1,000 Afghan civilians killed in deadliest 6 months: UN
By South Asia correspondent Sally Sara
Posted 1 hour 34 minutes ago
Updated 1 hour 35 minutes ago
The United Nations says more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year, making the death toll 24 per cent higher than the same period last year.
This has been the deadliest six months for civilians in Afghanistan, since the US led invasion.
The report says insurgents were responsible for most of the deaths but 41 per cent were attributed to government and Coalition forces.
The UN says increased insurgent bombings, and air strikes by international forces are the biggest killers.
Violence has escalated after a surge in foreign troops, especially in the south of the country.
The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on foreign forces to do more to reduce civilian casualties.
But the Taliban are urging their supporters to wage a holy war in the lead up to the presidential election on August 20.
source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war: report
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.
It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said.
"We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official told the Times. "We should probably reassess our priorities."
The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda is the primary goal of his strategy for the Afghan war.
Eight drones that have been devoted to tracking Al-Qaeda in remote Afghan mountains will be transferred to the fight against insurgents, the paper said.
And the US Central Command plans to send about 12 more drones to the Afghan front, including some aircraft that have been assigned to Iraq -- a move resisted by US commanders there.
The drones are in high demand and the military faces difficult choices in deciding how best to deploy the aircraft which are in short supply.
The armed Predators and Reapers can loiter over targets for hours and are viewed as an invaluable resource for both intelligence and military operations.
The drones are also used to target Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan though the US government does not publicly discuss those operations.
The new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has ordered an elaborate review of how the mission uses surveillance aircraft.
McChrystal favors using the drones in a more concentrated way instead of spreading the aircraft across the country so regional commands can use the plans for short periods each day.
The military also plans to increase the number of flights of U2 spy planes in Afghanistan and all of the Air Force's unmanned Global Hawks -- a much larger plane designed for surveillance -- will be shifted to Afghanistan, officials said.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.
It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said.
"We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official told the Times. "We should probably reassess our priorities."
The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda is the primary goal of his strategy for the Afghan war.
Eight drones that have been devoted to tracking Al-Qaeda in remote Afghan mountains will be transferred to the fight against insurgents, the paper said.
And the US Central Command plans to send about 12 more drones to the Afghan front, including some aircraft that have been assigned to Iraq -- a move resisted by US commanders there.
The drones are in high demand and the military faces difficult choices in deciding how best to deploy the aircraft which are in short supply.
The armed Predators and Reapers can loiter over targets for hours and are viewed as an invaluable resource for both intelligence and military operations.
The drones are also used to target Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan though the US government does not publicly discuss those operations.
The new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has ordered an elaborate review of how the mission uses surveillance aircraft.
McChrystal favors using the drones in a more concentrated way instead of spreading the aircraft across the country so regional commands can use the plans for short periods each day.
The military also plans to increase the number of flights of U2 spy planes in Afghanistan and all of the Air Force's unmanned Global Hawks -- a much larger plane designed for surveillance -- will be shifted to Afghanistan, officials said.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
Further to the information on Afghan midwives that I posted yesterday, a blog post from someone on the web alerted me to the fact that there was someone who practiced midwifery in Affy who has just been profiled in the NYT.
For those who are interested, here is the article:
By DENISE GRADY
Published: July 27, 2009
Everybody wants Pashtoon Azfar. Her government, American aid groups and her own colleagues, the midwives of Afghanistan, all want her to work for them, lead them, help them rebuild a health system from the rubble of war.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Podcast: Science TimesEnlarge This Image
Chris Maddaloni for The New York Times
Pashtoon Azfar, president of the Afghan Midwives Association.
Ms. Azfar, 51, is trying to oblige. By day she directs Afghanistan’s Institute of Health Sciences, by night she works for a nonprofit group from Johns Hopkins University that focuses on women and children’s health, and somehow she also manages to serve as president of the Afghan Midwives Association.
Visiting from Kabul recently, she was the star at a Capitol Hill briefing titled “Maternal Health in Afghanistan: How Can We Save Women’s Lives?” Her audience included members of the Congressional caucus for women’s issues.
Afghanistan has the world’s second-highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth (only Sierra Leone’s is worse). For every 100,000 births, 1,600 mothers die; in wealthy countries the rates range from 1 to 12. In one remote northeastern province, Badakhshan, 6,507 mothers die for every 100,000 births, according to a 2005 report in the medical journal Lancet. In all, 26,000 Afghan women a year die while pregnant or giving birth.
The main causes of these deaths are hemorrhage and obstructed labor, which can be fatal if a woman cannot obtain a Caesarean section. Even if the mother survives, obstructed labor without a Caesarean usually kills the baby. Most of the maternal deaths — 78 percent, according to the Lancet report — could be prevented. Against this bleak history, Ms. Azfar told her Washington audience, “I would like to share some successes with you.”
An intense woman with short, graying hair, Ms. Azfar rarely smiles. She ran through statistics showing notable increases recently in the country’s number of midwives, their education and the percentage of women who give birth with the help of a “skilled attendant,” usually a midwife. The United States, the World Bank, the European Commission, Unicef, the Hopkins group (known as Jhpiego) and other donors have all helped Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health to make improvements.
But there is a long way to go. Most women in Afghanistan, as many as 80 percent, still give birth without skilled help, and only a third receive any medical care at all during pregnancy.
Afghanistan’s problems mirror those of many other poor countries: shortages of personnel, supplies and transportation to clinics or hospitals, especially in remote regions and mountainous areas that are snowbound half the year. The deeper problems are cultural, rooted in the low status of women and the misperception that deaths in childbirth are inevitable — part of the natural order, women’s lot in life.
During her talk in Washington Ms. Azfar quoted Dr. Mahmoud Fathalla, an Egyptian physician and advocate for women’s health: “Women are not dying of diseases we can’t treat. ...They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving.”
Ms. Azfar works 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She has irked relatives by missing weddings and other family events because of work.
“My children are not happy,” she said in an interview after her speech.
Ms. Azfar grew up in a village about an hour from Kabul.
“Everywhere then, girls went to school,” she said. “Women’s rights before the Taliban were the same as in Western countries. Women had the right to vote.”
Her mother had 10 children, 2 of whom died. She always gave birth alone, behind a closed door. When Ms. Azfar was 9, she began to help, by waiting outside the door to receive the newborn baby and wash and swaddle it, while her mother then delivered her own placenta.
Ms. Azfar never actually saw a birth until she began studying midwifery at age 16, and only then, she said, did she realize how brave her mother had been. She finished the rigorous three-year program at the top of her class in 1976.
“It was a very well-respected profession in my country,” she said.
But decades of war destroyed midwifery and much of health care, she said. Professionals fled the country, and many never went back.
“One day, 100 rockets came into Kabul,” she said. She and her husband, a physician, took their four children and moved to Pakistan, living there from 1992 to 2003. She had a fifth child there.
By the time she returned to Afghanistan, she said, midwifery was in a shambles. Spots in professional schools of all kinds were being filled by people with political connections instead of those with good grades. The midwives who had stayed behind had not received any continuing education. Their skills were outdated, and their attitudes were even worse.
“A culture of war was going on,” Ms. Azfar said. “If a mother came for delivery they didn’t treat her as she deserved or needed to be treated. There was no emotional support.”
Attitude counts in midwifery: if midwives and other health workers seem indifferent or disrespectful, women start to avoid the clinics, and they miss out on the help they urgently need.
Ms. Azfar acknowledged that it was hard to change attitudes, but she insisted that it could be done, by making “interpersonal skills” part of the training and the tests that students must pass to be allowed to practice. In Afghanistan, these things became part of the midwifery curriculum in 2004.
“Does she greet the mother properly?” she asked. “Offer her a chair? A drink of water? Introduce herself? Let the mother ask questions? They are trained. They have to do it.”
She has seen signs of progress, of hope.
“Just five years ago we started the reconstruction of this profession,” Ms. Azfar said. “These midwives, they are champions. Oh, I love them. They are my heart.”
For those who are interested, here is the article:
By DENISE GRADY
Published: July 27, 2009
Everybody wants Pashtoon Azfar. Her government, American aid groups and her own colleagues, the midwives of Afghanistan, all want her to work for them, lead them, help them rebuild a health system from the rubble of war.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Podcast: Science TimesEnlarge This Image
Chris Maddaloni for The New York Times
Pashtoon Azfar, president of the Afghan Midwives Association.
Ms. Azfar, 51, is trying to oblige. By day she directs Afghanistan’s Institute of Health Sciences, by night she works for a nonprofit group from Johns Hopkins University that focuses on women and children’s health, and somehow she also manages to serve as president of the Afghan Midwives Association.
Visiting from Kabul recently, she was the star at a Capitol Hill briefing titled “Maternal Health in Afghanistan: How Can We Save Women’s Lives?” Her audience included members of the Congressional caucus for women’s issues.
Afghanistan has the world’s second-highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth (only Sierra Leone’s is worse). For every 100,000 births, 1,600 mothers die; in wealthy countries the rates range from 1 to 12. In one remote northeastern province, Badakhshan, 6,507 mothers die for every 100,000 births, according to a 2005 report in the medical journal Lancet. In all, 26,000 Afghan women a year die while pregnant or giving birth.
The main causes of these deaths are hemorrhage and obstructed labor, which can be fatal if a woman cannot obtain a Caesarean section. Even if the mother survives, obstructed labor without a Caesarean usually kills the baby. Most of the maternal deaths — 78 percent, according to the Lancet report — could be prevented. Against this bleak history, Ms. Azfar told her Washington audience, “I would like to share some successes with you.”
An intense woman with short, graying hair, Ms. Azfar rarely smiles. She ran through statistics showing notable increases recently in the country’s number of midwives, their education and the percentage of women who give birth with the help of a “skilled attendant,” usually a midwife. The United States, the World Bank, the European Commission, Unicef, the Hopkins group (known as Jhpiego) and other donors have all helped Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health to make improvements.
But there is a long way to go. Most women in Afghanistan, as many as 80 percent, still give birth without skilled help, and only a third receive any medical care at all during pregnancy.
Afghanistan’s problems mirror those of many other poor countries: shortages of personnel, supplies and transportation to clinics or hospitals, especially in remote regions and mountainous areas that are snowbound half the year. The deeper problems are cultural, rooted in the low status of women and the misperception that deaths in childbirth are inevitable — part of the natural order, women’s lot in life.
During her talk in Washington Ms. Azfar quoted Dr. Mahmoud Fathalla, an Egyptian physician and advocate for women’s health: “Women are not dying of diseases we can’t treat. ...They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving.”
Ms. Azfar works 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She has irked relatives by missing weddings and other family events because of work.
“My children are not happy,” she said in an interview after her speech.
Ms. Azfar grew up in a village about an hour from Kabul.
“Everywhere then, girls went to school,” she said. “Women’s rights before the Taliban were the same as in Western countries. Women had the right to vote.”
Her mother had 10 children, 2 of whom died. She always gave birth alone, behind a closed door. When Ms. Azfar was 9, she began to help, by waiting outside the door to receive the newborn baby and wash and swaddle it, while her mother then delivered her own placenta.
Ms. Azfar never actually saw a birth until she began studying midwifery at age 16, and only then, she said, did she realize how brave her mother had been. She finished the rigorous three-year program at the top of her class in 1976.
“It was a very well-respected profession in my country,” she said.
But decades of war destroyed midwifery and much of health care, she said. Professionals fled the country, and many never went back.
“One day, 100 rockets came into Kabul,” she said. She and her husband, a physician, took their four children and moved to Pakistan, living there from 1992 to 2003. She had a fifth child there.
By the time she returned to Afghanistan, she said, midwifery was in a shambles. Spots in professional schools of all kinds were being filled by people with political connections instead of those with good grades. The midwives who had stayed behind had not received any continuing education. Their skills were outdated, and their attitudes were even worse.
“A culture of war was going on,” Ms. Azfar said. “If a mother came for delivery they didn’t treat her as she deserved or needed to be treated. There was no emotional support.”
Attitude counts in midwifery: if midwives and other health workers seem indifferent or disrespectful, women start to avoid the clinics, and they miss out on the help they urgently need.
Ms. Azfar acknowledged that it was hard to change attitudes, but she insisted that it could be done, by making “interpersonal skills” part of the training and the tests that students must pass to be allowed to practice. In Afghanistan, these things became part of the midwifery curriculum in 2004.
“Does she greet the mother properly?” she asked. “Offer her a chair? A drink of water? Introduce herself? Let the mother ask questions? They are trained. They have to do it.”
She has seen signs of progress, of hope.
“Just five years ago we started the reconstruction of this profession,” Ms. Azfar said. “These midwives, they are champions. Oh, I love them. They are my heart.”
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
[Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press.]
On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Asssembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005, that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity, requiring the international community to step in if this obligation is not met. This last point is suspected to be related to the right of humanitarian intervention » and is the source of many debates.The discussion was initiated by General Assembly President Miguel DEscoto (from Nicaragua) and gathered Noam Chomsky, Gareth Evans, a supporter of R2P, former Foreign Minister of Australia and, until recently, president of the International Crisis Group, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a prominent African writer and defender of human rights, and myself. Here is the text of my speech.
I would like, in this talk, to challenge the intellectual assumptions underlying the notion and the rhetoric of R2P. In a nutshell, my thesis will be that the main obstacle to the implementation of a genuine R2P are precisely the policies and the attitudes of the countries that are most enthusiastic about this doctrine, namely the Western countries, and in particular the US.
During the past decade, the world has looked on helplessly as innocent civilians were murdered by American bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has been a helpless bystander of the murderous Israeli onslaught on Lebanon and Gaza. Previously, we have seen millions of people perish under American firepower in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; and many others have died in American proxy wars in Central America or Southern Africa. In the name of those victims, shall we say: never again! From now on, the world, the international community, will protect you!
Our humanitarian response is yes, we want to protect all victims. But how, and with which forces? How are the weak ever to be protected from the strong? The answer to this question must be sought not just in humanitarian or in legal terms, but first of all in political terms. The protection of the weak always depends on limitations of the power of the strong. The rule of law is such a limitation, so long as it is based on the principle of equality of all before the law. Achieving that requires clear-headed pursuit of idealistic principles accompanied by realistic assessment of the existing relationship of forces.
Before discussing politically the R2P, let me stress that what is at issue are not its diplomatic or preventive aspects, but the military part of the so-called timely and decisive response, and the challenge that it represents for national sovereignty.
R2P is an ambiguous doctrine. On the one hand, it is being sold to the United Nations as something essentially different from the right of humanitarian intervention, a notion that was developed in the West at the end of the 1970's, after the collapse of the colonial empires and the defeat of the United States in Indochina. This ideology has been relying on the human tragedies of the newly decolonized countries to lend a moral justification to the failed policies of intervention and control by the Western powers over the rest of the World.
Awareness of this fact exists in most of the world. The right of humanitarian intervention has been universally rejected by the South, for example at the South Summit in Havana in April 2000 or at the meeting of the Non Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur in February 2003, shortly before the US attack on Iraq. The R2P is an attempt to fit this rejected right into the framework of the UN charter, so as to make it appear acceptable, by stressing that military actions are to be the last resort, and must be approved by the Security Council. But, then, there is nothing legally new under the sun, and I refer you to the concept note of the Office of the President of the General Assembly for a precise discussion of the legal aspects of the problem.
On the other hand, R2P is being sold to public opinion in the West as a new norm in international relations, one that authorizes military interventions on humanitarian grounds. For example, when President Obama, at the recent G8 meeting, stressed the importance of national sovereignty, the influential French newspaper Le Monde called it a step backwards, since R2P has already been accepted. There is a big difference between R2P as a legal doctrine and its ideological reception in the Western media.
However, in a post-World War II history that includes the Indochina wars, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, of Panama, even of tiny Grenada, as well as the bombing of Yugoslavia, Libya and various other countries, it is scarcely credible to maintain that it is international law and respect for national sovereignty that prevent the United States from stopping genocide. If the US had had the means and the desire to intervene in Rwanda, it would have done so and no international law would have prevented that. And if a "new norm" is introduced, within the context of the current relationship of political and military forces, it will not save anyone anywhere, unless the United States sees fit to intervene, from its own perspective.
Moreover, it is beyond belief that the supporters of R2P speak of an obligation to reconstruct (after a military intervention). How much money exactly did the United States pay as reparations for the devastation it inflicted on Indochina or in Iraq, or that was inflicted on Lebanon and Gaza by a power it notoriously arms and subsidizes ? Or to Nicaragua, to which reparations for the Contra activities are still unpaid by the US, despite their condemnation by the World Court of Justice ? Why expect R2P to force the powerful to pay for what they destroy if they do not do so under current legal arrangements?
If it is true that the 21st century needs a new United Nations, it does not need one that legitimizes such interventions by novel arguments, but one that gives at least moral support to those who try to construct a world less dominated by the United States and its allies. The very starting point of the United Nations was to save humankind from the scourge of war, with reference to the two World Wars. This was to be done precisely by strict respect for national sovereignty, in order to prevent Great Powers from intervening militarily against weaker ones, regardless of the pretext. The wars waged by the United States and NATO show that, despite some significant accomplishments, the United Nations has not yet fully achieved this primary goal. The United Nations needs to pursue its efforts to achieve its founding purpose before setting a new, supposedly humanitarian priority, which may in reality be used by the Great Powers to justify their own future wars by undermining the principle of national sovereignty.
When NATO exercised its own self-proclaimed right to intervene in Kosovo, where diplomatic efforts were far from having been exhausted, it was praised by the Western media. When Russia exercised what it regarded as its R2P in South Ossetia, it was uniformly condemned in the same Western media. When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia, or India in what is now Bangladesh, their actions were also harshly condemned in the West.
This indicates that Western governments, media and NGOs, calling themselves the international community, will judge the responsibility for a human tragedy quite differently, depending on whether it occurs in a country where the West, for whatever reason, is hostile to the government, or in a friendly state. The United States in particular will try to pressure the United Nations into endorsing its own interpretation. The United States may not always choose to intervene, but it may nevertheless use non-intervention to denounce the United Nations as ineffective and to suggest that it should be replaced by NATO as international arbiter.
National sovereignty is sometimes stigmatized by promoters of humanitarian intervention, or of R2P, as a licence to kill. We need to remind ourselves of why national sovereignty should be defended against such stigmatization.
First of all, national sovereignty is a partial protection of weak states against strong ones. Nobody expects Bangladesh to interfere in the internal affairs of the United States to force it to reduce its CO2 emissions because of the catastrophic human consequences that the latter may have on Bangladesh. The interference is always unilateral.
US interference in the internal affairs of other states is multi-faceted but constant and always violates the spirit and often the letter of the UN charter. Despite claims to act on behalf of principles such as freedom and democracy, US intervention has repeatedly had disastrous consequences: not only the millions of deaths caused by direct and indirect wars, but also the lost opportunities, the killing of hope for hundreds of millions of people who might have benefited from progressive social policies initiated by people like Arbenz in Guatemala, Goulart in Brazil, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Mossadegh in Iran, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or President Chavez in Venezuela, who have been systematically subverted, overthrown or killed with full Western support.
But that is not all. Every aggressive action led by the United States creates a reaction. Deployment of an anti-missile shield produces more missiles, not less. Bombing civilians whether deliberately or by so-called collateral damage produces more armed resistance, not less. Trying to overthrow or subvert governments produces more internal repression, not less. Encouraging secessionist minorities by giving them the often false impression that the sole Superpower will come to their rescue in case they are repressed, leads to more violence, hatred and death, not less. Surrounding a country with military bases produces more defense spending by that country, not less. The possession of nuclear weapons by Israel encourages other states of the Middle East to acquire such weapons. The humanitarian disasters in Eastern Congo, as well as in Somalia, are mainly due to foreign interventions, not to a lack of them. To take a most extreme case, which is a favorite example of horrors cited by advocates of the R2P, it is most unlikely that the Khmer Rouge would ever have taken power in Cambodia without the massive secret US bombing followed by US-engineered regime change that left that unfortunate country totally disrupted and destabilized.
The ideology of humanitarian intervention is part of a long history of Western attitudes towards the rest of the World. When Western colonialists landed on the shores of the Americas, Africa or Eastern Asia, they were shocked by what we would now call violations of human rights, and which they called barbaric mores human sacrifices, cannibalism, women forced to bind their feet. Time and again, such indignation, sincere or calculating, has been used to justify or to cover up the crimes of the Western powers: the slave trade, the extermination of indigenous peoples and the systematic stealing of land and resources. This attitude of righteous indignation continues to this day and is at the root of the claim that the West has a right to intervene and a right to protect, while turning a blind eye to oppressive regimes considered our friends, to endless militarization and wars, and to massive exploitation of labor and resources.
The West should learn from its past history. What would that mean concretely? Well, first of all, guaranteeing the strict respect for international law on the part of Western powers, implementing the UN resolutions concerning Israel, dismantling the worldwide US empire of bases as well as NATO, ceasing all threats concerning the unilateral use of force, lifting unilateral sanctions, in particular the embargo against Cuba, stopping all interference in the internal affairs of other States, in particular all operations of democracy promotion, color revolutions, and the exploitation of the politics of minorities. This necessary respect for national sovereignty means that the ultimate sovereign of each nation state is the people of that state, whose right to replace unjust governments cannot be taken over by supposedly benevolent outsiders.
Next, we could use our overblown military budgets (NATO countries account for 70 per cent of world military expenses) to implement a form of global Keynesianism: instead of demanding " balanced budgets " in the developing world, we should use the resources wasted on our military to finance massive investments in education, health care and development. If this sounds utopian, it is not more so than the belief that a stable world will emerge from the way our current war on terror is being carried out.
Defenders of R2P may argue that what I say is besides the point or needlessly politicizes the issue, since, according to them, it is the international community and not the West that will intervene, with, moreover, the approval of the Security Council. But in reality, there is no such thing as a genuine international community. NATOs intervention in Kosovo was not approved by Russia and Russian intervention in South Ossetia was condemned by the West. There would have been no Security Council approval for either intervention. Recently, the African Union rejected the indictment by the International Criminal Court of the President of Sudan. Any system of international justice or police, whether it is R2P or the ICC, needs a relationship of equality and a climate of trust. Today, there is no equality and no trust, between West and East, between North and South, largely as a result of past US policies. If we want some version of R2P to work in the future, we need first to build a relationship of equality and trust and what I said before goes to the heart of the matter. The world can become more secure only if it first becomes more just.
It is important to understand that the critique made here of R2P is not based on an absolutist defense of national sovereingty, but on a reflection on the policies of the most powerful states that forces weaker states to use sovereignty as a shield.
The promoters of R2P present it as the beginning of a new era; but in fact it is the end of an old one. From an interventionist viewpoint, the R2P backtracks with respect to the old right of humanitarian intervention, at least in words, and that old right was itself a step back from traditional colonialism. The major social transformation of the 20th century has been decolonization. It continues today in the elaboration of a genuinely democratic world, one where the sun will have set on the US empire, just as it did on the old European ones. There are some indications that President Obama understands this reality and it is only to be hoped that his actions will match his words.
I want to end with a message for the representatives, and for the populations, of the Global South. The viewpoints expressed here are shared by millions of people in the West. This is unfortunately not reflected in our media. Millions of people, including American citizens, reject war as a means to settle international disputes and strongly oppose the blind support of their country for Israeli Apartheid. They adhere to the goals of the non-aligned movement of international cooperation within the strict respect for national sovereignty and equality of all peoples. They risk being denounced in the media of their own countries as being anti-Western, anti-American or anti-Semitic. Yet, they are the ones who, by opening their minds to the aspirations of the rest of mankind, carry on what is genuinely of value in the Western humanist tradition.
On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Asssembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005, that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity, requiring the international community to step in if this obligation is not met. This last point is suspected to be related to the right of humanitarian intervention » and is the source of many debates.The discussion was initiated by General Assembly President Miguel DEscoto (from Nicaragua) and gathered Noam Chomsky, Gareth Evans, a supporter of R2P, former Foreign Minister of Australia and, until recently, president of the International Crisis Group, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a prominent African writer and defender of human rights, and myself. Here is the text of my speech.
I would like, in this talk, to challenge the intellectual assumptions underlying the notion and the rhetoric of R2P. In a nutshell, my thesis will be that the main obstacle to the implementation of a genuine R2P are precisely the policies and the attitudes of the countries that are most enthusiastic about this doctrine, namely the Western countries, and in particular the US.
During the past decade, the world has looked on helplessly as innocent civilians were murdered by American bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has been a helpless bystander of the murderous Israeli onslaught on Lebanon and Gaza. Previously, we have seen millions of people perish under American firepower in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; and many others have died in American proxy wars in Central America or Southern Africa. In the name of those victims, shall we say: never again! From now on, the world, the international community, will protect you!
Our humanitarian response is yes, we want to protect all victims. But how, and with which forces? How are the weak ever to be protected from the strong? The answer to this question must be sought not just in humanitarian or in legal terms, but first of all in political terms. The protection of the weak always depends on limitations of the power of the strong. The rule of law is such a limitation, so long as it is based on the principle of equality of all before the law. Achieving that requires clear-headed pursuit of idealistic principles accompanied by realistic assessment of the existing relationship of forces.
Before discussing politically the R2P, let me stress that what is at issue are not its diplomatic or preventive aspects, but the military part of the so-called timely and decisive response, and the challenge that it represents for national sovereignty.
R2P is an ambiguous doctrine. On the one hand, it is being sold to the United Nations as something essentially different from the right of humanitarian intervention, a notion that was developed in the West at the end of the 1970's, after the collapse of the colonial empires and the defeat of the United States in Indochina. This ideology has been relying on the human tragedies of the newly decolonized countries to lend a moral justification to the failed policies of intervention and control by the Western powers over the rest of the World.
Awareness of this fact exists in most of the world. The right of humanitarian intervention has been universally rejected by the South, for example at the South Summit in Havana in April 2000 or at the meeting of the Non Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur in February 2003, shortly before the US attack on Iraq. The R2P is an attempt to fit this rejected right into the framework of the UN charter, so as to make it appear acceptable, by stressing that military actions are to be the last resort, and must be approved by the Security Council. But, then, there is nothing legally new under the sun, and I refer you to the concept note of the Office of the President of the General Assembly for a precise discussion of the legal aspects of the problem.
On the other hand, R2P is being sold to public opinion in the West as a new norm in international relations, one that authorizes military interventions on humanitarian grounds. For example, when President Obama, at the recent G8 meeting, stressed the importance of national sovereignty, the influential French newspaper Le Monde called it a step backwards, since R2P has already been accepted. There is a big difference between R2P as a legal doctrine and its ideological reception in the Western media.
However, in a post-World War II history that includes the Indochina wars, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, of Panama, even of tiny Grenada, as well as the bombing of Yugoslavia, Libya and various other countries, it is scarcely credible to maintain that it is international law and respect for national sovereignty that prevent the United States from stopping genocide. If the US had had the means and the desire to intervene in Rwanda, it would have done so and no international law would have prevented that. And if a "new norm" is introduced, within the context of the current relationship of political and military forces, it will not save anyone anywhere, unless the United States sees fit to intervene, from its own perspective.
Moreover, it is beyond belief that the supporters of R2P speak of an obligation to reconstruct (after a military intervention). How much money exactly did the United States pay as reparations for the devastation it inflicted on Indochina or in Iraq, or that was inflicted on Lebanon and Gaza by a power it notoriously arms and subsidizes ? Or to Nicaragua, to which reparations for the Contra activities are still unpaid by the US, despite their condemnation by the World Court of Justice ? Why expect R2P to force the powerful to pay for what they destroy if they do not do so under current legal arrangements?
If it is true that the 21st century needs a new United Nations, it does not need one that legitimizes such interventions by novel arguments, but one that gives at least moral support to those who try to construct a world less dominated by the United States and its allies. The very starting point of the United Nations was to save humankind from the scourge of war, with reference to the two World Wars. This was to be done precisely by strict respect for national sovereignty, in order to prevent Great Powers from intervening militarily against weaker ones, regardless of the pretext. The wars waged by the United States and NATO show that, despite some significant accomplishments, the United Nations has not yet fully achieved this primary goal. The United Nations needs to pursue its efforts to achieve its founding purpose before setting a new, supposedly humanitarian priority, which may in reality be used by the Great Powers to justify their own future wars by undermining the principle of national sovereignty.
When NATO exercised its own self-proclaimed right to intervene in Kosovo, where diplomatic efforts were far from having been exhausted, it was praised by the Western media. When Russia exercised what it regarded as its R2P in South Ossetia, it was uniformly condemned in the same Western media. When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia, or India in what is now Bangladesh, their actions were also harshly condemned in the West.
This indicates that Western governments, media and NGOs, calling themselves the international community, will judge the responsibility for a human tragedy quite differently, depending on whether it occurs in a country where the West, for whatever reason, is hostile to the government, or in a friendly state. The United States in particular will try to pressure the United Nations into endorsing its own interpretation. The United States may not always choose to intervene, but it may nevertheless use non-intervention to denounce the United Nations as ineffective and to suggest that it should be replaced by NATO as international arbiter.
National sovereignty is sometimes stigmatized by promoters of humanitarian intervention, or of R2P, as a licence to kill. We need to remind ourselves of why national sovereignty should be defended against such stigmatization.
First of all, national sovereignty is a partial protection of weak states against strong ones. Nobody expects Bangladesh to interfere in the internal affairs of the United States to force it to reduce its CO2 emissions because of the catastrophic human consequences that the latter may have on Bangladesh. The interference is always unilateral.
US interference in the internal affairs of other states is multi-faceted but constant and always violates the spirit and often the letter of the UN charter. Despite claims to act on behalf of principles such as freedom and democracy, US intervention has repeatedly had disastrous consequences: not only the millions of deaths caused by direct and indirect wars, but also the lost opportunities, the killing of hope for hundreds of millions of people who might have benefited from progressive social policies initiated by people like Arbenz in Guatemala, Goulart in Brazil, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Mossadegh in Iran, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or President Chavez in Venezuela, who have been systematically subverted, overthrown or killed with full Western support.
But that is not all. Every aggressive action led by the United States creates a reaction. Deployment of an anti-missile shield produces more missiles, not less. Bombing civilians whether deliberately or by so-called collateral damage produces more armed resistance, not less. Trying to overthrow or subvert governments produces more internal repression, not less. Encouraging secessionist minorities by giving them the often false impression that the sole Superpower will come to their rescue in case they are repressed, leads to more violence, hatred and death, not less. Surrounding a country with military bases produces more defense spending by that country, not less. The possession of nuclear weapons by Israel encourages other states of the Middle East to acquire such weapons. The humanitarian disasters in Eastern Congo, as well as in Somalia, are mainly due to foreign interventions, not to a lack of them. To take a most extreme case, which is a favorite example of horrors cited by advocates of the R2P, it is most unlikely that the Khmer Rouge would ever have taken power in Cambodia without the massive secret US bombing followed by US-engineered regime change that left that unfortunate country totally disrupted and destabilized.
The ideology of humanitarian intervention is part of a long history of Western attitudes towards the rest of the World. When Western colonialists landed on the shores of the Americas, Africa or Eastern Asia, they were shocked by what we would now call violations of human rights, and which they called barbaric mores human sacrifices, cannibalism, women forced to bind their feet. Time and again, such indignation, sincere or calculating, has been used to justify or to cover up the crimes of the Western powers: the slave trade, the extermination of indigenous peoples and the systematic stealing of land and resources. This attitude of righteous indignation continues to this day and is at the root of the claim that the West has a right to intervene and a right to protect, while turning a blind eye to oppressive regimes considered our friends, to endless militarization and wars, and to massive exploitation of labor and resources.
The West should learn from its past history. What would that mean concretely? Well, first of all, guaranteeing the strict respect for international law on the part of Western powers, implementing the UN resolutions concerning Israel, dismantling the worldwide US empire of bases as well as NATO, ceasing all threats concerning the unilateral use of force, lifting unilateral sanctions, in particular the embargo against Cuba, stopping all interference in the internal affairs of other States, in particular all operations of democracy promotion, color revolutions, and the exploitation of the politics of minorities. This necessary respect for national sovereignty means that the ultimate sovereign of each nation state is the people of that state, whose right to replace unjust governments cannot be taken over by supposedly benevolent outsiders.
Next, we could use our overblown military budgets (NATO countries account for 70 per cent of world military expenses) to implement a form of global Keynesianism: instead of demanding " balanced budgets " in the developing world, we should use the resources wasted on our military to finance massive investments in education, health care and development. If this sounds utopian, it is not more so than the belief that a stable world will emerge from the way our current war on terror is being carried out.
Defenders of R2P may argue that what I say is besides the point or needlessly politicizes the issue, since, according to them, it is the international community and not the West that will intervene, with, moreover, the approval of the Security Council. But in reality, there is no such thing as a genuine international community. NATOs intervention in Kosovo was not approved by Russia and Russian intervention in South Ossetia was condemned by the West. There would have been no Security Council approval for either intervention. Recently, the African Union rejected the indictment by the International Criminal Court of the President of Sudan. Any system of international justice or police, whether it is R2P or the ICC, needs a relationship of equality and a climate of trust. Today, there is no equality and no trust, between West and East, between North and South, largely as a result of past US policies. If we want some version of R2P to work in the future, we need first to build a relationship of equality and trust and what I said before goes to the heart of the matter. The world can become more secure only if it first becomes more just.
It is important to understand that the critique made here of R2P is not based on an absolutist defense of national sovereingty, but on a reflection on the policies of the most powerful states that forces weaker states to use sovereignty as a shield.
The promoters of R2P present it as the beginning of a new era; but in fact it is the end of an old one. From an interventionist viewpoint, the R2P backtracks with respect to the old right of humanitarian intervention, at least in words, and that old right was itself a step back from traditional colonialism. The major social transformation of the 20th century has been decolonization. It continues today in the elaboration of a genuinely democratic world, one where the sun will have set on the US empire, just as it did on the old European ones. There are some indications that President Obama understands this reality and it is only to be hoped that his actions will match his words.
I want to end with a message for the representatives, and for the populations, of the Global South. The viewpoints expressed here are shared by millions of people in the West. This is unfortunately not reflected in our media. Millions of people, including American citizens, reject war as a means to settle international disputes and strongly oppose the blind support of their country for Israeli Apartheid. They adhere to the goals of the non-aligned movement of international cooperation within the strict respect for national sovereignty and equality of all peoples. They risk being denounced in the media of their own countries as being anti-Western, anti-American or anti-Semitic. Yet, they are the ones who, by opening their minds to the aspirations of the rest of mankind, carry on what is genuinely of value in the Western humanist tradition.
This should be on Happy News.. although its absolutely none of my business what they post on there :)
'Willing' to leave IraqRod Nordland and Timothy Williams, Baghdad
July 30, 2009
FROM tomorrow there will be no ‘‘multi’’ in Iraq’s multinational force.
As Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, the United States is the last of the coalition of the willing the Bush administration brought together six years ago.
Remaining British combat troops are expected to withdraw to Kuwait by tomorrow with the Australians, leaving about 100 soldiers guarding Australian officials in Baghdad. The Romanians left a week ago.
NATO will keep a small training presence in Iraq, but its troops were never considered part of the multinational force because of opposition to the war from many NATO countries.
US military officials have acknowledged the need for a name change: it will officially become US force-Iraq from January 1, the deputy coalition spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Stewart, said.
‘‘This is done to reflect the new bilateral relationship between US forces and our Iraqi hosts,’’ he said.
Even this relationship is on the wane as the American military goes through the complexities of withdrawing 130,000 soldiers in the next two years while shifting much of its attention to Afghanistan. As one marine officer in Anbar province said: ‘‘We’re so out of here.’’
The phrase ‘‘coalition of the willing’’ became widespread after it was used by secretary of state Colin Powell before the American invasion, but it never got much respect. When it became clear that the UN was unwilling to back military action against Iraq, Mr Powell named 30 countries that would pitch in.
Countries contributing troops included Tonga, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Latvia. In all, 38 sent soldiers, typically in groups numbering in the low hundreds, in rotations that were usually brief and sometimes even furtive. Japan sent a force but said it would not fight. Australian and Dutch troops had to be used just to guard it.
Iceland sent the smallest contingent, even before it cut its force in half, which left only one Icelandic soldier in Iraq.
Many coalition contributors
lost soldiers in Iraq. Britain had the most casualties, 179 killed, because its troops were in the restive southern province of Basra. The other 37 contributors lost a total of 139 soldiers. American fatalities have been 13 times those of all the others together, exceeding 4300.
The lower number of coalition casualties reflects their role. Their chief utility was to free American soldiers from routine duties.
Georgia’s contingent manned the checkpoints in the fortified Green Zone of Baghdad, for instance, and brooked no arguments from people trying to enter, especially since few of the soldiers spoke anything but Russian or Georgian.
Its contribution grew to a peak of 2000, until the soldiers were withdrawn in August and rushed home to defend Tbilisi after the Russians invaded.
Britain stayed despite growing criticism at home, but its forces were steadily diminished until only 100 remained this month.
The security agreement with Britain was stalled in the Iraqi Parliament by opposition from the Sadrist bloc, followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Parliament will not reconvene until September 8. A British diplomat suggested the Government might grant an extension, but Iraqi Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said this would not be possible.
In Baghdad this week, armed men broke into a bank, killed eight security guards and stole $6.3 million in Iraqi dinars that the US military fears insurgents might use to recruit members and buy weapons.
NEW YORK TIMES
'Willing' to leave IraqRod Nordland and Timothy Williams, Baghdad
July 30, 2009
FROM tomorrow there will be no ‘‘multi’’ in Iraq’s multinational force.
As Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, the United States is the last of the coalition of the willing the Bush administration brought together six years ago.
Remaining British combat troops are expected to withdraw to Kuwait by tomorrow with the Australians, leaving about 100 soldiers guarding Australian officials in Baghdad. The Romanians left a week ago.
NATO will keep a small training presence in Iraq, but its troops were never considered part of the multinational force because of opposition to the war from many NATO countries.
US military officials have acknowledged the need for a name change: it will officially become US force-Iraq from January 1, the deputy coalition spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Stewart, said.
‘‘This is done to reflect the new bilateral relationship between US forces and our Iraqi hosts,’’ he said.
Even this relationship is on the wane as the American military goes through the complexities of withdrawing 130,000 soldiers in the next two years while shifting much of its attention to Afghanistan. As one marine officer in Anbar province said: ‘‘We’re so out of here.’’
The phrase ‘‘coalition of the willing’’ became widespread after it was used by secretary of state Colin Powell before the American invasion, but it never got much respect. When it became clear that the UN was unwilling to back military action against Iraq, Mr Powell named 30 countries that would pitch in.
Countries contributing troops included Tonga, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Latvia. In all, 38 sent soldiers, typically in groups numbering in the low hundreds, in rotations that were usually brief and sometimes even furtive. Japan sent a force but said it would not fight. Australian and Dutch troops had to be used just to guard it.
Iceland sent the smallest contingent, even before it cut its force in half, which left only one Icelandic soldier in Iraq.
Many coalition contributors
lost soldiers in Iraq. Britain had the most casualties, 179 killed, because its troops were in the restive southern province of Basra. The other 37 contributors lost a total of 139 soldiers. American fatalities have been 13 times those of all the others together, exceeding 4300.
The lower number of coalition casualties reflects their role. Their chief utility was to free American soldiers from routine duties.
Georgia’s contingent manned the checkpoints in the fortified Green Zone of Baghdad, for instance, and brooked no arguments from people trying to enter, especially since few of the soldiers spoke anything but Russian or Georgian.
Its contribution grew to a peak of 2000, until the soldiers were withdrawn in August and rushed home to defend Tbilisi after the Russians invaded.
Britain stayed despite growing criticism at home, but its forces were steadily diminished until only 100 remained this month.
The security agreement with Britain was stalled in the Iraqi Parliament by opposition from the Sadrist bloc, followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Parliament will not reconvene until September 8. A British diplomat suggested the Government might grant an extension, but Iraqi Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said this would not be possible.
In Baghdad this week, armed men broke into a bank, killed eight security guards and stole $6.3 million in Iraqi dinars that the US military fears insurgents might use to recruit members and buy weapons.
NEW YORK TIMES
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has failed to rule out the need for additional troops in Afghanistan as he discussed the need for a joint military and political strategy to defeat the Taliban.
In an interview for PBS's Newshour during a two-day visit to the US, Mr Miliband said that there was no long-term military "solution" on its own, adding that coalition forces were not looking to turn the country into a "colony".
Asked if this meant that a reported American request for Britain to send more soldiers to Afghanistan was unlikely to be met, the Foreign Secretary said additional numbers would "depend on the situation on the ground and burden sharing among the allies".
The comments come towards the end of the bloodiest month for British forces in Afghanistan since the mission began in October 2001. To date, 22 soldiers have died in July including the highest-ranking Army officer to be killed in battle since the Falklands.
Earlier this year it was reported that US Army officials including General David Petraeus, who oversees operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, were pressing the UK government to deploy 2,000 more troops in Afghanistan.
In his interview for PBS, Mr Miliband said that he had only seen that figure "in newspapers not Cabinet papers".
He added that British numbers in the country had already risen from around 3,000 to 9,000. Asked if this was set to increase further, the foreign secretary said: "That depends on the situation on the ground and the burden sharing among the allies. This is a 42-country effort and it is important that all countries play their appropriate part."
He added: "Britain has increased its numbers. We are guided by the situation on the ground, the assets we have at our disposal, and the fair sharing of the burden."
Mr Miliband stressed that military actions alone were not sufficient to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan. He said: "We all know that in the end there is no long-term military 'solution'."
The foreign secretary added that there was a need to create the space for sustainable home-grown politics and sustainable governments. "We are not trying to create a colony in Afghanistan," he said.
Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved.
In an interview for PBS's Newshour during a two-day visit to the US, Mr Miliband said that there was no long-term military "solution" on its own, adding that coalition forces were not looking to turn the country into a "colony".
Asked if this meant that a reported American request for Britain to send more soldiers to Afghanistan was unlikely to be met, the Foreign Secretary said additional numbers would "depend on the situation on the ground and burden sharing among the allies".
The comments come towards the end of the bloodiest month for British forces in Afghanistan since the mission began in October 2001. To date, 22 soldiers have died in July including the highest-ranking Army officer to be killed in battle since the Falklands.
Earlier this year it was reported that US Army officials including General David Petraeus, who oversees operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, were pressing the UK government to deploy 2,000 more troops in Afghanistan.
In his interview for PBS, Mr Miliband said that he had only seen that figure "in newspapers not Cabinet papers".
He added that British numbers in the country had already risen from around 3,000 to 9,000. Asked if this was set to increase further, the foreign secretary said: "That depends on the situation on the ground and the burden sharing among the allies. This is a 42-country effort and it is important that all countries play their appropriate part."
He added: "Britain has increased its numbers. We are guided by the situation on the ground, the assets we have at our disposal, and the fair sharing of the burden."
Mr Miliband stressed that military actions alone were not sufficient to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan. He said: "We all know that in the end there is no long-term military 'solution'."
The foreign secretary added that there was a need to create the space for sustainable home-grown politics and sustainable governments. "We are not trying to create a colony in Afghanistan," he said.
Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved.
This sounds like a really interesting movie. It doesn't play everywhere, unfortunately ;)
Explosive material
Kari Skogland recounts the saga of making her IRA thriller, Fifty Dead Men Walking
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 | 4:16 PM ET Comments0Recommend1.
By Martin Morrow, CBC News
Jim Sturgess stars as a young Belfast man who becomes an IRA informer in Kari Skogland's thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking. (Colm Hogan/TVA Films)
Kari Skogland gets full marks for chutzpah. The Canadian filmmaker knew next to nothing about the Troubles in Northern Ireland when she threw herself headlong into a feature film based on IRA informer Martin McGartland’s memoir, Fifty Dead Men Walking. She emerged with a dark, dirty, intense thriller that evokes both the war-zone atmosphere of 1980s Belfast and the chilling risks of playing a spy in the midst of sectarian violence.
'It's not a political movie. It's about a bunch of humans, often with common interests and common stories, that collide on opposite sides of the fence.'
— Director Kari SkoglandSkogland’s film is concerned not with the roots and reasons for the conflict between the Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists, but with the struggle faced by a young man who chooses to betray other members of his community for what he sees as the greater good. (The title refers to the number of potential IRA victims whose lives McGartland likely saved by working undercover as a British agent.)
The movie stars up-and-comer Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe, 21) as Martin, an enterprising Catholic lad who dares to become a reviled “tout,” and the venerable Sir Ben Kingsley as Fergus, the shadowy policeman who recruits him. The cast also includes Natalie Press as Martin’s girlfriend, Canadian Kevin Zegers as the mate who helps him join the IRA and Rose McGowan as the organization’s seductive “Mata Hari.” A Canadian-British-U.S. co-production, the picture was shot on location in Belfast and environs.
Making it was by no means easy. Before filming, Skogland and her actors had to first gain the trust of the Belfast community, still raw after three decades of conflict that cost more than 3,500 lives on both sides. Then there was controversy prior to the premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, when McGartland denounced the movie as inaccurate and threatened to sue. (The producers settled with him after tweaking some scenes and adding a closing-credits disclaimer.)
For Ottawa native Skogland, the film is a significant step in her burgeoning international career. It finds her blending the thriller and action genres she’s familiar with (Men With Guns, Liberty Stands Still) and the more dramatic concerns of her previous movie, the big-screen version of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel. Skogland took time to discuss Fifty Dead Men Walking, from the movie’s relevance post-9/11 to McGartland’s complaints and Sturgess’s funny moustache.
Writer-director Kari Skogland. (Star PR) Q: It seems like a good time to be examining the conflict in Northern Ireland, both because it has recently ended and because it reflects current sectarian clashes in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Did you have that in mind when you embarked on this film?
A: It’s not a political movie. It’s not intended to be. It’s intended to walk the line politically, to not present itself as for or against the IRA or the other side, the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary – the Northern Ireland police]. The idea is that it’s a bunch of humans, often with common interests and common stories, that collide on opposite sides of the fence. So what happens when you as an individual must look to your own personal moral and ethical code? You, at the end of the day, have to look at yourself in the mirror. And one day there will be peace and you have to reflect back on how you acted during times of conflict. That to me was really the story that I wanted to tell.
Q: Did you feel a bit presumptuous as an outsider in Belfast, making a film about the Troubles?
A: No question. I had to gain their trust. And I did quite quickly, once they realized my whole mantra was that it needed to be about the truth. I couldn’t afford to be necessarily accurate on all points, because there were legal issues and it wasn’t a documentary on the book. But I did have to make sure the spirit of the truth was in everything I did. And they really hooked on to this. Also, we were right on the heels of when [Sinn Fein leader] Gerry Adams and [Unionist leader] Ian Paisley shook hands for the very first time ever, so we were very much on the cusp of this change that was sweeping through. Finally, truly, peace was declared. So people were ready to tell their stories.
Q: McGartland took exception to some of the changes you made to his story. Was he involved in the film when you were making it?
A: I spoke to him for many, many hours while we were filming, and I’d spoken to him before that. The thing about Martin is that the story kind of morphed a little bit as a result of what had happened since the original book was written in 1999. A lot more information was coming out about what had actually gone down, and who had been involved. So I realized I had a slightly bigger story to tell. As well, I think Martin was more politicized than I wanted to be. He wanted me to make an anti-IRA movie, and that was just not the movie I wanted to make. Having said that, once he saw the film, he then loved it and was terrifically complimentary.
Q: Jim Sturgess is terrific in the role of Martin. He has this vulnerable, weedy quality that makes you really afraid for what will happen to him if he’s found out.
A: I met him and just knew he was absolutely right for the role, in part because he had that vulnerability and likability. Because he was going to have to play someone who, inherently, as a snitch, a rat, an informer, was going to have to do heinous things. So we had to like him and it had to be part of the fabric of who he was. And Burgess is just such a gentleman, such a nice man, that it comes through in his acting. I think he’s a very strong talent that we’re going to hear a lot more from in the future.
Fergus (Ben Kingsley, left) meets with Martin (Sturgess) in a scene from Fifty Dead Men Walking. (TVA Films) Q: I loved that funny little moustache he wears. It makes him look slightly goofy and endearing. Was it his idea?
A: [Laughs] It was his idea. He really wanted his look to be quite different from Across the Universe and 21. It took him a little while to convince me that the reinvention of the ’stache was going to be a good thing. It’s a big commitment to hide your lead actor’s face. But I think it was the right decision — it did change his look enough, it was also period-relevant, but it also gave him the licence to be someone that he hadn’t been before.
Q: Then there’s Sir Ben Kingsley. I understand he was your first choice to play Fergus.
A: A handler has to play his cards very close to his chest. Their whole MO is to control and spin, to push and pull, and ultimately make the informer dance the way they need to. The role needed someone who could do that without fighting for space onscreen. And one of the things that Ben does so fantastically is just that. Think of him in, say, House of Sand and Fog. I knew he had that wonderful nuance. I just couldn’t think of anyone better for the role. And he brought a lot to the party. We had a lot of conversations on who this character was. I have to say he was such a pleasure to work with and such a pleasure to watch. It taught me a lot as a director.
Q: I was struck by the guerrilla way you shot the action sequences, like a combat cameraman caught in the middle of a war zone. It feels as if Belfast was Baghdad during the invasion. Was that a conscious analogy?
A: Absolutely. And Belfast really was like that. As I did all my research I realized how intense the situation was there. You had these small communities that were like encampments, they were walled-in, literally — you couldn’t go out at night. There were helicopters 24/7 overhead. It was a true war zone. And I wanted the action sequences to feel organic and real. I didn’t want them to sniff of Hollywood in any way. So we worked very hard at achieving that kind of irreverent, happenstance style that had a kind of newsreel quality to it.
Q: I imagine things have changed a lot in Belfast since those days. What is the mood like there now?
A: It’s very much one of forward thinking, of putting the past behind. You have a Catholic community that is no longer disenfranchised the way it was. There are doctors and lawyers; many of them have gone away to be educated and then come back there. So you have a power shift that’s economic as much as anything. I have to say this was one of the most challenging projects I’ve done to date, creatively speaking, but also one of the most enjoyable on the social front.
Fifty Dead Men Walking opens in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver on Friday, July 31
Explosive material
Kari Skogland recounts the saga of making her IRA thriller, Fifty Dead Men Walking
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 | 4:16 PM ET Comments0Recommend1.
By Martin Morrow, CBC News
Jim Sturgess stars as a young Belfast man who becomes an IRA informer in Kari Skogland's thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking. (Colm Hogan/TVA Films)
Kari Skogland gets full marks for chutzpah. The Canadian filmmaker knew next to nothing about the Troubles in Northern Ireland when she threw herself headlong into a feature film based on IRA informer Martin McGartland’s memoir, Fifty Dead Men Walking. She emerged with a dark, dirty, intense thriller that evokes both the war-zone atmosphere of 1980s Belfast and the chilling risks of playing a spy in the midst of sectarian violence.
'It's not a political movie. It's about a bunch of humans, often with common interests and common stories, that collide on opposite sides of the fence.'
— Director Kari SkoglandSkogland’s film is concerned not with the roots and reasons for the conflict between the Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists, but with the struggle faced by a young man who chooses to betray other members of his community for what he sees as the greater good. (The title refers to the number of potential IRA victims whose lives McGartland likely saved by working undercover as a British agent.)
The movie stars up-and-comer Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe, 21) as Martin, an enterprising Catholic lad who dares to become a reviled “tout,” and the venerable Sir Ben Kingsley as Fergus, the shadowy policeman who recruits him. The cast also includes Natalie Press as Martin’s girlfriend, Canadian Kevin Zegers as the mate who helps him join the IRA and Rose McGowan as the organization’s seductive “Mata Hari.” A Canadian-British-U.S. co-production, the picture was shot on location in Belfast and environs.
Making it was by no means easy. Before filming, Skogland and her actors had to first gain the trust of the Belfast community, still raw after three decades of conflict that cost more than 3,500 lives on both sides. Then there was controversy prior to the premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, when McGartland denounced the movie as inaccurate and threatened to sue. (The producers settled with him after tweaking some scenes and adding a closing-credits disclaimer.)
For Ottawa native Skogland, the film is a significant step in her burgeoning international career. It finds her blending the thriller and action genres she’s familiar with (Men With Guns, Liberty Stands Still) and the more dramatic concerns of her previous movie, the big-screen version of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel. Skogland took time to discuss Fifty Dead Men Walking, from the movie’s relevance post-9/11 to McGartland’s complaints and Sturgess’s funny moustache.
Writer-director Kari Skogland. (Star PR) Q: It seems like a good time to be examining the conflict in Northern Ireland, both because it has recently ended and because it reflects current sectarian clashes in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Did you have that in mind when you embarked on this film?
A: It’s not a political movie. It’s not intended to be. It’s intended to walk the line politically, to not present itself as for or against the IRA or the other side, the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary – the Northern Ireland police]. The idea is that it’s a bunch of humans, often with common interests and common stories, that collide on opposite sides of the fence. So what happens when you as an individual must look to your own personal moral and ethical code? You, at the end of the day, have to look at yourself in the mirror. And one day there will be peace and you have to reflect back on how you acted during times of conflict. That to me was really the story that I wanted to tell.
Q: Did you feel a bit presumptuous as an outsider in Belfast, making a film about the Troubles?
A: No question. I had to gain their trust. And I did quite quickly, once they realized my whole mantra was that it needed to be about the truth. I couldn’t afford to be necessarily accurate on all points, because there were legal issues and it wasn’t a documentary on the book. But I did have to make sure the spirit of the truth was in everything I did. And they really hooked on to this. Also, we were right on the heels of when [Sinn Fein leader] Gerry Adams and [Unionist leader] Ian Paisley shook hands for the very first time ever, so we were very much on the cusp of this change that was sweeping through. Finally, truly, peace was declared. So people were ready to tell their stories.
Q: McGartland took exception to some of the changes you made to his story. Was he involved in the film when you were making it?
A: I spoke to him for many, many hours while we were filming, and I’d spoken to him before that. The thing about Martin is that the story kind of morphed a little bit as a result of what had happened since the original book was written in 1999. A lot more information was coming out about what had actually gone down, and who had been involved. So I realized I had a slightly bigger story to tell. As well, I think Martin was more politicized than I wanted to be. He wanted me to make an anti-IRA movie, and that was just not the movie I wanted to make. Having said that, once he saw the film, he then loved it and was terrifically complimentary.
Q: Jim Sturgess is terrific in the role of Martin. He has this vulnerable, weedy quality that makes you really afraid for what will happen to him if he’s found out.
A: I met him and just knew he was absolutely right for the role, in part because he had that vulnerability and likability. Because he was going to have to play someone who, inherently, as a snitch, a rat, an informer, was going to have to do heinous things. So we had to like him and it had to be part of the fabric of who he was. And Burgess is just such a gentleman, such a nice man, that it comes through in his acting. I think he’s a very strong talent that we’re going to hear a lot more from in the future.
Fergus (Ben Kingsley, left) meets with Martin (Sturgess) in a scene from Fifty Dead Men Walking. (TVA Films) Q: I loved that funny little moustache he wears. It makes him look slightly goofy and endearing. Was it his idea?
A: [Laughs] It was his idea. He really wanted his look to be quite different from Across the Universe and 21. It took him a little while to convince me that the reinvention of the ’stache was going to be a good thing. It’s a big commitment to hide your lead actor’s face. But I think it was the right decision — it did change his look enough, it was also period-relevant, but it also gave him the licence to be someone that he hadn’t been before.
Q: Then there’s Sir Ben Kingsley. I understand he was your first choice to play Fergus.
A: A handler has to play his cards very close to his chest. Their whole MO is to control and spin, to push and pull, and ultimately make the informer dance the way they need to. The role needed someone who could do that without fighting for space onscreen. And one of the things that Ben does so fantastically is just that. Think of him in, say, House of Sand and Fog. I knew he had that wonderful nuance. I just couldn’t think of anyone better for the role. And he brought a lot to the party. We had a lot of conversations on who this character was. I have to say he was such a pleasure to work with and such a pleasure to watch. It taught me a lot as a director.
Q: I was struck by the guerrilla way you shot the action sequences, like a combat cameraman caught in the middle of a war zone. It feels as if Belfast was Baghdad during the invasion. Was that a conscious analogy?
A: Absolutely. And Belfast really was like that. As I did all my research I realized how intense the situation was there. You had these small communities that were like encampments, they were walled-in, literally — you couldn’t go out at night. There were helicopters 24/7 overhead. It was a true war zone. And I wanted the action sequences to feel organic and real. I didn’t want them to sniff of Hollywood in any way. So we worked very hard at achieving that kind of irreverent, happenstance style that had a kind of newsreel quality to it.
Q: I imagine things have changed a lot in Belfast since those days. What is the mood like there now?
A: It’s very much one of forward thinking, of putting the past behind. You have a Catholic community that is no longer disenfranchised the way it was. There are doctors and lawyers; many of them have gone away to be educated and then come back there. So you have a power shift that’s economic as much as anything. I have to say this was one of the most challenging projects I’ve done to date, creatively speaking, but also one of the most enjoyable on the social front.
Fifty Dead Men Walking opens in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver on Friday, July 31
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)