A Cry of Despair and an Unheeded Warning

To walk through the gates at the infamous Birkenau II death camp in Poland is to follow the footsteps of around 1.5 million murdered human beings who were deemed to be “undesirable” by a perverse political movement that had lost its mind. To see the hair of the inhabitants of the camp, shaved off upon their arrival and used to create sleeping bags and clothing for Nazi officers, or the little shoes of the thousands of children, barely old enough to walk, gassed because they were too weak to work, or the urn of ashes of just some of those that were wiped from history on this desolate piece of ground, is to witness the depths of what humans can do to one another. This is us at our very worst. And the overwhelming question that burns throughout the journey into the darkness is simply how? How could we have let this happen?

The monument in Auschwitz-Birkenau to the 1.5 million people murdered in its grounds begins “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity”. And yet this is a warning we have not heeded.

After the scale of the horrors of the Holocaust became clear, the international community was unequivocal in its condemnation. Never again. Since 1945 we have witnessed the “killing fields” of Cambodia claim 2 million lives, the vicious massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda decimate a whole country, over 8,000 souls murdered whilst under UN “protection” at Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the systematic murder of over 300,000 civilians in Darfur. Today, over 1 million Rohingya people have been and continue to be forced out of their homes in Myanmar by the ruthless military regime. The phenomenon of identity-based mass murder, in the forms of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, is ubiquitous across the globe. And still we say never again.

Seeing first-hand the mechanisms by which the Holocaust was perpetrated is a shocking reminder of the efficiency with which humans are capable of killing each other. But it should not be a viewed simply as a horror of our past. The camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the logical conclusion of years of systematic marginalisation and dehumanisation of the Jewish people in Europe by the Nazi party. When Hitler rose to power in 1933 the idea of a death-camp run by German soldiers in Poland was laughable. But by May 1940 it was sickening reality.

As Philip Gourevitch writes in his excellent, if harrowing, account of the Rwandan genocide We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families, “What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime”. The idea is the crime. The so-called “inhuman” violence witnessed in countless crimes against humanity perpetrated globally is the product of an idea that has festered and spread among a population. One of the biggest questions following the Rwandan genocide, where there were no death camps but rather the killing was done with machetes by mobs in the streets, was how on earth it was possible to seemingly turn an entire population against one another over the course of just a few short weeks.

But the Rwandan Genocide did not occur just between the 7^th April and 15^th July 1994, in which the majority of the killing took place. Intergroup rivalry between Hutus and Tutsis had been instilled in the population by the German and Belgian colonial powers over 100 years before the massacres of 1994. These tensions were exacerbated by economic hardship and an increasingly inflammatory political landscape that culminated in a civil conflict between 1990 and 1993. The process of turning Tutsi people from neighbours, friends, and family members, into “cockroaches” and “tall trees” took decades. The process of dehumanisation, of turning a Jewish person into a “rat”, or innocent Bosnian civilians at Srebrenica into “hardened and violent criminals”, does not occur overnight. You do not pick up a machete and murder your neighbour after hearing a news broadcast telling you to do so. The thoughtcrime of identity-based violence is far more insidious than that.

So when you hear Donald Trump equating economic migrants at the US-Mexico border with criminal gangs and “animals”, or Nigel Farage standing in front of his infamous “Breaking Point” campaign billboard, depicting refugees and migrants as a looming existential threat to the UK, remember that this is a deliberate incitement to hatred. Left unchecked, that becomes an incitement to violence. Indeed, with the Christchurch mosque attacker citing Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” in his manifesto, and a shocking increase in white extremist hate crimes across the US and Europe since 2015, it would appear that the more volatile and antagonistic political landscape we find ourselves in is already having destructive consequences.

In the UK, attacks on politicians have increased amidst the increasingly toxic debate surrounding Brexit. The murder of Jo Cox in 2016 appears to have heralded a new dawn of violence aimed at those with differing views. When two of the biggest political scandals in party politics concern accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and Islamophobia within the Conservatives, we have to ask ourselves where political discourse in this country is headed. Toxic identity politics are not new. We have been here before.

The monument at the death-camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau undoubtedly elicits a cry of despair from those who visit. But as a warning, it appears to have been less successful. It is up to every single one of us to pay attention to the stories of those who have been persecuted solely because of who they are. Because its very easy to say “never again”, and to genuinely feel it and to mean it. But it has happened again, and it is happening again, and it will continue to happen again unless we make a change.

The world around us has already taken its first baby steps down a dark road that we have walked a hundred times before. There is still time to divert our course, but it will take every individual person to pay attention to what is happening and to call out the behaviours that push us further down the path. Calling out this hatred now, while it is still relatively safe to do so, is the only way to prevent the physical crime from occurring down the line.

In visiting Krakow, I also heard the inspirational stories of Oskar Schindler and Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who saved many lives and gave hope to thousands of people in the ghetto at the time of the Nazi occupation. But they risked their lives, their livelihoods, and the lives of their families in order to do so. That kind of heroism is rare and extremely commendable. Those names should be remembered and celebrated to the same extent that Hitler’s, Eichmann’s, and Rudolf Hess’ names are remembered. But even those acts of incredible courage and strength could not turn the tide of history. By that point it was too late.

Right now, it is not too late.

Little changes now can prevent catastrophic ones later.

Never again.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana.

Cyclone Idai and the Importance of Public Health Preparation

Cyclone Idai devastated Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Madagascar as it tore a path through South-Eastern Africa between the 4^th and 21^st March 2019. It was one of the worst cyclones ever to affect the southern hemisphere, with an estimated 1.7 million people directly affected by the storm and over $1 billion in damage caused. Flooding in the immediate aftermath caused the majority of deaths in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and the overwhelming destruction led to a revised appeal on behalf of IFRC to cover the cost of the immense scale of the response.

Although the flood waters have now long subsided, the true magnitude of the disaster is still yet to be fully understood. Recent reports from agencies active on the ground in Beira, one of the worst-affected areas, have raised concerns over the potential for tremendous health crises in Idai’s wake.

Cases of cholera were reported in Beira just a week after Idai made landfall, as a result of water being contaminated by sewage in the flooding. By 4^th April, there were an estimated 4,000 cases of cholera in and around Beira, resulting in at least 7 deaths. Medecins sans Frontieres reported an estimated 200 new cases per day at the height of the response, with the Red Cross describing the threat of further outbreaks as a “ticking bomb”. Though cholera currently appears to be the biggest health threat to victims of Idai, a severe lack of clean drinking water means threats of typhoid and other diarrheal diseases remain high. The stagnant flood water also acts as a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes and other vectors, leading to an increased risk of malaria, which has seen 276 new cases reported in Mozambique as of 2^nd April.

These emerging health crises have been exacerbated by the massive damage to infrastructure in Beira and other severely affected areas. Beira’s main hospital suffered serious damage in the storm, leaving several of its operating theatres unusable, and an estimated 55 other health centres across Mozambique were affected. International NGOs and the World Health Organisation have responded quickly to try to plug the gaps, with the WHO distributing nearly 900,000 cholera vaccines and MSF doubling down on its programmes in the affected region, but the spiralling health implications of Idai are simply too large to contain completely.

As the recent Preventionweb report on Idai’s health consequences reports, the interruption of health services for communicable and non-communicable diseases is another major concern in affected communities. Mozambique has around 2.1 million HIV patients, many in hard-to-reach communities that may no longer have access to antiretroviral drugs. Similarly, those who require medications for long-standing diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and tuberculosis are facing medical shortages. The World Health Organisation, alongside many other international actors, are also increasingly focusing their attention on the treatment of the mental health consequences of disasters, which can have catastrophic effects on the development and resilience of affected communities.

The longer-term health implications of Idai are proving to be more destructive than the storm itself. The spiralling risk of epidemics, dramatic loss of health infrastructure in-country, and poorly understood mental health effects of a disaster like Idai demonstrate the importance of viewing disaster response through a public health lens. Medical assistance is one of the key life-saving priorities both in the immediate response phase and as affected populations start to rebuild their lives. Effective health and sanitation programmes make the difference between a one-off destructive natural event and a protracted, complex humanitarian crisis.

But as the scramble to find increased funds to meet the needs of the population also shows, a key focus for the future of disaster management needs to be in preparation and prevention, rather than in response. The speed with which the WHO was able to distribute almost 900,000 cholera vaccines was possible thanks to the Oral Cholera Vaccine Stockpile, administered by an international coordinating group and organised in preparation for quick response in areas at risk of epidemic. Around the world, hospitals and health providers are developing emergency preparedness plans to ensure they are able to continue working during and after a crisis. As the humanitarian sector more widely continues to acknowledge the importance of preparation in ensuring effective response, the factors that contribute to a resilient health system in developing countries must take priority.

IFRC estimates that for every $1 spent on preparation, up to $4 can be saved in recovery. The almost unprecedented fury of Cyclone Idai helped to demonstrate the snowball implications of a hazard that strikes an unprepared community. Building resilience to future disasters does not just mean building stronger structures (though that is obviously extremely important), but developing strategies to cope with disasters at a local level, implementing preparedness plans, engaging in health education and ensuring that at-risk communities know what to expect and where to go to get help in the event of a crisis, long before it occurs.

With climate change increasing the likelihood of more frequent and more destructive weather patterns globally, the need to make sure that everybody is prepared becomes increasingly pressing. When a system is vulnerable to disaster, threats can multiply exponentially. A compromised healthcare system has knock-on effects on those who may not have been affected by the initial event itself.

Disaster response must focus on long-term resilience as well as immediate life-saving care. It is not easy, but building long-term resilience will save money, time, and ultimately lives.

Building local communities’ resilience to disasters is a key focus of the Agenda for Humanity and of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Viewing disasters through a holistic lens can help to identify vulnerabilities to be addressed, and also potential partnerships between sectors to tackle complex crises around the world.

QSAND is a shelter and settlement sustainability tool that provides a holistic framework to support resilient reconstruction following disasters.

LA 92 - Fighting a Cycle of Injustice

LA 92 is a National Geographic documentary covering the devastating Los Angeles riots that left 63 dead and over 2,000 injured, with more than $1 billion of damage done to properties across LA county between April 29^th and May 4^th 1992. The riots began as a response to the acquittal of 4 LAPD officers accused of excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King, and the leniency in judgement afforded to a Korean shop owner who shot and killed a 16-year-old girl, Latasha Harlins, whom she wrongly suspected of attempting to rob her. The systematic and institutionalised racism this revealed in the heart of the justice system sparked angry protests, which swiftly degenerated into violent racially-motivated attacks against residents of Koreatown and white motorists on the intersection of Florence and Normandie, and widespread looting across LA. The chaos continued for 6 days, with the LAPD seemingly abandoning Koreatown in order to safeguard predominantly white and wealthy neighbourhoods in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, before the California National Guard was called in to restore order.

Just as the documentary draws parallels between the 1992 riots and the 1965 Watts Rebellion, which saw 34 killed and $40 million in damage, it is difficult not to compare the spark of the 1992 unrest to the shooting of Michael Brown and strangulation of Eric Garner, both at the hands of US law enforcement, that catalysed the Black Lives Matter movement into a global campaign to tackle systemic racism towards black people in 2014. The antagonistic relationship between law enforcement and ethnic minorities in the US shows little sign of abating. More recently, the imprisoning and separation of families at the US border marks just the latest human rights violation committed under the guise of justice in the United States. As a news report cited in the documentary states: racism in the US is as American as apple pie.

But by the 4^th May 1992 the LA riots were not a principled reaction to an unjust system, but an insight into the depravity of the worst of our human condition. As victims are dragged from their cars by mobs of angry young men and beaten – in some cases to death – or  forced to watch as their stores and homes are burned to the ground, the viewer is forced to confront not just the reality of a system built on racism and division, but the depths of humanity's capacity for violence when pushed to breaking point. At one point, a man stood on the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the burning city below, points out that this wasn’t just about racial prejudice or injustice, but that people of all races were rioting because of economic frustrations and a sense that they had been forgotten by the political system.

In an age when our politics is becoming more divisive across the world and where people of all social classes, religions, and ethnicities are again feeling as though they are not being listened to, we should take note of the cocktail of conditions that led to this explosion in LA in 1992. Where does inequality, injustice, and pent-up frustration eventually lead? Can this be channelled into peaceful, productive protest rather than the senseless violence showcased in LA 92? Is history destined to repeat itself again and again?

To prevent the repetition of a destructive cycle that keeps people separated by race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality, we should pay close attention to the message of hope that also runs through LA 92.

It wasn't the police or the national guard that ended the violence and restored order to LA. It wasn't the President. It was the people. Ordinary citizens with their brooms and their bin bags and their messages of peace and reconciliation, who came out to clean up the mess in a show of solidarity. People of all races, ages, religions. Defiant in the face of the violence, they worked together to restore their communities, to reject the divisive identity politics that had fuelled the madness of a week of chaos. They were not people in positions of power, and they had little to gain from standing up against a mob that had seemingly lost its mind. They put themselves at risk to try to mend a broken community. And they prevailed.

When violence occurs and horror seems to overwhelm the situation, look for the leaders. Look for those protesting against the tide, like the older man yelling at the looters that what they're doing isn't right, or the congresswoman regaining control of an angry crowd outside the post office during the riots by asking them politely to “work with her”. Or Rodney King himself, overcoming his own fear and shame at what had happened to plead for the violence to stop. Look for those who are trying to do good, even when everything around them is bad. They are always there. And they will bring us all back from the brink, usually with no support, no sense of self preservation, and no recognition.

LA 92 left me feeling shocked, angry, and sick to my stomach. But it also gave a glimpse of hope for how people are able to overcome our differences and reject prejudice, injustice, and violence in favour of the search for a better world together. We are a long way from a just, egalitarian, and peaceful utopia. But we will keep trying to find our way there.

Rodney King, in his emotional and powerful plea for calm towards the end of the riots, said it best:

"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?

We're all stuck here for a while, let's try to work it out.”

LA 92 is available to watch on Netflix.

Fear and Falsehood - The Fallacy of Global War

The brutal massacre of 50 people as they attended Friday afternoon prayers in Christchurch by a white nationalist terrorist last week has dominated headlines across the world. Understandably, the worst terror incident in New Zealand’s history, which the attacker livestreamed on Facebook, has been impossible to ignore. For a peaceful nation, this was a tragedy of almost unprecedented scale.

As world leaders praise Jacinda Ardern’s leadership in response to the terror attack, and investigators pour over the killer’s “rambling, strangely written” and vehemently anti-Muslim manifesto, debate continues to rage over what this latest extreme act of violence means for the increasingly polarised global political and religious landscape. Just two days after the Christchurch shooting, there was another mass shooting, this time claiming the lives of three people and seriously injuring three more in Utrecht, Netherlands. Although there is currently little hard evidence that this attack was motivated by terror, the police announcement that this is an ongoing line of enquiry was quickly co-opted by various media outlets and prominent figures to highlight the “threat” of Muslim immigration to Europe (a threat that the Christchurch attacker also claimed as a motive).

It seems the violent terrorist attack by an “angelic boy” has led to a crisis of conscience in some western media outlets. In response to the extensive media coverage around Christchurch, Breitbart, the far-right American news website, bemoaned the supposed media silence of a massacre of Christians in Nigeria in the weeks running up to Christchurch. Citing sources from other right-wing outlets such as Christian Militant, the article highlights what it sees as hypocrisy in the mainstream media in its uneven coverage of the attacks in New Zealand and Nigeria: “The New York Times did not place this story on the front page; in fact, they did not cover it at all. Apparently, when assessing “all the news that’s fit to print,” the massacre of African Christians did not measure up”.

It is true that the deaths of up to 120 Christians in Nigeria in February and March 2019 did not get the same headline coverage as the Christchurch massacre. I have not found one western media outlet that has reported on any one of the attacks against Christian farmers in northern or central Nigeria this year, by predominantly Muslim Fulani herdsmen. However, this is the extent of the accuracy in the Breitbart article.

The article goes on to incorrectly describe the attackers as “Fulani Jihadists”, when in fact the main motive for the prolonged violence between these groups is not a religious one. Nor is it a one-off terrorist act. Violence between Fulani Muslim herdsman and Christian farmer groups of various ethnicities in these areas of Nigeria is a result of a prolonged and increasingly desperate struggle for land ownership. International NGOs, such as International Crisis Group, have been reporting on the tit-for-tat violence since fighting escalated last year. In the same way that no western media outlets reported the attacks on Christian farmers by the Fulani in the last few months, the ICG report in summer of last year was largely ignored in the Western mainstream.

Unfortunately, such violence between groups that are in direct competition over increasingly sparse resources is becoming routine in Nigeria, and, as I argued in my Future of Climate Conflict post, will likely be exacerbated globally as climate change stretches the limits of our natural resources. As ICG noted in their analysis of the herdsman/pastoralist conflict in Nigeria, ethnic and religious differences between the disparate groups are easily exploited in a context of increasing uncertainty and economic fear, making violence more likely.

The Christian victims of the Fulani attacks were not killed because of their religion, and it is wrong to claim otherwise. An excellent Snopes fact-checking article adds that “while Breitbart’s article provided details of several reported attacks by Fulani herders on farmers in Kaduna State in February and March 2019, it did not mention the attack on the mainly Muslim Fula ethnic group, which was the single largest reported atrocity during the time period in question”. These attacks are part of a larger conflict, one that the western media has made no effort to report on since its very beginning. This in itself is a demonstration of the failings of the media to report on African conflict, but it is not an example of an agenda that somehow “favours” Muslim victimhood and silences violence against Christians, as Breitbart implies. In fact, the extensive coverage of the “bring back our girls” campaign that followed the abduction of 200 school girls in Nigeria by the terror group Boko Haram demonstrates that Jihadist violence features heavily in the global discourse on terrorism.

Religion- and ethnicity-based identity politics are the weapons used to encourage intergroup hostility and violence. What happened at Christchurch was a tragedy and a disgrace. Any deaths as a result of intergroup violence in Nigeria or Utrecht are equally horrifying. This is not a time for comparison, or finger pointing. The attack in New Zealand shook the world because of the visceral nature of an attack on such a scale in an otherwise peaceful country, that was livestreamed online for viewers around the world to watch. The attacks on Christian farmers in Nigeria have left thousands to struggle with the loss of a father, mother, partner, or child. Families across Utrecht now have to come to terms with lives that have been permanently damaged.

No good has come of any of this violence. All that has been left behind is sorrow, anguish, and in some cases likely a desire for revenge. People have been killed simply for being who they are. The motivation behind the act in no way justifies the consequences in any of these instances, but the context and nuance of each situation should not be ignored. If you are looking for evidence to suggest that Christianity and Islam are incompatible, then you will find it. But that does not mean it is actually there. This is not a point scoring exercise. This is not some apocalyptic endgame between Christians and Muslims. This is not a war. This is madness.

We are people. We live and work together. We stand side by side and help each other out and laugh together and muddle through and try to make something in the years we have here. For some of us, those years ran out too soon. 

Nobody is responsible for the deaths in Christchurch other than the terrorist who held the gun. But he was inspired by the exact rhetoric and sabre rattling that Breitbart and others have co-opted for their own ends. The attacker explicitly stated that his reasoning for killing 50 innocent people was because of the existential threat that Islam supposedly poses to Christian/Western values. This is the exact same rhetoric used by Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and other Jihadi groups the world over. Deflecting from a terror attack committed in the name of white nationalism and Christianity by highlighting attacks on Christians reinforces the exact thinking that led to this brutality in the first place. Not only is this thinking wrong, it is incredibly dangerous. He killed them because they kill us.

He killed them because they kill us.

Where does this kind of thinking end?

Child Soldier to War Criminal - The Cycle of Violence in Uganda

Dominic Ongwen, Brigade Commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army under the leadership of Joseph Kony, stands on trial at the International Criminal Court on 70 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. His charge list makes for grim reading: murder, enslavement, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, torture, rape, and pillaging.

But Ongwen’s trial is not unique in the nature of the brutality it will examine; these stories are unfortunately all too familiar in the region of central Africa that the LRA has terrorised for over three decades. Rather, it is unique in that it marks a first for the International Criminal Court. This is the first time that an inductee is being charged with the same crimes that have been done to him. Thomas Obhof, a defence lawyer on the case, has emphasised this point in discussing the charges against Ongwen: ““He was tortured … forced to watch people being killed, was used for fighting as a child soldier. Even the prosecution have said that what he went through is a serious mitigating factor.”

Ongwen was abducted by LRA soldiers when he was around ten years old (he claims in his own testimony that he was 14, but this is disputed by other LRA captives who think he was younger). Once captured, he was tortured and forced to watch videos of people being killed. As he became indoctrinated, he was taken under the wing of Kony’s deputy commander, Vincent Otti, who acted as a father figure to the young boy (and would later be indicted alongside Ongwen by the ICC, though he would be executed by Kony before facing justice). He was told he was fighting for the future of his people, the Acholi of northern Uganda, and that his missions had come from God. He was told he would grow up to be a leader of a feared and elite military unit. And he did, impressing Kony and Otti with his military tactics, and striking fear into the heart of any civilians who knew his name.

Now in the dock, this former child soldier stands before the world as a perpetrator of the very acts he witnessed and suffered through as a boy. Almost 2,000 people will be represented by the prosecution in his case, which is currently ongoing. As far as many are concerned, life imprisonment will not be justice enough for Dominic Ongwen. Joseph Akweyu Manoba, appointed by the ICC to represent the victims, told the Guardian “They tell me that if the ICC doesn’t punish him and he returns to Uganda then they will kill him themselves”.

And who can blame them? Ongwen’s Sinia Brigade ravaged northern Uganda between May 2004 and October 2005, attacking IDP camps, and killing, raping, and plundering their way across the land they were supposedly liberating.

Ongwen’s childhood abduction by Kony’s men does not excuse his own abhorrent acts. He remains responsible for his own crimes, and if he is found guilty he should be held accountable for every single life he ended or ruined. But his story should remain a warning for those seeking revenge for horrors inflicted upon themselves.

Perpetrators are rarely simply perpetrators. Many were victims first. This does not absolve them of their moral duties, and nor should it change our opinion of them or their actions. But the contexts in which a monster is made should be examined, because only then can we work towards ending the cycle of violence that only breeds more violence.

Dominic Ongwen, child soldier turned war criminal, now faces some form of justice at the ICC. His captor, torturer, commanding officer, and spiritual leader, Joseph Kony, remains at large. The LRA has abducted 3,400 more children since 2008. Child Soldiers International reports that active recruitment of child soldiers occurs in at least 46 countries globally, and that children have served in at least 18 conflicts since 2016. All will live with the consequences of violence for the rest of their lives.

As the ICC tries to find a semblance of justice in the case of Dominic Ongwen, it falls to all of us to work towards ensuring that we do not have to do this again. As Ongwen’s story demonstrates, it is far easier to harm than to heal. Violence can undo in seconds what peace takes years to achieve. We must strive for peace, however hard that may be.

You can find out more about child soldiers here.

Humanitarian Commandos - The Problem with Politicising Aid

The international humanitarian sector faces a host of challenges in improving its capacity to respond to complex emergencies across the globe. In the context of increasing violence being perpetrated against aid workers globally (174 aid workers were killed in 2017 alone, a 30% increase from the year before), international NGOs and humanitarian organisations are facing difficult decisions regarding how best to remain effective in supporting civilians affected by conflict, and also safeguarding their own personnel.

When a situation becomes too unsafe for humanitarian work to continue, the consequences can be disastrous. For example, when MSF was forced to suspend operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 450,000 people were affected. Therefore, humanitarian organisations and development actors are searching for new ways of working that can allow for continued aid support in dangerous areas, and that also provide a modicum of protection for the aid workers themselves.

According to a recent report from USAID’s Global Development Hub, the answer may be to train aid workers as commandos. The proposal of the development of so-called Rapid Expeditionary Development (RED) teams within USAID would allow humanitarian work to continue in areas where other civilian American personnel are unable to reach, according to the report’s authors. The suggestion is that “RED Team members would be specifically recruited and trained ... to secure communities vulnerable to violent extremist radicalization and exploitation” and that these individuals would then be able to act independently of partner organisations in delivering support in austere environments.

This sort of “elite humanitarian” capability may well increase the capacity of USAID to respond in hard-to-reach areas and allow for a more hands-on approach to complex emergencies as they unravel, but it also risks further blurring the line between humanitarian action and military activities.

Traditional humanitarian approaches to security are characterised by ‘acceptance’, or the idea that aid and development workers will be kept safe by the fact that they are not perceived as a threat (as enshrined as a fundamental principle of humanitarian action by the Red Cross movement). In contrast, the use of military-style tactics and techniques help to contribute to a “culture of war” that can lead to the perception of foreign actors as combatants rather than benign actors.

The growing number of attacks on humanitarian actors since 2003 has been attributed to the increasing link between INGO activity and the agendas of western governments. USAID, as an American organisation, can be expected to work in support of wider US strategic goals, but humanitarian actors more generally must be seen to remain neutral in the conflict situations in which they respond. A 2017 article published in International Peacekeeping found that “there is a growing consensus that the politicization of aid and its embeddedness within military operations may be contributing to greater humanitarian insecurity…”. This extends to the humanitarian sector in its broadest sense. If one organisation is seen to be acting in a way not befitting of the humanitarian agenda then the entire sector is held responsible - and suffers the consequences.

The USAID proposal argues that RED Team members could be used to help win the “hearts and minds” of local communities, but this very terminology was borne from the counterinsurgency movement in the US military (as the report itself references). Humanitarian action should not be about “winning hearts and minds”. It should be about saving lives. Governmental agencies like USAID or DFID will of course work to uphold national interests, but the co-option of humanitarian activity to meet political ends puts the whole sector in the firing line.

The legitimacy of the humanitarian sphere as a neutral, impartial, and independent force for good is the best defence an aid worker can have.

“Humanitarian commando” is an oxymoron. Aid worker deaths and kidnappings will continue to rise if the lines between humanitarian and combatant remain blurred.

Valentine's Poems and a Poundland Lenin

It’s been another day of useless and stupid political discourse in the UK. Today, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell comes under fire for calling Winston Churchill a “villain” for his decision to send in soldiers to break up striking miners in Tonypandy, South Wales, as home secretary in 1910 – 1911. In response, Sir Nicholas Soames, Tory MP and grandson of Churchill, referred to McDonnell as a “third rate, Poundland Lenin” who was only making the statement in order to gain publicity. If that were the case, it certainly worked. Theresa May and Boris Johnson rushed to the defence of Churchill, with Johnson declaring on Twitter “"Winston Churchill saved this country and the whole of Europe from a barbaric fascist and racist tyranny and our debt to him is incalculable… JM should be utterly ashamed of his remarks and withdraw them forthwith.". The argument has become so heated that Tory MP Robert Halfon even requested an “emergency debate” on Churchill in Parliament.

McDonnell’s quote came in response to a question posed in a Q&A with Politico: “Winston Churchill, hero or villain?”. Given the simplicity of the question, McDonnell was almost forced to answer unequivocally; in Tonypandy, Churchill was the villain.  He did later clarify that Churchill was a “hero” in the war.

Now I would like to suggest, and bear with me here, that both responses might be correct. Is it not possible that the “greatest Briton who ever lived” is also the man who enthusiastically supported British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War? Is it not possible that the man who led Britain at a time when the Empire was on the brink of collapse did his utmost to defend the UK, even at the expense of the colonies?

There is no such thing as a hero or villain. There are only public figures who make decisions that benefit some, often at the expense of others. Good people do bad things, bad people occasionally do good things, and those of us who fall squarely in the “average” category will keep doing both. The world is not black and white. And we should not treat it as such.

Reducing Winston Churchill to a “hero” or a “villain” deprives us of the ability to rationally evaluate the decisions that he made as a leader. When we talk about someone as influential as Churchill we should be able to do so objectively, or we risk historical revisionism. Take Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a peace icon and Burmese national hero who later stooped to the depths of inhumanity in her tacit support for ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Rakhine. Her past triumphs should not justify her current crimes. Nor should Churchill’s status as a British hero make him immune to criticism.

This debate serves as a distraction to the looming debacle of Brexit currently hanging over the UK. But in case you were worried that the Churchill scandal was preventing Parliament from making serious progress in Brexit negotiations don’t worry, Tory MP Andrea Leadsom and SNP MP Pete Wishart found time to spar on the issue through some Valentine’s poems…

What has happened to debate? In the Twitter age, it appears to be easier to launch a personal attack against someone with an opposing view than to consider their argument and respond with a reasonable critique. When the Brexit negotiations in the UK parliament look more like point-scoring exercises than meaningful discussions on how best to secure a deal, we have to start to question where it all went wrong. If we lose the ability as a society to debate the legacies of our most important public figures, or the content of the policies that will shape our country for decades to come, then we lose the ability to meaningfully come together to find solutions to our biggest issues.

You may or may not agree with John McDonnell. You might think I’m wrong to criticise those who responded angrily to his comments. You might also be pro-deal, be happy to leave the EU without a deal, want a second referendum or have no idea what it is that you want from the Brexit madness anymore. That’s good. That’s normal. Let’s take a breather and ask why we’re so upset. Let’s talk about it.