can be no denying that horrible crimes against humanity have been carried out in the name of Islam. From the 9/11 attacks, to the mutilations and murders of the Taliban, to the repression of women and minorities by Wahabist sect Muslims – the list goes on. Islam, of course, is not alone in this. Most of the world’s religions have been cited as justification for horrible acts all around the world. The vast majority of Muslims oppose these acts and see them as a violation of the true spirit of Islam: a spirit of tolerance and peace.

There is a large and active movement of Islamic reformists who believe that the religion has been, in the words of Sheema Khan, “hijacked by radical Islam”. These reformists face severe dangers in their work from extremists within their own community. Radical Islam and its followers - be they the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt or Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere - believe in overturning secular states where Islam is the dominant religion (e.g. Egypt) and the re-establishment of the Caliphate as an Islamic super state stretching from Morocco to Indonesia that is ruled under Sharia law. The problem is, as Canadian social commentator Gwynne Dyer points out, the Muslim middle-class in these secular states don’t want this and the revolution is failing.

Some thought should be given to why the extremists have gained popularity at all. Many of these secular states are very repressive and very poor. Political repression and economic disenfranchisement leads to resistance. The extremists offer a different path that ends in Paradise and for many it’s a choice they are willing to make. If there’s one point to be made about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, it’s that they’re genuine. They do believe that God is on their side and they do believe that Jihad, or Holy War, is the one and true path for followers of the faith. What’s remarkable about the extremists is how limited their knowledge of Islam and the Qur’an really is. Like religious extremists of all backgrounds, they read what they want to read and interpret it as they see fit. They believe their holy justification is a command not open to interpretation when their very outlook is based on flawed interpretation.

Canadian Muslim reformist Irshad Manji has started ‘Project Ijtihad’. ‘Ijtihad’ is Islam’s own tradition of debate and dissent. Her work highlights human rights abuses in the name of God. In her writing she cites periods of Islamic history in which religious tolerance was the norm as was respect for women. Her goal is to re-open the shut door and breed debate and the possibility of different interpretation and dissent without the threat of a Fatwa hanging over anyone’s head. Support for her movement is growing.

It is time for America to see the true face of Islam – not just the slanted view from the media (most notably Fox news). There is a streak of Islamophobia a mile wide in the United States that can only be fought with exposure and integration. This will be a difficult task fraught with dangers. Sheema Khan actually opposes the building of the mosque as too confrontational and disrespecting of New Yorkers. Without a doubt, there are many raw nerves surrounding the attacks. She made the very valid point that when she asked the mosque builders where their funding was coming from they dodged the question.

If the New York mosque is a closed space of radical preaching it will be a disaster and an insult to every American. If it is an open space, such as the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, there is the possibility that minds may change. Mainstream Islam can begin to reclaim their faith from the extremists and people of other faiths can see that their beliefs and those of Muslims are really just different sides of the same coin: belief in and active worship of God. So let the mosque be built, but make it a space not just of worship, but of education and true Ijtihad. It stands the chance of being an American version of the South African Truth and Reconciliation commission. Perhaps, with its building, the deep and terrible wounds that were inflicted that September day 9 years ago can begin to heal. Whether this happens or not remains to be seen, but I am hopeful.

Affecting Change: Fighting the institutions of innequality

Historically, the most popular party in the United States was not the Republicans or the Democrats. In the early years of the 20th Century, the Socialist Party raised astounding grass-roots support countrywide on a policy of addressing social, economic, and political inequalities. They mobilized the poor farmers in the countryside and the industrial workers in cities on a scale never seen before and presented a major threat to the established political elite. They opposed American involvement in World War I and this sealed their fate. The government used new anti-sedition laws to imprison the leadership of the party, dissolve its structure, and essentially erase the party from history. They used a propaganda campaign to whip up fear of a communist revolution on American soil and the Socialist party lost widespread support. Nonetheless, their legacy lives to this day in the form of the major trade unions that were established with their hard work and strife. Large-scale, institutional change was achieved – at a great cost.

Today, in the West, the forces concerned with facing and affecting national and global inequalities have been relegated to the outside. Every time the leaders of the economic status quo meet to establish policy there is widespread grass-roots opposition – in the streets. Since the famed ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999, the anti-globalization movement has grown and maintained its presence at these gatherings. They are a force to be reckoned with judging by sheer numbers but have yet to affect top-level institutional change. The story always ends the same way – with anarchist groups causing damage and riot police violently dispersing thousands of individuals and movements that are presented to the public as dangerous radicals.

The question facing the Left is clear – how to become a united force capable of changing government policy instead of simply a fractured force capable of drawing attention to the inequalities of current policies. The movement is trapped on the outside looking in. In spite of over 10 years of fervent activism, the protestors are just that: protestors. This is not to discount progress that has been made. The World Social Forum is a clear example of successful organization to bring together countless social movements to provide an alternative to the status quo of the World Economic Forum. However, the WSF remains locked out by the Western media and relatively unknown to the general public. Effectively they are screaming in the dark. The Left is facing a brick wall: a right-wing behemoth establishment supported and self-justified by corporate media. The Western institutions have money to build a media structure that can simply exclude the Left from coverage. Without exposure to the general public, the Leftist alternative is invisible. The public see no alternative other than what is presented to them in print and on television and come to believe that they have no choices beyond what is shown to them. Apathy and despair turn to anger and scape-goating begins. The conservative movement relies and thrives on anger and fear and never fail to present a list of enemies on which the socioeconomic problems of the common individual can be blamed. Lose your job to outsourcing? Blame immigrants, homosexuals, a Zionist conspiracy, the United Nations, minorities, whoever, it doesn’t have to conform to reason. Just don’t blame those in power. It’s easier to hate the Other and blame him for your problems than investigate the root causes of the issue. The problem is huge and seemingly intractable.

Take a concrete goal of the anti-globalization movement: the overturning of the Washington Consensus. This consensus, born out of the 1980s of Reaganism and Thatcherism, holds that the pillars of privatization, market deregulation, and fiscal austerity should be enforced on developing countries through the loan-lending auspices of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Developing countries are forced to open their markets to cheap Western imports that undermine their home-grown businesses while the West maintains trade barriers to prevent imports from these countries thus protecting their domestic industry. The consensus has lead to record profits of the formation of multinational corporations whose profits dwarf the GDPs of these countries. It has also led to social unrest, corruption, and widespread poverty throughout the developing World. It is institutionally enforced inequality.

Anti-globalization protestors can draw attention to these inequalities and organize to create grass-roots alternatives (such as ‘Fair Trade’) but can they affect large-scale institutional change? The proponents of the Washington consensus have their economic well-being at stake and endless resources to combat resistance and quash alternatives (such as media blackouts of such alternatives). They have everything to lose and will not go without a fight.

The answer may not lie in the West at all. Explosive economic growth in other regions of the world has brought the fight right to the West’s front door. After nearly 30 years of suffering under the Washington consensus, other countries have organized their domestic markets to compete with the West instead of being enslaved to them. China, India, Brazil and others have shown that regulation, smart investment, and financial saving have lead to economic prosperity. American-based multinationals are now having to compete with pressure from new multinationals based out of the Third World. These countries have organized into powerful trading blocs that are organizing relations with each other instead of with the West. China established trade links with Mercosur (a trade federation including Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uraguay), replacing the Americans – who had been their previous trading partner. China also established major links in Africa and came to an agreement with the powerful economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). India, while exploding in growth, is establishing links with the subcontinent and members of ASEAN. Instead of enjoying total, hegemonic control of trade relations and rules, American multinationals are being forced to compete to survive.

Some of these trading blocs, having suffered previously under the control of the IMF, understand the importance of protecting their workers and their workers’ well-beings. Nowhere is this more true than in the miraculous shift to the Left in Latin America. When Evo Morales, a relatively uneducated, indigenous, cocoa farmer was elected in Bolivia he began sweeping changes in a country overrun with corruption and elitism. Hugo Chavez, though becoming more and more dictatorial in his ruling, has done a great amount for the poor in Venezuela. Lula da Silva’s, of the Worker’s Party, was elected in Brazil, and brought fighting social inequality to the forefront. What is even more impressive is that the people and governments of South America have sent a clear message to the US that they will no longer tolerate interventionism on their part. When American-backed right-wing groups began social unrest in Bolivia, Chavez and da Silva sent a clear message to Washington. When Chavez was ousted in a military coup, the people of Venezuela took to the streets demanding he be reinstated. The coup failed. Now there is talk amongst the leaders of a completely unified South America on economic and trade issues and Lula da Silva has proposed a trans-South American worker’s union.

Morales, Chavez, and da Silva organized grassroots support for their elections and have overturned institutional inequality and initiated a future less dark for the poor, disposessed, and disenfranchised of their nations. The question remains in the West, can we do the same? We may be aided by the fact that the economic shift in which US hegemony has been replaced with competing trade blocs will force compromise and a new consensus that is more representative of social concerns instead of just economic ones; one that reflects the needs of the citizens of the World instead of just the shareholders of American multinationals. This change from the outside, with the slant of corporate right-wing media, will be met with fear and hostility on many fronts. The anti-globalization movement and the Left in general are presented with the question of how to deal with this backlash. At the 2010 United States Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit one of the main issues of debate was the establishment or larger educational and lobbying groups that could serve to liaise with the institutions of Western power instead of simply protesting them.

Big changes are coming whether we like it or not. The Third-World power solution has great potential for good but also for corruption and the suspension of human rights in favor of economic cooperation. As we speak, India, Thailand and others are buying huge interest in Burmese oil, bolstering the brutal regime there. Perhaps the challenge for the left can be read in the slogan for the USSF: “Another World is Possible, Another US is necessary”. We have to offer hope and viable alternatives that will keep food on people’s tables in the face of institutions that offer fear and scape-goating. It’s not an easy task but it is essential. The psyche of the West needs to change before its institutions will. It is perhaps changing the psyche and worldviews of the average citizens that the social justice movement will affect large-scale institutional change.

Strange Bedfellows - Thoughts on the G20 Summit and the Anti-Globalisation movement

Extremists at opposite poles need each other much more than apparent animosity would indicate. Hezbollah needs the apartheid laws and bombings of the right wingers in the Israeli parliament to justify their attacks just as the parliament needs the rocket attacks to justify their policies and bombings. Islamic terrorists need the zeal of Christian fundamentalists and vice versa. And as much as they would hate to admit it, the violent anarchist minority (such as the Black Bloc) that show up at World trade meetings to smash windows and burn cars desperately rely on the exclusionist policies of the economic status quo.

In a world described in images and thirty-second sound bites it is the phenomenon of the spectacle that decides global public opinion. A recent cover of Maclean’s magazine shows a picture of a burning police car with a Black Bloc activist jumping in front; the headline – “Lock them up”. The anti-globalization movement is losing the battle of the spectacle, and thus global public opinion, thanks to the mindless violence of a tiny minority in their ranks. When people look back at the G20 meeting in Toronto, they won’t remember the policies decided upon by the World leaders, or the alternatives and valid arguments presented by the protestors – they’ll remember that burning police car.

Make no mistake, during the summit there was limited coverage of police violence against peaceful protestors. Brief shots of citizens being tasered, beaten, and tear-gassed were shown on the airwaves. However, two factors rendered these images moot. For one, the mainstream populace is always more accepting of ordered institutional violence than its chaotic, anarchistic opponent. People want to see the police maintaining order by whatever means necessary rather than balaclava-wearing goons smashing clothing stores, banks, and whatever they take to be their enemies. Secondly, the images of police violence played side-by-side with images of the Black Bloc. By visual association the protestors are found guilty. The media companies thrive on spectacle – it’s their bread and butter. Add to this the fact that the companies are owned by large corporations with vested interests in the global meetings. A media bias is at work. Need proof? Every year there is coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the big economic players decided the rules for the next year. Every year there is no media coverage of the World Social Forum, where activist groups meet and propose alternatives.

In my opinion, the cause of the anti-globalisation movement is just. The very name of the movement affects their cause. It suggests that they oppose inevitable global economic trade. This makes them appear irrational in their goals. Many members have adopted the ‘Global Social Justice Movement’ in replacement, but it hasn’t caught on – even with the activists themselves. The aims of the movement are clear – these economic meetings are completely exclusionary. They exclude representatives from the poorer nations on whose backs they ride; workers’ movements; indigenous movements; environmental movements; women’s’ movements; and a host of others. The summits decided the economic destiny and livelihoods of millions without asking for the opinions, or, God forbid, the participation of representatives of these millions. The protestors are there to make a stand and demand that their voices are heard. If the destinies of millions are being decided by a few, the voices of resistance will be heard.

The problem is, they aren’t heard. The movement is denied access to mainstream media and we are left with a violent spectacle. The movement is presumed irrational and public opinion turns against them. The movement relies of guerilla media, the internet, and hot-spots of liberalism like university campuses, to communicate. It gets the word out surprisingly effectively to a few, but still keeps them marginalized to the mainstream middle-class.

As Canadians, citizens of a democracy, it is not just our right but our solemn duty to question authority. The summit organizers rely on public apathy to pass their decrees and send the police out into the streets. It is our duty, each and every one of us, to see past the media slurs and the violent spectacle to get at the heart of the matter. We must investigate and leave no stone unturned in our quest for the truth of these summits. Global inequality of all kinds is perpetuated by the malice of a few and the apathy of millions. This investigation will expose us to things we don’t want to see. It is a road to psychic discomfort and perhaps the realization that we are all at fault in our accepting ignorance of World affairs. In the final say it is up to us to force real change and give a voice to the silent millions suffering under global economic policy. At the same time, it is up to the movement to make a stand against elements within their own ranks and completely disown the Black Bloc and other violent anarchistic segments. All they accomplish is the swaying of public opinion away from true socioeconomic justice and the justification of police violence. And the G20, among others, rely on them more than anyone else to help railroad their policies. We are already seeing the effects of these policies in Western nations. In the end, it’s up to us to speak – not to be spoken for.

The Simplest of Questions - Thoughts on the Afghan War

On the 25 of August in 2009, 14 Afghan National Police members stole three Ford Rangers, took their weapons, and deserted from their posts at Neshin Castle. Just over a week later, 8 ANP members took a truck from the same outpost and deserted. A note in the military dispatch detailing the desertion states matter-of-factly that they deserted because they hadn’t been paid. NATO and the United Nations have been in Afghanistan for nearly a decade trying to build the civil structures of a functioning nation and they still can’t pay the police officers. These stories and others are detailed in over 90,000 short and terse military dispatches leaked to Wikileaks last week. The overall picture is grim. High civilian casualties, constant combat and disorder, and the systematic failure of institution-building come across in the acronym laden field reports. In the section focusing on defections, it is interesting to note that along with ANP desertions have been the surrender and defection of (sometimes) large groups of insurgents.

When the media portrays the war as a clash of civilizations and a battle between Islamic fundamentalism and the auspices of modern democracy, the field reports tell a different story. Alliances and allegiances in Afghanistan are weak and shift on a regular basis. The questions in the minds of Afghan (including those ANP members) are not of grand scale ideological conflict. They are the questions one would expect of anyone who has been trying to live in a country torn by war for nearly half a century: How do I keep a roof over my head? How do I feed myself and my children? How can I avoid getting killed. The ANP members did not swear allegiance to the Taliban and go off to fill their ranks. They left because they weren’t being paid and could not make a living. A dispatch tells of a group of around 40 insurgents who, after their Mullah had been killed, surrendered to US forces because they were tired of “running and hiding.” They didn’t admit that they were misguided and now accepted the West’s philosophy. They just wanted the fighting to stop.

Since the invasion and defeat of the Taliban government in 2001, NATO and the UN have imposed a top-down enforcement of institution-building in Afghanistan. Basically importing Karzai to head things and going to Warlords (some of the worst human rights violators in the world) and giving them cash and government posts. The hope seems to have been to drop a Western government from the sky onto the country and hope that it would take root. The result has been widespread corruption and nepotism. Warlords languish in their riches, accumulating more and more while the average Afghan has seen little to no improvement. In essence Afghanistan has gone from a vicious and genocidal (but predictable) dictatorship to a state of complete chaos where their lives depend on the whims of criminals and the aim of NATO fighter jets.

It is time for a rethinking of nation-building in Afghanistan. The top-down approach is not working and the basic needs of millions are still not being met. A story emerged recently (though it got very little publicity) of the success of a small Afghan community. The leaders of the town had realized that they couldn’t depend on the West for help against the Taliban and that they could depend on the Taliban to attack and conscript them so they decided on a grassroots approach. The community itself organized and trained a militia from their own ranks. To this day they have held off repeated Taliban attacks and secured their region without the help of Western aid. Their militia was referred to by an American commander as they most effective Afghan fighting force.

Take a man away from his family and town, put him in a uniform and give him a gun, put his life in constant danger, and don’t pay him anything. Chances are his support for your plans for his country will wane severely. Why shouldn’t those ANP members have deserted? What exactly were we doing for them? Take that same person, approach him in his town and offer him the basic tools for deciding his own destiny and trust can be built. It is not for us to decide what happens in Afghanistan. It is for the Afghans. An Afghan wants safety, peace and health as much as anyone else. Help is definitely needed and this is not a call for Western powers to pull out of Afghanistan. It is a call to truly, and for the first time, approach the Afghan people themselves and give them control. Undermine the Warlords and Taliban by building a horizontal base of grass-roots, village to village support. Let the villagers decide on the institutions they need and want and provide protection and support when they organize.

If anything can be said with certainty from any side of the political spectrum is that the Afghans have suffered enough. For us to replace tyranny with violent uncertainty and widespread cronyism is not helping. Let’s restart with the people and build from there.

Spirit of the Sun - Article

There is an uneasy peace in the streets of Cape Town. It appears as a city under siege. Armed guards stroll aimlessly through the business district twirling their truncheons. Barbed wire and electric fences surround all buildings from high-rises to modest apartments. The occasional car passes through the rainy streets. Everything feels sterile, sanitized and cold: lifeless. The morning passes and the streets begin to fill. But still, the joyous noise and mayhem of other major African cities cannot be found here. The blacks and the whites keep to themselves as they pass with briefcases in hand. Apartheid has ended, but still, of course, the streets and alleyways are cleaned by blacks. The city’s soul is hidden under a bullet-proof vest.
Some friends and I decided to visit one of the black Townships on the outskirts of the city near the airport. On the way there, the driver takes us through the remains of the completely bulldozed ‘District Six’. It used to be a huge neighbourhood housing blacks and whites that was completely demolished in the 1960s by Apartheid authorities. The homeless were relocated to shantytown camps, one of which was named ‘Langa’ meaning ‘the Sun’. Langa was the site of some of the fiercest battles between police and freedom activists during the fall of the White Only government. I had heard it described by journalists as a “hellhole of filth, disease, and violence.”
When we arrived I felt a keen sense of exhilaration. This was the Africa I had come to see. The dirt streets were overflowing with people. Corrugated tin roof shacks were stacked together and formed the passageways for the ample traffic. Scores of curious children swarmed us as we disembarked from the van. The healthy and well-clothed tots plied us with questions and took our hands as if to give us a personal tour of their home. We wandered the streets where women cooked meet on grills and men carried wares. Though we were a curiosity for passersby we were never hindered and never felt the slightest threat.
We were soon invited into a local bar, composed of an empty, windowless shack, with a bench around the inside, a woman stirring a pot at the back, and a solitary hanging light bulb providing the only illumination. The hut was filled with men of all ages, some with woolen caps. The beer was poured into an empty paint can and passed around the room. It was offered to us and we all had a swig. No payment was accepted and we thanked our gracious hosts.
Out on the street we were directed to one of the larger concrete bunkhouses that lined the center of the township. As we walked towards the building children played soccer in the street, teenagers stole glances at us and laughed, and old men chatted huddled around corners. The afternoon sun cast the scene in a golden hue.
I am told by the driver that it can take eight years or more of waiting before a family can be offered space in one of these barracks. We enter a room not near big enough to be called a bachelor suite back home. It is home to eight families and their sleeping bags are laid out in carefully assigned positions. The matriarch of the largest family proudly shows me around. She is particularly happy to show me her night-patrol jacket. During Apartheid, Langa was controlled by brutal criminal gangs. The populace rose up and did away with that, instituting their own patrols to keep the peace. She is beaming with pride over her role in keeping her community safe. Her husband is away in the city doing menial work to pay for their living. She is left to care for the kids during the day and watch the streets at night. I ask her,
“Is there any crime in Langa?”
“No, no,” she tells me, “everyone knows everyone else.”
We walk the busy streets and chat with many people. Most hope of a better life in the city, a better job, more money. Concurrent with this we encountered a strong sense of pride in the township. People talked about future plans for community centers and schools.
We made our way over to the ‘illegal settlements’. These were shacks set up on land that the government had designated as no-go zones. These were the poorest settlements in Langa. The industriousness of the residents was impressive. One family’s shack was composed entirely of doors. One made judicious use of toilet seats. A young man emerged from his home and welcomed us over. His two beautiful daughters came out to play with us and pose for pictures. With pride, he freely welcomed us into his home and introduced his wife. He explained that he worked during the day in the city. He told us that he worked very hard to provide a better life for his daughters.
The graciousness and generosity of the citizens of Langa was overwhelming. The strong and cohesive sense of community in this place in undeniable. The goal of Apartheid was to break the blacks: to disenfranchise them, take them from their homes, to destroy their culture, to make them weak and subservient. No greater testament to the failure of those policies exists than in Langa. Langa has a soul and it is vibrant, industrious, alive, joyous, and full of hope.
Whereas Cape Town exudes a feeling of fear and the need for protection, Langa welcomes you with open arms and oozes pride and self-regeneration. The townships and their tribulations contain valuable lessons for Cape Town. At the same time, there is much that Cape Town can do for the Townships. It would be thoroughly irresponsible to write anything about Langa without mentioning the poverty. It is there in force, especially in the illegal settlements. Much more funding is needed for proper housing for the residents. Much can be also done to address the rather shameful fact that the city uses the townships as a cheap labour force. Their pay rates are never sufficient to escape the townships and provide a better life for their children.
What Langa offers Cape Town is far more long-reaching. It is the proof that forgiveness is possible and sometimes great opportunity for bridge building can come from the relics of the painful past. The joyous, vibrant and stridently life-affirming spirit of this magical place can hopefully one day infect Cape Town itself.

The Lives of Others - Article

Dusk had fallen on the landscape like a thick blanket when we entered the town. Our vehicle bumped along the hole-scarred highway lined with wooden shacks. We were silhouetted by the shacks’ solitary light bulbs: the town’s only illumination. We rounded a bend and our path was blocked. A crowd of perhaps one hundred Ethiopian men danced and jumped in the street. They sang and waved their walking sticks giving us the impression that we had stumbled upon an impromptu celebration. As we inched forward into the mass, something changed in the space of an instant. The crowd enveloped the vehicle and began to shake it and beat the hood with their sticks. The reason for the change was written into their faces: they had seen my bearded white face in the back seat. Now the thump of sticks off the hood was accompanied by a multitude of outstretched hands demanding payment. In the midst of panic I realized that producing my wallet would have only worsened the situation. My sense of isolation was palpable. Regardless of the fact that I was in a vehicle with several Ethiopian friends I felt completely alone – the only white man in this corner of Africa.

After what seemed like an eternity, a man appeared shouting at the crowd and pushing them from the front of the vehicle. Our mystery benefactor cleared a small opening and we pushed forward and out of the town. As we entered the impenetrable darkness of the African night, our expedition cook turned to me from the front seat.
“They drank the local beer,” he said with a smile as calm and collected as he ever was. It was as if the situation had never weighed on his mind in the slightest.
These moments had been indicative of the best and the worst of an encounter with the Other. My difference, the colour of my skin, had been the catalyst of the meeting. Assumptions were made on both sides; neither side was capable of seeing past the prejudice of the moment to the truth of the matter. The group saw a rich westerner; an easy rube to be intimidated for benefit. I saw an unruly mob and probably imagined more danger than was really present. Yet in the end an unspoken dialogue prevailed. The man had pointed out to the crowd that they were being belligerent and putting themselves in a position of domination over me to extort reward. I was a visitor to this country and this, the man reasoned with the crowd, was highly inappropriate. This sense of action as being wrong was not Ethiopian, it was common to all humans. They left, only temporarily shamed out of song and dance to grant me a reprieve, and I departed relieved and shamed by the depth of my racially motivated fear. Nothing had been said and yet everything had been known.

The cook’s calm smile and reassuring words were important in their own right. However much we had come to know each other and however much we shared in common as human beings – we came from different worlds. In my world violence was a phenomenon most commonly experienced through watching the nightly news. Aside from the odd hallmarks of crime, such as seeing some yellow police tape in front of a local restaurant, it was largely foreign to me. And when I did see signs it was with the same grim glee as a motorist slowly driving past a highway accident.

As our vehicle drove on into the warm night, I took stock: there was an entire geography of context to understand in this country. This was a country where the proliferation of automatic weapons amongst the populace was absolutely commonplace. This was a country where the burnt carcasses of tanks and armored cars littered the fields. This was a country where a few cafes had grenades thrown into them shortly before I arrived. This was a country that had felt the despair of famine and the terror of war both in the very memorable past. A crowd of drunks haranguing one’s vehicle was barely something about which to raise an eyebrow.

Fear, however, real, unadulterated fear, is often the byproduct of a meeting with Others. In one sense it is a primal fear of the unknown harkening back to when humans existed in small clan groups and always risked encounters with other clans. As the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski put it, we are then faced with three choices. We can fence ourselves off from the Others and pursue an isolated existence. We can enter into dialogue with them and attempt to grow stronger with each others’ help. Or, we can enter into war with the Others. All too often, one can imagine that fear triumphed and war was the result. All we have to do is look at the innumerable conflicts around the world based on perceived difference and ethnicity. The unspeakably bloody results of Rwanda, Chechnya, and Bosnia added to what we witness everyday in Darfur, push us as social actors to somehow see past impulsive prejudice and conquer the fear.

When it comes to encountering difference, dialogue is the currency of cooperation. Without dialogue how can an Israeli come to terms with someone who is willing to blow himself up to fight what he sees as unjust oppression? Without an honest attempt at mutual understanding how can the average white American understand that the motives of terrorists are more complex than just idiomatic statements like “They hate our freedom,”? However, getting beyond the fear and towards a multilateral debate with others is no easy task and the cards are stacked against any who would try. In spite of this, rising above the anxiety of contact with those who are different from us is the most important task a person may be confronted with in contributing to a full and lasting peace in the world. We must not forget that in an encounter with Others, one learns important truths about oneself. In the words of Emmanuel Levinas, “…the self is only possible through recognition of the Other.” This is not always a pleasant or welcome experience – but it is vital. We immerse ourselves in a new context of being, essentially, in a new world. We are alone and we are whole. We are no longer a pastiche of our Western friends and values. We can become the Other and understand instead of drawing back in fear.

If we look at the globe, all we see are groups of Others trying to coexist. Boundaries are everywhere demarking difference: by race, by class, by country, by religion, or on a larger scale, North vs. South, East vs. West, First World and Third World, Occident and Orient. Perhaps the boundary that matters most is one defined by inequality: the boundary between the enfranchised and the disenfranchised, the haves and the have-nots. The gulf between those with power in the cabinets and boardrooms of the world and those in the streets crying out to be heard is the most chaotic and socially explosive of global divisions. It was just such a chasm of understanding into which I fell that night in the small mountain village. The men in the street saw an outsider with means: a man whose wealth allowed him to visit their country. Mine was the face of the ‘faranji’, the face of one who hides behind a camera lens and powers through their landscape in air-conditioned range rovers. Perhaps I angered them. Perhaps they were tired of being a display for self-important travelers. Perhaps they thought I owed them something.
All around us we see fences, wars and dialogue. Those with influence and capital build walls to protect them from the Others. Theirs’ is the dialogue of alliances of groups of others seeking domination of everyone else. They view the problems of the world through the strictly reductive lens of an economic prism while hiding behind their fences of police blockades and tear gas. Not surprisingly, it is fear of Others that guides their hands. It is a fear of what such an encounter would mean and, more importantly, what it might mean to the socioeconomic status quo that they have enjoyed so thoroughly for so long. However, the policies of exclusion and the deification of economic determinism have brought us to the chasm before which we stand and a serious altering of the status quo, if not complete overhauling, is due.

It is only the dialogue of inclusion and cooperation that has any chance of bridging the gap. The World Social Forum is a commendable example of groups of Others coming together and seeking solutions through multilateral assistance. They work to give a voice to the silenced. We must never forget that the whole Othering project, which sets us apart with difference is undermined by the primacy of human experience. We all take pride in our accomplishments and regret our failures; appreciate honesty and do not accept lies; feel comfortable and safe in a warm home and feel destitute in the cold street; we all demand dignity and the right to have our voices heard. The list can go on and on. This primacy unites us all, rich and poor, and is the key to breaching the fences of our world and opening productive lines of dialogue. In an age when environmental threats couple with economic and social ones to threaten the very existence of global order, meeting the Other on common ground and realizing our ultimate sameness is fundamental to our survival.