Dear all,

Paul Redfern writes: 
'As for Chechenya [...] I have no doubt that the silence on this issue does
arise from embarrassment; with so many [...] now having to face up to the
fact that they tied themselves to the tail of paper tiger, a discreet
silence is obviously seen as the order of the day'.

T.S. Elliott commented that people could perhaps not bear too much reality;
it is for this reason, perhaps, that academics (including myself) have not
taken as much notice of the situation in Chechenya as they might.  But I am
one geographer who, with some reservations supported intervention in
Kosovo, and certainly does not see a 'discrete silence' as the order of the
day.

Schopenhauer, Nietzche's favourite philsopher, said that the history of
humankind was marked by one continuity - the horrific, brutal and
frequently senseless exploitation, degredation and destruction of one human
being by another.    I watched the BBC 9.00 news last night and found
myself agreeing with Schopenhauer.  I saw a two-year old killed by
shrapnel; I saw children with legs amptutated; I saw shattered buildings; I
saw people fighting to get food to their families; I saw how far hopes for
lives worthy of the term have been crushed. Perhaps, in some ways, even
worse, I saw 'people' whose humanity and identity had been removed - by
Russian soldiers, by Russian government, by Russian people, by the media,
by me.  These were no longer people.  They were: 'refugees'; 'casualties of
war'; 'a nation without hope'; 'the archetypal dead child'; the 'obligatory
child with limbs blown off'.  These people had lost their identity as
people; it was as if they had never been 'people like us', with homes,
histories, everyday life, going to the shops, waking up to the alarm clock
in the morning, tucking their children into bed at night, having arguments
with the neighbours, making love.  I felt....what?  Sick to the stomach?
Outrage?  Horror?  Shame?  All these are cliches and banalities; they do
not go even a fraction of the way towards describing the horror that people
are going through.

This is what war does to those who are not caught up in it like this.  It
stops them being people.  They cease to register on the scale that allows
most people to easily think of them as 'us' as well as 'them'.

And what is this all for?  This is a political war.  Russia is crumbling,
socially unstable.  People are starving.  Alcoholism, drug abuse, crime,
suicide, are at an all time high.  The economy is in ruins, thanks to the
greed of western free-marketeers, the stupidity of western governments, and
the blindness of Boris Yeltzin et al.  The army is hungry, and so
dangerous.  In desparate situations, people look for someone to blame.  The
government needs an enemy.  Better, it needs a war, a popular war, because
there is nothing better than a popular war to unite a disillusioned and
angry people.  Even better, it keeps the army occupied - while they are
fighting, they won't rebel.  And so, for Russia, Chechenya now bears the
sins of the world.

What makes me most angry, however, is what Hannah Arendt has called 'the
banality of evil'.  This is not brutality and degredation with 'feeling'.
It is not one, or even several, tyrants with Hitler moustaches and twisted
faces.  It is not even the (highly dubious) question of 'for the greater
good' (whatever that may be).  It is purely a question of politics.  We can
be sure that if the Russian goverment figured out it could win votes by
sending the Chechenyan people each a bunch of red roses, it would do that
instead, and give service to a smile.  I see the usual, smug, overfed,
sharp-suited politicians presiding over this hell not because they feel any
particular ill-will towards any particular person but because they are
interested only in political survival.  Evil is done because it is
expedient to do so.

And then I see people on the streets of Russia who have forgotten that the
people of Chechenya are real people who live and breathe and hope and fear.

This message has gone on too long, so I'll end it now.  As about the only
(feeble) thing I can do, I am writing to Robin Cook to urge him to work
towards stepping up international pressure on Russia.  Yes, I know there
will be shouts of 'hypocrisy' from some quarters.  Yes, I know the
situtation, like any human situation, is more complex than I have made out.
 But if we are serious about our critical credentials, evil and suffering
has to be fought where it is found.  This is how any war has to be fought:
step by step, battle by battle.

Best wishes,

Graham Gardner
University of Wales
Aberystwyth 



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%