{"id":14952,"date":"2011-10-10T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=14952"},"modified":"2011-10-09T00:42:36","modified_gmt":"2011-10-08T23:42:36","slug":"afghan-and-german-deep-cultures-at-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/10\/afghan-and-german-deep-cultures-at-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan and German Deep Cultures at War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Koblenz, Germany \u2013 Keynote Speech at the German Federal Armed Forces: Coping with Culture<\/em> (Deutsche Bundeswehr, “Innere F\u00fchrung”)<\/em><\/p>\n

Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/p>\n

This lecture is dedicated to your hero and my personal good friend, Wolf Graf von Baudissin, who coined the term “innere F\u00fchrung<\/em>“, inner steering.\u00a0 My talk is about collective inner steering, worldviews, often subconscious, as natural and normal as to be in no need of articulation.\u00a0 And yet that is what we need, based on countless dialogues with Afghans and Germans of many varieties.<\/p>\n

Afghans are autonomous mountain people living mainly in 25,000 autonomous, self-reliant villages. Divided into, say, 6-8 nations, the Pashtoons were split by the Durand border drawn by imperialists.\u00a0 This is where Alexander the Great became the Small.\u00a0 Even the Mongols gave up; the British were beaten in 1842-1878-1919, as were the Soviets in the 1979 invasion. Moreover, the US 7 October 2001 invasion, backed by a coalition of the willing–Germany and Norway being members–seem to get nowhere.<\/p>\n

My dialogues with taliban and others point to three clear goals: no secularization, no unitary state under Kabul, no more invasions.\u00a0 Three reasons for fighting; on a scale 0-3, most Afghans are probably 1 or 2.\u00a0 Their muslim monotheism, with a strong we-culture<\/em> and much sharing, rules out any rule by infidels and any capitulation.\u00a0 Their time perspective is unlimited and their umma<\/em> comprises 57 Organization of Islamic Cooperation-OIC countries with 1,560 million muslims.\u00a0 Their experience staving off intruders is their strength.<\/p>\n

What does Afghanistan brings to mind?\u00a0 Switzerland, of course. 6,000 autonomous municipalities, 4 nations surviving as a loose nation-based federation with high local autonomy, good relations with neighbors, neutrality.\u00a0 In a TRANSCEND mediation in February 2001 a five-point solution emerged:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. coalition with taliban,<\/li>\n
  2. a federation degrading Kabul,<\/li>\n
  3. a Central Asian community with all neighbors and open borders,<\/li>\n
  4. basic needs for all nations and genders,<\/li>\n
  5. peacekeeping by the United Nations Security Council and the OIC.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Nevertheless, a leading Afghan politician present said, “Fine, but the Americans will attack us in October for bases and pipelines”.\u00a0 And they did.<\/p>\n

    If Afghans draw the conclusion from history that we survive by staying the same, the Germans draw the opposite conclusion.\u00a0 German history is high drama.\u00a0 The First and Second Reich<\/em> had the Lord, God, as the guide, the Kaiser gratia Dei<\/em> as His representative on Earth, surrounded by a gradually modernizing court and army, with subjects trained in obedience; the enemies, created by the 1054 and 1095 schisms, were orthodox and muslim.\u00a0 And jews.\u00a0 The First World War destroyed all that: the Kaiser abdicated, the court receded to the background, and so did the Lord; the people were confused as Russians, Serbs and Jews stayed as enemies–the latter as defined by Martin Luther.\u00a0 In came Hitler.\u00a0 God became Providence incorporating Wotan, Kaiser<\/em> became F\u00fchrer<\/em>, the court became the Party, added to army and industrialists.\u00a0 And People got steering from above, from the outside.\u00a0 The key enemies were the same, Jews, Russians, Serbs.\u00a0 The rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n

    And the Second World War destroyed all that.\u00a0 Again, the positions of God as ultimate guide and of His representative on earth were vacant.\u00a0 The former was occupied by Washington and Moscow, the latter by Adenauer and Ulbricht.\u00a0 The people, well seasoned in obedience, followed suit in two varieties of Germans divided, like the Pashtoons, by imperialists.\u00a0 For the Jews the Final Solution, for Russians terrible suffering, but in the end Nazi Germany was beaten by them.\u00a0 From the Serbs an irritating guerrilla; they got a belated beating, eagerly, in Kosovo\/a.<\/p>\n

    From Washington a new Trinity emanated: Rule of Law, Human Rights and Democracy; focused on acts of commission, not omission, individual not collective human rights, debates\/voting, not dialogue\/consensus.\u00a0 Very Western.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Muslims were almost forgotten but then Washington was hit by 9\/11.\u00a0 Unlimited solidarity with Washington became German foreign policy, defending their security at Hindukush.\u00a0 Having arrived at the new Trinity the Germans felt entitled, nay, obliged to spread that gospel to the “failed” Afghans.\u00a0 So they did.\u00a0 The rest we know.<\/p>\n

    Ladies and gentlemen, may we make a little jump ad absurdum<\/em>? A village at Hindukush has long-range weapons and has decided to defend its security in Berlin.\u00a0 Being good kantians Germans immediately recognize the Afghan right to generalize.\u00a0 Historians have identified Berlin as a major source of insecurity for others, also for Afghans.\u00a0 And their ethnologists have studied German culture and found the same Sendungsbewusstsein<\/em> in all epochs.\u00a0 Thus, Germans tried to win hearts and minds of people they conquered, like Norwegians, building roads with one hand and torturing, imprisoning, killing with the other; like in Afghanistan.\u00a0 The ambiguity communicated badly: we hate them.<\/p>\n

    The German people seem to accept almost anything, the Lord in two varieties, Kaiser I and II, F\u00fchrer, Superpowers in two varieties.\u00a0 Time has come to normalize that country as a loose cultural federation with numerous autonomous municipalities.\u00a0 And they found a delicious concept, Heimat<\/em>, the local, the organic, to build on.\u00a0 The mountains are few. And Germans are too homogeneous.\u00a0 A Norwegian has proposed a division in Wein-Katholiken, Bier-Katholiken, Bier-Protestanten<\/em>, claiming that nazism was an alliance of the latter two, with some opposition from the former.\u00a0 But the typology was found too Nordic, too alcoholic.<\/p>\n

    Am I making fun of the whole inter-cultural exercise?\u00a0 No. Like Sun Tzu I believe in knowing not only Other but also Self.\u00a0 But not on imposing Self on Other, also known as colonialism.\u00a0 Dialogue yes, exchanges yes, cloning no.\u00a0 Some will grasp what is offered, others will pretend and use it against the donor.\u00a0 As Germans forced back to a highly ambiguous Heimat<\/em> past would do.<\/p>\n

    Let Afghans be Afghans.\u00a0 Hold the Swiss model high. Let muslims help muslims.\u00a0 Stop the nonsense about running the world from Central Asia; let central Asians find their own form.\u00a0 Germany has a message, and it is Article 23, unification; by Schengen borders.\u00a0 And Martin Luther’s preface to the first printed Qur’an, in Latin, Basel 1541.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Let Afghans be Afghans. Hold the Swiss model high. Let muslims help muslims. Stop the nonsense about running the world from Central Asia; let central Asians find their own form. Germany has a message, and it is Article 23, unification; by Schengen borders. And Martin Luther’s preface to the first printed Qur’an, in Latin, Basel 1541.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}