The Broken Rifle

Who is threatening who?

Andrew — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 09:47:00 +0000

Members of the French military on parade. Photo: Hugo Delauney via UnSplash

28 Apr 2025

Author(s)

Patrice Bouveret

This article was originally published in a special issue on Civilian Based Defence, issue 213 (December 2024), of the journal Alternatives Non-Violentes. Translation by Marc Morgan.

What should we name as “threats”? What criteria should we use to analyse threats? How do we come to perceive something as threatening? How can we decipher language aimed at public opinion concerning real risks? Many questions confront anyone seeking to draw up an inventory of threats.

Threats are a social construct before becoming a reality. According to the dictionary, a threat is a “type of behaviour, an attitude, by which one shows a person or a group of people that one intends to harm them, to hurt them, in short to force them to act against their will”. Accordingly, threats seem to come from some “other person” considered an "enemy", who would like to take what we have by constraint or by force.

This means that to understand a threat, we need to first identify who it is that is making a threat - and whom they are threatening - in order to avoid being drawn into and trapped by a perception and narratives defined by others. Furthermore, threats cannot be analysed solely as prefiguring their presumed consequences. They must be seen within a long-term context, and the chain of events that led to the situation must be deconstructed in order to act on ultimate causes of threats, if our objective is to defuse them. Otherwise, we risk being sucked into a logic of escalation whose outcome is well known: a surge of violence and generalised warfare.

In short, threat is one of those catch-all words that, by focusing on fear, allows us to postpone any analysis of our responsibilities, and to avoid acting to prevent threats from materialising. The interaction between the complex elements of a situation is also very often ignored. Each threat is examined in its own terms, and not in its relationship with other threats. By being used excessively and in the most varied contexts, this overused word is emptied of meaning.

France: the target or the source of threats?

There is a significant gap between the perception of a threat by public opinion, the reality of the risk incurred, and the response of those who govern. This is the case with regards to the military threat at the heart of the themes covered in ANV’s special issue.

This is especially the case since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Russian troops, accompanied by the nuclear threat by President Putin, revived the fear of a war in Europe. A "change of era" for many commentators, such as to justify an increase in budgets and the maintenance of the logic of nuclear deterrence. Many media outlets have made this a front page theme since the invasion, and gone so far as to ask "Are we ready for war?" The only prospect held out for the future is the continued strengthening of France's military apparatus and the militarization of society.

This resulted in the elaboration of a new National Strategic Review at the end of 2022. Unlike previous similar exercises which were based on the work of a duly appointed commission, involving the holding of hearings, this review was conducted directly by staff internal to the Élysée and the Armed Forces Ministry. This document provides an overview of present threats and risks for France, and sets out the main features of military policy for the years to come. It places nuclear weapons at the heart of the system, even describing them as the "backbone of our security" and explicitly designates Russia and China as two states posing a specific threat to France. It serves as the basis for the elaboration of the Military Programming Laws (LPM). Additionally, in the spring of 2023, the government submitted to parliamentarians a new Military Programming Law covering the years 2024 to 2030, which provides for a significant increase in military spending. In doing so, it fuels the threat of war, and this strong contribution to the arms race is achieved to the detriment of the development of public services and the satisfaction of social needs. Not to mention that this militaristic vision of society comes from a minority - albeit one adorned with the democratic veneer of a parliamentary vote - and not from a genuine democratic debate.

Our military forces are always presented as serving the defence of France and peace but, like Janus, they have two faces - it all depends on which side we are on. What is presented as “defensive” can be perceived as aggressive by others... Remember: for several years now we have witnessed a gradual disappearance of the boundaries between threats that come from “within” and those from “without”. This dematerialization of borders, against a backdrop of globalization, reinforces the unpredictability of the source and origin of threats.

Nuclear weapons provide a stand-out example with which to explain this paradox. The strategy of nuclear deterrence, the aim of which is to promote peace and prevent any attack on “vital interests”, is specifically based on the exercise of threats against the other, the threat of disproportionate retaliation. This includes the use — according to French nuclear strategy — of a nuclear bomb first as a “final warning” to re-establish deterrence, in the event that that “other” might have any doubt as to France’s true intentions. If nuclear weapons and the strategy of nuclear deterrence played “a fundamental role in the preservation of peace and international security” as President Macron has asserted, following in his predecessors’ footsteps, all it would take would be for every country to have a few nuclear weapons of its own, and there would be no more wars in the world. It is easy to measure the absurdity of such reasoning and the danger that it would pose to humanity.

Likewise, by becoming the second largest arms exporter in the world, France contributes significantly to fuelling the arms race and participates - through the use of its weapons, munitions or components - in many conflicts in different countries. In recent years, the war in Yemen has brought back into the limelight France's responsibility with regards to the use of the weapons it sells, highlighted in particular by several studies published by the Observatoire des Armaments, concerning the war waged by Russia against Ukraine or that of Israel against Hamas.

It was during the presentation of this strategic review on November 9, 2022, that President Macron explained that France must "put itself in a war economy posture". He also expressed his wish to strengthen our moral fibre, in particular with the strengthening of the SNU, the Service National Universel, in order "to bring together all France’s vital forces, both military and civilian, for the defence of our sovereignty.".

All of which is contrary to the commitments made in favour of strengthening the values of peace regularly reaffirmed by France within the United Nations as a permanent member of the Security Council. Indeed, the UN Charter clearly states in its Article 26: " In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee referred to in Article 47, plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments." We are a far cry from that.

And what if the main threats are not military?

France favours a top-down approach to the analysis of threats based on the security objectives defined by state authorities, such as protecting the country’s territory and strengthening infrastructure to ensure it can continue to function. It does not factor into this analysis the fears and needs expressed by the population, non-state actors, social groups or civil society organizations, nor does it involve them.

This leads to a significant gap between the population's perception of threats and the State's response to them, whether in terms of security or in various other areas (migration, the risk of terrorism, climate threats, etc.), based on what turns out to be an illusion, the priority given to the development of technologies to respond to security risks. Indeed, this technological race - as robotization and AI, artificial intelligence, underline, is on the contrary a factor in new risks, all the more so if we do not adopt a structural point of view, that of the State, but the viewpoint of society or groups of individuals.

The most obvious example is the universalization of computing as the dominant tool for managing societies and our individual lives. The accumulation and storage of digital data – in addition to being a major consumer of energy – also represents a vulnerability in terms of the security of this data, its hacking, etc., thus creating new security threats in a kind of dialectic – already present at the military level – between the sword and the shield.

In fact, in this national narrative, widely disseminated by the dominant media, the use of threats serves as cement to unite the population around the government, which is more or less effective, depending on the period. Threats are given heightened coverage to mask non-consensual, minority political orientation choices favouring an economic logic based on the accumulation of ever more wealth and the reinforcement of inequalities, and such inequalities themselves are the causes of wars. The rhetoric of threats serves as a kind of easy scapegoat, used to avoid a collective debate about the structural causes of the successive crises that our societies are experiencing, and to develop responses to face them. Whether on an internal or external level.

France is not the imaginary country respectful of humanist values in which we all live in harmony, and that we have to defend against an invader. This is an illusion that underpins the idea that there are on the one hand two distinct times in the life of a society - that of peace and that of war - and, on the other hand, also two distinct spaces: interior and exterior.

The reality is quite different. Our society lives in permanent conflict - both internally between different groups with divergent interests, as well as externally in its relations with other countries – a conflict in which we are permanently acting and reacting, in search of a balance between ourselves and others, oscillating between "hell is other people" and "our worst enemy is ourselves"...

Because isn’t defending one’s territory what we already do every day the campaigning commitments which we take on? Isn’t that the dynamic force that we need to amplify and to share as widely as possible? Because it is through actions and collective organising that we will build a “living together”. Isn't the threat to such "living together" in fact the greatest of threats?

L’Observatoire des armements (Armaments observatory)

Although the logic of war continues to shape our societies and relentlessly impact our lives and the planet, the Observatoire des Armements has continued, ever since 1984, to work tirelessly to disarm minds and countries. It publishes the Damoclès magazine, in paper and digital editions, as well as articles and investigative pieces that are an important and reliable source for journalists and the media.

See website https://www.obsarm.info/

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Patrice Bouveret is co-founder and director of the Observatoire des armements (Armaments Observatory), an independent centre of expertise created in Lyon in 1984. He is also responsible for the publications of the Observatoire des armements, including the Damoclès review; he is the author of numerous contributions, including « Le nucléaire comme catastrophe : sortir du déni » (“Nuclear as a catastrophe: an end to denial”), in Catastrophe(s) : parlons-en ! Approche pluridisciplinaire des catastrophes de Hiroshima au Covid-19, directed by Patrick Dieuaide and Claire Garnier-Tardieu, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022, 206 pages.

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Resilience in times of war: how WRI members in Sudan are sustaining their work for peace

Andrew — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 09:09:00 +0000

Map sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC0 - Public Domain

11 Apr 2025

Author(s)

Andrew Metheven

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

I recently had the privilege of speaking to Mamoun, a Sudanese activist and organiser involved in conflict monitoring and peacebuilding efforts across Sudan. Like everyone living in Sudan in recent years, Mamoun’s life and work has been deeply impacted by the ongoing civil war that has raged across the country since April 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Throughout our conversation it was clear that its impossible to understand what Mamoun is experiencing without some understanding and knowledge of Sudan’s recent history and the wider conflict, so before sharing some of Mamoun’s story I will give a brief outline of what has occurred in Sudan in recent years.

Background

In 2019 a popular uprising in Sudan led to the overthrow of then-dictator Omar al-Bashir, who took power in 1989 and has been accused of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. The protests led to Bashir being arrested by the Sudanese military in a coup led by members of the military, who dissolved the government. Sudan was led by a joint civilian-military government for two years, but in 2021 Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – the leader of the SAF – took over the country.

The RSF is a paramilitary group formed in 2013, and has its roots in the Janjaweed militias responsible for horrific violence in Darfur. The Janjaweed were used by the Sudanese military and Omar al-Bashir as a counter-insurgency force against anti-government rebel groups in Darfur, and were accused of genocide. One driver of the more recent conflict has been attempts to assimilate the RSF into the SAF, with leaders of both military groups refusing to relinquish control – the failure of talks has led to a “showdown” between the two armed groups, which began on 15th April 2023 with violence breaking out in Khartoum, the capital, before spreading across the country.

The conflict has had a collosal impact on people across Sudan – it has been described as the “world’s most severe humanitarian catastrophe”. More than 14 million people have been displaced, and there are multiple reports of mass atrocities across the country perpetrated by both the RSF and the SAF, and attacks have destroyed hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. Even as I write there are new reports of civilian casualties, with the military accused of killing hundreds of people in an air strike on a market in Darfur. However, it can also feel like the situation in Sudan has received relatively little attention from both the peace movement, or in more “mainstream” political spaces.

War Resisters’ International has maintained strong connections with activists in Sudan and South Sudan, and we want to share some of the story of what our members have experienced over the last few years. Despite the fear and violence they have remained active and organised, supporting each other and working with other networks in Sudan to monitor the conflict and share information of the shocking impact on civilians.

Mamoun's experience

When the conflict began, Mamoun and his colleagues in SONAD – the Sudanese Organisation for Nonviolence and Development - were based in Khartoum, where they had an office and ran various projects focused on nonviolence and peacebuilding. Since the revolution and coup in 2019 they had been involved in collecting data about the revolution, deepening understanding of how the nonviolence movement worked, and meeting and helping people who were victims of human rights abuses.

Even before the most recent escalation the groups members didn't feel safe - the goverment wasn't democratic and the work they were doing wasn't welcome. Mamoun told me that the organisation was “training young people, political parties, students, all in nonviolence and human rights. The previous government that was removed in the September revolutions didn't like the work of the NGOs but they couldn't stop it becasue they were afraid of the interational community and the UN. But they didn't welcome our work so we weren't completely safe.”

Religion and ethnicity is deeply interwoven into conflicts in Sudan, and SONAD sets itself apart by working with people from all religious communities, bringing together Christians, Muslims, non-believers and followers of traditional animist religions. This in itself made SONAD unpopular with the government, which under Bashir had introduced Sharia law in Sudan; Mamoun explained that some elements of the government and military still believe that Sudan should be an islamic country, and that “South Sudan is for the Christians”.

When the SAF and RSF started fighting, Mamoun didn’t immediately leave Khartoum, but it was no longer safe to go to the organisation’s office, where they stored their equipment and documents, and ran events and projects. Some members of the group left to other areas of Sudan immediately, or travelled to other countries, and the focus of the group’s work rapidly shifted to monitoring the conflict. They began working alongside other civil society groups in Sudan, under the umbrella of the Youth Civic Observation Network (YCON), which has been responsible for collecting data about the war. Mamoun and SONAD have been responsible for collecting data in Khartoum, where – despite significant risks – they are working to monitor crimes and collect data on the impact of violence by both warring parties. You can find YCON’s website and reports here: https://www.ycon-sudan.org/

Eventually Mamoun left Khartoum as well, but continues to travel to support the work of his organisation across the country, which continues to face the fear of arrest and violence: “Since the start of the war a lot of our members have been arrested by both parties of the war, because collecting information is seen as very serious. We have three or four members who were arrested but released after several weeks and months... When they arrest any of our members it is very difficult for us to do anything because they can also target us. Our organisation doesn't exist in a specific place so they are looking for the rest of the members, but they can't find us because we are separated across Khartoum and Sudan. We are able to communicate across the different areas, though sometimes there is no internet, electricity, or the phone lines go down. Sometimes the security situation means people don't feel safe picking up the phone and talking to each other.”

It was hard to believe the resilience that Mamoun and his colleagues have shown, managing to sustain their organisation in the face of enormous challenges. At times it reminded me of the sense of crisis when the covid-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the world, and our organisations had to find new ways to communicate in a changing world. But throughout our conversation there was a sense that Mamoun didn’t feel he was doing the work he should be – he explained that before the war they “mobilised communities against the war and for nonviolence, advocating for democratic solutions to conflict.” and the Sudanese civil society networks SONAD is part of are being impacted by the massive cuts the Trump administration has made to USAID.

Despite these challenges, Mamoun is already thinking about the work of SONAD after the war and the role they can play as one of the few organisations in Sudan advocating for nonviolence: “So many people are being traumatised, killed, raped - so many people are militarised. The impact will be felt for a long period of time, so our work as SONAD will be to teach nonviolence and help the traumatised people, and to advise people who have been impacted by the war. When the war is over we will have to regather SONAD. The economic impact of the war has been very big - lots of people lost everything - their jobs, their homes. Especially in the conflict areas, everyone has lost someone.”

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Turkey shouts against authoritarianism: "all together or none of us!"

Andrew — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 10:26:00 +0000

Protestors Demonstrating outside of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality building. Photo: CC4.0 Wikipedia

04 Apr 2025

Author(s)

Merve A

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

For the last few weeks Turkey has been experiencing one of the most significant and widespread socio-political upheavals in recent years. The detention of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, on 19th March triggered an outpouring of anger in Turkey against the government, President Erdoğan and the discomfort caused by the ongoing socio-political-economic crisis. After Imamoğlu was arrested and sent to prison on 23rd March, the protests turned into a street mobilisation not seen in Turkey for a long time.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul, was seen as Erdoğan's strongest rival in the upcoming presidential elections and “the next President of Turkey”. For some time now Erdoğan has attempted to“block” his political rival. First, İmamoğlu's university diploma was unlawfully cancelled to prevent him from running for president in the next elections. Then he was detained within the scope of 'corruption' and 'aiding terrorism' investigations - the 'corruption' investigation eventually led to his imprisonment. This process turned into a clear demonstration of Erdoğan's “fear” of his potential rival.

The common discourse of the protests: Erdoğan's resignation

Since 19th March, the protests across Turkey have gone beyond condemning the attacks and repression against İmamoğlu. The anger on the streets has converged around discontent with the social-political-economic crisis in Turkey, distrust of the government and a reaction to Erdoğan himself. The main discourse and demand of the protests is now the resignation of Erdoğan and the government.

From the very beginning of the protests, it was a big question as to how this street mobilisation would evolve. This is because, especially in the aftermath of the 2013 Gezi park protests (when protests against the gentrification plan for Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul spread across the country and turned into a social movement against authoritarianism) we have witnessed an ever-increasing crackdown on civil society and human rights organisations in Turkey. Since the Gezi park protests, social opposition had been greatly weakened and the street as a space for action was restricted and often even banned. The weakness of the social opposition has made it difficult to understand and analyse what this process and street mobilisation will evolve into. Since İmamoğlu's detention, “protest bans” have been introduced, first in Istanbul and then in other cities. Official statements made by the government said that “provocation” would not be allowed on the streets. However, the ongoing mobilisation on the streets has clearly shown that these bans were not recognized by the public in Turkey.

In big cities like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, large mass protests were organised but we have also witnessed similar actions in many other cities across Turkey, in a way we have not experienced before. Street protests, university student boycotts, education unions joining the university student boycotts, calls for economic boycott by the main opposition party, and a nationwide call for boycott...

Criminalisation of the street protests, increased use of force and lawlessness

In almost all of the protests we have seen the same reaction from the authorities: Police brutality, the use of force against protesters, detentions and arrests and so on... The mobilisation on the streets is facing increasing police brutality and state repression every day. On a daily basis the homes of people involved in the protests are raided by the police in the early morning hours. University students - who make up the bulk of the masses on the streets - are often the targets of these operations, alongside journalists who are trying to document the events.

According to the Interior Minister, as of March 26, more than 1800 people were detained during the protests and more than 250 were arrested, but since that official statement was made, the number of detentions and arrests has continued to increase. The protests have been met with unlawful use of force by the police, with people beaten with batons and kicked while on the ground. Police have indiscriminately used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons against protesters, causing numerous injuries. Some of the detained protesters reported being subjected to ill-treatment and torture in detention. Some detained women reported physical abuse and sexual harassment by police officers.

Profile of protesters and future of protests

According to a survey, 70.2 percent of the participants in the protests are between the ages of 18-24; and 55.3 percent are college or university students. According to the same survey, most of the young people who participated in the protests see a dark future if Erdoğan and his AKP party continue to rule Turkey.

This anxiety expressed by young people on the streets is reflected in the slogans chanted during the protests, their banners, as well as in interviews circulated on social media. It is clear that the anger and frustration of a generation who spent their childhood and early youth in Erdoğan's power, who were condemned to live in the wreckage of the social-political-economic devastation, and who “no longer see a future in this country” is one of the main mobilising forces on the streets.

On the other hand, the attitude of some young people on the streets from the generation who spent their childhood in a period when social opposition was weakened and activism was criminalised raises some questions.

In addition to the revolutionary groups participating in the protests, some of the groups masses come from Kemalist/nationalist backgrounds. Racist groups are also active in some protests, and anti-Kurdish discourses have also been present. In addition, there are also examples of discriminatory discourses against women and LGBTI people, which is why it is very important to analyse the streets, recognize discriminative discourses and try to stand against them. It is clear that the social forces in the opposition, who have been significantly weakened by years of state repression, have a lot to learn from each other.

Where are the Kurds?

While Turkey is experiencing the biggest street mobilisation in recent years, Kurdish people remain the most vulnerable subject of this process. While some in the opposition say that the DEM Party (a Kurdish party with legal representation in the Turkish parliament) has remained “passive” because of the current peace process between the PKK and the Turkish government, some of the protesters are united around racist and fascist discourses. Although Kurds were subjected to similar criticism during Gezi due to the “peace process” with the government back then, they were not subjected to racist and fascist discourses and targeting as intensely as they are now.

After the appointment of trustees to some CHP (the Republican People’s Party) municipalities in recent months the main opposition party described the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu as a “political coup”, while its attitude towards the “trustee policy” that has been in place over the past years was also sometimes questioned and criticised. Over the past years, the frequent seizure of municipalities in Kurdish provinces and the dismissal and replacement of DEM Party mayors with government-appointed trustees had become a policy.

Even though CHP as the main opposition party “condemned” the repeated exposure of DEM Party municipalities to the practices what they now define as “political coup”, no strong opposition was organised against the government's trustee policy during these periods. This lack of strong and organised opposition prepared the environment for the government to change the target of its trustee policy, first towards smaller CHP municipalities and finally towards Ekrem İmamoğlu, Mayor of Istanbul.

While the DEM Party is currently being accused of “supporting authoritarianism” due to the ongoing dialogue process with the government, it is trying to conduct politics on a fine line. While criticising the anti-democratic practices, police brutality against protesters and state repression, the DEM Party is also trying to manage the “peace and democratic society” process, which is very fragile, while taking part in the protests.

What awaits us in the process?

During the Gezi protests in 2013, the most common slogan we shouted on the streets and the common phrase that excited us was “This is just the beginning, keep fighting”. The process that began on March 19 is actually a new beginning for us: The beginning of a social opposition against the state oppression that has been increasing for decades, against the gradual restriction of human rights and freedoms, against police violence, against the and against the fear of getting organized and against authoritarianism.

The period we are going through in Turkey is very fragile, complex and dynamic. It is uncertain if the mass street mobilisation will continue and the roadmap of the social opposition is vague. However, one thing is clear: people are finding the courage to rebel against the social-political-economic crisis we are trapped in a way that is new and exciting.

The politcal order that Erdoğan has built throughout his 20+ years in power has now turned into a huge ruin. Increasing unhappiness, insecurity and uncertainty have united different layers of society around one common idea: the need for change and the belief in being able to change.

The street, a space for action that had been lost for decades in Turkey, was regained when this process that started on 19th March. Many people who had been afraid of politics and the street, or who had been intimidated or isolated, regained the ability to go out on the street and take part in political activity.

Different social dynamics united against a “systematic injustice” felt the power to change. We know that the road we have to walk is long and sometimes uncertain. But this time, we are uniting around a different slogan: “There is no salvation alone, either all together or none of us!”

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What the US can learn from South Koreans who stopped an authoritarian power-grab

Andrew — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 10:38:00 +0000

24 Feb 2025

Author(s)

Jungmin Choi

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence.

As Elon Musk and his DOGE team set about dismantling government agencies, many Americans expected a strong response from Congressional Democrats. Instead, party leaders offered weak statements and little resistance to being refused entry to the very agencies they are tasked with overseeing.

This lack of urgency amid what’s being called an administrative coup stoked a wave of angry calls to “do more.” In their outrage on social media, many pointed to decisive action taken by politicians in other countries facing crisis. For example, someone on BlueSky noted that “South Korean politicians were literally scaling fences to protect their government,” while “our senators are sending out pre-scheduled tweets about the Super Bowl.”

South Korea is a particularly apt example in this context. After all, something incredible happened there two months ago, and it could be just the kind of inspiration Americans need to turn the tide on the Trump administration’s dangerous power-grab.

On Dec. 3, at 10:23 p.m., South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol unexpectedly declared nationwide martial law, citing the need to eliminate pro-North Korean elements and anti-state forces. He then established martial law command, mobilized troops and stripped citizens of their fundamental political and social rights. This included prohibiting all political activities by the National Assembly and political parties, control over all press and publication freedoms, a ban on strikes, slowdowns and assemblies, and the ability to arrest and detain anyone without judicial procedures or warrants.

The last time martial law was declared in South Korea was in 1979, following the assassination of then-President Park Chung-hee. However, what happened in December would be considered a self-coup — where an incumbent president takes actions to acquire or demand greater power while in office — and no South Korean president has done that since October 1972.

The martial law situation came to an abrupt end when the National Assembly passed a resolution demanding its withdrawal on Dec. 4 at 1:01 a.m. In response, martial law forces gradually withdrew from the National Assembly building. The Presidential Office announced the lifting of martial law at 4:26 a.m., and it was formally rescinded through a cabinet council resolution four minutes later, effectively terminating the entire episode within about six hours.

Subsequently, a nationwide movement demanding both the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s resignation and comprehensive social reform was initiated. President Yoon is currently under detention and indictment while simultaneously facing impeachment proceedings. Many high-ranking officials from the Yoon administration have either resigned or been impeached, and numerous general-grade officers involved in the incident have been detained.

There were many reasons that the self-coup failed, including command confusion due to the extremely small number of personnel involved in planning the attempt. However, none of these factors could have halted the coup without civilian action. Here are four key lessons from this movement that contributed to their victory.

1. Take action commensurate with the threat and move quickly

The South Korean Constitution explicitly states that when the majority of the National Assembly request that martial law be lifted the president must comply. After martial law was declared, civil society activists shared information about the police blockade of the National Assembly and the possibility of MPs being arrested, calling for people to gather at the Assembly.

As activists arrived, they began livestreaming the situation outside the assembly via social media. The opposition leader also initiated a livestream from his car while heading to the assembly, appealing to supporters to gather. Over 16,000 people assembled outside the assembly that night. They arrived before the martial law forces’ armored vehicles and helicopters, helping MPs scale the walls of the blockaded assembly building. Those who arrived by taxi reported that drivers didn’t accept the fare.

Elderly citizens stated they came thinking that they have lived long enough, and should take bullets instead of the young if the military opened fire. Young people reported standing in front of tanks with their bare hands, thinking that they wouldn’t actually shoot. They stood against armored vehicles and buses carrying martial law troops with nothing but their bodies, while recording and transmitting footage in real-time through social media. Most citizens who rushed to the assembly had no knowledge of nonviolent direct action or nonviolence training, yet instinctively grasped what was most crucial.

MPs weren’t the only ones scaling the assembly walls that night. Parliamentary aides and staffers also climbed over with citizens’ assistance. While citizens outside surrounded and blocked tanks, armored vehicles and buses, helicopters landed inside the assembly grounds. Parliamentary aides defended the main assembly building, constructing barricades with furniture at the entrances and using fire extinguishers to repel martial law forces who broke through windows. Assembly staffers prioritized protecting the generator, since modern parliamentary voting requires electricity.

Ultimately, the martial law troops failed to occupy the main parliamentary chamber due to the resistance mounted by citizens, parliamentary security personnel and legislative staff, including lawmakers’ aides.

2. Encourage defections from security forces

A common testimony from citizens who confronted martial law forces that night was their open or subtle resistance to the coup attempt. They didn’t forcefully enter the National Assembly by actively repelling citizens gathered in front of the parliament and didn’t forcibly remove resisting aides from the assembly building. When they were ordered to seize the servers of the National Election Commission, they delayed by eating instant noodles at a nearby convenience store. And when the president’s arrest warrant was executed, Presidential Security Service officers either took leave or remained in standby areas, disobeying the Security Service chief’s orders, leading to the president’s arrest.

There are many reasons that they acted this way. It partly stemmed from the military command’s secretive preparation and execution of the coup. The martial law troops reportedly did not know their destination until moments before boarding military helicopters, and none received proper briefings. The new generation of military personnel, raised after procedural democracy began taking root, also possesses more civic consciousness than their predecessors. They were capable of independently assessing that the situation by no means warranted martial law, and thus would have been less receptive to orders to mobilize force to stabilize social order under such circumstances.

Ordinary citizens also actively encouraged soldiers to defect or not follow unlawful orders. Until the assembly passed the martial law termination, civil society organizations repeatedly issued statements appealing for disobedience from martial law forces. Citizens outside the assembly physically blocked martial law troops attempting to enter, tearfully appealing for disobedience with pleas to stop. They were urged to not commit crimes against the people by following unlawful orders. There were some citizens who were former special forces veterans, and they appealed for restraint by emphasizing their shared unit background. And lawyers’ group even distributed templates to the Security Service for them to justify refusing unjust orders.

3. Beware of the next martial law

Although the National Assembly passed a resolution demanding the lifting of martial law, it took approximately four hours until the president actually lifted it. During this time, people maintained their position in front of the National Assembly, preparing for the possibility that the president might reject the assembly’s demand. According to a government investigation that followed, President Yoon allegedly issued directives to “enter the National Assembly main chamber by force, including the use of firearms if necessary, to remove the members.” Furthermore, it was revealed that he instructed the military to “continue with the operation regardless of the martial law being lifted, as it could be declared two or three more times if needed.”

While the first coup attempt ended in failure after six hours, citizens remained anxious about the coup forces continuing to occupy key government positions. As soon as dawn broke on Dec. 4, civil society organizations across the country began issuing statements and holding press conferences throughout the day, demanding the president’s arrest, resignation and parliamentary impeachment.

The opposition party announced their intention to file criminal complaints against the president and the minister of defense for insurrection and to pursue impeachment. The secretary general of the National Assembly issued measures completely prohibiting the entry of Defense Ministry staff and police officers into the assembly building. Many opposition members of parliament, including the assembly speaker, stayed within the parliament building for about a week rather than returning home or to an official residence, preparing for contingencies such as abduction.

Civil society organizations held large-scale daily protests in front of the National Assembly to protect the parliamentarians while simultaneously pressuring the assembly to swiftly pass the presidential impeachment motion. On Dec. 14, as the National Assembly passed the impeachment motion, over a million people turned out for the mass demonstration. They shifted from the National Assembly to the vicinity of the presidential residence and the Constitutional Court, continuing to demand the president’s arrest and urging the Constitutional Court to expedite its impeachment deliberations.

4. Create festive, diverse forms of resistance

As large-scale demonstrations continued daily in front of the National Assembly, organizing the crowds became the primary consideration. Notably, light sticks emerged as a new symbol of mass protest, replacing the traditional candlelight. While candlelight maintains a somewhat solemn atmosphere, light stick at the protests created an ambiance reminiscent of K-pop concerts, where they are often used by fans to cheer for their favorite idols. They created remarkable synergy at the protests when combined with hit songs that were sung as protest chants. (When the Jeju Air accident claimed 179 lives in late December, light sticks were temporarily replaced with candles as a gesture of mourning.)

This played a crucial role in attracting younger generations, who comprise the K-pop idol fanbase, to the rallies. Another characteristic feature of South Korean mass protests — food sharing — evolved significantly, with participants pre-paying for dozens or hundreds of cups of coffee, beverages, various snacks and meals at nearby cafes and restaurants, or sending coffee and snack trucks to protest sites. The rallies were basically structured like festivals, featuring various musicians and artists. Speeches were limited to two minutes each, with pre-registered free speech sessions, ensuring that participants had an opportunity to share their perspectives with the crowd.

Many other groups participated. Unions for metal workers, railway workers and transport workers went on strike and held demonstrations at local ruling party offices and the offices of parliamentarians who refused to cooperate with the impeachment motion. History teachers created and distributed educational materials as teaching resources. The 34-page PowerPoint presentation distributed online was structured in four sections: the nature of martial law, historical cases of martial law in South Korea, problematic aspects of the Dec. 3 martial law declaration, and the creation of slogans for protests and collective actions. It was designed for immediate classroom implementation. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions developed a website facilitating easy transmission of text messages to anti-impeachment parliamentarians, effectively rendering their mobile phones unusable due to the overwhelming volume of incoming messages.

Following the failure of this six-hour attempted self-coup, South Korean social movement organizations initially concentrated their efforts on pursuing presidential impeachment through the National Assembly, followed by demands for the president’s arrest. Currently, they are campaigning for the Constitutional Court to deliver a final verdict for the president’s dismissal. To this end, on Dec. 11, an umbrella organization called Emergency Action for Yoon Out and Social Reform was established by some 1,550 civil society groups.

South Korean social movements, drawing from their experience of successfully impeaching President Park Geun-hye just eight years ago, shared the assessment that their previous achievement was limited to merely shifting political power from conservatives to liberals. Therefore, this new umbrella organization set its objectives beyond the immediate resignation of the president. It’s aiming to establish the Seventh Republic of Korea that would achieve comprehensive social reforms through public discourse.

To achieve this, Emergency Action is conducting large-scale weekend demonstrations in front of the Constitutional Court while simultaneously operating 11 subcommittees composed of member organizations to design visions for social reform, develop reform proposals through deliberative processes and gather public opinion through discussions.

It is worth noting the role of the opposition party during the self-coup attempt. Parliamentary members who had military and National Intelligence Service backgrounds, and were previously considered conservative within the opposition party, played crucial roles. These members had easier access to internal information due to their existing networks. They had carefully observed the widespread appointment of the president’s private associates to key positions in the military and executive branch since the fall of 2024, interpreting these moves as preparations for declaring martial law.

Their intelligence capabilities enabled the opposition party to prepare for the possibility of martial law. In September, they had already proposed amendments to strengthen the requirements for declaring martial law. Moreover, opposition lawmakers had already agreed to gather at the National Assembly if necessary, which enabled them to move swiftly on the day martial law was declared and pass a resolution to lift it.

In South Korea, the prevention of a self-coup — which could have easily succeeded given the mobilization of martial law forces — was achieved through swift action based on identifying methods to lift martial law within the existing system. Had the coup succeeded that day, reversing the subsequent dictatorial situation would have been far more challenging.

The dangers of the moment are still real. Since the president’s arrest on Jan. 26, the situation has grown more complex with signs of far-right mobilization. South Korea has entered a prolonged struggle to strengthen its imperfect democracy, but its example should provide inspiration to all, including Americans, even as South Koreans work to defend and expand upon their recent victory.

Author information

Jungmin Choi is a campaigner at World Without War, a South Korean antimilitarist organization based in Seoul that supports conscientious objectors and takes action against the arms trade.

Programmes & Projects

Front Page The Broken Rifle

Countries

United States of America Korea, South

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La militarización en México: Continuidad y expansión en el uso de las Fuerzas Armadas

Natalia — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:57:00 +0000

Military parade on Mexico's Independence Day - 2015. License: CC BY 2.0, available on Flickr.

21 Feb 2025

Author(s)

Mario Andrés Hurtado Cardozo

Translated by

Florina Tufescu (EN)

Far from representing the agenda of a single party or ideological constellation, Mexico’s militarisation over the last few years is part of a phenomenon that has constantly developed over decades, unimpeded by the succession of governments of different political shades and orientations. It was greatly consolidated by the previous government, under the leadership of former president Manuel López Obrador. Despite having promised to send the army back to the barracks, he increased its participation in public safety tasks as well as in sectors previously considered beyond its remit and in which it has continued to act during the presidential mandate of Claudia Sheinbaum, such as health, infrastructure and the airline industry.

The expansion of military control

Militarisation is not a recent phenomenon in Mexico but a continuously unfolding process of the last decades, regardless of the party in power. Although the democratic transition at the end of the twentieth century enabled greater political pluralism, the army’s involvement in civil and public safety issues never disappeared completely. In fact, during Felipe Calderón’s presidency (2006-2012), the ‘war on drugs’ entailed the active participation of the armed forces in public safety tasks, which led to the significant growth of criminal cells and of violence at the national level.

The government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) subsequently promised to tackle the crisis with different strategies, yet these promises proved hollow. Instead of strategy changes, the president strengthened militarisation, creating the breeding ground for very severe human rights violations. He even supported the reformulation of laws enabling the armed forces to act in various roles that had previously been the exclusive prerogative of civil security. Under Peña Nieto, the army’s role in public safety was expanded.

The previous government of López Obrador maintained and deepened this tendency and implemented measures that further amplified the presence of the military in Mexicans’ daily lives. The creation of the National Guard, for example, was promoted as a public safety strategy, yet with a clear military component. Albeit presented as a civil security force, the National Guard has in practice always been under the control and command of the armed forces, as finally confirmed by the reform of September 2024, which formally incorporated it into the army, thus illustrating the continued militarisation of the country.

Beyond security proper, the armed forces have extended their influence into other areas of Mexican social and economic life. At the level of infrastructure, the army has been in charge of the construction of important projects like the airport of Santa Lucía and the Tren Maya railway, two flagship initiatives of the current governing party. In the health sector, the army has played a dominant role in the distribution of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and the running of hospitals and medical services. This expansion of military labour into civil sectors has generated a debate on the effectiveness of these policies and on the risk of consolidating military control over key aspects of Mexican society.

A decades-long project

Mexico’s militarisation is neither an isolated phenomenon nor restricted to a single administration but a long-term project that has gained more relevance and visibility over the last two decades. Transcending changes of government, it has been driven by right-wing as well as left-wing administrations. In this sense, militarisation has become a transversal theme corresponding to a model of security and social control which has been supported by different political actors and whose implications go beyond a specific political agenda.

It is important to realise that the militarisation process is not limited to public safety policies. Over the years, the armed forces have become involved in a rising number of tasks, which include the management of natural resources, the distribution of humanitarian aid and the implementation of social control policies. This has led to a growing sense of the strengthening of military values in different areas of the social and community life of Mexico, such as nationalism and sexism among others. Thus, what started as the military’s intervention in public safety has evolved into expanded control over various social areas, even while the security strategy has proved ineffective in the fight against organised crime and even more so in achieving pacification.

Human Rights impact

One of the most concerning aspects of the militarisation process has been its impact on human rights. The army’s involvement in public security tasks has been followed by numerous denunciations of human rights violations, ranging from abuses of power to crimes against humanity. An alarming number of cases of violence, torture, forced displacement, violence against human rights defenders and journalists, forced disappearances and gender-based violence, perpetrated by members of the army and of the National Guard, have been documented over the last few years, with many of these affecting indigenous peoples and communities.

The actions of the armed forces have been particularly controversial, for example, in the migration context. The border security policies implemented by the government of Peña Nieto as well as of López Obrador and now of Claudia Sheinbaum, under pressure from the United States, have led to greater military deployment and control of migratory flows, resulting in serious violations of migrants’ rights encompassing arbitrary detention, physical violence and sexual abuse. As recently as 5 February 2025, Sheinbaum and Trump agreed on the deployment of 10 000 National Guard troops at the northern border. The presence of the military at the borders has contributed to an atmosphere of hostility against migrants, who have been subjected to various forms of abuse and discrimination.

Furthermore, the involvement of the armed forces in social control tasks has had a direct impact on civil society, in particular in the context of protests and social mobilising. The army, together with other security forces, has been involved in the suppression of student, trade union and social protests, with emblematic instances of violence like those of Tlatelolco (1968), Acteal (1997), Atenco (2006), Ayotzinapa (2014) and Nochixtlán (2016). The military response to the protests and the lack of accountability for these abuses is one of the main factors behind the erosion of trust in the institutions responsible for the protection of human rights.

The case of Ayotzinapa in 2014 in particular continues to be one of the most representative of the militarisation of Mexico since the participation of military personnel in the disappearance of 43 students is a clear example of the impunity that surrounds human rights violations commited by the armed forces. This 10-year old case and other instances of violence and repression remain unpunished, highlighting the absence of effective mechanisms of civilian control and accountability of military personnel.

The executive order recently issued by the US president, which designates drug cartels as terrorist organisations, has opened up the debate on the effects of these measures and on how any ensuing actions could lead to a frontal attack, with greater expenditure and military investment in addressing them. This leaves room for reflection on the impact that this kind of measures has had for decades in the area of human rights as well as on the risk of amplifying a bellicose logic instead of genuinely seeking solutions that tackle poverty and the related issues of arms trafficking and drug use.

Impunity and oblivion

Despite the peace and justice rhetoric adopted by the current government, militarisation has been constantly accompanied by impunity, especially with regard to the abuses committed by the military. Accountability mechanisms for the armed forces continue to be inadequate and opaque while the victims of violations rarely receive justice. Instead of advancing towards reparations and the sanctioning of those responsible, the government has adopted a pact of silence and an attitude that prioritises forgetting the acts of violence, thereby minimising the gravity of the violations.

Instead of focusing on justice and on guaranteeing the rights of victims, governmental policies have favoured an emphasis on pardons and oblivion, without acknowledging the suffering of those affected. This oblivion and denial of the acts of violence as well as the lack of political will for repairs of damages perpetuate impunity and undermine the efforts of building a more just and equitable society.

Conclusion

Mexico’s militarisation process has gone on regardless of the different parties and ideologies in power and has developed in a context of failed social and security policies, which have not managed to reduce organised crime nor to deal with its increase. Thus, militarisation has been a long-term project that has enabled the army’s increased presence in different areas of the country’s social, economic and political life. While security is one of the central aspects of this strategy, the impact on human rights has been devastating, with growing violence, impunity and repression of civil society.

The consolidation of military control, the lack of effective accountability mechanisms and the government’s focus on the oblivion of abuses are all aspects that need to be urgently tackled. Militarisation must not be the answer that guarantees peace and security in Mexico; on the contrary, it is necessary to strengthen civil institutions, uphold the respect for human rights and guarantee justice for the victims of violations committed by the armed forces. Only through a profound change in security policies and greater transparency and accountability will it be possible to advance towards more effective actions that support justice and the reinstatement of civil control over the military.

This text was written on 7 February 2025 in Mexico City

Author information

Colombian Law graduate, activist and researcher, with a Master’s in human rights. He is a conscientious objector who has worked in Latin America, especially in Columbia, Paraguay, Honduras and Mexico, in support of human rights defenders, journalists at risk and young people liable to military recruitment. He has authored research on human rights, freedom of expression, crime and security policies, and he has collaborated in the creation of initiatives to protect human rights advocates and journalists and to champion the right to conscientious objection. He currently works as a policy advisor of civil society organisations in Mexico, promoting public policies for the protection of human rights.

Programmes & Projects

The Broken Rifle Front Page

Countries

Mexico

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Resisting US nukes on UK soil: preparing to take action at RAF Lakenheath

Andrew — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:50:00 +0000

10 Feb 2025

Author(s)

Marc Morgan

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

The Lakenheath Alliance for Peace is a coalition of nearly 50 British and International peace groups which have come together to protest against the existing militaristic installations, and the threatened stationing of nuclear weapons, at RAF Lakenheath airbase in eastern England. The Alliance is organising an international Peace Camp which is being held at Lakenheath from 14th to 26th April 2025; the Peace Camp will bring together protesters and peace activists from many parts of the world.

USAF Lakenheath and nuclear weapons in UK

RAF Lakenheath is in reality USAF Lakenheath; it is the largest US airbase in Europe, assigned to United States Air Forces in Europe and Africa. Its Air Force units maintain combat-ready wings that are pledged to NATO, and plans, conducts, controls, coordinates and supports air and space operations in Europe, parts of Asia and all of Africa with the exception of Egypt. Over the past two decades, warplanes based at USAF Lakenheath have led devastating conventional weapon missions in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Syria, the Middle East and East Africa.

American nuclear weapons were stationed at Lakenheath until 2008 when they were removed under popular pressure, marking the first time that the UK has been free of US nuclear weapons since they were first deployed after the second world war. In recent years, documents have come to light revealing that the return of nuclear weapons to Lakenheath is scheduled; contracts have been awarded and building work is underway on the secure storage facilities that these weapons require.

The return of American nuclear weapons to Britain, one of the US’s main allies within NATO, and one of the main cheerleaders for NATO militarism, would represent a major provocation at a time of escalating tensions between NATO and Russia, and in world geopolitics more generally. Lakenheath is a symbol for the risks we are facing and for the irresponsibility of so many of the world’s governments, and of the nuclear-armed states and alliances in particular.

In calling on you to join us at Lakenheath, we are inviting you to protest against the rise of militarism everywhere, and the dangers which US nuclear and conventional weapons, and the airbases which host them, represent in Europe and throughout the world.

Peace camp

The April 2025 Peace Camp will be a major landmark within what is already a rich history of protests by the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace. Significant days of action have been scheduled there for two years now, involving the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and many other groups and individuals. Monthly vigils are held at the airbase, and in July 2024, hundreds of protesters gathered there for a 3-day peace walk and 10-day peace camp (see the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSSqXkzlw2c ). The Lakenheath Alliance for Peace is open to all groups and individual supporters which share its aims and its absolute commitment to nonviolence.

The April 2025 Peace Camp will present a unique opportunity to meet campaigners from diverse countries and backgrounds. Accommodation will be provided at a campsite near the Lakenheath airbase, where workshops and informal meetings will be held throughout the duration of the Peace Camp. 24-hour vigils, and various forms of actions and protests, will be held outside the main gate of the airbase, or occasionally at different locations in the vicinity of the base. The different protests will culminate with a blockade of the base on Saturday 26th April.

A major focus of the LAP is communication and engagement with the local communities living near the airbase. Their lives are affected by the horrendous noise generated by the planes, by the disruption to roads and transport caused by both the personnel of the base and the contractors servicing it, and by the impact of the base on wildlife and fauna. The schedule of events for the Peace Camp includes several events which express this wish for engagement with local people – stalls and festive events on markets, public meetings, etc… See https://lakenheathallianceforpeace.org.uk/peace-camp-events/ for details.

International Peace Conference

The more than 800 US airbases dotted across our planet impact local, regional and national economies, communities, and politics in a myriad different ways. The diverse forms of their impact will be the main theme of an International Peace Conference to be held, as part of the Peace Camp, on Thursday 24th April. The following link gives the Agenda for the Peace Conference: https://lakenheathallianceforpeace.org.uk/international-peace-conference/.

The link also gives the following synthesis of the themes and aims of the International Conference , which could serve as a message concerning the Peace Camp as a whole:

“Central to US militarisation and its increasing nuclearisation, is its extensive network of foreign military bases…. A number of US bases across Europe – under the auspices of NATO – enable US nuclear weapons to be present in Europe. They put Europe on the front line in US wars, and risk nuclear war being fought in Europe. These bases are currently in the process of being equipped with upgraded and more versatile nuclear weapons, as well as being used to support ongoing US wars. ….

This conference aims to analyse these political and military developments – globally, regionally and locally, drawing together movements and activists from across the world, to support each other, strategise together, and plan action for resistance and change.”

How to join the camp and conference

Please join us at the International Conference, and also for as much of the Peace Camp as you are able to. If you would like to run a workshop, concerning any aspect of the campaigning activities in your own country or any relevant theme, that would be greatly appreciated. Your presence and contribution will in any case make a real difference.

Lakenheath is approximately two hours from London by car or train, and all local transport and accommodation will be taken care of. You can sign up here at https://lakenheathallianceforpeace.org.uk/sign-up/

Visit the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace website for more details, or contact LAP at their email address lap@gn.apc.org.

Author information

Marc is a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, of Trident Ploughshares, and of the Mouvement pour une Alternative Non-Violente (France); he is also an Attender at Tottenham Quaker Meeting, North London.

Programmes & Projects

The Broken Rifle Front Page Network News

Countries

United Kingdom United States of America

Theme

nuclear arms

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Reflections on a visit to Kosovo

Andrew — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:15:00 +0000

Photograph of Kosovo Albanian refugees during the Kosovo War, presented as evidence at the trial of Slobodan Milošević

24 Jan 2025

Author(s)

Marc Morgan

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

This quick overview of my impressions, following a twelve-day stay in Kosovo, does not claim to be a detailed analysis of the situation in this country. I was not in Kosovo for political or journalistic reasons, but as a volunteer for the NGO "The Ideas Partnership". This non-profit organization, founded in 2009, tries to fill the gap in education, health care, and school and social support suffered by the most deprived communities in Kosovo (Roma, Ashkali, and other marginalized communities).

My interest in Kosovo, and my wish to spend time there, goes back a long way. I joined the MAN (Mouvement pour une Alternative Nonviolente - Movement for a Nonviolent Alternative) in 1995, partly because I shared the MAN’s interest at the time in the nonviolent struggle of Kosovo Albanians against the repressive Milosevic regime. I read with great interest the MAN’s mission reports of 1995 and 1997, which documented meetings of MAN activists not only with Ibrahim Rugova’s LDK, the spearhead of this nonviolent struggle, but with other “goodwill-oriented” Serb and Kosovar Albanians groups committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict there.

The impressions I relay here are based on conversations while visiting Kosovo recently. While there, I spoke with

about ten Kosovar Albanians, including Tahir Dalipi, a friend of Jean-Yves Carlen and Jean-Marc Muller of the MAN centre Alsace,
three or four particularly well-informed internationals,
only two Serbs, a young student from Belgrade who was doing an internship as a guide at the Church of the Virgin of Leviša, in Prizren; and a taxi driver who took me back from Graçanica.

Understanding Kosovo

The first impression that emerges from Kosovo, especially for those like me who only knew it before its independence (2008), is that it is a young and dynamic country. Despite this, Kosovo remains a country with big challenges:

its exports are low, and unlike neighbouring countries, Kosovo attracts little tourism.
its youth aspires to go abroad, and failing that goes to Prishtina. As a result, the countryside is emptying.
the country has many minorities who are marginalized and excluded from what progress the country is experiencing.
a very particular problem obviously subsists with the Serbian minority.

The conflict with the Serbian minority is absolutely not resolved on the political level. The general picture is well known: the independence of Kosovo is recognized by 115 countries, but is not recognized by significant countries including India, China and Russia, and 5 countries of the European Union (Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Rumania). In particular, of course, Kosovo's independence is not recognized by Serbia, which claims Kosovo as Serbian in the name of its status as the "cradle of Serbian civilization".

In a global context where multiple conflicts are burning more ardently, there is little motivation to resolve this problem once and for all. It is in particular a thorn that the European Union is reluctant to pull from the "Balkan flank" of our continent; other issues are perceived as being of higher priority than launching a challenge to the five countries that are resisting recognition.

The maintenance of the Serbian myth, and the very concrete demands of Belgrade, are a significant obstacle to the establishment of peaceful relations. The point of view of all my non-Serb interlocutors is that while this situation is a burden for the whole country, it is the Serbs of Kosovo who pay the greatest price.

Ibrahim Rugova and the nonviolent movement

In view of this observation, it is interesting to revisit history, and to shed a critical light on the hopes that the nonviolent struggle of the Kosovar Albanians had raised, in Kosovo and elsewhere. We can also consider the factors that led to this hope being disappointed: the lack of support given by the international community to Rugova; his own mistakes; the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), towards which the hopes of the Kosovar Albanians ultimately turned as the nonviolent struggle appeared not to be delivering significant results. Finally, we must recall the truncated and ultimately aborted mission by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the autumn of 1998, in which Pierre Dufour participated. Pierre himself expressed his point of view in his book, which is shared by the people I spoke to about it: this mission had neither the time, nor the means, nor the support that would have allowed it to succeed, and perhaps to avoid the war that followed.

A first observation concerning the traces of history in the Kosovar Albanian collective memory: Rugova is respected, even venerated. Several people have described him to me as the “Father of the Nation”. This is not just a question of rhetoric or a mythical ideal. The Kosovar Albanians recognize that it was Rugova who allowed them, at a time of harsh Serbian repression, to think of themselves as a people with a destiny of their own to forge, while Yugoslavia was in a process of decomposition. Moreover, the nonviolent resistance that Rugova embodied and that was organized around him brought concrete benefits, or at least mitigated real causes of harm, in an extremely practical way. Two Kosovar Albanians told me that without the parallel education system, their education would have been truncated or fragmented. More than one told me of the pride and importance of being employed in the parallel system, through which the LDK countered the suppression of jobs for non-Serbs. And several acknowledged that it was thanks to Rugova and the LDK that a bloodbath comparable to that experienced in Bosnia and Croatia during the wars was avoided.

At the same time, none of the small sample of Kosovar Albanians I spoke to said that they believed that nonviolent struggle could ultimately have succeeded, and that it would have been enough to give it time for it to do so. And, what is harder for us nonviolent activists, none of them challenged or expressed regret about the rise of the KLA.

Monuments to Rugova, streets or establishments bearing his name are plentiful in Kosovo; commemorative signs to the glory of the KLA are no less so. Everyone I spoke to agreed that Rugova and the nonviolent struggle saved lives in the initial phases of the conflict; several told me that the KLA also saved lives when the conflict became violent.

On this point, it is important to let history tell us what it tells us, not what we would like it to say; at the very least, I cannot make my interlocutors say what they did not say, or deny what they told me.

The commemoration of the KLA is only one of the ways in which, quite understandably, Kosovo has been made Albanian. In the vast majority of public spaces, the references, the reading of the country’s history as portrayed, are Kosovar Albanian. The Ethnographic Museum of Prishtina presents the customs and history of an Albanian family. The National Museum of Kosovo commemorates Kosovar Albanian traditions on the one hand, and the struggle of the KLA on the other; the temporary exhibition I saw there consisted of a series of photos, by a British photographer, glorifying the NATO intervention. NATO, the United States, are venerated. Everywhere in the street, in city spaces, tributes to the KLA and American flags flourish….

It is easy to understand and sympathize with this young country as - liberated and independent for the first time in its history - it reclaims and showcases its history. Furthermore, of course, the memory of the trauma, suffering, repression and deaths of Kosovar Albanians during the conflict are still very vivid. All the Kosovar Albanians I spoke to knew, often among their close relatives, victims of Serbian atrocities.

What now?

Faced with this reality, the vast majority of Kosovo Serbs have adopted a position of withdrawal and isolation. In the town of Graçanica, a Serbian enclave a few kilometres from Prishtina, whose beautiful Serbian Orthodox monastery I went to visit, Serbian flags were on display on every street corner. The school systems are completely segregated – Serbs do not learn Albanian, nor, do Kosovar Albanians learn Serbian. In their enclaves, Serbs cling to their version of history, a vision in which they are victims – and to the vain hope of a return to a Serbian Kosovo. They commemorate those who disappeared at the end of the Kosovo war, and lament the exactions actually committed by the Kosovar Albanians who returned to Kosovo with the victorious support of NATO.

There was no equivalent in Kosovo to the "Truth and Reconciliation" commission in South Africa. There is no foreseeable possibility of agreement on a common reading of history, so there can be no shared recognition of the crimes committed by one side or the other, nor request or offer of forgiveness.

In Kosovo, the repression and exactions committed by the Serbs were much more severe, and more spread out over time, than those, certainly not insignificant, of which the Kosovar Albanians were guilty. Several Kosovar Albanians told me that as long as there was no recognition of these crimes, and a request for forgiveness, reconciliation would be impossible.

History is not made of perfect or ideal situations. From the Albanian point of view, NATO intervention and the resulting independence of Kosovo are necessarily experienced as blessings, liberating events that allowed their young country to build itself and forge an existence and an identity. It would be futile to deny this reality – or to deny that, with time, perhaps a future for Kosovo based on appeasement, shared prosperity and integration for all its minorities will be possible.

In the meantime, from the point of view of believers in nonviolence, we can see that a situation put forward as “resolved” is not resolved at all, that serious tensions, hatreds and resentments remain, and that an entire people – the Serbs – consider themselves wronged by history and misunderstood by the international community. It is not impossible that Belgrade will play with fire and fuel the simmering ongoing confrontations, turning these into a “hot” conflict. The grievances of the Serbs feed into broader global conflicts, latent or open, between "the West" and Belgrade's allies in Moscow or Beijing.

Serious mistakes, especially by the international community, but also by Kosovar actors, caused the nonviolent movement ultimately to stall. Its path to success was a difficult one, but if it had succeeded, if it had received the attention and support it deserved, perhaps we would not still be experiencing the tensions that persist today, and the threats of renewed violence that weigh heavily on prospects for the future.

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The Broken Rifle Front Page

Countries

Kosovo

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Unveiling a hidden tragedy: the devastating legacy of French nuclear testing in Algeria

Andrew — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 10:07:00 +0000

The Gerboise Bleue nuclear weapons test in 1960.

06 Jan 2025

Author(s)

Rachid Aouine

In the vast, silent expanse of the Algerian Sahara lies an enduring legacy of destruction, a shadow cast by French nuclear testing that continues to harm lives and the environment decades later.
Between 1960 and 1966, France conducted 17 nuclear tests in Algeria, seeking to secure its position as a nuclear power. What followed was not just a series of detonations but an indelible scar on Algeria’s landscape and its people. The tests left behind radioactive contamination, environmental degradation, and generations of human suffering. Despite this, efforts to achieve accountability and justice have been met with silence and neglect.

Recent international attention has brought the issue back into focus. In September 2023, Dr. Marcos A. Orellana - the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights - sent letters to the French and Algerian governments, urging them to address this dark chapter of their shared history. Yet the governments’ ongoing refusal to engage underscores a troubling lack of commitment to justice and transparency.

The story of French nuclear testing in Algeria

On February 13, 1960, France detonated its first nuclear bomb, Gerboise Bleue, in the Algerian desert near Reggane. The explosion marked the beginning of France’s nuclear weapons program. Over the next six years, 16 more tests followed at Reggane and In Ekker. These experiments were designed to bolster France’s military strength, but their impact on Algeria’s people and environment was catastrophic.

Even after Algeria gained independence in 1962, France continued its nuclear testing program under the terms of the Evian Accords. This agreement allowed the French military to use Algerian territory as a testing ground for several years after independence. These tests turned the desert into a laboratory for France’s nuclear ambitions, leaving behind widespread radioactive contamination and exposing countless individuals to dangerous levels of radiation.

The Human Toll of Nuclear Testing

For the communities living near the testing sites, the fallout from these experiments has been nothing short of catastrophic. Families suffer from a range of severe health issues, including cancers, congenital disabilities, and respiratory diseases. Many individuals who were exposed to radioactive fallout during and after the tests have died from radiation-induced illnesses. Survivors often find themselves marginalized, struggling to access healthcare or recognition for their suffering.

The environmental consequences are equally dire. Vast areas of once-productive land remain uninhabitable, forcing local populations to abandon agricultural practices that sustained them for generations. The contamination of the soil and water has devastated livelihoods, creating a cycle of poverty and displacement in affected regions. The testing sites, particularly Reggane and In Ekker, remain hazardous, with buried radioactive waste posing a long-term threat.

To this day, both the French and Algerian governments have failed to provide clear information about the extent of contamination, the locations of buried radioactive materials, or the full scope of health risks faced by affected populations. This lack of transparency has left victims in a state of uncertainty, unable to fully understand or address the dangers they face.

The Role of Detention Camps on Radioactive Sites

The tragedy of French nuclear testing is compounded by the use of radioactive sites as detention camps during the 1990s, specifically between 1992 and 1995. Algerian authorities established camps such as In M’Guel, Reggane, and Oued Namous to imprison thousands of political detainees during a period of internal unrest. Many of these detainees were held arbitrarily, without trial, and subjected to harsh conditions.

The use of these sites for detention exposed prisoners to dangerously high levels of radiation. Survivors report long-term health complications, including cancers and other radiation-induced illnesses, while many detainees succumbed to these conditions. Evidence suggests that detainees were treated as expendable, with no regard for their safety or well-being. This dual injustice, arbitrary imprisonment in radioactive environments remains an unresolved and overlooked chapter in Algeria’s history.

The Special Rapporteur’s Call for Action

In September 2024, the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights took a firm step by addressing the French and Algerian governments in letters that called for concrete action. The letters demanded accountability, transparency, and reparations for the victims of nuclear testing.

The Special Rapporteur called on France to declassify information about its nuclear tests, including detailed maps of contaminated areas and the locations of buried radioactive waste. The letters also urged France to acknowledge its historical responsibility, compensate victims, and provide full transparency to affected communities.

For Algeria, the Special Rapporteur emphasized the need for proactive measures. The government was urged to monitor health impacts, rehabilitate contaminated areas, and ensure that citizens are properly informed about the risks they face. Algeria was also called upon to collaborate with France and international organizations to address the damage effectively.

Despite the gravity of these calls, neither government has responded, a silence that speaks volumes about their unwillingness to confront the past or prioritize the well-being of affected populations.

Advocacy Efforts and the Fight for Justice

Shoaa for Human Rights have been at the forefront of advocacy efforts to bring attention to this issue. Shoaa has worked tirelessly to document the impact of French nuclear testing, bring into light the affected communities, and demand justice from both France and Algeria. Their efforts include engaging with international bodies, publishing reports, and calling for greater transparency and accountability.

Shoaa emphasizes that both governments share responsibility for addressing this tragedy. France, as the initiator of the tests, must fully acknowledge its colonial legacy, declassify all relevant documents, and provide reparations to victims. Algeria, as the custodian of its citizens’ rights, must prioritize the health and safety of those affected, push for reparations through diplomatic channels, and ensure that contaminated areas are rehabilitated.

The recent letters from the Special Rapporteur offer a glimmer of hope. They have reignited the conversation about French nuclear testing in Algeria, drawing international attention to the issue and pressuring both governments to act.

A Path Forward

The legacy of French nuclear testing in Algeria is a reminder of the long-term consequences of nuclear ambition. For the people living in the shadow of this tragedy, justice remains elusive. However, renewed advocacy and international attention offer a chance to address this historical wrong.

France and Algeria must move beyond denial and neglect, acknowledging their shared responsibility to the victims and the environment. Transparency, accountability, and reparations are essential to healing the wounds of the past and ensuring that this dark chapter is never repeated. The world must not allow this tragedy to remain hidden, it is time for justice to prevail.

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Rachid Aouine is the founder and executive director of Shoaa for Human Rights

Programmes & Projects

The Broken Rifle Front Page

Countries

Algeria France

Theme

nuclear arms

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Interview: Why is the military industry a climate problem and what can be done to solve it?

Andrew — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 12:01:00 +0000

Liverpool dockyard. Image credit: Andrew Hall/Unsplash

19 Dec 2024

Author(s)

Andrew Metheven

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

In December 2024, WRI staff member Andrew Metheven met with Khem Rogaly, a Senior Research Fellow at Common Wealth, a think tank that sets out to “reimagine ownership to repair past harms and secure a future of sustainable and shared prosperity”.

Khem has recently published a new report titled A Lucas Plan for the Twenty First Century, which sets out to understand how the UK could transition from military to civilian production. To do so, Khem interviewed trade unionists to understand how they see their role in the industry, and how they think such a transition could occur.

Andrew Metheven: To start with, it would be helpful to understand how you see the relationship between military spending and the climate crisis? Aren’t they two separate things?

Khem Rogaly: Military spending is a climate problem, and a massive, multi-layered climate problem. We can understand that in several ways.

Firstly, military spending means spending on military operations, infrastructure, and maintenance of military capacity, by a state. That has an emissions impact. Globally, the military sector is responsible for about 5.5% of emissions. If you take the UK for example, its military sector is responsible for more emissions that 60 countries. The emissions from not just maintaining the capacity to fight a war, but in the UK’s case – because its a large military spender, the 6th highest in the world – to intervene globally, has a big emissions impact.

About half of those emissions come from private industry, in the production of weapons for the British military. The other half comes from energy use, primarily fighter jets and warships. I’d really emphasise that fighter jets are an essential part of that, because they are burning jet fuel at a high altitude, which has a cumulative climate impact.

But that’s only maintaining military infrastructure – the second layer is fighting a war. The environmental and ecological impact of that is obvious too. We can see the most obvious example of that in Gaza now. The term “ecocide” was invented to refer to the American war in Vietnam, and the particular strategy that the American military took, to destroy the relationship of a people to their land. The same tactic is being used by Israel in Gaza, and has been done historically by the Israeli military, but they have accelerated the process since October 2023.

And the final aspect, beyond the ecological destruction that is both inherent to war and has now been adopted as a modern military tactic, is cold war. And I think the best way to frame this is that “cold war is a hot problem”. Basically because, you have geo-political competition – currently led by competition between the US and China – which results in greater military spending and the buildup of the military infrastructure which we’ve already discussed has an emissions impact.

In addition to this, there is economic warfare, and when we’re in a moment of climate crisis and the global economy needs to be decarbonised rapidly, and in a coordinated manner, that is another climate problem. Because what you have are decisions, like those taken by the Biden administration, to put tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles – a policy made to prioritise the interests of the American automotive industry over decarbonisation. To rapidly decarbonise the highest emitting sector in the US economy, you would need to expand public transportation, but you would also need to replace a lot of conventional vehicles with electric vehicles, and the country that is leading the manufacture of these vehicles is China. So there we can see that Cold War style competition is getting in the way of how US policy tackles the climate crisis.

AM: You’ve recently published a report called “A Lucas Plan for the Twenty First Century” - could you summarise what your new report outlines?

KR: The Lucas Plan was a proposal by trade unionists at a military company called Lucas Aerospace, which they published in 1976 to demonstrate that it was possible to convert production from military aircraft components to 150 different civilian products. The plan was extremely innovative, because within that set of products they were looking at converting production from aircraft parts to wind turbines and solar cells. So even in the mid-1970s they were aware of the ecological costs of industrial production and were designing early renewable technologies. It was innovative in another sense because they argued that they should be able to oversee the transition process. They felt, as the people undertaking production and doing the work they were best placed to understand what the transition would look like.

The other point that is important to make about the Lucas Plan is that its often held up as this single example, but really it was part of a long tradition of trade union organising within the military industries in the UK, Europe and US, which stretches back to the wake of the First World War. For example, in Barrow in Britain – at the shipyard that now builds nuclear submarines but previously made conventional warships – trade unionists came up with an alternative plan for a shift to civilian production in response to the devastation of the First World War. This agenda had another huge political resurgence in the wake of the Second World War.

So my report takes a degree of inspiration from the Lucas Plan and aims to explore how that transition could be feasible in today’s military industry in the UK. To do that I spoke to 21 workers within the UK military industry, and interviewed them about their experience of work and the feasibility of a transition.

There are three key takeaways I want to highlight.

1. The UK has maintained a much higher level of military spending than most European countries consistently over the past decades. The justification that’s often given to maintain a high level of military spending is that it’s necessary from an economic perspective, because there are communities across the country who are reliant on military production for good quality manufacturing jobs, and the wider economic benefits that are brought to their local communities from those jobs. My report shows that more than half of these jobs have been lost since 1980, that many of my interviewees had experienced highly insecure work, with hundreds of people fired on the same day. Even up to the present I heard about how a site was going to be relocating imminently, with the threat of redundancies. My interviewee there wished that there had been a transition because contracts with the Ministry of Defence can be highly variable.

2. On the feasibility point: what the interviewees showed, through their experiences, is that a transition is eminently possible. That was particularly stark in the naval shipbuilding sector, where I found four of the UK’s naval shipyards are already undertaking work in offshore renewables supply chains. There are close adjacencies between the skills needed to work on wind turbines, but also to fit out underground trains and to work on the production of public transport infrastructure. Interviewees spoke of the idea of the transition as if it were something normal and their companies would do take on civilian work when they deemed it beneficial. So it's feasible from a technological stand point.

3. For all of this to be possible it would require a reordering of state priorities, away from the level of military spending that we have at the moment. The reason for that is that moving production into a civilian market means you need to demonstrate that there is sustained market for the new products, so that jobs are secure. It was very clear from the interviewees, that they felt that there would have to be a reallocation of public investment towards civilian procurement in order to make that happen.

AM: In the report you’ve made it clear that “the UK’s military industries are viable only because of constant public investment”, and that resources should be redirected towards green industries, but in our current political climate the idea of a politician coming out and saying “we should cut military spending” feels like a career-ending move! What, in your mind, would this process look like?

KR: You can flip it on its head: the only heavy manufacturing sector in the UK that has the government as its main customer is the military industry. What that means is that the Ministry of Defence – along with the export partners that it approves - dictate what is produced in the British military industry. Through its procurement programmes the Ministry of Defence directs production. In the military sector you normally have more specialised production of a more limited set of products than the mass manufacturing line in something like the automotive industry, where you are producing a consumer good at a mass scale. So you have a broad base of people who are working on a few specialised products, that have skills that can be redirected. As I outlined in my report, there is an opening for the state to redesign its manufacturing base, and because its responsible for what’s made in this private industry it can also oversee a transition.

However, as you say, the political challenge is immense: politicians at the moment don’t want to oversee that transition, but its more to say that in political/economic terms it is definitely feasible, just as it is in technological terms. The thing I would add is that it’s important not to suggest it would be easy and smooth. A lot of the interviewees identified that the type of specialised work they’re undertaking has strict requirements that you don’t get in the civilian sectors. You’re making very hi-tech and bespoke pieces of kit, mostly for well funded global military powers, and they have exacting standards. That requires work. There would be a challenge in ensuring that the transition moves to something that is equally labour intensive.

My suggestion, as a starting point, is to set up a state-holding company – not dissimilar to how Labour have setup a National Wealth Fund. The key difference is that it would acquire 100% ownership of sites, while the NWF is taking smaller equity investments. Through this company you could take over specific military production sites and guide their production towards the needs of public sector companies, like transport and energy companies, and use that as a sustained base of demand, coordinating with other companies within the public sector.

As an example, consider Harland & Wolff, which famously owns a Belfast shipyard and went into administration a couple of months ago. All four of its shipyards are at threat, and jobs are at risk. Trade unions are obviously trying to protect their workers, but the government, rather than taking those sites into public ownership as they easily could (because they are operating on contracts from the MoD primarily, as well as some production of products for off-shore renewables), is instead trying to entice a Spanish state-owned company to buy the shipyards. The UK government looking at paying that company £300m to sweeten the takeover. There is an alternative here: the government could save its £300m, take the site into public ownership, and use that ownership to oversee a transition towards renewable energy, public transport infrastructure, or other civilian projects that are urgently needed.

AM: What would you say to those who argue that we must maintain a strong military industrial base, in order to maintain the UK’s security and that of our allies? Wouldn’t this just benefit other companies in other countries?

KR: The UK is an outlier in the level of military spending it has maintained over the last decades – we spend more of our GDP than many comparable countries. Maintaining our level of military spending is not about security, and I say that because military spending, as it is currently formulated, doesn’t go towards national defence, or defending the British Isles from attack. The Government’s Defence Command Paper sets out that the British military needs to be a global force, that it needs to be able to intervene anywhere in the world, at any time, in any domain (land, sea, air, nuclear), and that it needs a constant forward presence beyond Europe. That means military bases in the Persian Gulf and across the world, but projecting British military power globally doesn’t serve British defence. Instead, as we’ve seen with the brutal consequences of British interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, or being a crucial supportive partner to Saudi Arabia or Israel, it has brutal consequences for the people who face these military interventions.

Another reason I would add, if you look at the procurement spending of the British military, which is now around £37bn each year – far more than Labour said was too much for the climate – often it’s completely wasted. It’s spent on projects that are delayed, overspent, get cancelled. If you look at the Ajax tank for instance, a £5.2bn project that has been eternally delayed and has injured the military personnel that have been testing it. So the idea that spending is the route to security is flawed from that perspective.

AM: The brutal one! How realistic do you think this is? Are there any signs of hope that this will occur?

KR: To be realistic, we’re living in a time of rearmament, through a moment of heightened geopolitical competition, of genocide in Palestine, of expanding wars in different contexts, so it feels very far away. Especially in Europe there is political pressure to increase military spending – a position that is supported by both major political parties in Britain.

In the British context, we have to be realistic about the fact that we haven’t cut military spending in real terms following the end of the cold war. We’ve actually maintained it. We’re not in the situation that continental European countries are, so the idea that we need to rush into massive increases in military spending just doesn’t stack up. I think before we touch on points of hope, it’s important to note that this kind of transition, or demonstrating that this kind of transition is possible, that building a coalition between antiwar movements, trade unions within the military industries, and climate movements is an essential way of undercutting the idea that military spending is necessary for economic reasons. I think it’s necessary, in those terms, as a counterweight to the industry, and to the military and foreign policy establishments that will promote constant increases to spending.

In terms of hope: there have been hopeful moments within trade union politics over the last year, that have indicated that within the military industry there are trade unions and trade unionists who want to build towards this kind of transition. The best example that I would give of that is the United Auto Workers in the US, a major trade union in the US military industry as well as automotive, who represent workers making armoured vehicles and munitions. In response to the genocide unfolding in Palestine they called for a ceasefire, but also mandated their members to explore transition away from military production, and towards a just transition. I think seeing examples like that is very hopeful.

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Programmes & Projects

War Profiteers The Broken Rifle Front Page

Countries

United Kingdom

Theme

Militarism and Climate Change

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Eco-sumud and the Palestinian struggle for eco-social justice

Andrew — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 12:20:00 +0000

85 year old Labiba Abdullah working her farmland in Dayr Ballut, March 16 2021. Photo credit: Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua Net

27 Nov 2024

Author(s)

Manal Shqair

Translated by

Natalia García (ES)

The creation of Israel on 78% of the land of Historical Palestine has marked a violent disruption of the sustainable relationship that Palestinians have maintained with their land for generations. The ongoing Israeli colonization of the rest of Palestine – culminating in the unfolding genocide and ecocide in the Gaza Strip and the silent ethnic cleansing in the West Bank – poses further threat to the indigenous Palestinian lifestyle in relation to land. Despite more than seven decades of colonial dispossession and violence, Palestinians have been able to steadfastly face Israeli attempts at obliterating the knowledge and skills that Palestinians draw on to maintain a sustainable attachment to the land. I call this the act of eco-sumud, meaning eco-steadfastness.

The anti-colonial praxis of eco-sumud refers to the Palestinian persistence to stay on the land using environmentally friendly ways of maintaining a strong attachment to it. This includes the use of indigenous land-based knowledge, cultural values, tactics and tools to fight back against Israeli dispossession and the unsustainable management of land and its resources that comes with dispossession. Palestinian women have been key environmental and anti-colonial warriors in reinforcing eco-sumud. Eco-sumud is premised on the understanding that the fight for climate justice and the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination are inextricably linked. As a concept and practise it thus acknowledges the mutual constitution of social and ecological crises. It recognises the pursuit of a just agricultural and energy transition in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as inseparable from the pursuit of Palestinian self- determination and social justice – and vice versa. As such, eco-sumud constitutes a powerful counter-practice to Israeli ecological colonialism while also informing a counter-narrative to Israel’s efforts at greenwashing so as to cover its ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people and their environment with a green garb.

Rainfed agricultural practice among Palestinian villagers in Dayr Ballut, the West Bank, offers an empirical example of eco-sumud. Ba’li, as the practice is known in vernacular Arabic, has facilitated the local preservation of agricultural land across a century of colonial occupation, water apartheid and land grabbing. It involves the preparation, planting, cultivation and protection of plants and soil without irrigation, utilising instead natural soil moisture and the capture and preservation of water during rain seasons. In Dayr Ballut, villagers, predominantly women, have combined this traditional farming method with diversifying the types of crops grown to reduce their vulnerability to water scarcity, climate shocks, and soil degradation.

Embodying at once a social, spiritual, cultural and material relation to the local ecology, facilitating both social justice and sustainable uses of the land, ba’li crystallises the power and potential of eco-sumud to inform a just decolonial transition in Palestine. Such a transition is premised on five pillars: First, it disrupts the internalisation of the social construction of Palestinian knowledge and culture as inferior to their colonisers. Second, it foregrounds relationships with the land and its natural resources based on reciprocity and interdependence. Third, it promotes the collective sharing of land, water and knowledge rather than their monopolisation and luxury commodification for the few. Fourth, it affirms that women are primary actors in the anti-colonial struggle for self-determination and ecological justice. Finally, it refuses the notion that Israeli settler colonialism is undefeatable, cementing instead the invincibility of the burning desire of the colonised to determine their own destiny.

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Programmes & Projects

The Broken Rifle

Countries

Israel

Theme

Militarism and Climate Change