Against drones - a riposte to Philip Hammond

In an article published in the Guardian on 18 December, UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond outlined his case for the use of drones in the war on terror. Hammond claims that contrary to the belief of what he calls "drone activists", drones are in fact a sensible and totally legal way of reducing casualties in warfare, and it is a "myth" that drones indiscriminately kill civilians.

Hammond begins by arguing that the word "drone" is misleading, giving connotations of a machine out of a science fiction story beyond human control. In fact, we are told, drones are manoevered by highly qualified people, applying the ultimate precision to avoid casualties. Mr Hammond concedes that he is aware of one terrible case in which a drone strike killed four Afghan civilians by mistake, but it's "hardly the picture of devastation so often painted by activists who so vociferously oppose their use." Other than this one exception, Hammond would have us believe, drones help to save "the lives of our personnel, our Afghan allies and Afghan civilians on a daily basis."

While insisting that his defence of drones is based "on the fundamental facts", Hammond's only recognition of civilian casulties is the aforementioned incident in Afghanistan. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strikes carried out by the CIA in Pakistan between 2004 and 2013 killed between 2534 to 3642 people. Meanwhile a report carried out by Al Jazeera found that drone strikes on Yemen have killed nearly 800 people, mostly civilians since 2002. Drones have killed more civilians than 9/11. This goes to show that the high precision technology is hardly impressive. Despite rejecting the idea that drone warfare is shrouded in secrecy, Hammond has no inclination to recognise or explain the civilian death toll.

The legal justification for drone warfare relies on the conflict being defined as between two state entities. But Al Qaeda isn't a state. British and American drones are terrorising civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Hammond's talk of "saving lives" applies more to British troops than to innocents on the ground, who continue to be viewed as "collateral damage".

Barack Obama has claimed that in order for a drone strike to be authorised there must be a "near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." And yet time and again "military intelligence" has proved incapable of distinguishing villages from training camps, leading to carnage, such as the killing of 45 women and children in Yemen in 2009. As Simon Jenkins points out, ground troops would face severe punishment for an atrocity such as this but "air forces enjoy such prestige that civilian deaths are excused as a price worth paying for not jeopardising pilots' lives."

US Congressman Alan Grayson quoted an American official based in Yemen as saying "every drone death yields 50 to 60 new recruits for Al Qaeda." Drone attacks are the worst possible PR for Britain and America, and a gift to extremist groups seeking to recruit volunteers. Eliminating terrorist leaders is useless if the attack inspires many more to take their places.

It is difficult to point to any progress achieved by Philip Hammond and his drones since he became Defence Secretary in 2011. The war on terror continues and drones have not yielded any reduction in Al Qaeda attacks. Beyond this, drone warfare has jeopardised Western relations with both the Afghan and Pakistani governments, who have both condemned the use of drone strikes. Meanwhile as Tom Engelhardt observes, the supposedly invaluable data gathered by spy drones has not given the US or Britain the upper hand.

Antagonising governments and civilian populations in countries around the world does not make us safer. Flouting international law only further erodes our moral credibility. Philip Hammond's defence of drones continues the long tradition of prioritising the safety of our troops and pilots over the lives of foreign civilians. This flawed logic will only serve to unnecessarily prolong the war on terror.

Debunking the myths around Swiss bank secrecy

It is widely thought that Swiss bank secrecy was established in the 1930s, in order to enable Jews and other victims of the Nazis to hide their money from the regime. In his fascinating 2011 book Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson exposes this hypothesis as a myth, and gives an insight into the vast offshore empire used by companies and the super-rich to hide their money from the taxman.

Swiss bank secrecy is far more than 80 years old - it dates back centuries. In the 18th century, the Catholic monarchy of France borrowed money from Swiss banks - secrecy was crucial, as it would have been a scandal if it had been revealed that the monarchy was taking money from Protestant moneylenders. Bank secrecy and neutrality were the two crucial elements to Switzerland's international policy for centuries.

Whenever dirty money is traced to Switzerland and they comes under fire, Swiss banks always roll out the same World War Two story: if it had not been for Swiss bank secrecy, the Jews would have had nowhere to hide their money from the Nazis. In reality, it took decades after WWII for Swiss banks to release assets held by the victims.

The first investigation after WWII conducted by the Swiss Bankers' Association identified a miserly 482 000 francs held by victims of the Nazi regime. Thousands of relatives of account holders were turned away by Swiss banks demanding to see death certificates, something which concentration camps obviously didn't provide.

Further assets were released by Swiss banks in dribs and drabs, but it took until 1998 for a full pay out of $1.25 billion. So much for Swiss banks being the noble assistants of the victims of the Holocaust.

But beyond this, justifying secrecy jurisdictions on the basis that they enable people to hide their hard earned money from tyrannical regimes is absurd. As Shaxson points out, "Who uses secrecy jurisdictions to protect their money and bolster their positions? The human rights activist screaming in the torturers' dungeon? The brave investigative journalist?...Or the brutal kleptocratic tyrant oppressing them all? We all know the answer."

In 2007, Swiss banks held $3.1 trillion in offshore assets. But this is only a fraction of the money kept and transferred through offshore havens. Bank secrecy and tax havens have enabled dictators such Mubarak, Mobutu and Abacha to siphon billions of dollars from the coffers of their own treasuries. While organisations such as Transparency International condemn governments in developing countries for their corruption, it is partly the banking laws and secrecy in countries such as Switzerland which facilitate it.

An in-depth discussion of the arguments against tax havens can be found here. One of Shaxson's key points is that while people generally think of Switzerland and Caribbean islands such as the Caymans when they hear "tax haven", many offshore havens are in fact under American or British jurisdiction.

We can only speculate at how much money is hidden in tax havens - in 2012 a study arrived at an estimate of $21 trillion and $32 trillion. While it is depressing that such a vast web of international tax evasion and corruption exists, the still small but increasing interest, awareness and media attention given to this issue is encouraging.

Finally, the obscene amount of wealth hidden offshore makes a mockery of the argument for austerity. It shows that cuts in public services and living standards for the majority are not inevitable. Just think how much progress could be made in improving school and hospital facilities, reviving the economy and combating climate change if some of those trillions were taxed at a reasonable rate.

The most under-reported country in the world?

In March this year, a military coup took place in the Central African Republic which plunged the country into chaos. A group of rebels calling themselves the Seleka ousted former president Francois Bozize. Since then it is estimated that 1.5 million people have been displaced, and there have been reports of massacres of civilians, the burning of villages and widespread rape. While shedding some light on the situation in the CAR, the minimal news coverage there has been shows just how pitifully little we know.

As its unimaginative name suggests, the CAR lies in the middle of the African continent, bordering Chad and Sudan to the north, South Sudan to the East, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo to the south, and Cameroon to the west. The CAR was

colonised by the French, and prior to this the region had been ravaged by the Arab slave trade. Since independence in 1960, the CAR has suffered from bad governance, instability and chronic poverty, and it remains one of the ten poorest countries in the world to this day. Three times the size of the UK but with only 4.6 million inhabitants, the CAR is a vast territory about which we know next to nothing. Even before the outbreak of violence last year, neither the IMF nor the World Bank had any staff on the ground, and few NGOs are active in the CAR despite the desperate need.

While it is difficult and dangerous to get information out of a war-zone such as Syria, amazingly, there are still scheduled flights, and as a high interest story, there are channels for the media to get into the country. In stark contrast, the CAR is less extensively mapped today than Britain in the year 1800. While tarmac roads connect the capital city, Bangui, with some of the other principle towns, dirt tracks are the norm, and these can become impassable after the rains. According to the Wikipedia page, there are "over 1800 motor vehicles on the road." Before last year's coup, there was one flight from Paris to Bangui per week.

The main route to the outside world should be the Oubangui river, which connects to the Congo and the Atlantic Ocean. But continued conflict in the DRC has made this route impassable. Sudan and South Sudan have recently been at war, and the Chad is politically unstable. As a result, CAR's main route to the outside world is through Cameroon, and this road is in very poor condition due to the damage caused by heavily laden trucks.

Deposed President Bozize himself came to power through a military coup in 2003, after a five year period in which there had been numerous attempts by different military groups to seize the capital. The only means of social mobility in the country is the army, and except for Bozize's predecessor Patasse, all of the country's leaders since 1960 have been military men. While political commentators are now discussing whether the CAR is in danger of becoming a failed state, no government has ever been able to control the whole country.

As is often the case in international affairs, Aljazeera has given the CAR much more coverage than the western media, although there have been reports on the latest conflict in the Independent and the Guardian. The Seleka rebels marched into Bangui on March 24, and their leader, Michel Djotodia, declared himself president. But while "Seleka" means "alliance", it quickly became clear that the rebels were far from united. Djotodia has even tried to disband the Seleka, amid continued fighting among the rebels. Djotodia has admitted that he can't control the rebels, stating, "it is difficult for me because I don't know who they are."

Last week Aljazeera has reported that another armed group, calling itself Anti-balika, has attacked Seleka rebels, displacing a further 200 000 civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes and are taking refuge in the forests, or gathering in make-shift refugee camps. Evidence of a massacre in which 18 people were killed has been found, but it is likely that this is only a tiny fraction of the violence unfolding in the country.

But the international response has been pathetic: Britain has pledged £5 million in aid, a laughable amount which will make barely any difference. The African Union hopes to have a force of 1100 soldiers in the country in 2014. What exactly they are expected to achieve remains unclear.

The CAR briefly made the headlines during the Kony 2012 phenomenon, and Joseph Kony was thought to be hiding in the east of the country. Commentators interviewed in an Aljazeera programme claimed that armed groups as diverse as the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army, the Janjaweed from Sudan, and the Nigerian Boko Haram may have spilled over the borders into the CAR. But the the striking fact is that we simply don't know. Statements from the French government stressing the danger that the CAR could become a failed state and a safehaven for terrorists give the illusion of some sort of command and understanding of the situation.

In reality, to talk of the CAR's "borders" is meaningless. Most of the borders are unmarked and unprotected areas of jungle. While the CAR would make an effective hiding place for Kony, it seems unlikely that Boko Haram would want to take refuge or try to recruit here. The crisis in the CAR is the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of the country. Framing it in terms of terrorism makes little sense and only serves to disguise our ignorance of what is really going on.

Portraying the conflict in the CAR as a threat to our security may raise some foreign interest. However, the grim truth of the matter is that the vast majority of us are not affected by the events in the CAR. In a civilised world that shouldn't be a reason not to care.

75 years after Kristallnacht Germany deserves admiration for the way it has dealt with its past

75 years ago today was Kristallnacht, the terrible pogrom against the Jews in Germany which foreshadowed the Holocaust. The BBC covered of the anniversary with an article by Stephan Evans, posing the question: "how strong is anti-semitism in Germany?"

By implication, this headline suggests that anti-semitism is still a negative force to be reckoned with in Germany today. Evans acknowledges that the Holocaust is taught in schools, "but how much anti-semitism lingers despite the knowledge of what happened?" The answer to this question is said to be a "complex picture."

Evans quotes a study conducted in 2011 which apparently showed that anti-semitism was strongest in Poland and Hungary, but that also in Germany, "anti-semitism is significantly more prominent than in the other western European countries." The evidence for this is shaky at best. Nearly half of respondents in Germany agreed with the statement: "Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era", compared with 22% in the UK and 32% in France. With no exact figures or information regarding the phrasing of the questions, there is no proof that these responses are representative, nor that the answers themselves are anti-semitic.

But the refusal to believe that Germany has come to terms with its past is also reflected in Germany itself. Evans refers to a study carried out by the German parliament in 2012 which found that 20% of Germans hold at least "latent anti-semitism." Anetta Kahane of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation claims that "anti-semitism is acceptable again". Moreover, the AAF found that in 2011 there were 811 attacks on Jews in Germany, of which 16 were violent. On the basis that this increased to 865 in 2012 and 27 acts of violence, the AAF infers that anti-semitism is on the rise. The other 838 attacks are not defined, and there is no indication whether the 27 violent attacks were racially motivated.

These figures show that the extent of anti-semitism in Germany today is not a "complex picture" at all. To say that anti-semitism  has become "acceptable" is obscene. Even the extreme far-right neo-Nazi NPD party, while openly hostile to the Roma and Sinti, doesn't dare to even mention the Jews. Rather than ban NPD posters inciting racial hatred, the German government tolerated them, safe in the knowledge that hardly anybody would be persuaded by them. The recent elections proved them right, with the NPD failing to secure one single MP.

At an open-air karaoke event I attended in Berlin several months ago, a drunk blundered on to the stage and began telling an anti-semitic joke. A chorus of hundreds of voices from the crowd booed him off stage. While anecdotes such as these do not conclusive proof, they are indicative of attitudes in Germany today.

To claim that 27 violent attacks is evidence of mounting anti-semitism is a gross distortion of reality, and trivialises the attacks on thousands of Jews that took place on Kristallnacht. The real headline ought to have been that 75 years after that terrible night in 1938, anti-semitism in Germany is negligible. Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the Holocaust has been taught in German schools for decades. Berlin is full of memorials, museums and exhibitions about  the Holocaust and in 2011, 58 000 Germans visited Auschwitz.

Germany deserves admiration for the way in which it has come to terms with its past, something which Britain, still clinging to its "one world cup and two world wars" mantra would do well to follow.

The End of Poverty in our time?

The contemporary debate on aid to the third world is polarised, with advocates and opponents arguing whether or not aid has failed. Discussing the merits of "aid" in this way conceals some amazing advances in development across some of the poorest countries in the world. Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee's 2011 book Poor Economics expands on the ideas laid out in Duflo's TED talk, and brings to light some major advances in the war on poverty which too often go unnoticed.


Between 1999 and 2006, primary school enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 54% to 70%. In East Asia, the same seven year period saw the proportion of children in primary education rise from 77% to 88%. Despite rapid population growth in the world's poorest countries, the number of children of primary school age who did not attend fell from 103 million in 1999, to 73 million in 2006.

Of course, this leaves much to be done, and it is a scandal that there is still so much poverty amidst an abundance of wealth. Admittedly, the quality of teaching in primary schools is low in many countries, and millions of children go back to work in the fields at the age of 12, with no access to secondary education.

But there has been progress here too. Research conducted by Duflo and Banerjee shows that between 1995, enrollment in secondary schools increased from 25% to 34%  in sub-Saharan Africa, 44% to 51% in South Asia, and 64% to 74% in East Asia. These are major, positive changes which have happened in my lifetime. These developments are a reason to be optimistic about the future, and people should be aware of them.

As Paul Collier argues in his book The Bottom Billion, the number of people living in extreme poverty across the world is falling. " For forty years the development challenge has been a rich world of one billion facing a poor world of five billion people." Today, 80% of the world's poor live in countries which are on the up, while one billion are languishing in countries stuck at the bottom. Quoting UN figures in his book The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley states that there has been a greater reduction in world poverty over the last 50 years than in the past 500. In a recent TED talk, economist Charles Robertson argues that Africa is now at the stage Mexico and Turkey were at 30 years ago, and a boom is coming.

For various reasons, this progress, although ostensibly the goal of NGOs, is widely ignored in the aid industry. Some are concerned that donations from the public would decrease if they knew that poverty was falling. But progress such as this, for example in the field of education, is a powerful reason to step up the war on poverty. For this progress shows that change is possible, and worth fighting for. On a practical level, these successes allow us to analyse which developmental and economic policies have been successful, and which have not, paving the way to a better approach towards tackling poverty in future. Suppressing success stories only reinforces pessimism and cynicism that development in the poorest countries is even possible under capitalism.

The fact that tens of millions more children across the world now have access to education is something that should be recognised and celebrated. News such as this belongs in the national curriculum. Positive change of this sort is a testament to human achievement and ingenuity. As Duflo and Banerjee conclude, "poverty has been with us for many thousands of years; if we have to wait another fifty or hundred years for the end of poverty, so be it."

Tangier: a forgotten episode of the British Empire

As an ex-world power, Britain sometimes seems to be wishing it had its empire back. When cuts in the defence budget were introduced in 2012 even the BBC seemed to be lamenting the fact that the army is now smaller than it was in 1900, and that Britain could now no longer fight more than one war at the same time. While few people today still believe in white superiority or Britain's duty to "civilise", many myths surrounding the British Empire remain intact. Linda Colley's 2002 book Captives challenges the conventional narrative by focusing on a largely neglected aspect of the Empire: British slaves.

Events such as the recent stand-off with Spain over Gibraltar illustrate the impact that the British Empire still exerts over the world map today. But as Colley points out, Gibraltar was only acquired after a disastrous and perhaps deliberately forgotten chapter of the British Empire. After the English civil war and Oliver Cromwell's republic, King Charles II took the throne and married Catherine of Braganza, whose dowry included the city of Tangier. Located on what is today the Moroccan coast, Tangier seemed an ideal strategic outpost with its position at the gateway to the Mediterranean.

Colley argues that the British Empire at this stage was far more fragile than is often thought. As from 1662 the English monarchy poured resources into the Tangier project, an average of £75 000 per year - more than was spent on all home garrisons put together. In theory, Tangier was to be defended by 4000 soldiers, but in practice there were often no more than 1500. But this is perhaps not surprising given that the population of England at the time was approximately 3 million. The empire was overstretched in terms of both finance and manpower.

Nor was the force in Tangier homogenous or unified. The soldiers were a mix of English, Scots, Welsh and Irishmen although this was before the Act of Union in 1707. Despite the threat of harsh punishment, defection was common. Many soldiers had fought on Cromwell's side in the civil war and felt no loyalty towards the king. Compared to Cromwell's New Model Army, pay was low and irregular. On one occasion, Irish soldiers were defending Tangier against English defectors, and communicated in Gaelic so as not to be understood. 

At this time piracy in both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic was rife. The so-called Barbary Pirates, who operated from ports on the North African coast, captured hundreds of ships and took those on board as slaves. Colley estimates that at least 20 000 English men and women were enslaved in this period. In addition to this, one of the punishments for defection from the English army was slavery. Despite the grand words of Rule Britannia, the English were enslaving their own kind.

But the greatest threat to Tangier was in fact the sea. Hugely expensive efforts to build a harbour wall to protect the port were thwarted time and again by the strong Atlantic currents and waves. In 1684, the Tangier project was finally abandoned and the port was demolished. The story of Tangier is an embarrassing defeat for the British Empire and has therefore been quietly forgotten. By reviving it, Linda Colley shows the British Empire in a different light.

 

Oliver Stone vs Steven Pinker

"The US must, can and will lead in this new century. The third world war that many feared never came. And many millions were lifted out of poverty, and exercised their human rights for the first time. These were the benefits of a global architecture forged over many years by American leaders of both political parties."

Hillary Clinton

Oliver Stone's 10 part documentary "The untold history of the United States" is a bold attempt to challenge the conventional version of post-World War II history.

Stone fought in Vietnam as an infantry soldier, and was shocked by the misrepresentation of the war when he returned to the US. But more importantly, when Stone had children, he was struck by the way in which pupils are still taught a simplistic story of good guys and bad guys at school today. This provided the motivation to produce "The untold history of the United States." 

The documentary begins with an overview of the Second World War. Stone charges that the American post-war period has been greatly shaped by two "founding myths:" that the US won the war, and that it was necessary to use the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the US played an important role, but 80% of the German forces were focused on the Eastern Front. Approximately 400 000 Americans were killed in the war, compared to at least 22 million people in the Soviet Union, and possibly up to 30 million. 

The key role that the Soviet Union played in the Second World War remains largely ignored in American and British education. Stone alleges that this would not fit in with the conventional Cold War narrative, of freedom-loving Americans versus totalitarian Soviet communists.

Stone goes on to argue that contrary to popular belief, it was not necessary to use the bomb. 700 000 Soviet troops were pushing back the Japanese in Manchuria, and Japan was already heading for defeat. In addition to this, the number of lives saved through ending the war earlier has been revised upwards again and again. Stone sees Hiroshima as the moment the US lost its moral authority. As he puts it, "because we win, we are right, and because we are right, we are therefore good. There is no morality but our own."

The two founding myths led to the Cold War, and the frantic fight against communism both at home, and in proxy wars abroad. Millions of civilians were to die in the wars of Korea and Vietnam, while American history books continue to focus on the deaths of American soldiers, reveering them as dying to defend peace and democracy. The fear of communism was used to justify toppling democratically elected governments from Guatemala in 1954 to Chile in 1973, and some of the most despotic regimes were tolerated provided they were anti-communist. 

The documentary continues up to the present day, with 9/11 and the launching of the "war on terror" based on the same principle of "you're with us or you're against us" as the Cold War. Nor does it let Obama off the hook, berating him for his expansion of drone warfare. In 2011, the US sold 78% of the world's arms, and had military bases in 151 countries. Meanwhile, the US navy proclaims itself as a "global force for good" and statements such as Hillary Clinton's above continue to proliferate. Stone invites the viewer to consider whether the people of Hiroshima, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba and many other countries, might see the US in a different light. 

While Stone's documentary provides much food for thought, it is pretty depressing and whether intentionally or not, gives the impression that America's policing of the globe is making the world an ever more violent place. This is a notion which is very widespread - in a recent article on Syria in the Guardian, Nick Cohen claimed that the "world of tyranny and atrocity is no different now than it was 70 years ago", at the time of the Holocaust. 

Steven Pinker's book "The better angels of our nature" and related TED talk, although not written as a riposte to "The untold history of the United States" offers a fascinating counter-argument to Nick Cohen's statement. Pinker certainly doesn't set out to defend American policy. His argument is that we currently live in the most peaceful era that humanity has ever known, and that violence has been consistently decreasing for the past 500 years. 

He provides some fascinating statistics. The 20th century is commonly thought of as the most violent in human history. But while it is true that it was the century with the most violent deaths, this is due to the fact that the human population was at its highest. We have to look at the proportion of people who died in conflict to gauge the level of violence. In the 20th century, approximately 1% of the population was killed in war. In hunter gatherer societies of the past and present on the other hand, this figure ranges from 15% up to 60%. Pinker goes on to list the world's worst atrocities in terms of the proportion of the global population killed. Top of the list is the An Lushan revolt in 8th century China, in which 36 million people, 15% of the world's population at the time, were killed, the equivalent of 469 million people today.

Pinker is no American triumphalist, but his book challenges the pessimistic outlook of Stone's documentary. Totalitarian regimes were responsible for 138 million deaths in the 20th century, while democracies killed 2 million. Despite so many atrocities, the faults of the US simply cannot be put on par with those of Stalin and Mao. In 1950, the average conflict killed 65 000 people. By 2000, this figure had fallen to 2000 people. Parallels drawn between Iraq and Vietnam are false and unfair - dropping napalm is no longer an option.

None of this is to excuse the wars carried out by the US under the banner of fighting for freedom and democracy. Stone is right to criticize the standard rhetoric surrounding US history. But we should also recognise the decline in violence that has taken place, and refrain from regurgitating the pessmistic mantra that history just repeats itself, or that violence is getting worse. Instead we should embrace Pinker's conclusion that while there is still far too much war, the world we live has never been more peaceful, and this peace is likely to last and spread in the future.