{"id":24800,"date":"2013-01-21T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-01-21T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=24800"},"modified":"2013-01-21T12:01:05","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T12:01:05","slug":"algeria-mali-and-why-this-week-has-looked-like-an-obscene-remake-of-earlier-western-interventions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/01\/algeria-mali-and-why-this-week-has-looked-like-an-obscene-remake-of-earlier-western-interventions\/","title":{"rendered":"Algeria, Mali, and Why This Week Has Looked Like an Obscene Remake of Earlier Western Interventions"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are outraged not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps.
\n<\/i>
\n19 Jan 2013 – <\/i>Odd, isn\u2019t it, how our \u201ccollateral damage\u201d is different from their \u201ccollateral damage\u201d. Speaking yesterday to an old Algerian friend in the aviation business, I asked him what he thought of his country\u2019s raid on the In Amenas gas plant<\/a>.\u201cBrilliant operation, Robert,\u201d he shouted down the phone. \u201cWe destroyed the terrorists!\u201d But the innocent hostages? What about their deaths, I asked? \u201cPoor guys,\u201d he replied. \u201cWe had thousands of women and children killed in our war [in the 1990s] \u2013 terrible tragedy \u2013 but we are fighting terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there you have it. Our dead men didn\u2019t matter in the slightest to him. And he had a point, didn\u2019t he? For we are outraged today, not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed by the Algerian army \u2013 along with some of their captors \u2013 were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps. Had all the \u201cWestern\u201d hostages \u2013 I am including the Japanese in this ridiculous, all-purpose definition \u2013 been rescued and had the innocent dead all been Algerian, there would have been no talk yesterday of a \u201cbotched raid\u201d.<\/p>\n

If all those slaughtered in the Algerian helicopter bombing<\/a> had been Algerian, we would have mentioned the \u201ctragic consequences\u201d of the raid, but our headlines would have dwelt on the courage and efficiency of Algeria\u2019s military rescuers, alongside interviews with grateful Western families.<\/p>\n

Obscene<\/b><\/p>\n

Racism isn\u2019t the word for it. When George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara kicked off their war crimes with a full-scale invasion of Iraq, we didn\u2019t care a damn about the Iraqis.Ten thousand dead in a year? Twenty thousand? Or as George Bush said, \u201cThirty thousand, more or less.\u201d More or less what? But no problems with our precious dead. We know, for example, that since the Bush-Blair Iraqi adventure began, exactly 4,486 American military personnel died in the war.<\/p>\n

So you know whom we care about. And whom we don\u2019t care about. Watch carefully in the coming weeks, therefore, for the growing \u201cRoll of Honour\u201d of French troops in Mali, interviews in the French press with their relatives, statistics of the wounded. And don\u2019t waste your time searching for details of dead Nigerian soldiers \u2013 or, indeed, dead Malian soldiers \u2013 because there will be no details of their sacrifice.<\/p>\n

From the Middle East, the whole thing looks like an obscene television remake of our preposterous interventions in other parts of the world. French troops will be in Mali for only \u201cseveral weeks\u201d, Hollande and his cronies tell us. Isn\u2019t that what we said when British troops first appeared on the streets of Northern Ireland, and then spent decades fighting there? Isn\u2019t that what the Israelis said when they marched into Lebanon in 1982 and stayed for another 18 years? Isn\u2019t this what we thought when we invaded Afghanistan? That our chaps might not even hear a shot fired in anger?<\/p>\n

It was incredible to watch that old rogue Bernard Kouchner<\/a> this week, mischievously demanding that British troops on the ground in Mali assist in France\u2019s fight against Islamist \u201cterror\u201d. His eyes were alight with both cynicism and patriotism \u2013 a peculiarly French characteristic \u2013 as he played his 1914 entente cordiale \u201cwe\u2019ll-be-in-Timbuktu-by-Christmas\u201d routine.But why are \u201cwe\u201d, the West, in Mali? How many readers \u2013 hands up, oh virtuous and honest folk, could actually name the capital of Mali two weeks ago?<\/p>\n

I called up another friend, a French ex-legionnaire, yesterday. Why was France in Mali, I asked? \u201cWell, they say that the Islamists would have reached Bamako and there would have been a Taliban-in-Kabul situation, a state that had fallen into extremist hands. But I myself don\u2019t understand. Mali is an artificial state whose northern inhabitants, especially the Tuaregs, have always refused to be ruled by a black government in the south. It\u2019s tribal, with a veil of \u2018Islamism\u2019 over the top of it \u2013 and now how do we get ourselves out of this mess?\u201d<\/p>\n

Disdain<\/b><\/p>\n

Maybe we should ask Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the presumed \u201cmastermind\u201d \u2013 note the comic-cuts language we have to use for these vagabonds \u2013 of the Algerian raid. This is the \u201clegendary\u201d \u2013 again, note the adjective \u2013 \u201cMr Marlboro\u201d, whose interest in contraband and semtex explosive belts seems to outweigh his duties to Islam. North African journalists know a lot about Belmokhtar and his cross-border trade in cigarettes, weapons, 4x4s, drugs, diamonds and illegal migrants, and they are also appalled that Algeria \u2013 Belmokhtar\u2019s own birthplace \u2013 should now be involved in the Western crusade in Mali.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s overflights have been bitterly criticised in the Algerian press \u2013 a fact largely ignored in London where \u201cwars on terror\u201d take precedence over local Algerian opinion \u2013 as a symbol of Algerian humiliation at the hands of the country\u2019s former colonisers.<\/p>\n

But why should we care about the Algerians when they treat our dead with the disdain we have always shown<\/a> for the Muslim dead of Iraq, Afghanistan or, for that matter, Palestine? Syria, please note, is temporarily in a different category, since our desire to destroy Bashar al-Assad allows us to turn all his victims into honorary Westerners. Odd, that. For among the rebels facing the ruthless Assad are folk very similar to Mr Belmokhtar and his merry Islamists, the very men who rouse the anger of Crusader Kouchner.<\/p>\n

Do I sniff a bit of old-fashioned colonial insanity here? Carry on up the Niger? French troops battle rebels. \u201cTerrorists\u201d in retreat. Daily headlines from 1954 until 1962. In a country called Algeria. And I promise you, the French didn\u2019t win that war.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/i>correspondent for <\/i>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are outraged not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps. Odd, isn\u2019t it, how our \u201ccollateral damage\u201d is different from their \u201ccollateral damage\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24800","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=24800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}