September 2003

Kanske var vapenvilan under juldagarna 1914 en av 1900-talets potentiellt viktigaste händelser skriver den amerikanske historikern Stanley Weintraub. Sören Sommelius har läst en infallsrik och tänkvärd bok om en soldaternas vapenvila som hotade de krigförande högkvarterens planer. BokenSTILLA NATT. När vapnen tystnade julen 1914Av: Stanley Weintraub[Marker][Marker]Översättning Margareta EklöfUtkommer i dag (tisdag 2.9) Julen 1914 var förstavärldskriget några månader gammalt. De stridande parterna hade grävt ner sig i Västfrontens oändliga skyttegravar, från Engelska kanalen till schweiziska gränsen. Sedan augusti hade kriget krävt hundratusentals döda, sårade och saknade. Förhållandena i skyttegravarna var vedervärdiga. Här slaktades under ett drygt fyra år långt blodbad en generation unga män till ingen som helst nytta. På sina håll var det mindre än hundra meter mellan de tyska soldaterna å ena sidan och de brittiska och franska å den andra. Krigets första jul inträffade något mycket märkligt, en soldaternas vapenvila, genomförd av meniga i skyttegravarna i direkt...

ISTANBUL – No country prevaricates so much unless it has something to hide. The more the Iranians dodge and weave the clearer it becomes that an important faction in its divided ruling class wants to keep open the option to build a nuclear weapon. Yet at the same time it is also apparent that another powerful faction regards this as a mistaken policy that will set back all the enormous effort that has gone into mending fences with both Europe and America. It takes no great effort to understand that Iran has reasons for wanting nuclear weapons. Not least because Israel has them. It is not so much that Iran believes it could engage in nuclear brinkmanship to force Israel out of Palestine. Nor does it believe it could use its own nuclear armory to neutralize Israel’s and then seek to engage it with conventional forces. All these would be too...

Published in the Journal of Future StudiesVol 8, No 1, August 2003, pp. 107-110 Few people have the opportunity to make daily decisions at the international level concerning war and peace. But most of us are intimately familiar with another environment prone to conflict: road traffic. Comparing today’s prevailing national security policies with the measures we have taken to reduce collisions on the road can help us devise more sensible strategies to maintain international security in the future than the outdated military concepts that are still applied today. Until about 1880, there were essentially no traffic laws. Carriages passed each other on the left or right, as pedestrians still do today on a sidewalk, and whoever was more aggressive crossed an intersection first. But with the invention of motor vehicles, collisions became more frequent and more dangerous, sometimes fatal, and something had to be done. The solution adopted was to...

We are gathered this evening at a moment of great sadness, especially for those of us blessed by friendship with Edward Said. This sense of loss is both wide and deep. Edward touched many, many lives, including all those people throughout the world who knew him through words, written and spoken. His warmth and interest in the life of every person with whom he came into contact with was legendary. Edward never gave anyone the sense that they were “ordinary.” He conveyed to everyone he encountered, however routinely, of their importance to him. These last years of Edward’s life were both a tragic ordeal for him and those close to him, and a glorious chapter in an extraordinary life. It was glorious, despite the pain and suffering, because Edward’s courage and perseverance were so inspirational for his family, friends, colleagues, and activist collaborators. During this period Edward never lost his...

September 20, 2003 – 6 months after the US started the war on Iraq “I want to share with you three recent poems written with the second anniversary of 9/11 and our frightening leadership in mind.”David SEPTEMBER 11TH Each rising of the sun begins a day of awe, destinedTo bring shock to those who can be shocked. This day began in sunlit beauty and, like other days,Soon fell beneath deathís demon shadow. The darkness crossed Manhattan and the globe,The crashing planes, tall towers bursting into flame. The hurtling steel into solid steel endlessly playedOn the nightly news until imprinted on our brains People lurching from the burning towers, plungingLike shot geese to the startled earth beneath. The shock was painted on faces on the news,That such sudden death could be visited on us. But such death is not extraordinary in our world of grief,Born anew each brief and scarlet sunlit...

“En livräddares försvarstal”Av: Borislav PekicÖversättning från serbokroatiska av Djordje ZarkovicGavrilo förlag Den ex-jugoslaviske författaren Borislav Pekics roman “En livräddares försvarstal” är både en uppsluppen skröna och en politisk satir över det Jugoslavien som inte längre finns. Romanen, publicerad 1977, skildrar livräddaren Andrija Gavrilovic, som år ut och år in med stor nit fullgör det arbete vilket han betraktar som ett kall. Men han har otur. Den enda gång han behöver gripa in är för att rädda en hund, annars inte en enda incident. Men vem kan vara domare om det inte finns några skyldiga, vem kan vara läkare utan patienter? Efter femton år utspelar sig dramatiska förändringar i landet. Stora starka karlar kommer till hans strand för att bada, goda simmare. Tyskarna har ockuperat landet. Nu ockuperar de också Andrijas strand. “En livräddares försvarstal”är skriven som ett förklarande brev”att öppnas efter min död”. Brevet/berättelsen har inspirerats av “Sokrates försvarstal”, av...

LONDON – If Europe and the rest of the world want to save the UN as an institution that counts and Iraq from the disintegration that confronts it they must let the U.S. back into the UN – and into the driver’s seat. As Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s most revered ex secretary general, once said, the UN was created not to get us to heaven but to save us from hell. It is tempting – and I have been very tempted – to let the U.S. and Britain stew in their own mess in Iraq. They created this pickle and for a few months it has seemed right to let them soak in it, so that next time they might more openly listen to those many critics who warned them that war would probably end up, as it has, creating a worse situation that the one that existed before. But the...

ABUJA, NIGERIA – If you want to find opposition to the elected administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria open any newspaper any day. Last week, for instance, almost the entire press was up in arms against his vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who too calmly turned away as his bodyguards beat into unconsciousness a photographer whose crime was to get too close at a ceremony to crown the new Oba of Lagos, or so the reporters present unanimously say. The state governor shouted himself hoarse begging them to stop but to no avail. Cruelty and cold feelings remain part of Nigerian political and social culture 5 years after the fall of the ruthless military regime of General Sani Abacha who purged and pillaged until there was practically nothing left in the treasury, and those that prospered were the most corrupt. It became a dark satanic society more in the mould...

By Fredrik S. HeffermehlNorges Fredsråd – Norwegian Peace Alliance September 11, 2003 Oslo, 9. Sept. 2003 Dear ambassador, I have today submitted the following column for distribution by the IPS Columnist Service in Rome. A.o. I express support for the French, German and Russian defense of the UN Charter. And I urge nations not to yield to US wishes on Iraq without clear and unambiguous promises to return to loyal membership of the UN and collective decisionmaking – see end of article. In view of the urgency of the matter I am sending this to you before it reaches the the editorial offices (about 2000, all over the world). Fredrik S. Heffermehl US – over or under the UN? Empire and imperialism, words with a negative ring for most of us, have come into open use as a laudable abmbition for neoconservative, Christian crusaders in the present US government. Fortunately...

News Poem 1 Fresh wave of sabotage and violence took its toll on Iraq on Sunday Baghdad (Reuters) A second blaze hit a crucial oil export pipeline,A water pipeline was blown up,Six Iraqis were killed in a mortar attack on a Baghdad prison,A Danish soldier was killed. A Reuters cameraman was shot dead while working near a U.S.-run prison,Iraq’s governor (Kissinger-associate and terror expert L. Paul Bremer)said on Sunday: the country was losing$7 million a day due to the attack on the pipeline, 59 wounded in a mortar bomb attack on a U.S.-guarded prison,500 Iraqi detainees,including common criminalsand suspected anti-American guerrillas,are being held at Abu Ghraib prison,which was one of Saddam Hussein’smost notorious jails. [President Bush cites progress in Iraq.] News Poem 2 Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, 43 (Perhaps his camera was a rocket propelled grenade launcher) New York Times/Reuters Mazen Dana, a Palestinian working for Reutersfilming outside Abu Ghraib...

MONROVIA, LIBERIA – African peacekeeping has perhaps at last found the right turning on the dangerous road of ethnic strife, tribal war and warlordism that besieges too many countries in Africa. When President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, engineered, or rather enticed, the removal of the Liberian despot, Charles Taylor, to exile in Nigeria last month it turned the page on a new chapter in African peacekeeping efforts. It has been nine years since the U.S. /UN debacle in Somalia when the U.S. command of the UN peacekeeping force decided to cut and run after the gruesome death of 18 American soldiers. This was followed by a period during the Clinton Administration when the U. S. stood back from Africa’s wars. The administration effectively vetoed a major peacekeeping operation that might have stood a chance of forestalling the Rwandan genocide. The combination of a rebirth of political confidence in now democratic Ghana,...