Asad Abukhalil (photo: Asa Winstanley)

Originally from Lebanon, As’ad AbuKhalil is professor of political science at California State University, a well known commentator on Arabic TV stations such as Al-Jazeera, and runs a popular blog, which he writes in English, called The Angry Arab News Service.

He is known for his radical leftist political stances and, in particular, his emphatic support for the Palestinian struggle. However, he has recently received criticism from readers and former fans for his stance on Syria (he is against both the Assad regime and the opposition’s Syrian National Council).

In January, AbuKhalil was in the UK for a speaking tour of university Palestine societies titled “The Case Against Israel”. The day before his first talk at Goldsmiths University, I sat down with the professor in an Edgware Road cafe to discuss his thoughts on the Palestine solidarity movement, the historical significance of the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, the uprising in Syria, as well as other regional developments. I started off by asking him about his speaking tour.

As`ad AbuKhalil: I am going around to speak on making the case against Israel. I’m not going to be making any qualifications, or any disclaimers. I think I am of a generation who have seen too many Arab intellectuals, particularly in the United States, who used to get awkward and nervous whenever, after giving a long talk about the Palestinians, they are faced with a Zionist in the audience who would ask them: “But do you accept the existence of Israel?” And I’ve seen so many famous names dance around that question… I have become influenced by it in a way to be very categorical about it. When I started speaking publicly about Palestine in the United States, in the first few cases I was confronted by these same people who would stand up and say “But do you recognise the state of Israel?” And to that I would answer “Of course I wouldn’t!”

Asa Winstanley: So they don’t bother now?

AA: That never comes [up] anymore! And I felt like: that was so easy, why didn’t they all do that before? Since Oslo there is a trend in the pro-Palestinian community, particularly those with links to the PLO, to make the case for Palestine palatable with a case for Zionism. And that’s why I am here to oppose it.

AW: Why do you think Israel seems to be so sensitive to the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement?

AA: Since I left Lebanon in 1983, I have seen an erosion in the standing of Israel, especially in the eyes of Western liberals. When I left, these were the hardcore supporters… Public opinion in Europe has markedly changed over the last few decades. So much so that in almost all countries, even Germany, there is more support for Palestinians than for Israelis.

In Russia, after the rise of the supposed Islamic fundamentalist threat over there, there has been in fact a rise in the support for Israel, but if you talk about Scandinavian countries, or England, or France, and so on. I mean the public opinion is now, in England, more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli when they are asked that question. But now of course that does not translate into the political parties of the House of Commons or places like that.

In America, it has remained the same. It’s still 63 percent for Israel, versus [about] 12 or 13 percent for Palestinians. But what has changed even in America is that the bedrock of support for Israel has shifted from American liberals to hardcore Southern Baptists, Republicans, conservatives. So Israel is aware that they have an image problem, that they did not used to have a few decades ago, and they are particularly sensitive about college campuses… Why? Because they know this is their future generation of leaders, and if this bug gets to spread all around, it’s going to be hurting Israel in the long term. Assuming Israel’s going to be around by the time they reach power. In America, of course, there is such a big gap between college campus activism on Palestine (or any matter) and the very closed, conservative nature of Congress, that Israelis have less to worry about – and yet they seem to be worried.

AW: Why do you think BDS has taken off so much in the last five to six years?

AA: Israel does not do the just thing in the new world after the Cold War. Zionists still operate the way it did back in the 1880s, when they arrived in Palestine. They still use the same brazen and blatant racist resort to war crimes and massacres that they used all along, and I think they realise that it is much more shocking and horrific by the standards of today, and as a result there is an avalanche of reaction against Israel that has been generated in Western countries.

AW: What are the differences between the BDS movement in its modern form, and the more historical Arab boycott of Israel?

AA: The Arab boycott of Israel was much more strict… On the popular level it is [still] extremely strict: refusal of travel to Israel for any purposes – tourism of any form… There are disagreements about the visits, for example, some believe that if you go to Palestinian areas for activism and you can stay in Palestinian areas, spend money there and it’s fine, as long as you boycott any companies who trade with Israel.

The Arab boycott has been extremely effective – the loosening of it has been at the official level. When I was growing up, there was this simultaneous double boycott of Israel. There was the popular level that did not need any instruction, and then there was the official level, which was bad… So the BDS movement is a continuation, I think, of an Arab League official plan.

AW: What is your opinion of activists, quite often from Europe and America, who go to occupied Palestine?

AA: I have no problems with that whatsoever. I have a distinction made about Arabs who go there – those who have Arab citizenship, even if they have a passport from elsewhere. I am not against Palestinians who hold citizenship in America to go to Palestine, because that’s their home. But as long as Israel is occupying the land, and to abide by the Arab League boycott of Israel, I still believe we should adhere, and that all Arab citizens should not pass through Israeli soldiers’ checkpoints to enter into Palestine. If you do, it’s in areas where you do not have to go through them.

AW: So what’s the material difference there?

AA: That we have an Arab League boycott. The Arab League never did anything good! But they did [make] this plan of boycott of Israel, which I believe is something we should support.

AW: Many activists who go to Palestine are actually from Sweden, Norway, Scandinavian countries.

AA: Amazing. Those countries, when you go there, sometimes if you will stay for a week you will see a demonstration about Palestine somewhere – posters about Palestine everywhere – it’s amazing. Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands – it’s advanced. Over there, being pro-Palestinian is becoming part of the definition of being a leftist. I mean it’s easy to be a leftist against war in general – the John Lennon version. The challenge is to be a leftist in a way that puts real challenge to the powers of government and the super powers around the world, because you can really expose the hypocrisy on the question on Palestine. This is why Palestine becomes more symbolic for many activists. It’s not only about Palestine, it’s about the hypocrisy of the Western world.

AW: I think I read in one interview a Scandinavian activist saying that Palestine had become the Vietnam of our time.

AA: Yes, absolutely. And I’m glad that Jane Fonda is not on our side. Who wants her?

AW: Western activists who go to Palestinian demonstrations in the West Bank will quite often come into contact with Israeli activists, some of whom are anti-Zionist. You’ve said on your blog that you’re against any contact with Israelis, basically. Is that a fair understanding of your position?

AA: This is not an easy position, but that is my position. I have taken that position for a while. [Once] I was giving a talk at SOAS here in London and my hosts were sitting with me, and one of them was a graduate student and it was clear that she is one of the activists on Palestine. So suddenly it occurred to me to ask her, based on her accent, I said: “Are you Israeli?” and she said “Yeah, I am”. I said “have you served in the army?” and then she told me yes, that she was an instructor in the Israeli army. And then I had to tell her, “Well, let me tell you my position: I cannot talk to you.” Everyone around her, even her teacher (and one of her teachers is a good friend of mine) are telling me that she’s a wonderful person, that she has made a radical transformation, and I said “But that’s my position.”

And it’s not because of ideological dogmatism that I take this position, at all. It’s really, like, emotional. I mean, I get bothered – I just get bothered. To be sitting and chatting with somebody, and then thinking that this person may have killed a brother or sister… You know, I just can’t do that. Even with Ilan Pappe – I was telling [my wife] Farah – I was with him on a panel once, I didn’t ask that question. He’s done great work, but he served, right?

AW: I read in his memoirs that he did.

AA: Yeah, and as a result I remember I made a conscious effort not to shake his hand. So it bothers me. There is one known Arab here, who has been an adviser to Yasser Arafat and I told him, I said: “Don’t you have a psychological barrier?” Because it’s huge in my case and I don’t want to cross it and he told me “I do, but I feel like I have to cross it for another purpose”… I mean it’s psychological and personal… and for me, I am not for the categorical rejection of anyone. I have elaborated a position which [laughs] which basically…

AW: You wrote on your blog you’re opposed to contact with any Israeli, except where they’ve taken armed resistance against Israel.

AA: … they are resistant against Israel, or if they leave the land. There’s this socialist, anarchist Israeli who keeps sending me email, and he wrote an open letter to me one time. I never responded to him, I couldn’t.

AW: So do you think Westerners who make contact with Israelis are breaking a boycott?

AA: Not necessarily. I’m not dogmatic about that. They have a different experience, and I know their motives are very good, and I’m sure [the activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer] Rachel Corrie, who paid with her life for the cause, had dealt with Israelis, and I’m not in any way going to to delegitimise what she does for that… But this is for me – I’m not in any way saying that this is national or international policy, you know, this is suitable for me, it may not be suitable for someone else. I know many Arabs who disagree with me. Farah disagrees with me on this…

AW: There is a difference between a personal opinion and a general boycott strategy.

AA: Yea, yea, of course. This is the suitable position for me. There are Arabs I know who are activists, who deal with Israelis and I don’t reject them in any way, I’m not judgemental like that. But for me, I cannot.

Farah Rowaysati: The BDS [movement] does not call for boycotts against Israelis as persons, it calls for the boycott of institutions.

AA: But I am for super-BDS.

FR: I’m against dealing with Israelis who are Zionists…

AA: One time I gave a talk in Berkley, and this guy came up to me and said, “I’m an Israeli and I really agree with everything you say, I’m going to go back and work for human rights after I finish my law degree for the Palestinians” and I was like “Well, you know I don’t speak to Israelis” and he said “Yeah I know, I understand: I just wanted you to know” [laughs].

I’m happier like this, you know what I’m saying? I have a huge psychological block… We come from South Lebanon, both of us, which is so directly affected. We both grew up in homes that are within a few miles from Palestinian refugee camps.

FR:We’ve experienced several wars.

AW: What do you make of Gilad Atzmon? He is an Israeli saxophonist – a jazz musician who expresses support for Palestinians.

AA: I have declared him an anti-Semitic person based on things I’ve read. And that upset many Western supporters of this guy, and Arabs. I have refused any contact with this guy and, you know me: I’m strict about many things… and one of them is refusing any association with anybody who has the slightest tinge of anti-Semitism. And he has more than a tinge of anti-Semitism – he basically, writes against –

AW: ‘Jewishness’ is what he calls it… He’s a strange character because he keeps cropping up every few years and there keeps being controversy about him. He lives here [in London] by the way.

AA: Oh really? Call me paranoid – I mean that, please do, call me conspiratorial – I know there are genuine anti-Semites who creep into our movement, but I do worry that there are some infiltrators who pose as anti-Semites to stigmatise the movement. I’m not sure which group he belongs to, but either way I don’t want him [around]. It would be funny if he was sitting here in the cafe, right now.

AW: [Laughs] With all this news about Israeli organisations that want to sabotage the “delegitimization” movement [like the Reut Institute], people are getting justifiably paranoid about spies or infiltrators. Especially in London.

AA: It’s legitimate to be paranoid. I have heard enough by people in the United States about their experiences in the 1960s and 70, and many of them tell me that the loudest big-mouths during the 60s and 70s were the ones who turned out to be turncoats, the ones who would say during meetings, you know: “Let’s go and bomb that building!”

AW: You recently commented on your blog about Hamas being “for sale”. What did you mean?

AA: Al-Quds al Arabi had this story on the front page in which [Hamas leader] Khalid Maashal was cited – he was under pressure by the Saudis, that they would not have any dealing with Hamas unless he cuts all ties with Iran. And he was quoted as saying something to the effect that “I would accept that, if Saudi Arabia was providing the same support that I’ve been getting from Iran.”

So to me that indicated that Hamas is up for sale. I have always been suspicious of this guy, and never liked him (I’ve always felt that he is leading the movement on the footsteps of Fatah)… Look how [Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza] Ismail Haniyeh, when he went for his tour recently, asked to stop in Saudi Arabia.

AW: So how do you think those comments are related to the wave of Arab uprising the previous year, and the rise to prominence of the Muslim Brotherhood?

AA: [Many Palestinians] are worried that the Arab uprisings are marginalising the coverage of the Palestinians, and I share that kind of worry. Ismail Haniyeh strikes me as much more sincere than Khalid Maashal despite my opposition to the ideology of the movement and its practices. On the other hand, I think they also want to take advantage of the rise of the horrible Muslim Brotherhood, and I think the lousy Muslim Brotherhood is one of the reasons why I find Hamas to be very problematic.

It is a by-product of the Muslim Brotherhood which has contributed really nothing to the struggle for Palestinians… Look at Rashid Ghanuchi [leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda party], who flies all the way to Washington DC to prostrate and speak before Zionist groups and offer to not include in the new [Tunisian] constitution an article that will ban normalisation with Israel — which tells you that they buy and sell.

AW: I put on Twitter that I was going to interview you, and I got several Syrians angrily Tweeting questions.

AA: On Facebook, if you read Arabic… both sides are very unhappy with me, and the Syrian regime side, they have a lot of supporters. And both sides are unhappy. What can I say? I have nothing to apologise for. If anything, I think the positions taken by the Syrian National Council have reinforced every single suspicion and doubt that I have harboured against them all along. I do believe there is a real conspiracy, and I believe there is an attempt to hijack a legitimate uprising against a repressive regime.

AW: One question on Twitter was: “How does it feel to be called a regime apologist?”

AA: If some intellectual goons of the Syrian National Council think that they can intimidate me or delegitimize what I do, by calling me a “regime stooge” or something like that, of course that’s not going to bother me, because I know myself. I mean, as long as I get a daily barrage of criticisms, and sometimes insults – not as obscene as the ones I get from the other side, but still from the side of the regime – I know where I stand.

When I was opposed to the Syrian regime in 1976 when they invaded Lebanon, to crush a great leftist movement at the time, these people who are criticising me now were not even born. So I don’t need any sermons about the stance against the Syrian regime. Their intellectual method is very clear. It’s quite funny, in fact – you may be opposed to the Syrian regime, you may call for its overthrow, you may support armed rebellion against the Syrian regime. But – if you don’t support the Syrian National Council, you are for the regime. What the fuck is that? It’s absurd. In other words, I want to reassure my enemies that their attacks on me and name-calling do not bother me in the least, and the more they come, the better. I want to make the life of my enemies miserable…

I don’t support the Free Syrian Army. Now I have received information that the Free Syrian Army of Riad al-Assad comes from the background of Hizb ut-Tahrir [a political-religious movement]. No, I don’t support that. I don’t support pawns of Turkish, Islamist intelligence. But the principle: I am in favour of the right of every Arab population to raise arms against its government. Absolutely, and I make no apologies about that.

AW: The Tunisian government as well?

AA: Absolutely!

AW: One of your criticisms of Al-Jazeera [the popular Arabic satellite TV channel owned by the royal family of Qatar] is that they now rely on anonymous sources a lot. Someone on Twitter wanted me to ask: “why then do you use anonymous sources on your blog?”

AA: I am not a newspaper. I am not a TV station. I am a blogger who is doing a very personal thing. I share whatever information I have, and even rumours. Sometimes I receive rumours and I share them with people. Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are not – and whenever I am given evidence that something I have put is wrong, I always say that I’m correcting it, and I don’t change it. I have a policy of never re-editing things I have posted after I’ve posted them.

On Al-Jazeera [Arabic], when they used to air Bin Laden’s tapes, they used to put the disclaimer every time: “We have not yet authenticated this statement” — even when it was very clear it’s Bin Laden! [But now] whenever they put various clips from YouTube, they never have any disclaimers…

AW: So don’t you think journalists might have reason to be using anonymous sources in Syria?

AA: I did not in any way oppose the use of anonymous sources in journalism. I was making the point about how Al-Jazeera is now comical. This is like a caricature of propaganda TV in the Arab world…

AW: What accounts for the shift? Is it purely [Qatari] reconciliation with Saudi Arabia?

AA: Absolutely… Basically, Al-Jazeera have become to me much more malleable, much more obedient in its service for the shifts in Qatari foreign policy than I’d expected. But it has become a campaign by Qatar and whatever Qatar represents… It has become so feverish, the campaign is so comical, it’s so lacking in credibility, and therefore lending an undeniable, unwitting hand to the Syrian regime.

AW: A final question on Palestine and Palestinian solidarity: what do you think is the main thing to focus on, strategically?

AA: Non-compromise on the total rejection of Israel. I believe the total rejection of Zionism in Palestine should be in the platform and the plan of every movement. I think all these attempts to reconcile Palestine and Israel, and “let’s live together as Israelis and Palestinians in two separate states” – all that is going to be at the expense of the lives and the cause of the Palestinians. And for me, any movement that does not reject – categorically – Zionism, is akin to a movement against apartheid South Africa that basically wants a reconciliation with apartheid, and there should be no doubt about that part. You know, we should insist on that part.

AW: Thanks for your time.

In search of the fix

Forgive me, but I’ll start with a circuitous preamble. It’s relevant, so stick with it. The end point, to which we will steer lazily, is that social media condition us into pathological reward-seeking behaviours, in the same way that laboratory pigeons peck at a switch for food.

Now that your interest is piqued, a digression.

Distant though it seems, I remember well the first session of my psychology A-level. “You each have on your desk a small foil package,” said my thin, bespectacled teacher. “I’d like you all to unwrap it carefully. Inside, you will find a small portion of sherbet. We’re all going to watch a short video, and whenever you hear the word ‘psychology’ mentioned, I would like you to dip your finger into the sherbet, and place a small dab onto your tongue.”

The video commenced. Dutifully we sucked away at the white powder, which tasted unmistakeably of sherbet and thus was not, as I had hoped, finely ground cocaine. The video described the work of a psychologist named Ivan Pavlov, who, we learned, had conducted an experiment on dogs. Inside his laboratory, Pavlov would ring a bell every time he presented the dogs with food. The dogs formed a strong association between the two stimuli, bell and food, to the point that finally just ringing the bell was enough to cause them to salivate.

With our sherbet supplies exhausted, the video came to an end. At the front of the class, the teacher prepared the grand reveal. “Whilst watching this video, you have all been applying conditioning to yourselves. Your brain has begun to link the word ‘psychology’ to the sweet taste of sherbet. A positive association has developed, which I hope will keep you favourably disposed towards the subject throughout the term.”

The conclusion was tenuous, but I was floored by his élan. And this was my introduction to the process of conditioning.

Most of the things I learned during those classes are now lost in the mists of time, but an understanding of the principles of conditioning has been a valuable tool on many occasions since then. In the following instance, we are concerned not so much with the work of Pavlov but of his intellectual successor, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, creator of the model of operant conditioning.

But wait – we’re all denizens of the 21st century here. Let’s not bandy words when Youtube can set the scene:

Parenthetically, note that the man has the face of some ungodly Chomsky-Warhol hybrid. Then, listen to his words. “The main thing is what we call schedules of reinforcement […] There are a very large number of schedules and they have their special effects. And there is a good example of how you can move from the pigeon to the human case, because one of the schedules which is very effective with rats or pigeons is the variable ratio schedule, and that is at the heart of all gambling devices.”

Professor Skinner, after diligently imprisoning and starving countless pigeons, found that the most effective way to condition a behaviour into your test subject is to provide the reward after a variable ratio of responses: first, the pigeon must peck once to receive a food pellet. After that, three times, then seven times, five times, twice, thrice, once again, and so-on in a random or quasi-random pattern. The important thing is that the response should not be reinforced every time, or at regular intervals.

And so to Facebook.

For a pigeon, a small wooden box is an acceptable living environment; for humans, this is not usually so. Nevertheless, we still spend a huge amount of time sitting in front of small, glowing boxes, endlessly tapping away at keys. Sometimes we tap at these keys to accomplish important tasks, like writing novels or emailing Noam Chomsky. Sometimes, we tap the keys to achieve unimportant tasks, like searching for pictures of animals in hats.

I have a chronic problem with tapping the keys F-A-C-E-B-O-O-K or T-W-I-T-T-E-R  when I should be writing a masterpiece or emailing Chomsky instead. In this I am not alone. Sometimes it is a choice, but other times it is an insistent urge, like an itch under the skin or the craving for a cigarette. Behaviour that feels like a compulsion, and overrides the logic that says, ‘there are a million other things you should be doing right now’.

Logging into your account provides not just distraction, but a quantified reward: the small, illuminated number under the notification globe or message box. It is a signifier which says, ‘Behold, I am loved! As I sit alone at my overcrowded, under-cleaned desk, someone, somewhere, wants to communicate with me.’ What better way to reinforce our behaviour than through the thrill of communication? The essence of sociality presented to us in sum: 2 new friends, 1 message, 5 notifications.

But Facebook and our five hundred friends are fickle: they will not, nay, cannot reward us according to any fixed schedule. The notification is distributed according to chance: Work a little. Log on. Two messages. Log off. Work. Log on. One message. Log off. Sleep. Log on. Nothing. Continue ad infinitum.

Checking your account, be it Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail, etc., gives an intermittent reward. And the very fact that a reward is not given every time increases frequency of checking and produces compulsive behaviour.

Even now, as I type, Facebook is open in a window behind Microsoft Word. Aware of the irony, I can only manage about 5 minutes of writing at a stretch before I give in to the temptation to switch windows and sneak a glimpse. A chat window is open. It bleeps. I thrill. Work stops.

The problem is, I admit, one of discipline, but also of conditioning.

To compound matters, intermittently reinforced behaviour is strongly resistant to extinction – the process of breaking out of the habit. If a pigeon is rewarded intermittently, it will continue pecking for a long time after the reward is no longer produced. And just because you had no new mail when you checked 10 minutes ago, doesn’t mean you’re not going to check again now, just in case.

This is why, if you are addicted to social media, you are not just weak willed. Console yourself by realising that you are instead a pigeon, in a box, pecking at a lever interminably. I don’t know how to solve this, but using Skinner’s method, you could try to create a fixed log in schedule – say, once every half hour – and stick to it. Fixed reward systems still shape behaviour, but are less likely to create pathological addictions.

But as they say, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’

And on that note, today’s lesson concludes.

Oh, I almost forgot: @0corin. Tweet at me. I need the reward.

———–

NB: Those familiar with principles of operant conditioning might point out that checking email or Facebook is a hybrid of Variable Ratio and Variable Interval reinforcement. I am aware of this. Unfortunately, real life has an annoying tendency to introduce confounding variables. So it goes.

David Cameron meets with Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said at his palace in Muscat; 24 February 2011 (Photo: PA)

With Libya recently dealt with, and its dictator killed, there has since been scarce mention in the mainstream media of the new holder of the “world’s longest surviving dictator” title: Qaboos bin Said, the Sultan of Oman.

And for good reason: Qaboos happens to be Britain’s closest ally in the Gulf and has reigned in Oman for over forty years, his initial rise to power swiftly aided by the SAS. Indeed, Britain’s collusion with Oman has been just as horrific as its relationships with other Gulf dictators (or ‘local cops on the beat’ to use the phrase of President Nixon’s Defense Secretary, keeping an eye out for British interests). Oman is essentially a British intelligence base, with Britain being its largest foreign investor, facts which the majority of scholarly histories shy away from.

Andrew Marr’s revered History of Modern Britain covers the textbook events of the last century, such as the Suez crisis of 1956. But only a year later Britain intervened in Oman to prop up the current Sultan’s father, Said bin Taimur, who was also installed through the SAS in a brutal civil war that involved war crimes such as bombing water supplies and agricultural gardens – an episode which has conveniently been consigned to Orwell’s ‘memory hole’ thanks to state intellectuals like Marr, Simon Shama and Niall Ferguson.

Pick up your favourite history textbook and try and find any mention of this: A search for ‘Oman’ in the mainstream media search engines produces mostly travel writing, despite the Sultan’s sharp crushing of dissent during last year’s protests, which he met with a promise to create 50,000 jobs and increase minimum salaries, choosing to ignore his country’s deeper constitutional problems.

The coalition government has been saying proudly since 2010 that it’s developing new alliances with the Gulf region, and that increased investment, trade and military training of these countries is vital to Britain’s ‘national interest.’ During one of his sermons, William Hague announced this only several minutes after winning the election in 2010, in an early effort to deepen support for some of the most undemocratic, repressive, sexist regimes in the world. But we should be quick not to indulge in the luxury of historical ignorance by sagely ‘looking forward,’ as David Cameron frequently insists on The Andrew Marr Show.

From the late nineteenth century the Sultanate (later the Sultanate of Oman) stretched from the southern Arabian Peninsula to parts of modern Iran, Pakistan and Zanzibar, and was ‘a de facto British colony’ since the 1870s, according to the late Fred Halliday.[i] Up until the 1950s it was a ‘disease-ridden society where the infant mortality rate was 75 per cent and the literacy rate was 5 per cent, where slavery was still practiced quite openly (the Sultan himself owned some 500 black slaves) and where mistreatment, mutilation and torture were routinely used to intimidate the population into quiescence and passivity.’[ii]

The two wars fought on behalf of the Sultans of Oman in the 1950s and 1970s were significant, writes John Newsinger in his study of British counterinsurgency efforts, ‘first of all for maintaining a British presence and British influence in the Middle East and, secondly, for the part they played in the fortunes of the Special Air Service.’ The Jebel Akhdar campaign of 1958-59 ensured the continuation of the SAS, who would later become, ‘in effect, mercenaries hired out by the British government to friendly foreign governments to advise and assist in the suppression of unrest and rebellion.’[iii]

James Morris, in describing his visit to Oman in 1955, wrote that the Sultan treated his slaves ‘kindly,’ and that they had ‘all the advantages of the welfare state, with one exception: they had to work.’[iv] After Said bin Taimur had been deposed through his son’s coup in July 1970, a reporter with The Times visited the royal palace in Salalah and described how ‘Among twelve slaves presented to foreign journalists some had been forced, under pain of beating, not to speak. As a result they had become mutes. Others stood with their heads bowed and eyes fixed on the ground, their necks now paralysed.’[v]

The Sultan was flown into exile and kept in secluded luxury in the Dorchester hotel in London until his death in 1972. By the end of his rule, Oman had only three schools and six miles of paved roads. According to William Cleveland’s History of the Modern Middle East, ‘Oman [has] neither a constitution nor a legislature; all power [is] concentrated in the person of the sultan. The ministries [are] headed mainly by members of the Al Bu Sa’id ruling family,’ – who have reigned since 1744 – ‘and the sultan himself [serves] as prime minister.’[vi] ‘Even by 1970’, writes the diplomatic historian Mark Curtis in The Great Deception, ‘it was forbidden to smoke in public, to play football, to wear glasses or to speak to anyone for more than 15 minutes.’[vii]

British officers also held high positions in the Omani military until the 1980s. The British corporation AirServices, ‘the major consultant to the Omani Ministry of Defence … was strengthened by the order of British Aerospace Tornado jets in 1985.’[viii] From 1980-89, UK export credits for arms sales to Oman reached a total of £486 million. By the 1990s, Oman was essentially used as the US and Britain’s largest foreign military base during the first Gulf War, protecting the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Britain’s influence in Oman is unlikely to change while Qaboos remains in power, as Ian Skeet explained in the early 1990s: ‘His personal experience of Britain and the British has given him confidence in their advice and judgement. This has occurred at many different levels, from the friendships that he has with members of the Royal Family, the prime minister and ministers, through the military, diplomats, bankers and ordinary professional people.’[ix] To borrow Bill Clinton’s instructive description of General Suharto, the Sultan has remained ‘our kind of guy.’

Oman has great strategic importance to Britain, and an unfriendly rise of ‘radical’ Arab nationalism would be an affront to Western power, to be respected and revered. ‘If’, writes Francis Owtram, ‘domestic instability in Oman were to threaten Western interests it is quite possible that a Western intervention of some kind would seek to avert an anti-Western government from gaining and consolidating power in Oman.’[x] Owtram’s warning should serve as an indication of the crucial importance ‘local cops on the beat’ have to Western state-corporate interests, and of the struggles that lie ahead.

Footnotes:
[i] Fred Halliday, Arabia without Sultans (London: Penguin, 1974), p. 270.
[ii] John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 133.
[iii] Ibid., p. 132.
[iv] James Morris, The Sultan in Oman (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), p. 130.
[v] Cited in Newsinger, p. 135.
[vi] William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Westview Press, 2004), p.470
[vii] Mark Curtis, The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order (London: Pluto Press, 1998), p. 21.
[viii] Francis Owtram, A Modern History of Oman: Formation of the State since 1920 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), p. 158.
[ix] Ian Skeet, Oman: Politics and Development (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), p. 99.
[x] Ibid., p. 192.

Part of the ceremony involved sitting in a circle and sharing our stories about when we began our menstruation, the reactions we experienced from others, the support (or lack of) that we received and how we felt emotionally and physically. We passed around a hand made moon stick (or, talking stick) with a moon stone at the end, burnt at one end to represent the wise crone, covered in menstrual blood in its middle part to represent the mother and lover and left in its natural state at the tip to represent the wild maiden in our lives. As we passed the moon stick we spoke our stories, our sadness and joy from that time, our shame and pride and our experiences of connection and disconnection with our cycles and our bodies.

What touched me in our stories was the shame and disconnect with our menstrual cycle time that many of us had experienced and continued to carry with us in our bodies and hearts. What also touched me was the distancing from our wild maiden self that we had experienced; the self-censoring of our true desires, words and actions for fear of judgment, rejection and isolation.

When I came home, went back to work, continued with life as normal, I reflected on these discussions and experiences. How sanitised is our relationship to our bodies in this commodified and individualised society. How disconnected are we from that which is embodied. Menstruation is sanitised in media representations presented as a hygiene problem: something to be made clean and controlled. As a menstrual activist describes in her piece Menstrual Taboo ‘Menstruation must be concealed verbally as well as physically’. Through new brands of scented tampax to promises that sanitary towels are so discreet that ‘a woman can carry on as if nothing were happening’ we are told that we have something to be ashamed of, something that is better ignored and hidden. As one of the women commented in the moon lodge, they don’t even put red water when they test the sanitary towels in the adverts- it is blue!

This fosters feelings of shame in relation to menstruation. Women’s shame about menstruation can result in body shame which leads to a desire to hide oneself and one’s body. As menarche (the first menstruation) is associated with the development of sexuality, body shame about menstruation often develops into discomfort surrounding sexuality and a lack of sexual agency. As Ward et al. demonstrate in their research with young women in the US about their feelings about menstruation and sexuality, ‘These findings suggest that holding negative attitudes about menstruation may curtail women’s abilities to take pleasure in their bodies and sexual experiences, whether they are currently menstruating or not….[these] correspond with dominant discourses surrounding female sexuality, which characterise women’s bodies not as sites of personal pleasure, but as objects of male desire’.

Such understandings, representations and practices of menstruation mean that when a woman is menstruating she is supposed to carry on as normal and pretend nothing is happening. No recognition is given of this time in our cycles as this does not enter into what it means to be a professional in the workplace, a carer in the home or an activist in the community. Menstruation as a period of sensitivity, introspection, stillness and softness is banished from our world of constant demands to perform to the rhythms of patriarchal capitalism; rhythms that do damage to our earth, our bodies and relationships.

A few days after returning from the moon lodge I began my moon time. As the dark red blood flowed from my body I sat on the bus speaking with a dear male friend of mine about the beauty of menstruation. He screwed up his face as if cringing; as if I had said something uncomfortable. I asked him ‘why are you doing that’, ‘what does me talking about menstruation make you feel’. He replied ‘unpleasantness, strange, makes me want to wash my hands’.

How could we have reached such a place in our bodies, emotions and relationships? By looking back to history and the creation of the capitalist patriarchal subject we begin to unravel the processes of disconnection, separation and estrangement that devalue, silence and make shameful the female body and its cycles.

From the 15th Century a particular hierarchy of separations is woven into the social fabric. This impacts upon the subjects’ (female and male) relationship with their heart, minds and bodies, with each other and with the earth. In this the rational mind, usually masculinised, becomes the epitome of our power over others and nature, power being associated with our ability to control and accumulate. The bodily and the emotions, often feminised, become associated with animal desire, the irrational and that which needs to be controlled.

A web of relationships based on separations of the rational mind from the emotions and the body, of the feminised from the masculinised, of men and women, of blacks and whites was constituted. The consequences of this for the male proletarian subject are a distancing and repression of the emotional (other than acceptable forms of masculinised behaviour like anger and aggression) and the transformation of the body into a machine of work for the capitalist, and a subject wielding power over wife and children in the domestic sphere.

For the female subject the consequences included woman’s bodies being medicalised and sanitised. Whilst women-only spaces, herbal knowledges, women who lived autonomous and independent lives and spiritual practices of connection with nature and the cosmos were demonised and criminalised. This transformed spaces in which sisterhood, female power and solidarity could blossom into privatised spaces of the individualised and feminised home and public masculinised workplace. Such separations were constituted through dividing women from each other through competition and isolation and importantly dividing women from their bodies, emotions and intellectual capacities. Women often become strangers and competitors as opposed to friends and allies.

This is not merely something that happens to women. It is something that we internalise in our bodies and emotions; in closure, in feelings of shame, in physical pain and rejection and in silence, as our sharing in the moon lodge so powerfully expressed. It also something which creates the conditions for the sexualisation and objectification of women’s bodies and sanitisation and devaluing of women’s cycles.

Yet if we search and connect to female traditions, before the break and separations of capitalism[3] we find that there were communities that had a much greater connection with the feminine, female body and moon cycles. Women, when they were in their moon time, were often honoured and able to be in a woman-only space of rest, care and reflection,  known as the “red tent”, “moon lodge space” or other. In these women-only spaces could be found women who were menstruating, pregnant women, as well as those who had reached menopause. The different cycles and stages of a women’s journey in her life were honoured as were the wisdom to be found in each.

Ceremonies to honour menarche and menopause were enacted. The creativity, heightened intuition and emotional sensitivity that occur during menstruation were honoured. Spaces were created which allowed women to be still and cease responsibilities. This enabled the blossoming of the deeper wisdom attainable at this time. Multiple ways of knowing and knowledges were nurtured and viewed as essential for community well-being.

So how might we reclaim the female body, its cycles and the female wild maiden self?

The hyper-consumer and individualised society that we live in never stops, expects us to never stop performing and cuts off our sense of history and a different future with its focus on immediate gratification through consumer goods. Our workplaces reproduce this disconnected and debilitating rhythm with increasing stress, deteriorating conditions and an understanding of professionalism which denies and delegitimises all that is connected to the body and emotions. This shames and silences our natural cycles often leaving little space, time and possibility for collectively creating spaces of sisterhood, solidarity, sharing and resistance.

Yet even here there are small practices which we can begin to undertake, practices that bring meaning, softness and humanity into our spaces by bringing back our desires and selves into our working lives not shunning and shaming them.

To do this we can practice an ethic of slowness honouring our menstrual cycle. How might we do this? We can work less hard by working more softly in ways that do not conform to institutional expectations. In the spaces that we open up by working less hard and more softly we can do things (work related or not) that sustain, nurture and bring us pleasure. We can also begin to speak the unspeakable, to disrupt the silences and shaming in the cracks and margins of everyday interactions and conversations with people who we share a level of trust and connection with. This is not to force any woman to feel and understand menstruation in any particular way but rather to open the discussion so that we break the taboo and silence.

We can take this to our home spaces, to slow down our work pace of domestic and child care duties. We can use moments of time, in the cracks of these demands to daydream, to bathe ourselves with tenderness, to make love and feel the blood flow onto and into our partners, to paint, draw, write poetry, to bleed onto the ground- connecting and grounding ourselves, rub our blood over us, honouring our bodies as art works and our blood as the paint of life, blood on our canvases. To connect to our wild selves. To be.

We can also create our own moon lodges with trusted friends and family. We can create women-only spaces in which we give ourselves time to care for each other, connect with our creativity, and have stillness. Create a time and space outside of that of the crazy non-stop drive of marketised society. We can nurture and listen to each other in these spaces, share our stories and our histories in relation to our menstruation, our bodies, and our emotions. Reconnect with our feelings and each other massaging away the pain of trauma and shame. Transform spaces of strangers, isolation and competition into spaces of friendship, sharing and solidarity.

Holding our bodies, honouring our cycles and loving our life blood open up pathways to healing from the separations that create so much pain for ourselves, each other and the earth. In the process new and unimaginable intimacies and connections with our own bodies and each other will blossom[4].

Dedicated to my wild and free Sisters of Rhiannon. Thank you.

[1] Historically a moon lodge was in some ways the female counterpart to the Sweat Lodge ceremony. It was believed that women found their balance through menstruation in the Moon Lodge and also through honouring their moon time.
[2]In modern Wicca, and many Pagan religions, the Maiden is seen as the virginal young woman, or girl, who has not yet awakened. She is all about enchantment and new beginnings, youthful ideas and enthusiasm. She is associated with the waxing phase of the lunar cycle, as the moon grows from dark to full.
The Mother is the next phase in a woman’s life. She is fertility and fecundity, abundance and growth, the gaining of knowledge. She is fulfilment — sexual, social, and emotional — and she is represented by the full moon. Springtime and early summer are her domain; as the earth becomes green and fertile, so does the Mother.
Finally, the Crone aspect is the final stage. She is the hag and the wise woman, the darkness of night, and eventually death. She is the waning moon, the chill of winter, the dying of the earth. In some forms of feminist spirituality, the Maiden/Mother/Crone is used as an example of society’s treatment of women. While the Maiden is revered and the Mother is honoured, the Crone is pushed aside and reviled. Many women are trying to turn that around and reclaim the title of Crone. Instead of allowing themselves to be “old ladies” at Cronehood, these women are taking back the notion that with age comes wisdom. They are vibrant, sexual, life-embracing women who are proud to be labelled as Crone. Instead of hiding in the shadows, they celebrate the later years of life.
[3] There are also, of course, communities and collectives who develop similar practices and live by cosmologies of inter-connectedness in the contemporary period.
[4] To read about these issues see amongst many publications, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, Wetlands by Charlotte Roche, The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild and Trusting the Tides by Anne Dickenson.

Asier Mendizabal
Raven Row, 8 December 2011 to 12 February 2012

The press release for Basque artist Asier Mendizabal’s show at Raven Row (his largest outside of Spain to date) indicates the artist’s interest in ‘the symbols through which cultures are represented’, an innocuous but relatively banal characterisation of his investigation into the visual codes of collective life and identity.

This description fails to indicate how elegantly he explores how ideology, belief and identity are simultaneously abstracted and made real in the process of being given visual form. And while Mendizabal’s practice is grounded in very thorough research, his engagement with the process of making ideology visible is not esoteric or dry – it does not adhere to any supposed split between intellectual reference and aesthetic form.  Mendizabal successfully works with a variety of media and techniques to create compelling, often beautiful, objects and images; in addition, he provides explanatory texts (also beautifully designed) at two points in the exhibition.

The dynamic balance of ‘form’ and ‘content’ in Mendizabal’s practice, and in the Raven Row exhibition, is crucial. It amounts to a very direct use of, and engagement with, the same processes the artist explores. The piece ‘Bigger than a Cult, Smaller than a Mass (One, Two Backdrops)’ (2006), a tapestry of national flags stitched together and hung in front of a collage of newspapers mounted on the wall, invites questioning of how a specific ordering of lines and colours (which looks increasingly arbitrary when juxtaposed with other examples) becomes a ‘flag’ that can be read as a nation.

The form of a flag is only legible because of a prior and concurrent process of knowledge exchange, even if it is one that takes place almost automatically.  Mendizabal disrupts this syncronisation by stitching the flags together in an apparently meaningless constellation, and thus proves that ‘form’ and ‘content’ together give an image ideological meaning.  This might seem like quite an obvious point, but Mendizabal’s work expresses it with restraint, engaging in the very dynamic he investigates. Mendizabal interrupts the assumptions that enable cultures and beliefs to be represented visually (he detaches the signs from what they signify) and so proves that this process of making assumptions and identifying with them is assimilated rather than automatic.

Mendizabal’s recent work ‘A Letter Arrives at its Destination’ is presented as key to the exhibition and to Mendizabal’s practice over the last five years. Mendizabal has translated a 1953 letter from the Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza, addressed to the jury of an ICA competition to select a monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner. Oteiza’s entry into the competition was shortlisted by not selected, and in this letter (which was never actually sent to the jury) Oteiza explores the relationship between abstraction and political belief, protesting the ‘superficiality of an abstract art that is insufficiently experimental’.

This frustrated protest came at a historical moment when the Western art world was making a political maneuver in the cultural Cold War toward abstraction, which was made to represent a modernity ostensibly beyond politics. Mendizabal’s text-based work delivers this letter to London more than half a century late, printing it interspersed with oblique historical contextualisation and images of Oteiza’s submission to the competition. ‘A Letter Arrives at its Destination’ is provided as a pamphlet for visitors and also displayed unfolded on a table, so that the text and images are broken out of sequence and abstracted to the point that the narrative takes on a physical presence rather than an informational one.  You walk around the text in the same way you walk around one of Mendizabal’s sculptures.

Another pamphlet, ‘Otxarkoaga/Targu Jiu/Hernani’, gives some background historical information for three pieces in Raven Row’s large ground floor gallery. This information has a supplementary function rather than a drily explanatory one – reading the text and then looking back at the work adds to its meaning rather than changing it entirely. ‘Untitled (Targu Jiu)’ is a concrete sculpture of a large tyre; the visual surprise of an unexpected material applied to a familiar object radically removes it from any function or use beyond sculptural presence, even if the concrete looks implausibly yielding, its surface worn and stretched in places like rubber.

Put simply: this is an interesting sculpture; it provides a compelling aesthetic experience. But the pamphlet then also suggests that ‘Untitled (Targu Jiu)’ is part of a larger narrative related to Constantin Brancusi’s famous monumental sculpture, ‘Endless Column’, in Targu Jiu, Romania (now the tyre treads begin to look like the diagonal forms that make up ‘Endless Column’) and the attempts to destroy it with a tractor in the communist period.

This information does not detract from the initial experience of encountering the sculpture, it contributes to it – rather than constraining the viewer to see the sculpture in a particular way, it opens up the sculpture to more meanings and viewings.  This dynamic of looking, reading and then looking differently contributes to Mendizabal’s larger project of exploring how symbols, meant to function immediately, only have significantly mediated and contingent meanings via a more or less willed process.

It is not that symbols are meaningless or unintelligible so much as they are potentially meaningful – we can read them as other things. The Raven Row exhibition has sensitively presented a selection of Mendizabal’s work, foregrounding the insistent ambiguity and variation at the heart of his practice without surrendering either to incoherence or oversimplification.

Asier Mendizabal – Raven Row, 8 December 2011 to 12 February 2012
For more info, visit the Raven Row website.

“Howard’s dedicated activism continued, literally without a break, until the very end, even in his last years, when he was suffering from severe infirmity and personal loss – though one would hardly know it when meeting him or watching him speaking tirelessly to captivated audiences all over the country.”

It is hard reading the piece without noting some powerful, striking parallels: what Chomsky says about Zinn could easily have been said by Zinn (and many others) about Chomsky. for instance:

“Whenever there was a struggle for peace and justice, Howard was there, on the front lines, unflagging in his enthusiasm, and inspiring in his integrity, engagement, eloquence and insight; a light touch of humour in the face of adversity, and dedication to non-violence and sheer decency. It is hard even to imagine how many young people’s lives were touched, and how deeply, by his achievements, both in his work and his life.”

The full piece can be read here.

]]> http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/noam-chomsky-remembers-howard-zinn/feed/ 0 http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/anti-imperialist-17-david-lammy-understanding-violent-coercion/ http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/anti-imperialist-17-david-lammy-understanding-violent-coercion/#comments Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:25:13 +0000 Adam Elliott-Cooper http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/?p=11164  

David Lammy MP has had to undertake some quite serious back-tracking over the past 48 hours. After his comments in support of corporal punishment, headlines in the mainstream press included “Smacking ban led to riots because parents fear children will be taken away if they discipline them”. As the elected representative of Tottenham, and the appointed representative of much of the African/Caribbean population of the UK (or so it seems), Lammy thought he’d found common ground among the Black parents of Tottenham, and the conservative establishment his policies (and rhetoric) often reflect. However, this hasty assumption meant he failed to factor in the class, gender and post-colonial context in which his statement was made, in addition to the obvious racialised links made between the August ‘riots’ and urban crime at large.

One of the most striking aspects of Lammy’s remarks, is his inference that the British state is doing too much to protect young Black people from violence. According to Lammy, Black communities “live in fear of the social services turning up on their doorstep”. It is indeed true that social services operate far more in working class (and by extension Black) communities, due as much to institutional racism as demand – we see that the stress and trauma of socio-economic deprivation tends to go hand in hand with a prevalence of domestic abuse in these areas. However, even if we are to assume that Lammy is right, he makes little effort to bring attention to the other agents of the state, a knock on the door Tottenham constituents and Black communities live in far greater fear of.

In 2008, Frank Odame died from head injuries after the UK border agency raided his flat in Redbridge. In that same year, a Ghanian man fell from the third floor of a block of flats and another broke both his legs following a raid on a restaurant in which he was working. Both these people too, were being pursued by the UK border agencies. Asylum seekers driven to near and actual suicide, in preference to the prospect of UK Border Agency’s detention centres, speaks volumes of their extensively documented ill-treatment. And although Lammy has focused his attention on some officers involved in unlawful killings, such as that of Mark Duggan, he has never attempted to address the legislative and institutional flaws which often lead to deaths in the hands of police. In the same way that Lammy understands that the isolation of specific social workers will not stop Black/working class communities feeling vulnerable to the state when raising their children, he must surely understand that the targeting of specific officers will not stop institutional discrimination in other mechanisms of the state.

Secondly, (and perhaps more controversially), Lammy’s approach to corporal punishment, I feel, is profoundly damaging to Black, working class,or any community which wishes to view children as human beings, rather than property. To illustrate this, an anecdote from bell hooks is useful:

“Often I tell the story of being at a fancy dinner party where a woman is describing the way she disciplines her young son by pinching him hard, clamping down on his little flesh for as long as it takes to control him. And how everyone applauded her willingness to be a disciplinarian. I shared the awareness that her behaviour was abusive, that she was potentially planting seeds for this male child to grow up and be abusive to women. Significantly, I told the audience of listeners that if we had heard a man telling us how he just clamps down on a woman’s flesh, pinching it hard to control her behaviour it would have been immediately acknowledged as abusive”

Hooks not only highlights the populist appeal of corporal punishment, to which Lammy panders, but also the psychological effects of growing up around violence. Learning that power and control are exerted physically is the exact mindset which led to the ‘riots’ which Lammy is so hasty to condemn. In fact, corporal punishment has a very lousy track record when it comes to discipline. There is ample evidence to suggest not only that corporal punishment is not an effective way of teaching children the difference between right and wrong, but it in fact leads to an increased likelihood of the child being critical of the moral values his/her physical punishment was supposed to instil. Policy shifts in West African private schools allowed academics to follow the progress of similar children, some of whom were disciplined with corporal punishment, others who were not. The study found that children in the punitive school performed significantly worse than their counterparts in the non-punitive school. Similar studies have been carried out in Europe and North America, with similar results.

What David Lammy is in fact doing, is not protecting Black and working class parents from social workers and other intrusive state agents. He furthers a culture of domination in which we are socialised into accepting violence as a legitimate means of control, even when this violence is disproportionate to the threat, or perceived threat. As has been widely documented, the race and class of populations often plays a critical role in their chances of experiencing violence at state hands. The logic of the exertion of violent control led David Lammy to vote for a stronger asylum system, Labour’s anti-terror laws and the Iraq war, and informs his latest public support for the physical control of children, particularly those in Black and working class communities. Only by challenging both domestic and state violence, can we properly understand the social, economic and political issues which lead to young people growing up in poverty, rioting and dying at the hands of police.

POLISARIO chairman Mohamed Abdelaziz

December 2011 saw the re-election of outgoing POLISARIO chairman Mohamed Abdelaziz by a whopping 96% of the Front’s 1622 seat congress. The reelection comes at a difficult time for ‘Africa’s last colony’ as any meaningful negotiations with Morocco, the occupying power, remain at a standstill. More importantly, the POLISARIO has recently struggled to rid itself of media campaigns emanating from neighbouring Mali and Morocco alleging supposed ties between its organisation’s members and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQMI).

The supposed involvement of members of the Saharawi camps in Tindouf (South-West Algeria) in the kidnapping of two French citizens and three other European aid workers were presented by Mali-based media and officials as proof of POLISARIO’s ties to regional terrorist organisations and drug networks; but material evidence for this theory has yet to be presented by any of the accusing parties. These claims thus remain, for now, little more than a talking point for Moroccan officials aiming to downplay POLISARIO as a legitimate political actor.

The general criticism targeted at the recent elections resides in Abdelaziz’s longevity at the helm of the Saharawi independence movement, which he has headed – virtually unopposed – since the death of Mustapha el Ouali Sayed’s in 1976.

Mahjoub Ould Saleck , the founder of a movement known as Khatt Echahid (the martyr’s route) and highly critical of the POLISARIO, recently spoke out against Abdelaziz’s reelection as a ‘farce’. His criticism, however, has yet to truly gain any significant traction or challenge the POLISARIO’s key tenors.

Opponents of the ‘revolutionary establishment’ such as Saleck face a major obstacle: POLISARIO is recognised by the United Nations and a host of countries as the sole and legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people and its aspirations. The likelihood of Ould Saleck’s criticism ever becoming mainstream either domestically and abroad, remains highly improbable. What’s more, Saleck is perceived by many Saharawis as an even greater threat to the cause of independence for his outspoken support of the Moroccan autonomy plan.

Mohamed Abdelaziz has used an unexpected diplomatic victory in recent months to reaffirm his popularity. Last month, the European Parliament voted to reject a controversial fisheries agreement with Morocco citing the inability of the Moroccan Kingdom to demonstrate how this agreement would benefit the local Saharawi population.

Indeed, home to substantial primary resources (such as phosphate mines and fish), Western Sahara has long been subjected to the spoliation of its riches by European companies that turned a blind eye to the Kingdom’s expansionist and repressive policies with local populations. Under immense pressure emanating from human rights NGO’s worldwide, the parliaments MEP’s voted to discontinue the agreement.

Despite these minor diplomatic victories, younger Saharawis living abroad in countries such as Spain, Cuba and Mauritania (popular destinations for the diaspora seeking education or a better life) have become somewhat frustrated with the POLISARIO’s negotiated solutions and have begun advocating a return to the guerrilla tactics of old. In a Guardian Op-Ed piece dating back to October,7th 2010, POLISARIO chairman Abdelaziz, alongside Jen Orback, recognised the challenge presented by this growing impatience:

“After nearly 20 years of occupation, people have begun to tire of false promises and of waiting. There is more and more talk of resuming the armed struggle. Our estimation is that a majority of the people want the Polisario Front to reconsider taking up arms. It both hurts and worries us. In our roles, we have consistently advocated peaceful solutions and diplomatic methods. It is with great sadness that we see that the Sahrawis no longer believe in the possibility of restoring their country through peaceful means. At the same time, we understand the dejection that the Sahrawis feel.”

Beyond the circumstances of Abdelaziz’s reelection, developments in the Western Sahara help highlight the need to reach a solution based on the UN’s plan for a referendum of self-determination. The current stalemate is no solution: desperation, if left to fester amongst the Saharawi youth, will surely result in another avoidable upsurge in violence throughout the sub-region.

MY: The UN Committee on Human Rights has recently criticised the UK’s human rights record, specifically highlighting the libel laws, the Terrorism Act 2006, and the treatment of the Chagos Islands. There’s a widespread perception that the war on terror has weakened human rights provisions. Would you agree with that?

GGG: Oh, certainly. I think Blair’s dictum that the ‘rules of the game have changed’ was a signal to those undemocratic elements – the anti-human rights elements – in the bureaucracy in this country to do what they were very keen to do anyway, which was to enhance measures of control over citizens and non-citizens alike. And I think that has led to the tragedy of indefinite detention, which is still being worked out in the context of control orders. But that rush to exercise control has done serious damage, in this country and elsewhere, to human rights and fundamental freedoms.

At the same time, I think we can see a swing back in the pendulum. In many respects, the courts in the UK, while respecting the sovereignty of Parliament, have been very keen to remind the executive that they are not Parliament, that they may only exercise such powers as have been legally entrusted to them, and that those powers have to be exercised according to the rule of law. And they have reminded the executive that a ‘war on terror’ does not give them carte blanche to detain anyone indefinitely. Likewise with the allegations of torture and ill-treatment. The courts in this country have been good to the extent that they have refused to accept at face value what executives like to claim everywhere, which is: ‘if we say it’s so, then you can’t inquire into it.’ In that respect, our record is much stronger than that of courts in the United States, which have been too ready to adopt the government’s claim of state secrecy, as the reason for barring litigation on issues which should certainly see the light of day in court.

MY: The European Court of Human Rights has recently found against the UK in a number of cases, specifically on control orders, after which the court was criticised by Lord Carlile. We’ve recently seen the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange calling for the complete withdrawal of the UK from the ECHR jurisdiction. Is that kind of backlash likely in the UK?

GGG: I’m not so sure that it will actually have the effect that the extremists want. The idea of withdrawing from the jurisdiction of the ECHR appeals to the petty-minded nationalist, I suppose, but it does not reflect any deep understanding or knowledge of the background of the European Convention, or any deep understanding or knowledge of the judgements of the country.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues – there always will be issues – but the fact is the UK played a major role in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights. The reason it was slow to allow the right of individual petition reflected a rather arrogant understanding (although I can understand how they got to it) that all was well in the UK, and that UK law made adequate provision for the protection of those human rights now set out in a formal international instrument. But at the same time, the UK was very keen to export the European Convention model, which was often used as a basis for Bills of Rights tacked onto independence constitutions of countries of the Commonwealth which had achieved their autonomy. It was sometimes thereafter rejected by those countries – but the UK’s view, based on its experience and legal traditions, was that this was a very good instrument on which to base human rights protection.

But as I said,  there are issues. I was personally very surprised when the decision of the European Court of Human Rights on voting by prisoners attracted the ire of the tabloids to the extent that it did. I’ve worked on elections in the past, and I thought this was really a non-issue – one might have different views on it, but I was surprised by the vitriolic response among some quarters. I didn’t think, and I’m not entirely convinced, that this is a matter that the public is really concerned about one way or the other. It’s a matter which the government of the day, and their tabloid supporters, could use to generate anti-human rights sentiment, but I’m not sure that it’s the serious issue it’s made out to be.

Also, many of the Court’s judgments in a migration context have attracted controversy, even if, on the facts, they were rather unexceptional.   We hear our Secretary of State for Justice claiming that the court should not see itself as a court of appeal in asylum and immigration cases: again, if we look actually at the decisions themselves, we will see judgments that people might differ on, but which involve issues which are always going to have to be decided one way or the other. If we were to withdraw from the European Convention – a ridiculous notion – our decision makers, the Home Office, would still have to make these assessments, would have to ask itself whether in the case of someone who had been convicted of a criminal offence, they now should be deported. They would have to take into account, because families and MPs would demand it, the question of private life, best interests of the child, and the like. These decisions aren’t simply going to vanish simply because you step out of the European Convention. The advantage of the Convention for ministers and policy-makers, if they would only get their heads out of the sand, is that it does actually provide a structured approach to appreciating the human rights dimension of a number of different types of governmental decisions. It’s an approach which is by no means alien to the UK at all – it’s something which we have been doing for years.

MY: In your legal opinion on the recent Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, you wrote that ‘the interests of the Palestinian people are at risk of prejudice and fragmentation.’ Could you explain your reasoning?

GGG: This is one of those issues that has bothered international lawyers for some time: the question of who represents the state. Traditionally, international law has not been concerned with what happens, as it were, behind the veil of statehood. Basically, if you had power, no matter how you exercised it – tyrannically or democratically – and were in control of a piece of territory, you could present yourself as the representative of a state. Of course, with the principle of self-determination in the picture, with the recognition in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the authority of government derives from the will of the people, other elements are beginning to creep in. And I think we are rightly beginning to ask, not just in the Palestinian case but generally also, who is it who actually represents the state? Do they have behind them an exercise of the will of the people?

And in the case of Palestine, it is the people who have long been recognised as the principal actor in the process of finding a solution. Up to now, the PLO that has been accepted by the UN and the international community as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Now we see, incidental to the separate issue of the move to statehood,something else entering the picture, another entity that claims, or seems at times to be claiming, to take the place of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the people of Palestine. And that’s what worries me: there is suddenly a gap between the PLO – for all its representational deficiencies – and the putative ‘state’, which in large measure has little or no representational legitimacy whatsoever. For now the only general elections that have been held in Palestine in recent years are those that saw Hamas elected in Gaza – free and fair elections, certified internationally – with a substantial majority accruing to Hamas, which Tony Blair would surely have envied.

In the case of the Palestinian Authority, among others,  there’s an electoral gap there which needs to be filled. And I think that this is one of the challenges for Palestine, to allow the voice of the Palestinian people to be expressed, and I don’t just mean those in the OPT, but also those in the diaspora — the nine or ten million Palestinians in all, many of whom are very anxious to vote, as they should be. After all, it is their right of self-determination, right of return, right of compensation, which is likely to be at issue in the final move towards statehood. So my concern was with the issue of representation, not the bid for statehood, which itself reflects frustration on the part both of Palestinians  and the majority of UN member states, at the intransigence of an Israeli government which pushes ahead with its desire to take under its control of more and more of the land that belongs to the people of Palestine.

MY: The Palestinian issue is famous for the mass of legal rulings on the one hand, and power politics on the other. There is a growing movement amongst Palestinians to disregard the 1967 borders and begin a civil rights campaign within the entire region for a unitary, democratic state. With that in mind, what do you think are the obstacles to the implementation of UN resolutions on the conflict, and do you think international law can have an effect even when it is being obstructed by very powerful states? Or do you think it makes sense, in such situations, to domesticise the conflict, as it were?

GGG: On the international law side, I would like to be optimistic. I’d like to say, look at the advisory opinion on Namibia, which I think was a seminal moment in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, because it did actually contribute to changes in the positions of various states on the issue of South Africa’s control over South-West Africa. It contributed to the sanctions regime, and to the isolation of South Africa, and against the power politics of the day – British governments were very hostile to this idea, but they came round.

One would like to think the same could happen with respect to the advisory opinion of the ICJ on the Wall, but so far it hasn’t. Is it too soon? I would have expected and hoped to have seen some progress amongst states to ensure that their policies towards Israel were in line with that judgement, and I don’t see that. And that is unfortunate.

As an optimistic international lawyer, I would like to think that there is still time for change, but I can understand that people at the grassroots, on the ground, do not see that happening, but wonder yet again what’s going on and whether their tactics at the international level do not need to change. I would have sympathy for that approach, for the expected impact of the ICJ advisory opinion has not been realised. Perhaps we should have another ICJ opinion? One could ask the Court specifically, as was done in the Namibia case, about the legal consequences of that ruling for states in their relations with Israel, the occupying power.

MY: What do you think is the likelihood of going back to the ICJ?

GGG: It’s always an option – I don’t think there’d be difficulty in getting a request from the General Assembly. The majority is there, and  those in opposition to it are relatively few in number. The art is in the framing of the question, of course, but one could certainly put it in such a way as to appeal to a very large number of states as a practical and useful way of pushing the move for Palestinian statehood ahead.

Could you comment on the recent UNESCO bid, and the subsequent US withdrawal of funding of funding from UNESCO?

GGG: One does despair of the US, at times. They have such a funny approach to these issues. To withdraw funding from an organisation because of what, from one perspective, was a relatively innocuous bid on the part of a people whose claim to international representation had long been accepted by the UN and the international community, to sanction a whole organisation because of that, is rather pathetic.  We understand that it’s a consequence of US law, rather than anything else, so it may be impossible for the executive to do anything but follow through and withdraw its support. What can one do in a situation like that? I think we regret that it’s the American style, the big stick approach. We know, from experience and from the outside, that this tends not to work or to achieve much, but we’re going to have to learn to live with it for the time being.

MY: Could we talk about the targeted killings approach of the US in recent years, particularly drone targeted killings happening in Afghanistan/Pakistan region, but also in places like Yemen? From a grassroots perspective, there has been lots of concern about this from human rights organisations. What kinds of options do you think are open to them in terms of international law?

GGG: There’s a formal answer, which is less than satisfying, and then there are the difficult questions. Unmanned drones are a weapons system which is certainly not forbidden by international law. To some extent, they’ve been used in crude form for decades, and in a situation of conflict, one can well imagine drones flying back and forth, doing exactly the sort of things that manned aircraft would do in any such situation.

But that, of course, is not the problem. We’re concerned with drones being used as weapons systems on the periphery of recognised armed conflicts – for example, the case of the drone that recently came down in Iran. Was that being used for spying, for targeting purposes in relation to those who might be ferrying arms from Iran into Afghanistan? We don’t know, and that’s where it all gets rather worrying.

We are not sure exactly of the contexts in which they’re being used. We do know that they’re also being used as killing machines in relation to those suspected of being involved in al-Qaida and other subversive organisations. If that were done in the context of an international  armed conflict, one could hardly take exception to it, at least if the normal rules governing the conduct of hostilities were followed, so that military targets were identified and engaged, proportionality was involved, steps were taken to reduce the likelihood of civilian causalities, and so forth. If the target was clearly an enemy combatant, it would be difficult to criticise. But the so-called war on al-Qaida is not a war in the normal sense of the word; it’s not a war to which the rules of armed conflict apply, and there is reason for concern about the use  being made of drones in countries such as Yemen. In so-called counter-terror operations, drones are often used as a substitute for criminal prosecution.

There is considerable support for the view, and I would endorse this approach, that one of the best weapons in the fight against terrorism is international criminal law, rather than targeted killing or the use of armed force. Claiming the existence of an armed conflict or relying on the laws of war, by contrast, can give rise to innumerable problems. For example, who is piloting these drones – civilians, the CIA? Are they out of uniform, sitting in remote parts of the United States, flying drones via satellite over particular areas and using the weapons systems to knock off this or that person? That raises questions – let’s assume it’s the US doing it – that the US may not want to face up to, which is to accept that under the laws of war, those who fly from the apparent security of CIA headquarters become combatants, that is, legitimate targets; because they are no longer civilians, they themselves can be targeted in return. And this seems to me to be an open invitation, to those with whom you are in conflict, actually to come and engage with you on your own territory. There are issues here which haven’t been thoroughly thought through on the American side.

Plus, of course, and this is currently a matter of some debate for President Obama, there is the question of killing Americans. Recently a couple of US citizens have been deliberately targeted and killed by US drones. You can be sure that one day soon the courts are going to have to wrestle with this, because the constitution does aim to protect US citizens, whatever their views and actions. It will be interesting to see whether the courts will be able effectively to defend the constitution.  I’m not that optimistic, mind you, particularly given present and recent tendencies, but these are questions which will have their day in court.

MY: Many thanks for speaking to Ceasefire.

For part one of this interview click here.

Tim Westwood with troops at Camp Bastion

Being not only a Hip Hop artist but a life-long fan of the genre, I have, like many others, been very familiar with Tim Westwood. As a young boy, I remember listening to his show on Capital FM and have since spent the majority of my almost decade-long musical career trying to get a spot on his BBC Radio1/BBC 1xtra show. For a long time, an appearance on the show was – and, to some extent, remains – the benchmark for any aspiring Hip Hop or Grime MCs. For many rising artists, you were only considered relevant if you had been acknowledged by Westwood. Moreover, whenever Westwood chose to champion a particular artist, throwing his weight behind their career, big success was almost guaranteed.

Yes, his clout as the self-described “gatekeeper” has declined over the past three years, due to the rise of independent media like SBTV and Grime Daily and, more recently, the progression of Radio 1’s Hip Hop DJ Charlie Sloth. Nonetheless, turning down an invitation to appear on Tim Westwood TV, as I have done this month, was not a decision I could take lightly.

As far as I am aware, Tim Westwood’s first visit to the occupying military base ‘Camp Bastion’, in Afghanistan, was in early February 2011. In contrast to his later trip in May 2011, this one seemed to be in a more personal capacity, he had remarked of the British troops stationed there that they were “really making a difference to the world” and that he felt he had a “moral duty to come out”. He also vowed to “come back with Radio 1”. And come back he did.

A BBC Press release, published in late April 2011, announced that “Tim Westwood will be broadcasting his show live from Camp Bastion, the main base for British troops in Afghanistan, for five consecutive days from Monday 30 May 2011.”  BBC Radio 1Xtra, according to the announcement, was ‘the home of new black music’.

Further down, the press release proudly proclaimed that BBC Radio 1Xtra had “teamed up with BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) to simulcast Westwood’s show from the base, linking live with the BFBS Radio studio on the ground in Afghanistan, across the UK and to British Forces in more than 20 countries.” Moreover, Westwood’s Afghanistan shows were to be aired not only on BBC 1Xtra and the BFBS but also on BBC Radio 1 for 5 consecutive days.

This naturally prompts a question: what does ‘black music’ have to do with the occupation of Afghanistan? And why should BBC Radio 1Xtra listeners be subjected to this propaganda? Indeed, even setting aside the broader fact that as a citizen of this country my taxes were being spent to station an army, supposedly representing my interests, in over twenty countries, I found this entire press release very alarming.

Of course, for some this will come as no surprise. After all, whenever the BBC reports from places occupied by British soldiers, the journalists doing so are often “embedded” with them, and that is the perspective many have come to expect from the BBC. However the Westwood move seemed to me to signal a concerted effort to increase support for the British occupation amongst a specific UK demographic.

Although I do not believe Westwood’s decision to do this to be a malicious one, I do not believe it was the apolitical gesture of goodwill he tried to depict it as when he said “I got quite a lot of hostility back in the UK from people who said I was supporting the war, but that’s not what this is about. There is a distinction between the people who sent them and the people who are out there doing it.”

Indeed, a blog post by Rhys Hughes, executive producer for BBC Radio 1 makes clear how calculated this decision was, writing “BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra decided to bring Tim Westwood to Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, because the story of the troops out here is primarily a 19-year-old’s story, which is perfect for our audience.” Hughes went on to add “Radio 1 and 1Xtra worked very closely with BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) as well as the MOD to make this trip possible.”

The Ministry of Defence are precisely the people who send our young men and women to kill and die in our name. As such, this was clearly a concerted effort to target the very demographic they look to recruit. After all, who do the Ministry of Defence rely on to leave their homes in Britain and sacrifice their humanity thousands of miles away? It is, as Rhys Hughes put it, the 19-year-olds that are “perfect for our audience.”

Who do the Ministry of Defence rely on to sell these wars? Who do they rely on to recruit for these wars? To provide justification for these wars? The media, of course. The BBC, of course. And now Tim Westwood, the most well-known Hip Hop DJ in this country.

Indeed, upon Westwood’s return from Afghanistan, the BBC 1xtra website published some pictures of his trip with one photo labelled “Westwood phrases in Helicopter ground crew greeting” showing a white board with the words “Westwood quote of the day: Drop a bomb!” written on it.

Whether this was written by Westwood himself is unclear but the sad joke is there for the world to see. Have the people underneath those bombs ceased to be human?

Now, as I’ve said earlier I do not believe this decision was educated enough to be a malicious one on the part of Tim Westwood, but it clearly was a calculated one on the part of the BBC and the MOD hierarchies. Essentially, this trip has enrolled Tim Westwood as part of the war machine; a war machine I want nothing to do with.

Just this month, footage surfaced of US Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. The BBC, no doubt briefed by the MOD, fell over itself to report that those were ‘Taliban corpses’. Not human corpses, just Taliban corpses. As if they even knew the names of the people they were urinating upon, let alone any political affiliations they had and as if that makes any difference anyway.

Can Tim Westwood imagine for one minute how it feels to have your country violently invaded, occupied against your will and then see those foreign troops literally treat the corpses of your countrymen as a toilet? No he can’t. Can he imagine his country being occupied four times by the same foreign power in less than two centuries? Why do the British keep going back to the Afghans’ land? A land almost everyone knows to be the ‘graveyard of empires’?

Let us ignore the feelings of the Afghan people, as we do everyday anyway, and think about what this occupation is doing to the British soldiers involved in it, and how it affects their lives. A recent study has found that, for the last 2 years running, the US military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. This is the US military and not the British military but it would be interesting to find out the figures for the latter. I would not be surprised if such findings end up being somewhat similar. Of course, even if such studies existed, I wonder if the MOD would grant us access to them.

Or let us ignore the feelings of the soldiers, as those feelings are clearly not valued by the war machine that has sent them anyway. Let us think of how the citizens of this country feel about our military presence in Afghanistan. Well, in April 2010 an Independent on Sunday poll found that 77% of British citizens want the troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. And here we reach the truth of Tim Westwood’s trip to Afghanistan.

The reality is that the MOD and the BBC need to sell an increasingly unpopular military adventure to the youth of this nation, so they use a character of dwindling relevance by getting him to broadcast his live show from the heart of the occupation itself. After all, despite his dwindling relevance, this character remains the most widely recognised Hip Hop personality this country has ever produced.

This was, in essence, a failed attempt to make war cool. Now, none of us are perfect, I have made a million mistakes and bad decisions in my life and I am likely to make a million more, but turning down Tim Westwood TV is not one of them. I hope Tim Westwood develops the conscience to regret this decision in years to come.

If you want to stay updated on articles like this one, type your email address in the top right corner box. For previous articles, reviews and interviews featuring Lowkey, click here.

Also see: The Second Death of Mark Duggan.