The news I read these days seem to favor the perspective of disappointment. I hardly pay attention to the side that champions triumph, as it is too painful and a consequence of the most profound animosity in political discourse that I can recall. My newsfeed is replete with sorrow and apprehension. During Zoom meetings where we avoid discussing “outside issues,” I have witnessed an unprecedented outburst of this sentiment, including friends from the United States who burst into tears, filled with shame for the collective will of the majority of voters.
Beyond the United States, where I have friends and where I resided for five years, this sentiment is pervasive, encompassing, of course, countries within the European Union and Europe as a whole.
Friends and family members share news and comments on private channels. For instance, my father shared this comment by Markus Bernath in the Switzerland-based NZZ, or “Neue Zuericher Zeitung,” in the family channel. With a few lines, this comment reflects the enduring human desire for a strong leader. Notably, Markus Bernath concludes a “Zeitenwende,” a paradigm shift, indicating a departure from liberal democracy towards illiberal autocracy.
Inasmuch as I follow the U.S. news, I am closely following on developments within the European Union, in my country of origin Germany, in countries where I engage workwise, such as in the Ukraine and Moldova, or the collection of six jurisdictions forming what is known as the Western Balkans. If I want to name them politically correct, I am referring to Albania, Bosnia&Hercegovina, Kosovo [under UNSCR 1244], Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
In all these countries, the reactions are reflecting on the extent to which they are governed by aspiring democracies or are on a path towards illiberal autocracy. For instance, the reactions of the ruling class in Hungary and Serbia differ from those in Albania, Romania, or Moldova. Ukraine, which is currently suffering from a war of aggression by the Russian Federation, is a special case that relates to all the anxiety stemming from the fearful question of whether the second Trump Administration is prepared to avoid making the same rookie mistakes in demolishing the rule of law towards a rule of transactional self-serving thinking. This would leave these countries vulnerable to coldness, current and future aggression and war, or dependence on a fragile strength from the European Union and NATO.
Reflecting on the strong emotions from everyday citizens through those of political operatives towards the common reflections within these societies, these days carry an overarching sense of that the heydays of liberal democracy are gone. And in another very special case, my country Germany with our history of consequences of a dictatorship and fascism leading to the unimaginable suffering through Holocaust and genocide against minorities, we all feel the triumph of the fascist faces of right-wing extremism. Germany’s current government is in a crisis, and be it snap elections after a vote of confidence gone south, or be it the regular elections in fall 2025, we fear the triumphant march of the AfD to power.
I perceive the resignation and the collective anger that is evident in the shame experienced by some of my American friends. Simultaneously, there are outbursts of anger from friends in Europe directed at the entire United States, attributing the consequences of this election solely to its actions. At present, everything appears to be subject to the whims of powerful and profoundly irrational emotions.
I would hope that we get through this very soon. There is a difference between being prepared for worst-case-scenarios and being driven by negative anticipation of events. Those who say “I told you so”, or, “Democracy is gone”, I beg to not fall into the trap being set up for us: The trap of being held hostage by self-fulfilling negative thinking.
We should not allow ourselves to engage in resignation.
Amongst many early assessments of why this all happened there is one which tells us that voters were driven by the perception that the ruling system did not serve people well, that life did not get better, rather worse.
I also note reasonable assessments about how the ruling democratic structures were detached from what people think, feel, and want to have.
In that way, the crisis of democracy is a crisis of detachment from people in their everyday lives. And that I can confirm in my personal experience, when I listen to people in their daily conversations.
So, the crisis of democracy can be looked at as something stemming from the threats by autocrats and wannabe autocrats. But if we are walking on our own side of the street, we can also look at this crisis as a failure of democracy because of detachment of the political and buerocratic class from everyday life of people. That I confirm from every talk where I listen to grievances.
And secondly and lastly, there is the question as to which extent we have one measurement stick, or several measurement sticks which we apply for convenience. The rupture which went through societies when it comes to our position in the conflict between Israel and Palestine (yes, I would hope for a two State solution), it influenced the elections in the U.S., and it tore society apart in Germany, and went straight through my own family. Democracy has a crisis rooting in credibility of our own values.
Now, for a second, let me walk not only in the shoes of Ukrainian friends, Moldovan friends, Western Balkan friends, Israeli and Palestinian friends, but in the shoes of African friends: How could we possibly believe that people in Sudan, in the Darfur region, witnessing the largest crisis and famine since more than twenty years, or anywhere else, would lend trust into us from “The West” if we continue to apply double standards? And why, do you think, Russia has an easy entry point into Mali, the Central African Republic, or elsewhere?
There is no time for resignation. It makes us complicit. There is time for deep soul searching and a revival of a discussion about values. There is time for being prepared to take risks, and there is a time now for standing up for those values which we fear to be torn down.
In this, it does not matter where we live. It is affecting all of us.
On the picture: Taken by the author in a refugee camp in Darfur, June 2005
Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Today, March 18, 2024, the New York Times published a Guest Essay by her, titled “The Unforgivable Silence on Sudan“.
I render the platform of my small blog for sharing her powerful message.
She starts her essay with her impressions on occasion of her visit to a makeshift hospital in Adré, Chad. Chad is neighboring the Sudan. There she met young Sudanese refugees who were being treated for acute malnutrition. When she was in that hospital, all she heard was “an eerie silence”. The silence of human beings who are even too weak to utter sounds, who are too weak to cry.
In some recent blog entries on the situation of civilians in Ukraine’s war zone and of civilians suffering on both sides after the terror attack of Hamas’ against Israel and Israel’s military response fighting the terror organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip, I wondered how many news about terrible suffering of human beings can be taken in even by the most compassionate human beings. Reflecting on my perception of global news, I wondered about the underwhelming reporting on the re-occurrence of one of the most severe human tragedies of the past two decades, in Sudan’s Darfur Region.
Having been there on many occasions between 2005 and 2016, I remembered the public outrage and the humanitarian calls, including by celebrities who, from early on, helped broadcasting a message of compassion which supported a massive humanitarian intervention, and one of the largest peacekeeping operations of contemporary times to follow. Certainly, the human tragedy in Darfur left an imprint on public conscience in the West at that time. And of course, as is always the case, the public attention moved on, whilst the humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts were in for the long haul. AMIS, the African Union Mission, and UNAMID, the succeeding hybrid mission jointly led by African Union and United Nations, formed an intense part of my work both in the European Union and in the United Nations over almost fifteen years.
When the United Nations Security Council, pressed by some of it’s members, decided to wind down the peacekeeping efforts at the end of 2020, those news were not making big headlines. Outside of the community of humanitarians and practitioners in the field of international peace and security, not many people noted it.
Enter the situation just three years after, and with a brutal civil war re-ocurring in Sudan. To quote Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield reporting about her experience with the sound of silence:
“Twenty years earlier I had visited the same town and met with Sudanese refugees who fled violence in Darfur, where the janjaweed militia, with backing from Omar al-Bashir’s brutal authoritarian regime, carried out a genocidal campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage.
Today, civil war has once again turned Sudan into a living hell. But even after aid groups designated the country’s humanitarian crisis to be among the world’s worst, little attention or help has gone to the Sudanese people.”
On previous occasions I reflected on an impression that an increasing number of people appears to feel overwhelmed by the battlerhythm of horrific news. For about the last two hours, I tried to walk in the shoes of friends in Africa, or the Middle East, who very understandably perceive policymaking in the West as biased. Because, quite frankly, it is. Not only “others” are biased. We all are. But in this antagonistic struggle between systems there are real loosers. People in areas like Sudan’s Darfur Region are at the receiving end.
People like in Darfur certainly feel forgotten in their suffering. When some of them, together with others from poverty-stricken and terror-riddled areas of Africa manage to end up in human trafficking networks at the Mediterranean shores of North Africa, when they perish on their perilous journey to European shores, the reports about their fate have become a regular part in the battle-rhythm of incessant bad news to which many of us, perhaps, listen less and less. When people manage to reach European shores, whether they escape from famine, or have reasons of economic migration, they may arrive as unwelcome strangers, to put it mildly.
A former President of the United States is using an increasingly bellicose rethoric of de-humanization and labeling any migrant at the Southern U.S. border either as criminal, or being let loose from mental health institutions, or being a terrorist. Which, is, looking at some language and sentiments harbored in Europe, perhaps only some of the most extreme expression of hostility which seems to become the new normal. We have it everywhere. If we can’t prevent it from spreading, that is.
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield’s Guest Essay is pointing towards the culmination of what she calls “Unforgivable Silence”:
“For almost a year, I have been pushing the United Nations Security Council to speak out. On March 8, the Council finally called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. This is a positive step, but it is not nearly enough — and it does not change the fact that the international community and media outlets have been largely quiet.
The world’s silence and inaction need to end, and end now.“
Of course I am privileged, I thought when I was enjoying my second cup of coffee outside of my caravan in Berlin, looking back on one month of travel. I racked up roughly 20.000 kilometers, or 12.500 miles, I stayed in Serbia, Canada, Kosovo, Albania, and Germany, I passed through Hungary and Slovakia, I slept over in the Czech Republic. I sat on planes and I traveled for many days with my campervan. Except for the Canada travel by air, my faithful cat friend Tigger accompanied me everywhere.
Christian Christmas celebrations are over, the Orthodox community is still looking forward to it January 06. These are the days in between. New Year’s Eve is quickly advancing. Winter solistice has just passed less than two weeks ago, sun is coming up late in the morning and darkness settles in at a time when I would just go for another afternoon swim during summertime, with six to seven more hours of daylight to go. Right now, forest paths are muddy, nature is in its deepest state of hibernation, leaves on the ground are wet and often greyish. Road surfaces barely dry up. On my way through Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic I passed through heavy blizzards and made myself comfy for the night in a parking lot thickly covered with snow. Passing Prague, the snow all but disappeared. Traveling northbound through Dresden to Berlin just the occasional heavy rain, strong winds, grey nature. One of my self-made worries which I had tried to keep at bay for weeks was related to the consequences of a winter storm which had passed through Berlin early December. Loads of snow had brought the tent down which I have attached to my caravan. There was nothing I could do from thousands of kilometers away, except for a mental exercise not to allow my crazy and often restless mind to plunge into another reason for worrying just about everything. When I arrived in Berlin, removing the puddles of water from the tent’s collapsed roof and putting new pressure on the pylon-system stabilising the tent was all I had to do. Five minutes work, and the tent was up again. Weeks of worry were proven unnecessary. My mind was desperate to find a new thing to worry about, and I tried to keep that at bay.
At the beginning of December I prepared for my travel to Toronto. Going through errands which always were a ton easier than they felt, I followed my usual morning routine of having a breakfast in my favorite street cafe in Belgrade. I listened to my neighbors who started to be occupied by the upcoming Serbian elections. Some of them muttered that they would hope for a change in the political system, voices filled with frustration. One of the waiters in my cafe, conversing with me in English with a thick Russian accent, was asking me how life is in Germany. Expressing hope that somehow, some day, he would also end up in Germany. Less frustration in his voice, more something like the hopes that you express when you have a dream. A life dream, since people like this waiter are very young. They know from which circumstances they are coming from, and the future is better anywhere else.
Sometimes I jokingly say that I am an old fart. Which is true to some extent. Physically I am approaching 66 years of age. Yet, the way of life I have choosen, it keeps me agile. For everything in life there is a bill to be paid, the currency in which I pay my dues is restlessness and the constant thinking about how long I will still be able to do this, and what will happen when I will get really old. Remaining as much as possible in a state of gratitude allows me to see how artificial this constant battle is, my mind telling me what I don’t have. When I manage to see, instead, what is given to me, restlessness and dissatisfaction vanish. At least for a while. When I look around myself, I see many people being affected by the same thing which I cope with: I always compare what I have with what my mind is telling me I should have. I compare my current situation with my past, my mind selectively produces memories of residences, houses, fancy cars with a driver, important jobs with status and acknowledgement, business class flights and five-star hotels. Or I compare what I have with what I would like to enjoy like others. When I allow it, it creates a near-constant state of dissatisfaction. In that state I compare my simple apartment with old furniture with the houses my brothers have, or I used to have. In that state I don’t see the freedom of my vagabond life with a campervan and a caravan, instead I obsess about the next better option, the next better thing to have, another job giving me more financial leverage. When I listen to people who look at my lifestyle with admiration, I see that everything comes from comparison, keeping everyone out of the moment. When I then manage to look back with honesty, I remember how unhappy I was. How much I sedated myself, and how unavailable for really meaningful relationships I was.
It feels like we want to constantly compare our own situation with that of others. And since months now, I am trying to find an answer to the question whether there are psychological limits to the ability of feeling empathy for others: The onslaught of news about people who have not even a tiny fraction of what any of us has, it leads to an increasing number of conversations where I hear “But what about me and my needs?” A question which I hear in multiple variations, sometimes with an expression of helpless shame for uttering such an emotion, and sadness, sometimes with an expression of anger and fury. Is it possible that in a situation of “information overload” related to the suffering of other people, a shut-down mechanism emerges which makes people feel: “I can’t listen to this anymore“? Is it possible that, in order to internally justify such a thought then, people must find an argument like “But look around here! There is so much broken here, in my society, why are politicians not taking care of this“? Bold forms of this argument include the exclamation of desperation by saying “We can not always only help others!“
Is it possible that this presents a platform for right-wing forces to run this meme, and to wreak havoc on the ability to empathise with others, by playing the selfish card, a nationalist card, a card where they fuel negative emotions?
When I have conversations about this with my friends in my network, we quickly identify the gasoline which fuels this fire: Egotism. Because it is also correct to say, for example: Germany is one of the most powerful economies around, and with yet a relatively stable political system. We have a responsibility to help others, and by the way, if we don’t, it also will play out very bad for ourselves if all around us is crumbling.
Since the beginning of my international career 24 years ago, at any given time when I came “home”, to Germany, I felt that complaints about own misery were on a level which I could not understand any longer, comparing it with the effects of conflict and war in those areas I was working and living in, or the poverty-stricken perspectiveless of people in societies in which I contributed to assistance, or the frustration of people in the claws of nomenclaturae sucking the life-blood from any perspective of change, compelling people into compliance with a system of multi-layered corruption.
And, beyond Germany, is this a desease affecting the societies of the Western World?
Gratitude. I had a pinched nerve in my lower back when I started my travel to Toronto. Economy class seat, of course in the middle, not an aisle or window seat, squeezed in between two big persons. I had passed through the luxurious business class section on the way to my seat, thinking about the many times when I had the privilege to enjoy a spacious seat, and good food. Now I saw the faces of bored business class travelers when I passed through, and their annoyance when loads of economy class travelers disturbed their serenity. Sitting tight with a painful back, I sensed the travel stress of all others around me. Moving into some form of gratitude, I suddenly recognised that my two big neighbors felt uneasy about taking up so much space, and that they did what they could to give me space. If I would have aggressively claimed my space, I wouldn’t have noticed that. So, instead of an internal battle in which I would have thought about the misery of economy travel, I thought about the fact that one such travel brought me 8.500 kilometers westbound within hours. I was grateful to have an opportunity to see my children.
Arriving in Toronto, poor me (the economy class traveler with undeserved back pain) moved through immigration in minutes. Then, poor me decided to immediately pick up the new fancy MacBook Air 15 which I had ordered in advance at the Apple Store. Canadian prices for that gadget are so attractive. So I stopped at Toronto Eaton Center, the whole place in full Christmas decoration, North America style. Noticing homeless people in the shadow and hiding in corners, and fancy customers strolling through the high-end shopping mall, a trademark sign of Toronto, I picked up this new fancy gadget, immediately back in a cab then and arriving with almost no delay at the place where my children live. Grateful and happy, after a big hello by two teenagers, I fell asleep, privileged to cross one entire ocean in order to see my children, more or less every two or three months. My ex-wife also being grateful that now it was her turn to disengage from parental duties, for a little while.
I could complain about the combination of severe back-pain and jet lag which I experienced during the following days. I won’t. Instead, I recall the quality time of bonding with teenagers at different stages of their tumultous process of preparing to come out of age. I recall amazing talks about empathy in dark times with one of my children. I recall just being there, with nothing I could do, witnessing the pain of the first heartbreak experienced by the other child. I tried just to empathise, not being the parent giving advise, or meddling with the affairs of a teenager who had not intention to talk about this experience with a parent.
Coming back to the invisibilities in a high-powered society like the one my children live in. Living costs in Toronto are extraordinarily high. So has to be the income then, in order to make a living. Those people live in the neighborhoods like the one of my children. I see them coming out of their houses, getting into their SUV’s. Stopping at the neighborhood cafeteria on their way dropping off the kids at school.
Poor me, meanwhile, was limping through the house one evening, the pinched nerve was really incapacitating me. Poor me sat down and opened the fancy new MacBook Air. Domino Pizza has a near-perfect website. Geo-locating my area code, it directed me to the closest pizzeria. Ordering three pizzas, entering credit card details, tipping in advance in order to have “contactless delivery”, the website told me who the person was who fired up the oven and I could see the progress. Once things were out for delivery, a map would show me the exact position of the car on its way to our house. Ping. The very moment I limped out on the porch, the car arrived, I took control over the delivery. I enjoyed pizza with two children more or less bent over their cell-phones, their eyes glued to the Tic-Toc-streams.
Over the next days, I started to pay attention to this invisible layer of society, the low-wage-jobs which made it possible to enjoy such a luxury of, for example, pizza-delivery. Or ordering stuff on Amazon and to have it on our porch next day. I watched the nannies pushing the strollers with babies. I watched the people silently examining the litter boxes for collectible recycables. I watched the people warming up in the shopping malls, and I saw the legion of food-delivery drivers. I tried to imagine their lifes. To walk in their shoes.
Canada is a society with a lot of social compassion, and a lot of empathy. I’d love to live there. Yes, my lovely children, I just can’t, because I need to work the way I do. Go figure and watch this hidden layer of society in the United States, by contrast. And inasmuch as this new global wave of nationalism and xenophobia might be rooted in disenfranchised lower middle class and lower class portions of societies, I feel that the desease of a lack of empathy and of nationalism and xenophobia might be perfectly sitting smack-in-the middle of well-educated middle class people. It does not feel like a bottom-up uprising of the disenfranchised. It feels like memes are being spread by people who are well-educated, and not poor. I guess I am not the only one who can easily name a few examples for this in our own networks of people we know.
I left Canada eight days later. With a cured back and a new fancy MacBook Air 15. With tremendous sadness about leaving my children behind. On two flights with much better seating arrangements. Well, no sleep, though, which made the five hours layover in Frankfurt a difficult thing. Poor me. Arriving in Belgrade, I settled in my little old apartment and contacted my friends in the “Cat Pension”. Milos and Svetlana love Tigger, and he loves them and the other guest cats. Milos made everything happen to immediately put Tigger into his box and to drive to my place. With Tigger back home, I could witness real gratitude: My cat friend would not stop purring for two days, he would roll over in front of me ever so often, he would literally snuggle up in my arms for the next two nights.
I had five days to go. Five days to cure my jetlag from two times 8.500 kilometers, to finish some work preparation, to clean the van, load up the van, fill up the freshwater tank, activate the heating system. Five days to arrive from a different world, in a different world. My usual constant, my beacon of orientation: My street cafe. And back in European time zone, I could re-establish the pattern of frequent communication with friends, and friends in my recovery network.
One of them lives in South Africa. Another one in Scotland. A third one in Slovenia. Just examples, my friends live all over the world. For us, exercises in gratitude are key for our well-being. So, poor me, in a not so fancy apartment, witnessed the effort of staying grateful in the case of someone who lives on social subsidies, has no job, is coping with life and working hard on developing a positive attitude whilst being in a situation which, compared to mine, is so different. This friend of mine works hard on getting rid of fury, resentment, sadness, feelings of powerlessness. It does not make him or her rich. It will not immediately help in his or her economic troubles. Eventually, it will work. It always does. Like it does “this trick” for me. Well, waking up sometimes still sucks. But I manage to get better on that one too, one day at a time.
Empathy means to be able to listen to another friend of mine who really struggles with a massive depression, and the medication not working, without being brought down myself. Empathy means to just be there, sometimes, and to tell another person that, just today, that persons eyes look lively and good. Even if that person does not feel that way, the information about this is important. Because it will help loosen up the emotional pain. Sometimes, empathy is nothing else than pure love of being there for someone, with no means at your hands other than your sheer presence. Because, if I would would feel such emotional pain, I would want that for me. Just friends being there. And guess what, poor me: I do enjoy that. The very same friend would do everything the same way when it would me my turn to suffer from depression.
Sometimes, empathy means to completely let go, like in the case of one friend of mine.
Yet, poor me went through these five days worrying about each and everything, planning the travel to important work in Tirana, and how to plan the Christmas time, and how to travel. And how to tell another friend that I would not follow her invitation for spending Christmas at her place. Because, on one hand, I needed to take care of my collapsed tent. On the other hand, that travel would have added another 1.200 kilometers between Belgrade and Berlin. And thirdly, poor me wanted to be at a place where poor me would not be a guest, but feel “home”. Which is the caravan where Tigger and I live in Berlin. Not in misery, it is a fancy new caravan. And it is located in one of the most beautiful nature areas around Berlin’s lakes. Poor me.
So, five days later I shut the apartment door. Tigger being happy in the warm van, we traveled from Belgrade to Merdare. Which is in Serbia close to the border with Kosovo, in case you acknowledge Kosovo’s statehood. If you don’t, which Serbia and also a number of other States including some in the European Union do not, then Merdare sits at the Administrative Boundary Line separating Serbia and Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, under international mandate regulated with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244.
The very same UN Resolution which brought me to Kosovo early 2000.
The border crossing/boundary crossing is run through Integrated Border Management where both Serbian and Kosovan police and customs officers sit in one huge building which was erected and paid by the European Union. I was on my way to Tirana in Albania, and I wanted to do this travel in two days, in order to be easy on me. Having crossed the border, I decided that I would stay in Gracanica for the night. Gracanica is located directly at the fringes of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. It is a village half-mixed between Kosovo-Albanian and Kosovo-Serb portions, with a core of Gracanica, surrounding a famous orthodox monastry, still constituting somewhat a Kosovo-Serb enclave. I lived in Gracanica for several years in the aftermath of conflict. Much of my work also included preventing violence in these enclaves, and also at times coming from them. It was all about the protection of civilians after conflict and war.
So, my travel from Merdare to Podujevo, from there to Kosovo Polje, and from there through Pristina and into Gracanica, it always fills me with memories. Many of them being awful memories. But also paying attention to what is happening currently, I saw the business of economic progress, mixed with old vehicles, tractors, and carts still pulled either by old machines or even by mules. New since one year or so: Every now and then, at the entry lane of a fuel station, I saw single women, young women, standing there. They always seem to be on the phone. For the passing traveler, it would look like they are waiting to be picked up by a relative or friend. If you look closely, you will notice that they will, for half a second, establish eye contact with you. As soon as you don’t pay further attention, the eye-contact will end. If you would, instead, slow down, you would see them for who they are: Sex-workers. Of the same kind like I can see them in Romania, from Dobreta Turnu Severin towards Craiova, for example.
Why do I mention it? To me, the phenomenon in its visibility was relatively new. It might not be. But this kind of prostitution is the prostitution of the poorest of the poorest. Of course it is managed by pimps, and of course this is part of organised crime. The sex-workers themselves: The poorest of the poorest. And the phenomenon in itself another example for those hidden layers in societies. Layers that we often do not notice. Exept when we want to. Except when we use them. The food-delivery guys, the nannies, or the sex-workers. Just as a matter of precaution, and for the record: Don’t.Do.It!
I do include a “please”. Because I have empathy for them. A lot.
With the sun setting, I arrived at my favorite place, a little hotel, called “Hotel Gracanica”, overlooking wide open fields towards Lipjan. The hotel has nice rooms, a swimming pool, a really nice garden, and space for campervans. It always is a big and friendly hello when I show up there, letting Tigger jump out of the van, happily enjoying another familiar place he loves, sniffing out the vegetable garden.
I was the only guest. The friendly staff firing up the kitchen only for me. So I had a good meal, nice simple conversations, and a night in my van on a secure compound, instead of renting a hotel room. The night was cold outside, my van cozy and warm and lit with warm lights inside. My gratitude included that, and the connection to the WiFi. These people are not rich, nor fancy. They are welcoming. They will speak fluently Albanian and Serbian, and they will use both languages as needed. With me, they will speak English. They are humble. That’s why I always come back. And its only these little details, like the easy-going use of both Albanian and Serbian language, which tell me, an insider, the story of change in Kosovo. Change does not happen overnight. It takes generations. Meanwhile, all who help and assist, they need patience, and they need to be very humble, far off from hypocrisy or impatience. Often enough, our own limitations and impatience sit at the core of why sustainability of peace and reconciliation could not be achieved.
Next day, rested and with a nice little breakfast in my belly, Tigger and I took the travel from Pristina to Tirana. I have little to report about that, because the only thing, really the only thing, to talk about is the marvelous landscape when traveling through the high and snow-clad mountains. Advancing the mountains from Prizren in southern Kosovo already is breathtaking. Passing Morina Border Crossing and traversing through Albania is providing stunning views. Another little detail: Once through, the temperature almost immediately jumped up from sub-zero to mediterranean t-shirt weather.
Poor me arrived in a van at the Rogner Hotel, a five-star hotel in the center of Tirana. Poor me, with the help of colleagues, had secured that I did not have to lodge in a five-star-room, like the more than 80 other participants in the conference marathon to follow, but that a hotel employee jumped into my van and talked me through the small streets towards the garden entrance of the hotel. There was lot of Police around, and a large demonstration adjacent to the Hotel. The employee guiding me explained that this was a protest against the government. Later during conference evenings, I would listen to friends who cursed the mayor of Tirana. Go, walk the town, see the sprawling development of buildings, make your own judgement. Albania is in a critical battle against corruption and on establishing a deeply rooted rule-of-law, on her way towards the European Union. I belong to those who believe Albania will succeed. Because of the Albanian friends I have. I am impressed by their passion and dedication and professionalism.
Tigger and I ended up with my camper van in the stunning backyard garden of a five-star hotel, where my autonomous van would sit for the next four nights. Heaven for Tigger. Convenient for me, because I could just walk into the conferences, receptions, meeting rooms, breakfast rooms, lunches. Of course, in a suit. Of course, well showered (my van has a nice shower). Yet, poor me telling me whether this would be okay.
I decided not to listen to poor me. Here is the thing: If you take your time and listen to employees in Tirana in a five-star-environment, you will also get the story including poverty in that country. On another occasion of an earlier conference in 2023, I had combined my travel with stopping over in most rural places in Albania. The combination of poverty, simplicity, and friendliness was overwhelming.
Just saying, poor me: Be grateful.
I don’t write about my work often, here. It’s complicated. It’s boring for some of you. It’s about long-term strategies, and a real support to local and regional development. It is not exciting for those who look for bad news stories, because it is the opposite. If you really want, really want, dive into it over here. It is a globally recognised example for how roadmap-based initiatives to control small arms and light weapons make a real difference.
I am biased, of course. Because I have dedicated much of my time since the beginning of 2020 to this endeavor. I don’t want to put it into the bag in which you would also find all things which form the cradle of all civilisations. It is, in many ways, an ordinary undertaking with a limited scope. In many other ways, it is not. One of the most-read entries in my blog is called “On Coherence of International Assistance“. It captures my views on why this work is so successful, on a very abstract and strategic level. In the context of this blog, I want to say something different.
For the tenth time since 2018, a conference room in the Western Balkans was filled with more than 100 participants. Six high-capacity delegations from Belgrade, Podgorica, Pristina, Sarajevo, Skopje, and Tirana, comprised of ministerial officials, law-enforcement and custom officials, prosecutors. High-level delegations from Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and other donor representatives. International organisations such as UNDP, UNODC, OSCE, NATO, EUROPOL and EMPACT in the room, or online. Civil society present.
For.The.Tenth.Time. Implementing, and assisting, a strategic roadmap which ties the six juridictions forming the Western Balkans together. Delegations from those six capitals reporting their own progress in implementing efforts curbing the impact of small arms and light weapons, and intently listening to the reports of their fellow partners. There is a reason why we only refer to “jurisdictions” and name them only by the name of their Capitals. That we do not allow any symbol or name or flag denominating an entity in the room. Because it completely allows that all talk with each other, and we do not get into any of this political tension which we otherwise would witness, and which would make our work impossible.
All of these ten conferences have also seen six local conferences in their preparation. The energy and dedication is not capped by the length of this endeavor. Instead, all six jurisdictions meticulously work on the identification of the strategy for the next five years. They permanently try to find entry points into increased regional cooperation, and at the same time both from their side and the side of the European Union the resulting cooperation is bringing the Region and the European Union ever closer together, in the realm of this topic.
If you would scan the Internet news on such stories of success, you would hardly be successful. Because in the onslaught of negative news, good news are either not recognised, or news outlets would not even bother with reporting on it. And funny enough, sometimes we are even happy about it, because it keeps a technical process of astonishing success away from political antagonisation.
That is as far as I wanted to report about these four days in this blog entry. I just wonder how we can find ways to counter the news which make us depressed, helpless, angry, sad, overwelmed. How we can nurture a culture which also sees the good news, and not only the funny cat stories on YouTube, or the Tic Toc shorts which are meant to keep you in the advertising ecosystem.
This entire initiative is, from a specific viewpoint, a prime example of how, for example, Germany is taking part, and also leading, a support initiative which is meant to help others. And though there is also quite some financial support in it, it is much much more, and it is an example for what others, as I also pointed out earlier, put into question. May be the answer is simple. Helping others is a guarantor for own stability.
Let me come back to “poor me”, once more, and in my final travel report.
Poor me had contracted a serious cold in Tirana (Covid-test is negative). Yet, poor me decided to travel back to Belgrade in one go. Ten hours. Exhausted but happy, I arrived in Belgrade.
Poor me wanted to rest, but also could not get rid of restlessness. So it was only too short after arriving in Belgrade that poor me loaded up the van again. That is how my travel report began in the first paragraphs. That is how I moved through Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
Which constitutes my final comments:
Unlike last time, when arriving at the Serbian border with Hungary, there were no colons of migrants walking up and down the highway stretch. Also there were no military vehicles pointing their guns towards Serbia, on the Serbian side. No helicopters any more. But still, meticulous controlling of every car for illegal migrants on the side of Hungary. The intense cross-border efforts to fight organised crime trafficking migrants had an effect. Well, as always in fighting crime, the effect is to push crime away from one area. It will show up elsewhere. With the same victims. Repressive forms of fighting crime are not able to address root causes. They only can support zero-tolerance, and deterrence. But they do not operate at the root level.
Like last time, exiting Hungary and entering Slovakia was not possible without being flagged down and with polite police officers doing a visual inspection whether my van would carry illegal migrants. The same would happen, like last time, when leaving Slovakia and entering the Czech Republic. This time, approaching Usti Nad Ladem and the German border, I was not flagged down by a police vehicle with blue lights, inspecting my van for illegal migrants. But after the German border, a semi-permanent Police checkpoint forced every vehicle to slow down to walking speed. This time, I was waved through. “A Merry Festive Season” I exclaimed, they smiled, thanked me, and wished me the same.
Ending one day after I began this blog writing, and way too many coffees later, I can report that I am almost alone on my campsite. Most other permanent campers seem to enjoy the Season from the warmth of their homes. I don’t miss the two guys who I overheard in October, when these temporary migration-control measures were established, including Germany announcing to do this at the Polish and the Swiss border. These two guys said: “Now there won’t be any Muslim passing through Poland to Germany any longer”. For the sake of my inner peace, I did not vomit. I just left, because some things one can not control.
At the end, and against this background, special greetings go to my nephew and his Egyptian wife. My nephew converted to Islam. He was very easy on this. And his only reason was that he was so seriously trying to respect the cultural context of the family of his wonderful wife. If you ever come to know Egyptian culture, you will have a glimpse of appreciation what that meant for her parents.
If you, instead, harbor resentments, or would like to make derogatory comments, let me mention that my pregnant mother, a Protestant, was forced to accept at the time of marrying my Catholic father, in 1957, that I and any future children would be baptised Catholic. Otherwise the catholic priest would not have married my parents.
Think about that.
Be grateful. Be compassionate. Cultivate empathy. Before you die. Start now. You don’t know how much time is left to you to become a happy person. Hope you had a good Christmas. I did not put up XMas decorations, I could not get myself into it, with so many children dying in war, whether in the Ukraine, or in Israel/Palestine or Palestine/Israel, in Africa, or elsewhere. And have a peaceful New Year’s celebration. 2024 will not get better. In addition to all the unbearable suffering for which we need empathy, we will need to put every energy into resilience. 2024 the United States democracy will be put to a stress test that has the potential to rip it apart. Donald Trump, President Nr 45, the undisputed contender in the field of Republican candidates for the 47th President of the United States, has already made clear what we can expect.
Migrants are poisoning the blood of our country, he said.
With that, after 20.000 kilometers of migration, being a guest at most places, I end here.
Happy Holidays.
On this picture: I took this in a park in Tirana, December 2023
On the featured image: Taken by the author – The never ending emergence of new from the old
“Die Menschlichkeit ist da, wo Du und ich und jeder sonst sie leben. Daher ist sie da, auch wenn sie grad weint und sich geschlagen und getreten und geprügelt in einer Ecke verkriecht. Wir pflegen sie, wir lieben sie, wir stehen ihr bei und für sie ein.”
I wrote this to a dearest friend. She currently works in New York, as part of a national mechanism constituting the overarching work of the U.N. Security Council. The mandate of this national mechanism in this collective endeavor comes to an end by the end of this year, by natural rotation to another Member State. Over the past two years, this dearest friend of mine has invested her work into upholding, maintaining, extending, deepening the awareness for gender issues. For the promotion of female rights. For the promotion of protecting women against domestic and gender-specific violence. For the context between this work and the work on protecting the rights of children. Often enough, inextricably intertwined with the work on protecting minorities.
Two years of her life she invested into this high-power exercise. She wrote about her exhaustion at the end, taking the never-ending frustration into account which roots in the ability of some of the members of the Security Council to block everything by a Veto. These five permanent members of the Security Council, of course, established the possibility of vetoing each and any proposed decision of the Council both for reasons of national interests of the most powerful States post World War II, but also for other reasons, such as being able to maintain an orderly course of this highest body of the World with responsibility for Peace and Security, in light of the rotation of non-permanent Members in and out, which always includes great opportunities combined with some risks, and equally important in light of that those who constitute the P5 are not a uniform quintuplet. May be it was the combination of a will to trust with keeping a system of checks and balances running which motivated those founders, too.
Some of these risks we see these days: As the U.N. Charta promotes fundamental rights, including the universal requirement to adhere to respecting Human Rights, and also fundamental safeguards, including the prohibition of a War of Aggression, and the adherence to International Law such as the Law on Armed Conflicts protecting civilians, a violation of these laws and principles by the Council’s very own members becomes a stress test for the principles on which the U.N. is founded. It becomes an existential threat when some of the most powerful members of the Security Council, the “Permanent Five or P5” both violate the principles which they are upholding, and when they permanently exercise their right to veto for no other reasons than pure national selfishness.
This process is not new, it has a long history, and no member of the Security Council could safely say that they NEVER exercised their veto rights as a consequence of national deliberations. I also believe in that the world is not black and white, so in each of these cases vetoing parties will also often quote reasons which made them exercising their veto, reasons which somewhat can be understood on a more political level.
Anyhow, this history partly also is a shameful history. And beyond that, in each case where the Council failed, and fails, to address core interests of humanity and humankind, the constituting principles get eroded. I have personal exposure to that during my time in New York. In several prominent cases this incapacitated our joint desire to help, when help was most needed by people in the middle of a storm. I won’t shame and blame, therefore I’ll keep it with a general statement like this.
Next, I would point to that the use of vetoing for national and selfish reasons has proliferated over the last years to an extent one can only label as “endemic”, in ways which paralyse the work of the U.N. Security Council. As all self-fulfilling prophecies go, the inability to act collectively, as Security Council and as all depending bodies of the United Nations, being it the Secretariat, or it’s Agencies, the incapacitation leads to a progressive disregard of their very own raison d’etre. Which may be, I can not help but saying, part of the strategy of some which are represented in the Council: “Use it, don’t make it strong except when you can control it, otherwise weaken it.”
So my friend experiences this exhaustion, and it was against the background of what I wrote in “Shutting Down” that we had this conversation in which she asked the rhetorical question where “Menschlichkeit”, or “humanity” has lost, along that trajectory.
Here my answer again, translated into English:
“Humanity can be found where you and I and everyone else is living it. Humanity exists, therefore, even at times like right now, when she cries and feels beaten-up and bruised, cowering in a corner. We take care of her, we love her, and we stand in for her.”
Between my writing “Shutting down” and today I got news about some more people who I know who have shut down, have allowed to go astray, broken by the onslaught. I had conversations about it. We stay positive. We emphasize empathy.
And we exercise no-tolerance. Meaning we do not condone people in public functions, public officials or people exercising functions which are funded with public money, veering off course, embarking on bias and intolerance. We nurture messages of compassion and empathy. And we do not become complicit to messages of hate. It has consequences.
Which is reminding me that I still have not managed to continue my next instalment on “Integrity” within the “essays on policing”.
On the featured picture: The Class of 76 of my High School. I’m in there, too. Almost invisible in the background.
I grew up with Peter Gabriel’s towering work, whether in “Genesis”, or with Gabriel’s later solo phases of artistic development. One of my all-time favourites songs is “Signal To Noise”. Here are the lyrics:
“You know the way that things go
When what you fight for starts to fall
And in that fuzzy picture
The writing stands out on the wall
So clearly on the wall
Send out the signals, deep and loud
And in this place can you reassure me
With a touch, a smile while the cradle’s burning
All the while the world is turning to noise
Oh, the more that it’s surrounding us
The more that it destroys
Turn up the signal
Wipe out the noise
Send out the signals, deep and loud
Man, I’m losing sound and sight
Of all those who can tell me wrong from right
When all things beautiful and bright sink in the night
Yet there’s still there’s something in my heart
That can find a way to make a start
To turn up the signal
Wipe out the noise
Wipe out the noise
Wipe out the noise
You know that’s it
You know that’s it
You know that’s it
Receive and transmit
Receive and transmit
Receive and transmit
No receive and transmit
No receive
Receive and transmit
Receive and transmit
Receive and transmit
Receive and transmit”
Let the lyrics sink in first and consider whether, and how, you relate. Then take in the soundscape of the song. Here is a reference to the epic musical performance in it’s original version: Peter Gabriel – Signal To Noise – 2003 Original via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zM7QaPiwqE. And here a live version featuring the combination of Gabriel’s rock band, combined with the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan surrounded by his fellow performers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5KcEy3y23w. Consider how you feel, against your own memories of the time growing up with his music. Or against the background of your memories of the early 2000’s. Or against your cultural positions or affinities. Or against your current mood, whether you are depressed and feeling hopeless, or feeling hopeful. Or not knowing how you are feeling at all.
In all cases you will come to own specific contexts of how you relate to the lyrics, the soundscape, and the combination of a rock ballad with arabic tunes and sounds, and visuals.
As always on my blog, I am after something like common patterns. In this case, I am trying to wrap my mind around an impression which I have: That there is a rapidly increasing and all-pervasive desire of shutting down which I come across in many personal conversations, and which I suspect, with some personal heuristical indication, appears to be increasingly endemic at least in those societal contexts in which I live and move around.
Since a very long time, I am no stranger to feelings as they are expressed in these lines, the way I personally relate to them. This song is part of a playlist on my devices which I continue to listen to all over again, since many years. Like with any piece of art, my emotional relationship to it is based on the context of my personal memories, the way I grew up, the way I relate to the iconic music of my defining young years, the Rock music of the late Sixties and early Seventies which later made me select which performers I would follow, and what kind of new music I would let in, and where I simply wasn’t interested at all, and how I come back to my defining Classic Rock music as I grow older. Yes, of course, this is how nostalgic feelings develop, too. A friend for many years, who is considerably younger than I am, shares some favorite music with me every day during these weeks advancing the Christmas Holidays. That music is so different, and I relate so differently.
But I am also putting this masterpiece into my personal and professional context of history and experiences which include many severely traumatising events which I have had to process, and continue to do so. I do know a great many people who struggle with that they have gotten stuck in this trauma process, so I will offer an important word of optimism from the outset on. Because if you read the lyrics, they end with an impression that there is no way forward. Yet, there is one. It is a long and arduous process, but a promising one, always requiring outside help. I do strongly recommend professional help being part of it. I am not suffering from my trauma past. Not any longer. As far as I can tell. My processing work continues. But there is hope, and there is a way. I have integrated my past, welcome it, do not regret it, am not stuck in it. But I relate very much to the feeling of utter hopelessness which I listen to in conversations with an increasing amount of people who appear to have been on a different trajectory of lifetime developments than I have been and who seemed to have led lifes with much less trauma-induced self-harming behavior than I have. Until relatively recently that is.
And I feel much has begun with the Covid-19 pandemic.
In most simple terms, trauma is a consequence of harmful events. A trauma literally is a wound. Trauma is not the triggering event, but its consequence. Physical wounds, emotional wounds, cognitive wounds, spiritual wounds. That is why medical doctors describe wounds using the word “trauma”, like in the case of “concussion trauma”. In the very same way events create wounds in the brain.
The body-brain-relationship on cognitive level includes that physical wounds, trauma in the body, creates mirroring wounds in the neurophysiological setup of the brain. The brain reflects the sensoric input through constant neuronal change. Like every part of our body, for example, has a mirroring section in the neuronal setup of our brains, changes to this body, even temporary changes like through wounds will be reflected in the neuronal setup of our brains, and in a way that you can see on an MRI scanner or using other devices.
But it also goes the other way round. Not only that physical injuries create their mirror-representations in the brain, cognitive injuries will also become visible in the body. Traumatising events can leave the body seemingly unharmed, but not the mind, and then as a consequence of the complex reaction to trauma, the wound in the mind becomes visible on the “outside”, through behavior, or also through somatic consequences. We even name them “psychosomatic”. Think headaches, ulcer, strokes, cardiac arrests, and myriads of other forms of the mind-body-interrelationship which constitutes us. If I go any deeper, I will already have to be selective in describing the many interrelated consequences of trauma. If you think deeply, you will recognize that any border between “body” and “mind” is artificial. It literally is All One.
That is why it is so wrong, and so dangerous, to perhaps minimize, or belittle, psychosomatic illnesses. Like as if “just being stronger” would be a remedy. Using the same “logic”, less educated people will belittle traumatisation as a “desease of the weak”. Nothing could be more wrong.
Harmful events creating trauma can be “one-of-a-kind” but severe. Or cumulative by constant, but may be with less severe events forming a chain. Or in its most extreme forms, trauma can be the consequence of a repetition of severe events, each of which in itself would already constitute heavy traumatization but where the repetition creates devastating results. Like as if you would use a hammer and constantly bang on the concussion which you already got from the first time when the hammer hit your hand incidentially, and not the nail which your hand was holding against the wood.
You would never do that, would you? Hammering on the same wound all over again which you received in the first place? Pretty unheard of? Not really. Think of cases of severe mental illness, where people can’t keep themselves from banging their head against a wall, for example. Or take self-abusive sexual behavior re-enacting severe trauma from earlier abuse. The Internet is chock-full with videos of it, simple Google-searches show. In addition, many browser histories will be filled with such searches.
The conduit especially visible in the last example which I use in the previous paragraph is: In cases of mental trauma the mind often goes into re-enactment-mode, meaning that people with an initial trauma for example in early childhood will develop a life pattern of seeking situations in which they unknowingly or knowingly expose themselves to trauma, over and over again. I only began to understand that at the age of 55 years. I was not aware of this pattern, and it took quite a while until I reached an initial position from which I began to appreciate the consequences of my patterns on a cognitive level. That includes, importantly, people whose depression is masked to the extent that they even don’t know they suffer from it.
So, the first half if my interpretation of that song is one in which Peter Gabriel expresses the feeling that hope is drowning, then he expresses a glimpse of hope: Man, I’m losing sound and sightOf all those who can tell me wrong from rightWhen all things beautiful and bright sink in the nightYet there’s still there’s something in my heartThat can find a way to make a start.
Was I too early offering a glimpse of hope for instances in which all things bright seem to disappear, when even pain relief doesn’t work any longer? Because Gabriel’s lyrics include that, towards the end, hope seems to disappear. “No receive“. The signal seems to be lost, drowned in the noise of things falling apart. People who do not have personal experience with depression will have a hard time to even relate on a cognitive level.
Without a deeper investigation, my feeling is that an increasing number of people is experiencing what Peter Gabriel is expressing. A word of academic caution: Even if I can give testimony that in the overwhelming number of conversations which I have, people confirm that they feel numb, angry, depressed, helpless, just wanting to shut off communication and retreating to a beautiful peaceful place, it still is nothing else than my selective subjective experience.
But I travel a lot, I talk with friends, colleagues, and random people in societies all over the world. What I hear is often the same: It feels like a tendency to increased and enduring depressed feelings. Conversations communicate a struggle with hopelessness, feeling overhwelmed, feeling helpless, feeling exasperation and desperation. And there is anger, all over these conversations. Sometimes visible. Sometimes repressed and masked. Just listen long enough and deeply, you will see the repressed hidden anger.
It is not that I’m stuck in something myself and therefore selectively only talk to people who feel “like me”. My recovery from trauma and it’s life-long consequences, including systematic re-enactment of trauma by exposing myself to more of it, it is based on experiential wisdom which is confirmed by cutting edge science, whether psychology, psychotherapy, trauma-treatment, or the vast knowledge coming from neuroscience. It includes thatI always remind myself to remember the codeword H.A.L.T.: Never get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.
In this context, emphasis on “angry”, and on “lonely”.
Living my time- and science-tested recovery way-of-life I work very hard on practicing positive attitudes and principles of living. I deeply know what anger, resentment, fear, and the feeling of helplessness can do and to which dark places it can get lead.
Do people who have never had to recognize severe trauma know how much they have been traumatized? The word “traumatised” may often be used in superficial conversations, without a deeper understanding. It mainstreamed into conversations, before, during, and after the Covid-19-pandemic. Does the intellectual knowledge of the fact that one received severe trauma help, on deeper levels? My personal experience is confirmed by science: No, intellectual knowledge does not necessarily help. A typical response is: “I can fix it myself. I just have to change the circumstances. I don’t have to change myself. I’ll just fix it”. Of course this will prove wrong with no exception. The path from intellectual acknowledgement of own traumatisation towards a deeper understanding creating the willingness to seek and to receive help, it usually is a long-winded path with many injuries to oneself and to loved ones until one is able to recognize this fact. Until then, even those who try to be helpful will stand in the way when they will not submit to the victim’s expectation to be helped in fixing the environment, instead of helping to address the real roots of what individuals have to change within themselves, in order to embark on a path of healing. Witnessing the path down to rock bottom, not being able to help someone to avoid it, especially in the case of people one loves dearly, it can be heartbreaking. Being pushed aside as a consequence of the paranoid level of self-protection which has arisen in a traumatised person using every survival strategy under the sun in order to find relief from a pain too big to be acknowledged by oneself, it is a tough experience. Giving in, meeting the expectations of a suffering trauma survivor to stay stuck, or to believe that it is the circumstances, and not oneself who has to change, it moves any supporting person from the side of solutions to the side of problems. It is called co-dependence.
How many of us have experienced radical trauma during the pandemic? Each of us has own memories which we have neatly put into a mental closet. How many of us remember the traumatic isolation? Sure, I also know people who will report that they enjoyed the solitude. But many suffered from a deprivation of social contacts on an unprecedented level. Others suffered from trauma through the stress which Covid-19 brought into their private lifes, locking them up in one place, amplifying the catastrophic way of interaction in unhealthy relationships and abusive situations with no means to escape. Domestic violence increased. Cases of suicide and attempted suicide increased. The impact on children during a period of their lifes requiring social contact to peers has been catastrophic, and there is ample scientific research on this, whilst long-term impact studies necessarily are only in their infancy. Our lifes only started to normalize less than two years ago. Few people remind us of these times by still wearing masks in public. It seems like we have muted our traumatic memories to the maximum. For now. Just think how societies would react if a new serious wave of a pandemic would lead to a medical recommendation to repeat the containment measures which we applied from 2020 onwards. Literally everyone whom I present with this hypothetical scenario responds with “Unthinkable”.
Now, the next conduit: Remember how we witnessed the escalative proliferation of conspiracy theories at the same time, and fueled by the pandemic, and with some politicians and a bunch of crazy people pouring gasoline on the wildfire?
Talking about the meaninglessness of “truth” has become the new normal. Who would have not said you’re crazy if one would have described today’s reality to you just, say, less than ten years ago? Since 2014, this blog alone carries many examples of developments which always “upped the ante”. Until now with no peak in sight. We live in societies in which the deterioration of mannered attitude and bi-partisan discussion culture progressed into something where people will roll their eyes and say “Again? Please give me a break!” Or where people have taken sides and can’t talk to the other side any longer. Or where they have a hard time even acknowledging that the other side has a point, or can at least sense the shoes the other side is wearing.
Which is a another pointer towards a human attitude which also is a typical consequence of trauma reflected in earlier paragraphs of this writing: Denial.
Another one is Anger. Anger in it’s repressed forms as a consequence of trauma. Anger as a strong emotion used for control and manipulation. Anger as one of the key emotions exploited in social media and through algorhythms on basis of Artificial Intelligence. Remember what I wrote about H.A.L.T.?
Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
The scene with Cypher as quoted above is the most incredible way how to bite into a piece of juicy steak I have ever seen in any movie. Watch it.
Remember the statistics and figures with daily, sometimes hourly global development of how the Covid-19-virus rampaged through the World? The figures of infections, the figures of infection-related deaths, and then a year later on the figures of vaccinations, and how we struggled to see a relationship between vaccinations and a downward trend in infection-related deaths? Remember the denial, and how our societies were ripped into vaccination-supporters and vaccination-deniers, and how militant this discussion was, partly? How the fact whether someone was supporting or refusing vaccinations ripped through families? I remember a conversation where someone in my family spoke about a vaccination-denier who got severely sick, almost dying, from Covid-19. I could hear a subdued element of “Schadenfreude”. And remember how we needed to exemplify suffering through singling out individual stories of suffering in order to grasp the extent of what was happening, on a massive, global scale?
That was 2020 and 2021. Remember the numbers blowing your mind related to the suffering of people in Afghanistan after the implosion of all international activities there in 2021? An implosion and withdrawal which came, at least for many, without clear signs. And in any case, notwithstanding how premeditated it was, in its execution it happened fast, not in steps allowing to adjust policy of withdrawal. And then there was the highly unanticipated progress of the Taliban, taking over large swaths of Afghanistan, and then Kabul, much to their own surprise even. Do you remember the figures of casualties on the side of civilians? Or do you, more than that, remember the pictures from Kabul airport, and the individual stories of people. Do you remember the stories of Afghan women? How often do you read about the suffering of Afghan women, these days? Are you aware of the refusal of the Taleban, but not only them, related to the figures, and the facts of human rights violations? Have you been exposed to stories of denial, like it was the case with Covid-19? Stories of distortion and manipulation of facts, and conspiracy theories, and blaming the respective other side, singling out and protecting own decisions in a collaborative catastrophy with many factors needed to be taken into account, whilst people were looking for simple answers to yet another shocking and traumatising chain of events?
That was 2020 and 2021. Remember the numbers blowing your mind, of the suffering of people in the Ukraine, following the ongoing onslaught and the suffering through displacement, deportation of children, forced adoption, the war crimes and the crimes against humanity in occupied territory of the Ukraine, in 2022, whilst people in late 2021 would still dispute the intentions of an autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin? Who was helped in his disinformation campaign not only by denial and wishful thinking on the side of the West, but also through people like Nr 45 in the U.S., who until today sings songs of praise related to him, and to the dictatorial killer in North Korea, and an autocratic leader in China? Do you remember the statistics, and how we needed to create empathy which can not be reflected in numbers, by flooding the news with individual stories of suffering, and heroism, of the Ukrainian people?
Were you, at that time in 2022, still able to pay attention to Afghanistan? Were you, by then, able to also take in the sheer numbers of suffering of people in other parts of the World, less relevant to your own local and regional neighourhood? Like in Africa, just as an example?
That was 2020 and 2021 and 2022. What does the figure “1.200” do to you, on a level of empathic relating to suffering, when Hamas unleashed unimaginable terror, atrocities, murder, maiming, raping, mutilating Isaeli citizens October 07, 2023? The international news were only able to create understanding through individual stories, bordering, sometimes overstepping the limits of what can be put into press and TV by responsible media. Very much unlike the video streaming and glorification undertaken by Hamas. Almost immediately, despite the fact that I am almost not present at all on social media, I received messages from friends who had friends in Israel who, in their outrage and unimaginable pain even justified thinking about retaliation, and corporate responsibility of the Palestinian people. Reasonable words of caution against such holding a people responsible on a collective level drowned in the anger, fury, despair, pain. And in a specific German context which is visible in previous articles on this blog, it also began to deeply affect the German society, both related to how we deal with our Holocaust past and our collective responsibility to protect the Israeli State and its citizens, and how we experienced the consequences within our own multi-cultural setup which includes citizens and residents and temporary residents and people granted asylum who live in Germany, constituting parts of the German society.
What does the figure “18.000” do to you, related to the rough and daily increasing estimation of death tolls of Palestinian civilians? Except, that the collective figure of “1.200” and “18.000” defies any reference model which you had from previous news, where the decrying of massive suffering was already stressing your tolerance. Again, you are confronted with unimaginable suffering as reported in individual stories which are needed in any reporting, in order to make you being able to relate on an empathy level. Do you belong to those who have already forgotten the Covid-19-casualties and the suffering in Afghanistan and who barely think about the numbers as we digested them from the Ukraine just a year earlier?
In this section of my long writing, I want to make the point how deeply this collective development, taken together, has been traumatising us on a societal level. Pandemic, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, I often hear “What will come next?”. Almost no capacity left for appreciating suffering in other parts of the World. We take this in within an onslaught of news which still includes more, including climate change and natural catastrophes, including worrying political developments. And each of these news stories scare the hell out of us.
And please remember what I wrote earlier: Brains are highly social organs, and in addition to what trauma on an individual level does to us on a neurophysiological level, the same is true when we mourn the loss of a relative, or a loved one, or experience heart-break. And the same is true with our societal connections.
Each of the developments above has led to individual and societal traumatisation on a level which I have not witnessed in my personal lifetime, in this life. Can’t remember what happened in my previous lifes. Maybe I am blessed.
Leading to my final part of dealing with typical reactions to trauma, beyond being wounded, becoming numb, becoming angry, entering into denial: Another important effect of trauma, because of the way the survival mechanisms in our brains work, is shutting down.
This, I believe, I personally witness more recently, and especially since October 07, 2023. Remember the following lines from Peter Gabriel’s song: ” Man, I’m losing sound and sightOf all those who can tell me wrong from rightWhen all things beautiful and bright sink in the night“.
I feel we are ripped into pieces because we loose orientation. We can not compare 1.200 and 18.000, since every single life is invaluable. Where is the guidance on a question like “How many civilian casualties compose a violation of the responsibility of a Party to a War to protect the civilian population?” How do we stomach numbers according to which more than 70% of the Palestinian population are internally displaced, mostly having no shelter, no food, no water, at the brink of starvation, with almost no medical provisions?
In many discussions which I am part of, I can feel how this rips us into pieces. Not only in a specific German context. You can read about it in great detail and masterfully written in this essay in the “New Yorker“, which was sent to me by my nephew (the one who wrote a response to my blog article). Please, if you can, follow the link. But this rupture includes all of us, including the United Nations, for example. Please, also read the OpEd by Michelle Nunn, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jan Egeland, Abby Maxman, Jeremy Konyndyk and Janti Soeripto, titled “Why the U.S. Must Change Course on Gaza Today“.
Ms. Nunn is president and chief executive of CARE USA. Ms. McKenna is chief executive of Mercy Corps. Mr. Egeland is secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Ms. Maxman is president and chief executive of Oxfam America. Mr. Konyndyk is president of Refugees International. Ms. Soeripto is president and chief executive of Save the Children U.S. – How much higher can you get in the international humanitarian community?
This OpEd is heartbreaking in it’s own right. Because it struggles with some of the questions which are part of this long essay of mine.
I need to conclude on “Shutting Down”, being part of my title for this blog entry, too: I am increasingly confronted with statements like “I can’t bear this any more”, or “I don’t want to hear about it any more”, or “I want to leave to an island where I can just live a simple life, leaving all this behind”.
I can understand this reaction.
I also note reactions like regressing into familiar local contexts. In these cases people shut their eyes and ears, because they can’t bear the emotional pain any longer, and regress into a combination of denial, and self-serving domestic points. Like, “See, I understand all this, but is anyone talking about what is happening in my neighborhood?”.
I also can understand this, though I am fiercely calling for remaining compassionate and understanding for a global interconnection of events. No domestic problem can be solved without taking the global interconnection into account.
Finally, I note denial, regression, fake news, conspiracy theories, and radicalisation as a pattern which emerges also from the desire to find simplified answers to seemingly intractable problems. This is mixed with pure selfishness, egotism, and malice.
Whilst I appreciate the mechanics behind it, I can not even begin to understand this, nor tolerate it. Also this extremism, on the left and the right, narrowing the focus of observing problems to the point of almost becoming deaf and blind for anything outside the own area of interest, it both is a consequence of the long story on trauma which I have written down here, and at the same time it acts like an escalating agent. It puts gasoline on the wildfire which has become a global storm.
That is why shutting down must be fought with all individual and collective means. Without empathy, compassion, and the attempt to lovingly understand and to support collective values, we are literally doomed.
On the featured picture: Art by Eva-Maria Horstick, arteve.de. Part of a series created by using AI-tools. Eva was in the final preparations for an exposition in Israel when the Hamas attack October 07 created mass casualties, suffering, despair, trauma, and the grounds for even more suffering. Her project in Israel is on hold with no certainty whether it has a future, or not.
If one reads these posts in a sequential manner, the complexity of the topics at hand becomes apparent. May be even overwhelming. Sometimes I feel they can become confusing. After all, we all try to make sense of our environment.
Making sense of information is what brains do for a living. Here is a book recommendation: “Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain” by David Eagleman (Canongate Books; Main edition – 1 July 2021). It is fascinating. I may have my own difficulties to accept the comparison of animal brains (including our own) with all-purpose-computing devices, but on a neurophysiological level it is correct for sensory and at least some higher cognitive functions. Whether this includes what we name “awareness” is subject to research, but we don’t know this yet. Which could make me getting lost in talking about Artificial Intelligence, but I won’t, except for using a blog picture which has been created using AI-Tools. Look at more of it here: arteve.de. Sometimes I think awareness is holding a key stitching so many confusing topics together.
Brains do constantly work on making sense of any sensory input, and I think the same is true for any sort of cognitive input by means of abstract forms of information, beyond what we process through our five senses. To operate in this world requires an ability to conclude on what is happening “around us”. Like we make sense of optical input through our eyes, we are also wired to interpret the information which is reaching us through communication, through news, chatter, gossip.
Meaning: We construct a representation of the world around us. If you read David Eagleman”s newest book, or the one I have been referring to in other blog entries, “The Brain”, you will appreciate that what we perceive as “the outer world” in reality is a construct inside our brain. Using this comparison, it is easy to accept that, for example, our visual representation of the world around us is limited to that part of the electromagnetic spectrum which we call “visible light” (telling, that name, isn’t it?). Same with acoustic input: We don’t hear what bats hear, or cats, or dogs, (ultra high frequencies) or elephants (ultra low frequencies). We construct our inner representation of what we call the “outer world” through the possibilities andlimitations of our sensory input. The brain is agnostic where this input comes from. Throw input data on a brain, it will automatically work on making sense of it. Eagleman’s book offers fascinating insight into how this can lead to replacement or even enhancement of capabilities to create an inner world which we mistakenly equal with the outer world.
The same is true for processing information about the world as we have created it with our constructs which hold larger groups or societies together. We try to make sense of all sorts of data, and information. With that, we establish something which we then may call “truth”. Which is a treacherous word. In the realm of the fabrics for societal cohesion there is no space for “objective truth”. Rather it is about concepts which compete with each other. Terms used in social media such as “influencer” and “follower” are bluntly revealing this. Donald Trump’s choice of “Truth Social” as a brand name for his own bullhorn social media platform is telling: It’s about my truth, not your truth. Which renders any coherent use of the term “truth” very fragile, at least.
The interpretation of, say, visual information on physical objects in our environment is relatively stable: As long as the light gets reflected from an apple, even different lighting conditions will usually make me “see” an apple. Not a peach, not a shoe, not a snake, but an apple. Information encoded in light reflected from physical objects is less prone to manipulation, though it is possible. By contrast, the interpretation of data about our highly complex individual, social and political relationships, the interpretation of concepts which have no physical representation in the world (for example law, human rights, cultural norms, spiritual or religious or secular beliefs) is highly dependent on a great number of factors manipulating the result about what we believe to understand. There seems not to be one reality which could be universally accepted by all. There seem to be many competing “realities”. For one, thirty years ago I decided to prefer Apple computers and to ridicule Windows computers. It sticks, until today. Once you’re locked into one explanation of reality, it is very hard to stay open-minded enough to look at information which appears to go against the foundations of what you have decided to “follow”. Which is where “influencing” comes in: It is meant to get you into this select perception, and preferably to keep you there.
What do people make with this fact? How do I live with the recognition that my interpretation of my environment is fundamentally different from anybody else’s interpretation, but that none is holding a universal truth?
The brain is a highly social organ: It can not survive without other brains. It needs connections, it needs proximity to and synchronicity with other brains, it constantly does one thing: Establishing a framework of reference which does make sense within a shared reality with others. The hermit in a mountain cave who lives a solitary life and is able to come to autonomous attitudes and conclusions through “deep thinking” is a highly idealised concept, appealing only to very rare individuals. And even a hermit had to grow up in a social context before deciding to choose solitary self-confinement. The reality is: We depend on belonging to groups, for the sanity of our own mind depends on it. We can’t do without “influencing“ and “following”, all of us. That is also why I believe the pandemic created a global mental depression through massive deprivation of brains from what they need, and why I put the pandemic into the row of destabilising developments of the current world order: The effects contribute to our global development until today.
And again, why am I asking this question against the context I started with above?
It has to do with what is stressing our societal cohesion, in many different societies: Can I empathise with suffering of people without having to be on “one side, or the other side”? Can I acknowledge, as my nephew and I suggest from different vantage points, that we acknowledge suffering equally, and not limited to the fate of one group? Look at hashtags on Tic Toc: #istandwithisrael, and #istandwithpalestine appear to be mutually exclusive. Just one example for an attitude leading to “If you’re not with me, you’re against me.” Why do people follow such a foolish logic?
How do I make sense of data, information, conclusions, interpretations, efforts to manipulate, by reducing complexity and establishing an explanatory pattern? Are there any principles which can help guiding me on a higher plane of consciousness?
In attempting to avoid a futile and not-so-competent academic discourse, I am sure, however, that one crucial factor in how we interpret the world around us is what I would call “simplification”, or “categorization”, or “reduction”. Brains are highly specialised in identifiying patterns in incoming data or information, and that has been useful since the emergence of the pre-frontal cortex many millennia ago. What is setting Homo Sapiens apart from our ancestors may also be what is haunting us most: Any categorization reduces complexity, but also limits our appreciation about what happens. Whilst we have achieved an outstanding and evolutionary unique ability creating mental concepts which allow for cohesion of larger groups and societies, we still use the same hardware (our brains) for reducing complexity, and establishing peer connections with others. From there, competition arises, which is a good concept. But also intolerance arises. And conflict. And yes, we have developed fancy tools far more powerful than sticks and stones for successfully killing other fellow human beings. Have we missed out on developing commensurate tools allowing for empathy and compassion beyond the peer groups we have been born into, drawn into, chosen to belong to?
I don’t think so. Wisdom traditions hold these values since thousands of years. Which, against the evolutionary context of our brain development, still is a drop in the bucket. Meaning: The development and cultivation of compassion and empathy in a contemporary context is subject to evolution, too.
We have to work on this. Hard. Otherwise we will be history ourselves.
On the picture: Concentration Camp Memorial Site Dachau – Picture taken by the author
Nils is my nephew. Between him and me there are, give or take, three decades in age. Ever since I can remember we are very close. Souls don’t know age difference.
He is living in Neukölln, a district of Berlin known for its energy from its multi-cultural scene, or should I say “scenes”, because like neighboring Kreuzberg, it’s diversity is hard to describe, but wonderful to experience: Spend a spring or summer evening there in street cafes, with a view overlooking waterways and cobblestone scenery, vibrant international people gathering, discussing, having fun, it’s quite magic.
Mariam from Egypt and Nils from Germany are married. Last time I visited, I lost myself in their hospitality, our discussions, lovely Arab food and I had to rush back to my campsite in the “deep southeast” of Berlin (former East-Berlin) before the gates were closing.
I find it gripping. Nils has put his finger on a very uncomfortable truth here. So, read it. Observe your emotions when you read it. It’s important to do that. I will follow on in another blog entry.
“Dear Uncle,
I appreciate your post and share your perspective on the horrific loss of life at the hands of Hamas. October 7 is still in our memories and as time progresses I would like to add two perspectives: on Germany and its domestic discourse, and on the conflict itself.
In the weeks after Hamas’ horrific attack on innocent civilians and the ensuing violence in Palestine, I have come to doubt whether we, as Germans, have fully grasped the lessons of our own history. Germany’s historic guilt for the Shoah and WWII enshrined the principle ‘never again’ in our cultural identity. Never again must Jewish life be endangered by violence, in Germany and elsewhere in the world. I appreciate this lesson and its importance becomes ever more urgent as we witness a surge of anti-Semitic violence. It is deplorable and, primarily, a problem of our own making that Jewish life in Germany is threatened by hate crimes. After all, the Federal Criminal Police Office reports that 85% of anti-Semitic hate crimes are committed by native Germans.
Looking at the German public discourse I am very much worried that we reduce the painful lesson of our history selectively. “Never again” must signify “never again for anyone”, regardless of your ethnicity, religion or constructed social identities. Yet we are witnessing a massive shift in political discourse as migrant life is increasingly criminalized by means of legislation and law enforcement, whether in schools, workplaces, or on the streets. We focus heavily on language [is Hamas a terror organisation or a government, is a protest chant insinuating other meaning, is it fair to classify Israeli policies as Apartheid] that we fail to have a genuine discussion about the events on the ground. Jewish and Palestinian voices are loud and clear on these issues, we have so far failed to listen.
In Berlin, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims call for a ceasefire and a two-state solution, side by side. In this sense your dream is a reality today. However, your dream takes a bizarre if not sinister turn looking at the arrests by German police of Jewish individuals with anti- or left-Zionist beliefs for sedition as they speak out against the violence in Gaza. Yes, German police arrests Jewish life for using the right to freedom of expression on German soil. Civil society organisations such as Oyoun that created cross-cultural spaces for difficult conversations between Arabs and Jews have had funding and therefore their life lines removed. Artists and cultural workers from the Global South that create truly special alliances with Arabs and Jews and imagine shared futures are being cancelled, forced to resign, or refuse to appear in public from fear of reprisals or being slandered by the German press. Empathy flourishes at the heart of civil society, yet politicians and decision-makers from right and traditionally left-of-centre parties defame and dismantle these non-German perspectives.
Instead, we have a narrative that ignores all of these voices and portrays the two sides as irreconcilable. It seems too uncomfortable for the German public to be called upon by Jewish and Arab groups demanding equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. It seems so uncomfortable that opinions that challenge this status quo are silenced for sedition or other charges. Meanwhile German mainstream public and private media does their part in communicating only a very narrow perspective on the conflict. Hateful celebrations of a small number of people in the aftermath of the Hamas’ attacks were amplified. Cross-cultural protests, the attitude of protesters and their slogans are misrepresented and racial prejudices are spread. At the same time, media reports about Arabs and Jews in Germany and abroad as a homogenous mass and juxtaposes their interests and needs. This enables alt-right discourses and strengthens their political parties, such as the AfD.
What does that mean for the health of our own democracy and values of Enlightenment?
Palestinian and Arab life in Germany was removed of their right to freedom of expression in the first weeks of October. Children are prohibited from wearing the Kufija or show a Palestinian flag in school, criminalising their identity instead of engaging them on important discussions. Longstanding slogans of civil rights movements are being taken out of context and criminalized, in public spaces and in protests. German muslims and migrants are expected to verbally distance themselves from Hamas in every public and private conversation, fostering that people with a specific background need to prove themselves or cannot be trusted. Do I need to justify myself in every conversation that I am in fact not a Nazi, despite my identity?
The result is a slow erosion of political cultural and rights in Germany today. And reality is unfortunately as harsh as it sounds: non-European migrant and German communities, whether from the Middle East or elsewhere, feel unsafe as their social and political realities are marginalized, criminalized, and their fundamental freedoms restricted.
Stefan, the lessons of “never again” stipulate that the dignity and integrity of ALL life should guide our actions. We must call out injustice wherever it occurs. Israel’s defense against Hamas’ attacks is a logical response to a vile assault on our shared humanity. Let us remind ourselves that Palestinians themselves do not favour Hamas, with only 27% of Gaza’s residents supporting Hamas before October 7. This figure is comparable to German’s support for the right-wing and anti-constitutional party AfD in Germany.
The massive loss of Palestinian life is a direct result from the horrific assaults of Hamas in Israel’s soil. Yet as we look at Gaza and the West Bank today, we cannot overlook and excuse the Israeli government’s collective punishment of Palestinian life at the hand of a government that rejects a two-state solution, builds settlements at an alarming rate and openly endorses apartheid policies. The dehumanizing rhetoric adopted by Israeli officials pave the way for mass atrocities. We witness this today as we observe an unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure and loss of life in Gaza. In the West Bank, settler violence flourishes under the protection of the Israeli Defence Force. Back home, in safety and privilege, we label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, no matter if such criticism is vocalized by human rights organizations, governments, the UN or even Jewish-Israeli opposition to the Netanjahu government.
Why can’t we condemn the injustices in the West Bank, the collective punishment in Gaza, and Hamas’s heinous attacks with equal vigor? To what extend are we enabling an apartheid regime that solidifies its control under the guise of war? Why are Palestinians and Arabs not allowed to mourn their dead and voice their outrage with the collective punishment of Palestinian life? Why are we, as Germans with a Nazi history, so focused on Palestinians denouncing Hamas and anti-Semitism while arresting Jewish individuals demanding equality and safety for everyone? As a nation with a complex history, why can’t we engage the multifaceted reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict with empathy and dialogue for both sides? Why can’t we understand that Palestinians cannot pay for our own atrocities?
As per international law, neutral bystanders of crimes against humanity and severe human rights violations bear responsibility. Germany is politically not neutral in this conflict and its military exports to Israel are up nearly 10-fold. We stigmatize Jewish and migrant lives due to our inability to critically engage with our past and our allies. It is uncomfortable to us Germans with Nazi history to look in the mirror and critically reflect for fear of standing on the wrong side of history. Our solidarity with and historic responsibility for Jewish life must not lead us down a path of supporting violence and denying another people’s right to self-determination. We risk betraying our fundamental principles of human dignity and democratic freedoms in reaction to our historical traumas. We alienate and disrespect Jewish perspectives, German and non-German people of color and, in the process, thereof, risk losing our own humanity.
Uncle, I appreciate the conversation that you have started. We are the generations that follow the Shoah and the atrocities of World War II. It is our historic responsibility to uphold and apply its lessons to all life, to uphold their dignity and integrity in Germany and abroad.”
Note as of 25 November: Very small editorial corrections on request from Nils for clarity. Since the blog post has been up since one day and has been read, and since these are not grammar corrections, here the corrections for transparency:
a) German muslims and migrants are expected to verbally distance themselves from Hamas…
b) Do I need to justify myself abroad (remove word)…
c) non-European migrant and German communities…
d) We alienate and disrespect diverse Jewish perspectives, German and non-German people of color and…
Featured picture: Mushrooms in autumn, Berlin, taken by the author, 2023
I spent almost two weeks in Berlin. The golden autumn colours of early November have been replaced by the grey/brown colors of a few remaining leaves which will soon be gone as well, leaving the remaining green only for the the firs, and a few bushes. The dark winter time has arrived, rain is dripping off the trees, the pedestrian’s walkways are covered with layers of sticky leaves, less and less fresh mushrooms pop up in the woods, walking in the forest needs to be done early afternoon, otherwise I would need a torch. I am starting this blog entry shortly before 4 pm, and daylight is fading. Since this night the raindrops hammered away on the roof of my caravan, the heating system humming along, coffee will soon be replaced by herbal tea for the cozy evening. My cat friend just enjoying the time he is spending with me, or checking the rainy neighborhood, then coming back for yet another snooze. This winter I am, at least for the moment, doing better with the depression attacks which always come with the darker season. In my conversations with other people in my life I frequently hear about depressive mood swings. The reasons not only being related to the darker afternoons and long nights: Frequently I will listen to the despair and feeling of utter hopelessness which seems to come with the never-ending stream of troublesome and often horrific news about human suffering. I do also suspect that long-term impact from the Covid-19-pandemic plays an important part in all that. As far as I know, our scientific understanding of it has grown significantly.
Yet, I am doing mostly okay, and I am preparing for my two-days-travel back to Belgrade. Almost done with my house-cleaning and preparation of my campervan, I am now sitting here processing some pieces for writing. Each of them not seeming to warrant an entire article. But all of them somewhat relevant. So I try to establish a conduit of sorts which I want to put on the blog before moving towards the next installment in the series of “essays on policing“.
On De-humanization, and on Getting The Ducks Into One Line
I said that I am doing relatively okay, despite the following quotations:
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…
“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”
“those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from … and their entire existence will be crushed when … returns to …”
“…undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Who said that?
Number 1, 2, and 4 are quotations from the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, including on occasion of a Veteran’s Day Speech he gave November 10, 2023. The Washington Post reported under the headline “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini“. Number 3 is attributed to Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, after media was following up on the comments above.
Other articles, such as in the New York Times, make reference to openly discussed plans to creating giant camps, “a vastly expanded network that would facilitate the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, including longtime residents with deep ties to communities”.
Nr 45, in unison with his minions, is extremely articulate about using every power available to crush enemies, their wifes, and their families. Reports are out that right-wing organisations such as the Heritage Foundation are in possession of vetting lists with tens of thousands of names of individuals considered to be loyal to Trump, with the aim to install them in every corner of Federal administrative agencies, the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense.
People appear to get either excited about this, or tired. CNN’s Jack Tapper was very clear in one comment where he said that this is the open attack to get the Republican Party in line. Because: Who is crying foul related to such comments, aggression, retribution, and vengeance? Not many. In a recent article I wrote about this. The obvious next and strategic blow is aiming at getting the Republican ducks into a line. Dissent will not be tolerated once Nr 45 is the official party candidate for the job as Nr 47. Tapper literally likened the Grand Old Party to the only institution which can stop the demolition of democratic values as it is unleashed by an upcoming autocratic leader. Of course, there still will be an election, and we may be lucky to get away without the ultimate consequences. But, do we know that? And does it justify complacency, or denial? Certainly not.
The use of terms like “vermin” then leads to the historic responsibility which Germany bears for the consequences of Nazi-Germany’s crimes against humanity. The Holocaust has put Germany into a role where, what we call “Staatsraeson”, leads to a strong supporting role to Israel which Germany has taken after the Hamas Terror Attacks of October 07, 2023. Chancellor Scholz stated “The security of Israel is German Staatsraeson”. Meaning that Germany recognizes Israels’ right to self-defense, and the following actions in the Gaza-strip.
Which, in my experience, is a conflict and war with a potential of antagonisation ripping through the German and other societies like none I have witnessed in a long time.
When I look at the human suffering of civilians in Israel, and in Palestine, and in conflicts and civil wars in the Ukraine, so many places in Africa, and so much more, at one point I raised the question: “How open do I have to keep the path to my soul in order to stay compassionate and loving for all those who are victims of brutal violence, conflict, oppression, and war?” I genuinely feel like this, in order to stay out of crippling inertia and depression. But one answer which I got was “I can’t keep my soul open much longer, I can not bear this.” So, is this a reflex of emotional and spiritual survival? Will such a reflex lead to shutting down our mercy and compassion, and lead to a simplified world where we will be selective in our compassion, selective in our support to universal values?
I came across a Youtube video produced through an interview with Yuval Noah Harari, one of my favorite authors, a historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This is an amazing piece of media work, and it describes in a very intense way why we moved from a relatively peaceful period into a current period of conflict and war. Harari and the authors explain in vivid presentations why the demise of a current world order (arguing a monopolar world order before this time of conflict) is leading into chaos, and dissolution of international instruments of stability and order. I strongly recommend watching it, it is a nine-minute piece and Harari is very clear about the imminent threat to humanity as a whole if we don’t find a way out, and back to common values.
And, on a more personal note, a continuation of my article on “The Attack on Humanity by Terrorism: Blinding and manipulating through inciting hatred and fear on a unimaginable scale – The monster hides in plain sight” might come up, perhaps in a form of a discourse, attempting to bridge the divide. Because standing in against terror, standing in for human rights, it does not mean to be on either one or the other side, which is the devious result from Hamas’ mastermind plan. By the way, in my previous blog article I mentioned that Hamas’ aim will be to make the attack on Israeli citizens forgotten. Here a link to a Hamas political leader denying that Hamas attacked innocent Israeli citizens, but only conscripts, despite the overwhelming footage which included old people, women, children.
Somewhat related to the above, and somewhat a comment for a new paragraph is the following, and I quote from a BBC article:
“Then in 2006, Hamas kidnapped a soldier, 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, in a cross-border raid. His father, Noam, led a painful five-year campaign to bring him home, stressing the “unwritten contract” between the state and its conscripts.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister – then as now – signed off on the biggest ever prisoner exchange for a single soldier. More than a thousand inmates were released including Yahya Sinwar, who went on to lead Hamas in Gaza, and apparently masterminded the 7 October attacks.“
Emphasis by italic and bold letters are all mine.
The very same way, but may be a thousand times more grave, we may see future terror leaders coming from what is happening right now. Some may say: “See, this is why the response to this attack is wrong.” I do say: This is part of the devilish logic which has been masterminded by Hamas, because it is not leaving Israel with any alternative to responding with military means. As I said, this does not give Israel a free reign unshackled from restraints by international law. It simply means that whatever Israel does, Hamas’ logic aims at disruption of communication and future violence. Another question which I have heard from a friend: When the Ukraine was attacked, all of us welcomed Ukrainian refugees. Where is the response of the Arab world, taking in people from Gaza? That includes the painful question why the Rafah border crossing is kept close by Egypt. I am not an expert, nor my friend is. But the question is valid. And unnerving.
Yet, how can I fare relatively well despite such news?
Here is a book recommendation: “In Love With The World – A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying” by Helen Tworkov and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Here is a link to Amazon, but you can buy it everywhere. I enjoyed it thoroughly on my Kindle, though.
I don’t know how you will feel when reading this book. I can imagine that you might retract, because it is about Life and Death, Living and Dying, Dying and Living. I have no writing skills to even summarize it. To me, it is mindblowing, and gripping. It is about Mingyur’s begin of a four-year wandering-retreat which he went on in 2015, in his Tibetan Buddhist monastic tradition. It is a wonderful story filled with details about his experiences after leaving a protected monastry environment, exposing himself to the loud, noisy, dirty and poor street life of India. I wonder how he could remember all these details which make up a story creating most colorful images in my phantasy. It is a book with a unique approach to mix daily experience with Buddhist thinking and tradition. It is a book in which he gets poisoned by rotten food and almost dies. Most of all, it is a book describing his experiences during this process of a near-death-experience.
For Tibetan Buddhism life and death are an endless series of “Bardos”, or transitions. Trillions of beginnings and endings in daily life, bigger ones through changes throughout one’s life, and the great Bardo of coming into this life as well as leaving this life. Which is, in Buddhism, something I can not appropriately describe. Some would name it birth-death-rebirth, except if you leave this cycle of constant involuntary rebirth by awakening. Of course, this is a profoundly spiritual belief without any ability to prove it by means of science. Of course, it is one of many ways how to make sense, except you are utterly atheist. But like Pema Choedron’s book “How We Live Is How We Die”, Mingyur Rinpoche’s book is filled with practical wisdom of how to apply the profoundly human principles of compassion and love, which, in my view, sit at the spiritual root of what we have labeled Human Rights. This book helps in accepting there is literally no permanence at all in life.
The book is one of the reasons for why I am doing relatively well.
Alright. Now my head is free for the finishing touches on the next “essay on policing”, which will focus on some very personal experiences which I made on my path towards integrity.
The featured picture: Memorial Site Concentration Camp Dachau – Germany. Picture taken by the author on occasion of visiting the site May 2019, with two dearest American friends.
Every parent has seen this: A child in devious mood, quickly checking that it is not being watched, then hitting his or her sibling. The sibling being attacked yells for Mom or Dad. The parent rushing in, trying to find out what happened, and the attacker claiming “Mom, she started it, not me!” Bullies on schoolyards do the same: They immediately accuse the victim of having started the fight when caught.
As parents, we would join in the common experience that this is a typical phase within childhood development. If we are wise, we would undertake all efforts not to be manipulated into taking one child’s side. If we are able to clearly identify what happened, and who started it, we would work towards an understanding that action has consequences, that own behavior leads to accountabilty. We love them both. We would work hard helping our children to gain values of coexistence, rather than domination. We would learn how to explain the need for compromise, and that any compromise includes giving something away in order to share getting something. Myself being a parent, I remember this vividly. It can be absolutely unnerving being confronted with two children who are locked into a fight, not capable to give up, and becoming furious that Mom or Dad does not take their side. It takes a lot of patience and diplomatic skills to navigate through these situations until both children are ready for a compromise. In more than one case, I messed it up. The consequence was turmoil, protracted fights, and pain on all sides. But if successful, peace is reestablished quickly. And at some point during their development coming out of age, former children will look back at their fighting memories with smiles and jokes.
Childish behavior? What does it have to do with the title of this blog entry?
Let me try to paint a larger picture before locking in on what, in another context, representatives of the United Nations have named actions “verging on pure evil“. With this wording AFP is quoting UN officials talking about the unimaginable suffering of Darfuri people again, twenty years after a genocide. They are at the brink of another one. I have written about it, here. Most of us don’t even see these news. We are transfixed by what is happening in Israel and the Palestine Territories. I want to write about action which has crossed the border into the realm of pure evil: The Hamas terror attack against Israel and Israeli civilians, October 07, 2023.
In order to create the link from childish “tit for tat” and “he started it, not me” kindergarden behavior to what appears to have exploded into fiery emotional antagonization making it difficult offering an argument calling for reason, I want to recall how used we have become to the application of this utterly childish behavior as a most devious tool of manipulation by adults, namely by adults who hold or held highest office, and how a cohort of followers is using this method for manipulating and controlling massive portions of entire societies. The trick is: Blame the other side, trick them into anger and hatred, and capitalize on it. After pointing this out, I will take it to its most recent extreme application: This time in the corner of terrorism. Because we are running the risk of being successfully blindfolded by the mastery of a plan coming straight from hell, emerging through the underground tunnels in Gaza.
The 45th President of the United States brought this childish logic of always blaming others to perfection in each and every argument. When accused of bullying behavior, he would point to others having started it. When held accountable for own actions, he would point to others, faking stories, hammering out endless lies about these peoples’ own alleged evil. We have been through endless years where this person simply followed one rule: Escalation. On uncounted occasions we found and find ourselves in a reality where every day reveals another outrageous attack which was previously considered to be unthinkable. He is not alone in that, and I am not even talking about his followers, I am talking about other Heads of State, Presidents, Dictators, Autocrats. My argument is that this form of behavior has become mainstream, on a global level. Ruling people, manipulating people, controlling people, by inciting hate, anxiety, anger, and locking them into a fake narrative through lies which stop any bipartisan communication cold in its tracks. Once I am not willing to listen to people with other views, because I am told they are the enemies, I have successfully been locked into a world being solely controlled by these pied pipers.
However, like in the case of Nr 45 and others, we still underestimate them. We try to find reasons, we may ridicule, laugh, minimise, deny. I take a different approach: I assume that people like Nr 45 or others are not just deranged, or are stuck in childish behavior, or may suffer from mental conditions including narcissism and psychopathy making them incapable to act differently. They may be all that, but I do believe they act in cold blood. I believe that Nr 45 knows exactly what he is doing. Currently he is playing the story of facing prison “for the American people” to absolute perfection. It doesn’t matter that every Democrat is laughing at that silly argument. It does matter that this story locks up millions of other people in a scenario justifying to demolish democracy, and being intolerant to anyone different from their fascist, xenophobic and misogynistic thinking. I believe there is a good chance he may succeed again, and this is openly discussed in mainstream media. Which will open the doors of hell. Again. Never before in my view it has been more important to remember lessons of history. We are about to make horrible mistakes, once more.
This modus operandi is not new, at all. Sect leaders do it. Dogmatic ideology and ultra-orthodox religion does it, within any faith I know. Hostage takers do it. Hitler did it. Children in insane family situations face the same, as victims. Rocker gangs, street gangs, mafia-type organisations, they all deploy these principles, partly or in full. And these are just a few examples, small and large. At the core, it is about mercilessly controlling others for the own benefit.
Terrorism and violent extremism is using the same approach. The list of contemporary examples is long and would stretch from Afghanistan to the Middle East, from East Africa to West Africa, I could name examples in the Carribean, in Middle, Central, and South America, in Europe, just from the list of country situations I have a personal experience with. Of course it would include Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and the history or even small contemporary pockets in the Balkans. Again, just examples. Do we pay attention to Africa?
But nothing leaves me more scared than what is happening since October 07, 2023, the day of a most horrific attack by Hamas against Israel and the Israeli people.
Why is that?
It was Hamas who launched a terror attack from hell. It were Hamas terrorists who equipped themselves with GoPro cameras, livestreaming their hunt for Israelis hiding in horror. Lifestreaming how they maimed and raped and killed them. Amplifying the lifestreaming done by ISIS a thousand times larger. It were Hamas terrorists who deliberately bragged and documented their murderous attack on innocent Israeli citizens, claiming unspeakable atrocities in messages sent back to their families on social media channels.
For me, one question sits front and center: Why have they done that? And my answer is: In order to maximise blind emotions by Israeli citizens, in order instill hatred in the Jewish community all over the world, in order to derange a beginning hopeful dialogue between Israel and Arabic States, and in order to outrage international friends and supporters of the Jewish community. Reminded of 9/11, I am. At the same time, Hamas did this in order to be seen in the world of their sympathisers and supporters, to instill raw emotions of lust for more cruelties. They simply calculated that, within weeks, nobody would remember these pictures, because the world would be flooded by picures of dead Palestinian children.
Why?
There is only one answer possible: The sheer size of this attack, it’s careful long-term planning in utmost secrecy, and its military-style execution serves one brutally calculated purpose: To incite blind fury in the Israeli society. Hamas has done this for no other purpose than to provoke the most massive attack against Palestinians in the Gaza strip possible. Hamas’ calculus includes not only hundreds of Israeli hostages. It includes 2 million hostages in the form of Palestinian citizens who have no chance other than to live with probably the most sophisticated network of tunnels that the world has ever seen. Those tunnels do not serve as protection for the Palestinian people. They don’t serve as food storage for the population, or as shelters for them. These tunnels serve the purpose of a terror organisation, allowing fighters to move in security, rest between combat, storing huge amounts of weapons and military equipment (and food for the fighters), and deliberately placing the entrances of these tunnels into buildings used by civilians.
Hamas wants the Israeli military to overreact. Hamas wants to see as many Palestinian civilians being killed as possible. Israel, struggling with the pain of a terror attack and death tolls paling much since the Holocaust, now struggles with how to exercise the right of self-defense and taking at the same time all reasonable precaution to avoid civilian casualties in a situation where the other party to this war is using an entire population not as a shield, but as victims in a strategy aiming to blame Israel for violations of international law on armed conflict. Hamas, not Israel, is fundamentally violating the responsibility of any government to protect their own citizens. Hamas is leaving Palestinian citizens no choice but to be in the cross-hairs of IDF military action. The newsrooms are filled with stories of Israeli intelligence operatives calling Palestinian people hours before a planned strike, guiding them by telling which buildings have to be evacuated, and how much time is left. The newsrooms are not filled with stories how Hamas fighters lay down their weapons during any temporary silence of the guns, helping their population to get out of the combat zone. They simply don’t do that, because they need, and want, the pictures of Palestinian dead people, the pictures of overcrowded hospitals. They don’t want to show the entrances into the tunnel network under those hospitals.
This does not mean that Israel somehow can gain a moral benefit. It does not take Israels’ responsibilities away at all, as many in highest functions and being friends of Israel have stated, including highest officials in my own government, with mindblowing clarity and standing at Israel’s side. Germany has a historic responsibility, until today.
But it does mean that under no circumstances Hamas shall be allowed to successfully victimise itself, executing a long-term strategy exactly aiming at that. In this, there is the connection to the childish bully, and autocrats and would-be autocrats.
It does mean that there is a direct consequence of Hamas’s strategic and operational decisions for those Palestinanian casualties, in addition to the havoc they caused on the side of Israeli citizens. Every Palestinian citizen killed is being killed because of deliberate and calculated decisions from Hamas political and military commanders who want to see exactly this happening, rather than taking precautionary measures in order to adhere with their own obligation to protect the citizens of Gaza.
Hamas and their supporters will do everything to keep this fact in hiding, though in plain sight. Whether Israel exercises caution during a strike and casualties have been unavoidable and in compliance with international law, or whether there will be operations gone out of control, in each and every case Hamas will use these pictures for deflecting from its own accountability, and outmaneuvering Israel, finding herself in the most awful “Catch 22” situation imaginable. Each action is aiming at raising fury of Israelis, and every ultra-orthodox jew taking the law into his or her own hands will be used to contribute to the narrative that the evil is Israel.
That is the evil. And it started with this devilish plan executed by Hamas. For that, Hames needs to be held accountable. Like everyone else who violates international law, including the law of armed conflict. There is no other way. But this was carefully planned and executed by Hamas, including killing their own population through this calculus.
Why am I so passionate about this?
In recent weeks I am confronted with a flood of passionate reactions. Many of which are entirely polarised. The list of reports of people demonstrating for the one cause or the other with peaceful means is endless, and global. The list of incidents of anti-semitic violence is horribly long in many countries. Anti-semitic sentiments are exploding. The list of demonstrations and actions in support of the Palestianian cause is including unacceptable violence, in places where this stokes yet another round of xenophobic reactions. Many countries experience this.
At the same time, I am witnessing an emotional energy in this affecting the day-to-day discussions of “ordinary” people exceeding by far anything I have witnessed in previous developments, like when the war in the Ukraine broke out. Most recently, it affected my own family. It feels like if one supports the Israeli case, only subdued mentioning of the suffering of innocent civilians on the Palestinian side minimises the risk of being suspected of supporting “their” cause. The same the other way round: Reminding of the fate of the Palestinian people seems not to be very compatible with, at the same time, expressing equal sympathies for Israeli victims.
Been there on so many other occasions of conflict. But this time it feels very explosive including in societies far away.
Sympathy and compassion for the suffering of innocent people is running the risk of becoming monopolised: Either one is on the Israeli side, or the Palestinian side. Very much the same way, demonstrations appear to focus on the one or the other narrative, or may be it’s the way how media is reporting about them. And the mantra of “Who started it?”, “Who is responsible for it?”, it often leads to fingerpointing towards the other side. A collective view appears to be difficult to argue.
I would dream of demonstrations in which Israeli and Palestianian victims, mourning their loved ones, stand in for the protection of their human rights together. And where Hamas is isolated. Punched out. By both sides. Accused of the sheer monstrosity of their decision how to set the world on fire. And where more than it already is happening, Israeli voices can be heard how they desperately try to exercise caution. And other voices making it clear that there is no space for human rights violations.
And above all, that there is no space for collective responsibility of both peoples for actions of individuals, or in the case of the Palestinian people, a terror organisation. That both people have a right and will to co-exist.
It was this discussion that Hamas wants to eradicate. Because Hamas wants to eradicate the State of Israel. To achieve this, they are ready to kill their own children.
I mourn every innocent victim of this endless cycle of putting the blame on others, including through a recent terror attack from hell’s underbelly. I wish we retain an ability to listen to each other, and to cultivate an attitude where I first and foremost look at my own accountability, before talking about the accountability of others.
How to navigate within these essays: Initially these essays were meant to form a book. I have decided to publish them, step by step, on this blog. By nature of blogging, the most recent article appears on top of all other articles, whether they are part of this anthology, or they address other issues. If you want to read these essays like a book, HEAD OVER HERE and navigate through the content of the entire set of essays on policing.
A close friend responded to my recent blog entry on integrity: “I love word etymology – think about this – integrity … integrated … mid 17th century: from Latin integrat- “made whole” :)”
On the featured picture: June 30, 2005, I visited a refugee camp with thousands of internally displaced persons (we call them IdP) close to Al Fashir, the regional capital of Darfur, in Sudan. I took many pictures, this one displays a young girl sheltering a baby in her arms. My visit was part of a European Union Factfinding Mission. We tried to find out how we could assist the African Union Mission AMIS in their gargantuan task of providing security to people in Darfur. Tormented by a civil war, Darfuri people fled a situation in which they found themselves attacked by militias burning their villages, killing and maiming villagers, trapping women who went to fetch water at local waterholes, subjecting them to most cruel violence, raping and killing them. The fate of children was equally horrible. Refugees had come to these camps where they hoped for protection. Places like these were abuzz with the presence of peacekeepers and non governmental organizations providing most basic humanitarian assistance. The Internet was chock-full with shocking stories and with outrage, the pictures of suffering went around the world. What would follow were many years of peacekeeping, first by the African Union, then by the hybrid Mission UNAMID, jointly conducted by United Nations and African Union. For many years, UNAMID included the largest uniformed policing component of any peacekeeping operation, by far exceeding the 4700 police officers from up to 54 nations which were deployed to Kosovo, under UNMIK. UNAMID police and military components focused heavily on protecting civilians. By comparison, capacity-building of Sudanese policing was very limited, which sets this Mission apart from, for example, how UNMIK operated a large capacity-building component. There are many reasons for this due to the nature of this very specific environment. However, this difference is noteworthy.
UNAMID completed it’s mandate December 31, 2020. April 2023, severe clashes began between Sudanese government military forces and forces under the RSF. Conflict and it’s horrible consequences quickly reached Darfur again. Twenty years after the beginning of an international effort to protect civilians in Darfur, Darfuri people find themselves in the same horrible situation of being attacked by militias, their villages ransacked and burned, the population facing the very same threats which they suffered from two decades earlier.
Four days after I published the first “essay on policing”, a friend called me. She came from lunch with another friend of ours. Both are Romanian police officers. Both served in UNMIK in Kosovo at the same time when I was there. Both had, and have, distinguished careers with intense ties to policing in international peace operations. “He is writing his memoirs!“, the other friend exclaimed to my friend. Yes, to some extent there are elements of a memoir in this series of essays on policing. But not because I want to put my story out there on the Internet the same way like vloggers put their lifes on Youtube. I feel like it would be boring if I would take an impersonal academic view on the topic of policing. Textbooks on policing may be found in libraries of police academies. You can go there on your own. You also will find many publications on international aspects of policing. To some I have contributed. My objective here is a little different: I would like to draw your interest on some aspects of policing which I find deeply relevant in a contemporary discussion of a fragmented, increasingly violent world. And I believe I can do that best if I make it interesting by establishing a personal context. That then, somehow, is also like writing a memoir. I was in my street cafe this morning and had a conversation with the waiter, who speaks five different languages. We spoke about how people can easily misunderstand others if they just believe they are talking about the same issue. Everyone has a personal story, a personal and cultural, and a language context. In order to find commonalities, one has to tell one’s own story, and to listen to the story of others.
As I mentioned in the introductory essay, my time in Kosovo exposed me to the question “What have police officers from 54 different nations in common?“. And secondly, to the equally important question “Which are the principles and values which we want to promote for an entirely new Kosovo Police?“. It was the starting point for all work reflected within these “essays on policing”.
What you see above is an early attempt to structure my thoughts on policing using a mindmap. Behind some of these branches there are deeper levels which I have hidden here. By no means this early mindmap is complete, I am using it here as a conduit for a conclusion which came up when I attempted to cluster topical areas which could possibly be of relevance for these essays. At the end of this thought process I was left with one organising principle around which I could arrange a number of aspects showing up in this mindmap: What is integrity?
I started from there and thus the next few chapters reflect on “integrity“. In order to not make this a highly abstract tractise, I will look at it from the vantage point of my own experiences. They can not be generalised, but they may be an incentive for thinking. They somewhat focus on what I call “my policing DNA”.
Throughout those two decades of my own involvement in any international operation including larger uniformed police components I have seen two interdependent objectives. Of course, these two objectives do not stand in isolation from other objectives of such missions. But they can be identified in efforts under the umbrella of the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, and others. These functions can be seen in mandates for peacekeeping, they are reflected in some civilian crisis management operations’ mandates, as well as in some United Nations’ Special Political Missions. They can be found in peace support operations of the African Union or missions of sub-regional organisations in Africa. Whichever language is being used in the respective mandates, they relate to
To protect civilians
To build national capacity in the field of security and the rule of law.
Of course, peace operations have several other core functions, and also some specific mandates which are unique to a single mission. However, in those international operations with larger uniformed police components these two core objectives can be found.
In addition, there are missions and operations within the framework of international organisations and also multi-lateral and bilateral efforts which involve policing expertise only in the field of capacity building for institutions in the field of security and the rule of law.
These capacity building efforts can continue over long periods of time and are, so to speak, handed over from one international activity to the next, on the long-winded road from conflict engagement towards peacekeeping, then peacebuilding, ultimately hopefully leading to lasting peace. In specific geographic contexts, such as for example the Western Balkans, these capacity building activities continue long after and have become an increasing part of integration efforts into the European Union. This also will hold true for other parts of South-Eastern Europe, such as for example Moldova and the Ukraine.
For each and every of these different categories of international activities we have witnessed what happens when support activities within both objectives, or one of them, were terminated too early, not implemented under the right assumptions and circumstances, or under political constraints and pressure, or when the overarching framework of international ambitions, the necessary political unity of key actors, unrealistic mission mandates, understaffing with expertise and numbers, or fragmentation of international activities, led to the break-down of complex and costly activities. I spare a list of relevant examples, because, that list would be shamefully long. No type of international assistance would get away without having a share in this sad compilation.
But what I would like to stress: There would be an equally long list of examples of successful missions, both related to the interim task of protecting civilians, and the task of supporting an acceptable and capable array of institutions in the field of policing and the rule of law. Also here, these success stories do not single out one or another form of international mission setup being more capable than other forms. I leave the question “Why is this so?” to academic research. On many occasions I have been subjected to interviews by researchers. So I do know that this work is out there.
I use the following arguments for the interrelation between the Protection of Civilians and Capacity Building:
a) The protection of civilians is a core responsibility of the State.
b) Protection of civilians under the mandate of international organisations or coalitions of the willing is a temporary substitution of this function of the State. Reasons can sit with that a State (1) should not, (2) does not want to, or (3) can not sufficiently exercise this protection, or any combination of these three factors. For clarity: There are predominantly military engagements “out there”, often of bilateral nature, which brand themselves “peacekeeping” and which, at least, do not fall under the scope of what I write about here. Personally, I refuse to name, for example, military detachments of the Russian Federation in some States in South East Europe, “peacekeeping”. They are instruments of political and military control, such as in Moldova, or elsewere.
c) Any efforts of international protection of civilians must be accompanied by support of capacity building in the field of security and justice, as otherwise there is no exit strategy for this temporary substitution.
That is why capacity-building sits at the core of any successful international assistance in situations of conflict, war, and post-conflict support. It must be done right, otherwise the mission runs into critical failure.
It is from there that I witnessed so many mandates, reports, inquiries, or statements carrying buzzwords such as “sustainable“, “local ownership“, “lasting impact“, and so many more.
In all those scenarios in which I would be asked whether we were successful in assisting in setting up credible institutions in the field of security and the rule of law, I would examine to which extent it was possible to nurture “integrity” within the work of individuals, groups, organisations, legal frameworks, leadership, management, and corporate identities. Personally, I would believe that this is the case for example in the Western Balkans.
There is a final reason for why I am attempting to look at international policing within peace operations, and policing at large, through the lens of attributes such as “integrity”: Catch-phrases like “sustainable establishment” and so many else include a time-dimension. Here, any assessment can become tricky. If one focuses on short time-spans, an assessment on “sustainability” does not make sense. If one looks at time-spans which are stretching over decades, “sustainability” can lead to depressing assessments if, and once, new conflict is emerging. Twenty years ago we started to put immense efforts into protecting civilians in Darfur. Fifteen years ago we began to assess, on request of key U.N. Member States, whether we had succeeded and could disengage. Since recently, we find the situation of Darfuri people where it was twenty years ago. You can say the same for Haiti, for example. We currently witness so many situations beyond the ability of peace operations to influence them leading to constant repetitions of cycles of violence with immense civilian suffering. West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, you name it. Including the Middle East. I was in Rafah on occasion of the opening of the border crossing in November 2005 under the auspices of a EU monitoring mission, dubbed EUBAM Rafah. After the terror organisation Hamas took over the Gaza strip, our efforts stalled. Around the same time, I was in the West Bank, in a line of support of capacity building for the Palestinan Police through an EU civilian crisis management mission dubbed EUPOL COPPS. If one widens the aperture of the time lens too wide, sustainability answers can become very blurry.
Any assessment of why this is so would be drowning this writing. In taking a view using a lense named “integrity” I hope to inject a different, perhaps fresh, perspective. It will also allow me to make some comments, in later essays, on why short-term goals in capacity building do NOT work. As my friend and predecessor as U.N. Police Adviser Mark Kroeker used to say: “You can’t stand up a police organisation”. Like I, he also avoided to speak of “Police Forces”.
“Integrity” relates to values. Values give meaning, purpose, and support long-term development. Wherever we assist in capacity-building, our success depends on how we can support the establishment of a “DNA” which allows the implementation of policing according to some universally accepted values. Whilst this is true from an agnostic perspective for any set of values, here comes the first hard choice: Which values do we want to put front and center? Of course, being a peacekeeper, my own response comes without a split-second of thinking: The values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and everything which followed throughout decades of development of a universal framework of the United Nations.
Next, I will try to examine this from a personal vantage point, my own socialisation into a German police organisation.
So, how did I find my own way into the police, and policing?
Stefan Feller 