Are we a world at war?
Surely for a world to be at war there should be some cohesion behind geographical lines. There should be advancing fronts. There should be a war office and sirens in the streets.
‘Where are the bomb shelters?’ we in Western nations cry. Go away and leave us be! We are at peace, not war!
But that doesn’t account for all of us. Maybe less than 1% is small, too small to care about, but not when it translates into 60 million.
60 million refugees. That’s according to the UNHCR; nearly 60 million people forcibly displaced in 2014.
One person in every 122 on the planet is either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.
These are the highest levels since 1945.
So is the world at war? I think it is. I think that we are in the midst of a monumental crisis and we are for the most part blind to it.
Saying that world war exists starts the search for causes and solutions.
It could be argued that the main cause lies in history: in peoples lumped together with other peoples whom they may never have much liked or got along with as the globe was carved up under the auspices of Empire. It could be argued that each situation has its own unique history: The Rohingyas of Burma, the Kurds of Turkey, Iraq and Iran, the Darfuri of Sudan, the Hazara of Afghanistan to name some on a long list.
And what of the African migrants in South Africa? That’s a different sort of ethnic cleansing. Workers pitted against workers.
What of the Haitian descendants in the Dominican Republic, who face expulsion back to Haiti? All 250,000 of them. Different again. This time it’s been legislated.
The victimisation of minority ethnicities has a long long history. It could be said that these examples show a world not at war but disunited.
But what of the cleaving in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia? A faith dispute between two versions of Islam? Or a manufactured cleaving feeding off the schism. A cleaving cultivated, funded, sought. To answer that we need to examine America’s interests. And Saudi Arabia’s. And Britain’s. In fact, the entire military complex that seeks war, especially when times are austere.
As they are now thanks to the biggest sting against the 99% the world has ever seen: the GFC.
Is it the case that, done with the casino, war is now sought by the banksters, by elements of big business, by the 1%ers whose ambition is only to acquire more wealth?
Or is it simply the case that the cankers of hatred festering in the body of many nations, cankers that have fed on fear and on poverty for decades, are bursting all at once?
Maybe it’s all these things.
My little blog post seeks only to ask questions. The answers would fill bookshelves.
It is my impression that a world at war is what we have. War invisible to those of us who deem ourselves unaffected by it. What a privilege that is! What a convenience! It gives us the power to thumb our noses at asylum seekers. To regard refugees as the scum of the earth.
This is Refugee Week. It’s about time we told ourselves over and again that those 60 million refugees on the planet are the casualties of various forms of ethnic cleansing in countries involved in some sort of war.
It’s about time we tell ourselves that just because the tanks are not rolling down our streets, doesn’t mean we are a world at peace.
It’s about time we tell ourselves that casualties of war are not collateral, are not so much garbage, are not takers and chancers.
They are people, people who bleed just like us.
Isobel Blackthorn’s first novel, ASYLUM, has been released by Odyssey Books and is available through all major booksellers.