REMEMBRANCE

As a historian / archaeologist and someone who has more than a passing interest in politics I have to find a happy medium between living in the past and living in the now. It is important that we remember what has been done (for good and for bad) and to use that knowledge to make intelligent sensible choices about our future. I am a big believer in ‘rememberance’, by that I mean we should never be selective when it comes to remembering history.

If you want to wallow in nostalgia about the ‘British Empire’ or the ‘Soviet Union’ that’s fine, but, while remembering the heroic and principled stand against fascism in 1940 then you should also chose not to forget about the Bengal famine (which killed six million) in the middle of the second world war or the million or so who starved to death in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century.

The remnants of Stalin's Artic Railway

For those who yearn for the strong man in Russian politics and days when the sound of ‘Soviet rockets made the world tremble’ don’t forget the millions who were murdered or imprisoned by Stalin and his cronies (not to mention the millions killed and imprisoned by the fascist regimes in Europe and Asia in the 1930’s and the 1940’s) and the repressive regimes that held sway across half of our continent until the early 1990’s.

The vast majority of the old brutal oppressive Communist dictatorships, save for Cuba and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have collapsed and been rightly cast into the dustbin of history. While both Cuba and the PRC have made real social achievements (particularly when it comes to health care and literacy) it is important to remember that these achievements have come at one hell of a price in broken Human lives and scattered bones.

In recent years the tide may well have finally turned against dictatorship, even though we may yet have some way to go before they are finally gone. Certainly the real courage shown by protesters against tyrannical (nominally Communist and other) regimes, particularly in the last 12 months has been impressive, it has however been matched by what can best be described as a failure of leadership on the part of the UN Security Council which appears tired, out of step and unfit for purpose.

NOT RULING ANYTHING OUT...

William Hague (the UK Foreign Secretary) has said that he is not ruling anything out in relation the situation in Syria - anything save any action to protect the Syrian people - that is. The whole situation reminds me in many ways of the early months of Bosnia in the 1990's - where the West made many pious pronouncements about Human rights, arms embargo's etc, yet did little. If you are the ones being shelled by the a government that has been stockpiling arms for the best part of forty years then Hague's words will bring scant comfort.

The UN and the Arab League are failing to halt the killing, the UN is stuck between a rock and a hard place, as both Russia and China will veto any moves to actually act to save lives. The days are gone when Russia and China will step back from supporting and protecting their somewhat bloodstained Allies at the UN.

How many more Houla style massacres will we see before anything is done? Back in February, the European Parliament backed a resolution calling on Russia to stop arms sales to Syria and allow the UN Security Council to take the lead in resolving the crisis and has actively condemned the "brutal massacre" in Houla , and repeated calls for the Syrian government to implement the UN peace plan. Yet still the bodies pile up.

In many ways it is entirely natural for the few remaining Communist dictatorships like Cuba and the Peoples Republic of China (itself a brutal repressive dictatorship) to side with the Syrian Government. Cuban repression is well documented and the PRC's behaviour towards dissidents and ethnic minorities (and the peoples of Tibet and East Turkestan to name but two) within its own border is a matter of record. China has other concerns and anxieties, spreading democracy definitely is not among them, and stability at any price may be a key factor here along with arms sales.

Yet Syria also has some fair weather friends who should know better, including Cuba, Venezuela, South Africa, Brazil and India (who have abstained on Syria related UN resolutions) who remain silent along with the old traditional ‘left’. There is some irony here in that some of the states supporting the Syrian dictatorship were themselves involved in liberation struggles, they might once had a degree of sympathy for the Syrian people who are laying down their lives for freedom and liberty or perhaps they are stuck in the vice like grip of the past or merely enjoying the trappings of power.

THE HUMAN COST OF A UN VETO

The people of Homs (and the rest of Syria) continue to pay the price for the Peoples Republic of China and Russia giving the green light to Syria's rulers to slaughter its opponents. Russia and China have now twice vetoed UN action on Syria. President Assad and his government used the veto as an effective licence to kill those Syrian people who oppose them. Human rights groups and activists say more than 7,000 people have been killed by Syrian security forces since the uprising began last March.

The UN actually stopped estimating the death toll in Syria after it passed 5,400 in January, saying it was too difficult to confirm the figures. Syrian Government forces have been battering the rebel stronghold of Homs since last week. It has been estimated at least 95 people died in the city last Monday alone. The Syrian government has publicly vowed to pursue the offensive until "order" is restored and state television has denied that there had been any bombardment.



Russia may persist in maintaining its relationship with the Syrian dictatorship; sue to a combination of arms sales, strategic desire for a warm water port and a lingering resentment in the corridors of the Kremlin to having lost the Cold War. It has been estimated that some 10% of Russia's global arms sales go to Syria, with current contracts being possibly worth as much as $1.5 billion (£950 million). Aside from ammunition, recent sales have included military training aircraft, air defence systems and anti-tank weapons. The icing on the cake though is the fact that the Assad regime provides the Russian navy with a navy base at the port of Tartus (which is Russia's last base outside of the former Soviet Union).

It's entirely natural for the Peoples Republic of China itself a brutal repressive dictatorship to side with the Syrian Government. The PRC’s behaviour towards ethnic minorities (and the peoples of Tibet and Xinxiang / East Turkestan to name but two) within its own border is a matter of record. China has other concerns and anxieties, spreading democracy definitely is not among them, stability at any price may be a key factor here as well as potential arms sales.

Syria's slightly more fair weather friends Venezuela, South Africa, Brazil and India, abstained on previous UN resolutions have been pretty quiet of late (as has the old traditional ‘left’). Its a little odd that some of the states indirectly supporting the Syrian dictatorship have themselves been involved in liberation struggles themselves, perhaps they might well have once had a degree of sympathy for the Syrian people who are laying down their lives for freedom and liberty or perhaps they are stuck in the vice like grip of the past or enjoying the trappings of power.

However, you spin this, its yet another pretty blatant diplomatic rebuff to the West, perhaps signalling a much stronger stance from Beijing and Moscow who are unhappy to see the weight of the Security Council ranged against the Syrian authorities. Perhaps all of this signals the end of the new era of intrusive diplomacy brought about by the UN Security Council resolution 1973 on Libya last March, overwhelmed by Russia and China's self-interest.

It is entirely naive to think that that President Bashar al-Assad will go peacefully or any time soon. A brutal leader can kill as many of his people as he likes when there are no real consequences for him or his regime over the short time and stay in power. Assad's brutal murderous regime continues to rocket and shell its own citizens and to bring buildings crashing down on top of women and children in Homs.

The West and the Arab League invested a great deal of time and effort in putting together the UN Security Council resolution – which if not vetoed would have condemned the violence and called for a transition to democracy. Such a resolution would have sent a powerful signal not only to Assad but also to those around him that the world had taken note and a potential coalition forming against him. Although the wording of the resolution was weak, making no reference to sanctions or even the specific removal of Assad – both Russia and China quickly used their veto to kill it stone dead.

THUS SHOULD DIE ALL TYRANTS...

He won't be missed...save by his friends

The news that the Libyan ex-leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after fleeing an assault on his home town of Sirte will I suspect lead to the shedding of few tears for his passing. He may be missed by members of his family and his friends but by few other people. There will be more tears from the relatives of his victims and their surviving family members. Gaddafi may not have dodged the NATO bullets but he has successfully avoided a day in court at the Hague on War Crimes charges. Hopefully the National Transition Council will once its fully in-charge will publish any recovered paperwork relating to the supply or arms to the previous regime and hopefully have a full and public investigation into just who supplied the Libyan dictator with his weapons over the long and brutal years of his rule.

KNOWING WHEN TO GO?

A potential visitor to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal and friend

There must come a moment in the 'politcal life' of 'a great leader' when they begin to lose the plot and any contact with real people (save for those telling you what you want to hear) becomes increasingly tenuous. Was it always about being the top dog, getting to the top of the greasy pole, getting to sit at the top table? Or was it always about lining ones pocket and siting pretty. Is the process gradual or seismic, or can said 'great leader' look back and pick the moment when any good being done was outweighed by the bad things being done.

Certainly of late we have seen 'great leaders' go from being favoured sons of the West to siting in a prison cell. For some dictators absolute power and endless overnight room service has been replaced with spending quality time with the slop bucket. And perhaps even more pleasingly having to keep a possible date in the Hague war crimes court in ones diary has become more prominent in a former great leaders diary than remembering peoples birthdays.

As a 'great leader' do you seek out 'Yes people' or is it something that happens around people who exercise power or run the shop? In the West (and in the UK) it has often been said that successful political leaders, regardless of their political hue, never quite know when to go.I have also heard it said that a political career always ends in failure. The long lingering departure of Tony Blair in 2006 / 2007 is a good case in point, a personal desire to clock up more time in office than Mrs Thatcher certainly overrode any political sense of reality, regardless of any electoral damage done to the Labour party.

Take Muammar Qaddafi, he overthrew the Libyan King Idris I (who was portrayed as puppet of the West (especially by Qaddafi after he took power), he was in power for 41 years, and until fairly recently was the longest-serving leader in both Africa and the Arab world. Having ceased power, in tail end of the Nasser era when the Arab great leader model was the height of fashion.

In the last 4 decades he has gone from handsome and charismatic young army officer to complete nutter and international pariah. Admittedly in this world being crazy and holding absolute power in a brutal dictatorship are not mutually exclusive, I mean who going to say no? The once smart uniforms have been replaced by (if I was being generous) a somewhat flamboyant dress-sense and gun-toting female bodyguards.

As bizarre as aspects of New Labour's policies were they have nothing on Gaddafi's political philosophy, as laid down in the Green Book. Gaddafi's green book which might be described if one was being particularly generous as a homemade alternative to both socialism and capitalism, with some aspects of Islam thrown in for good measure (the late Enver Hoxha (dictator of Communist Albania) would have been exceptionally envious).

Nominally Qaddafi created a political system known as the "Jamahiriya" or "state of the masses", in which power was supposedly held by thousands of "peoples' committees". In truth Qaddafi and his hangers on held and retained absolute power in a very centralised and authoritarian state and appear to have had few qualms when it came to hunting down their political opponents (and murdering them) at home or overseas.

There was a time when the West feted unpleasant brutal dictators because then were perceived as being anti communist or keeping the lid on a whole host of potential other problems. The Cold War has effectively been over since 1989, yet we in the West have carried on being nice to some pretty unscrupulous and brutal repressive regimes. After the Cold War was over various countries have been more than happy to sell arms to nasty repressive brutal regimes regardless of their human rights record e.g Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Egypt, etc.

I have absolutely no doubt if some of the dictators that have fallen in recent months had survived or had successfully fought of the challenge to their power then, then after a short interlude, they would be being quite happily wooed by governments and businesses from the West. I mean you can never have enough rubber bullets and ground attack aircraft can you? I suspect that Western leaders find it easier to deal with dictatorships than democracies. It's far easier to right of the Arab people as fundamentalists who are incapable to running their own democratic states, who need a firm authoritarian hand to rule them, etc.

If democracies successfully emerge across the Middle East, then things will be different, perhaps democratically elected Arab leader will remember just who exactly was no keen to support their oppressors. Not to mention exactly who was more than happy to tool them up with the rubber bullets, armoured land rovers, armoured cars, electric cattle prods and tear gas and all the other handy little things that dictatorships need to stay in power. On that thought, perhaps we will have to wait and see what emerges as the Arab spring moves through summer and into winter.

A WIND OF CHANGE?

Small stones can start large avalanches, opposition to Muammar Gaddafi and his murderous repressive regime is not new, it has a long history both inside and outside of Libya. Not that former PM Tony Blair and other Western Leaders who were busy snuggling up the repressive leader and his spawn would have noticed, but courageous Libyans defying the repressive Gaddafi regime took to the streets not a month ago, but more than two years ago. They risked torture and death sentences and their protest largely passed unnoticed by most of the world, a small group of families began to hold weekly demonstrations in Benghazi, the city that has become the epicenter of the uprising that swept across Libya.

In less than three months Gaddafi has gone from being the West's best mate to billy no mates. The UN Security Council has twice in three weeks done the right thing, initially by referring Libya to the International Criminal Court, then, by authorizing military force to protect civilians from Muammar al-Qaddafi's crazed wrath. Qaddafi is in many ways the perfect stage villain complete with an iffy dress sense, madness and way over-the-top threats to "show no mercy" to the people of Benghazi, along with his regional meddling and megalomaniac ideas, left him few friends or defenders.

Now What's even more amazing aside from the fact that China and Russia decided not to vote or even to abstain in the UN, is the fact that the Arab League (which has long promised much and delivered little for the Arab peoples) has also played an key role by abandoning its usual position of opposition to Security Council action against some of it's more repressive members. Previously the league has watched silently as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir committed crimes against humanity in Darfur, somewhat less recently, Saddam Hussein (Iraq) massacred Shia and Kurds, and Syria's Hafez al-Asad destroyed the town of Hama.

Now the question are the winds of change wafting through the Middle East and North Africa or is the ground literally crumbling beneath the feet of a whole host of iffy and repressive regimes - with popular dissent and demonstrations in Algeria, Syria, Yemen and Bharain - where next people may well wonder? What's embarrassing for Western leaders in particular is that they now find that many of the despots they have feted because they brought 'security and stability' to the region (and also lucratively armed to the teeth) are now busy repressing their own people in what appears to be a series of increasingly bloody and brutal (and hopefully futile) attempts to stay in power.

Gaddafi and friend (AFP / Getty)

Western leaders are 'discovering' that 'their boys' are a pretty grim and repressive bunch of (hopefully) no hopers. I suppose that we should all be grateful in that at least we have been spared the embarrassing suggestion that they did not no what they were like or what they were doing. Certainly the former New Labour Government and no doubt the Con Dem's spent plenty of time being nice to Gaddafi regime (the sight of Peter Hain (Labour MP for Neath) defending a long line of arms sales to Libya recently on BBC Question time comes to mind). Now the people are taking to the streets throughout the region, risking their lives for freedom, democracy and human rights against autocratic leaders that have long denied them for so long.

Here's hoping what we are seeing is the wind of change and here's hoping that Gaddafi (and his ilk) and the rest of the repressive bunch end up in Court and after due process spend a seriously long time in goal answering for their crimes. When Saddam went far too much was swept under the carpet (the Kurds amongst many others never did get their day in court) and we never did find out which Western Governments (and the rest) and which companies had been quietly breaking the sanctions because after all he was 'our boy'.

And while we are at it lets have a long hard look at just who's been profitably tooling up the forces of repression around the globe and shine some light on the UK's foreign policy and exactly what decisions have been and are being made on our name? Now this wave of revolution has been fuelled by the courage of ordinary people who are prepared to stand up and be counted, aided and abetted by Facebook - the blocking of which by repressive regimes is a key sign of unrest and dissent- incidentally I wonder if Facebook is blocked in Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbarbwe and Iran all of whom have expressed their support for Gaddafi?