My People

When you gonna leave

My People

Give them room to breathe

My People

Stop oppressing

My People

All they want is bread and clothes

Space to rest – and left alone

My People:

When you gonna free

My People?

Let them live in peace

Stop killing

My People

All they need is dignity

A chance to be free

Stop making scared

My people

Let them out of jail

My People

Stop building walls around

My people

When you gonna show you care

Join the people in the square

My people

…

Stop pointing guns at

My People.

(My People. Yusuf Islam 2011)

In 2011 Yusuf Islam opened a concert in Beirut with that song, as the civil war in Syria was raging, as cities were being levelled and millions of people fled from the violence to join the ever growing tidal wave of people seeking refuge, somewhere, anywhere. At the conclusion of the concert the reporter Robert Fisk interviewed the singer, asking him for his reaction to the Arab Spring, Arab awakening. His response was; “I’m inspired, but I am also afraid – because of the lack of defined leadership. Dictatorship is easy, but democracy is about consensus – and that’s hard. But it’s like the sun coming up.”

That was 13 years ago, and today Syria is still at war; a civil war seemingly without end.

The power of a dictator comes easily, but to cede that power, to listen to the many voices which make up the population, to arrive at a consensus requires making tough decisions which undermine the power of the dictator. And with powerful, well-armed friends like big Vlad from Russia with an airforce, drones and bombs to throw around at those pesky subjects who are not showing absolute loyalty and destroying their homes, their workplaces, their lives.

Nothing much has changed for Syria in the last 80 or so years. Robert Fisk in Night of Power quotes a press clipping from the May 1945 uprising, protesting French control. The description is the same as 2011 and not much different than what we are reading and hearing from Syria today. The people are still not being listened to. In 1945 it was the French colonisers, in 2011 and today it is a despotic president.

It is not just Syria which has a dictator problem.

Sunday morning I rode down to the local beach, just after sunrise, a beautiful time to walk through the crunching sand and the warm water breaking onto the beach, and as is not unusual, an opportunity to chat with others out enjoying the peace and freshness of the new day. I waved at some women who were at the base of the stairs, they waved back and despite them being obviously muslim, the dress code was a pretty good indicator, I approached and we exchanged good morning greetings. They were from Sudan, arrived here in Australia as refugees about twenty years ago. The Sudan was then in its second civil war, and today they are in their third, or is it just a continuation of another never-ending civil was where despots seek power and are prepared to kill and lay the country to waste in their pursuit of power.  

The Arab world is again on fire as despotic leaders and imperial powers, past and present, assert their power, threatening the very fabric of lives of the citizens, or are they subjects?

The distinction of citizen or subject is an important one, where a citizen claims the protection of a state and in democracies has the right to vote and to question those who hold political positions where as a subject is loyal to a sovereign, a monarch or president who holds absolute power.

In being a subject, the test of loyalty is at the behest of the leader who commands that loyalty.

The instability in the region is in large measure due to neocolonialism, a usually subtle but at times an overt control by more powerful nations over the less powerful.

A good example is the causes, or should that be excuses for the Iraq wars under both Bush presidencies. Those wars were all about oil and the threat by Saddam to trade oil in Euros instead of US dollars, which would have undermined the economic power of the US in the global economy. Interestingly, President elect Trump is threatening 100% tariffs for those countries who want to trade in other currencies.

But I am stepping ahead of the time line here; the instabilities were effectively put in place with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, 1919 with France and Britain drawing lines on the map, carving up the region formerly under Ottoman control and including parts of North Africa. The further breakdown of Imperial and colonial rule occurred throughout Africa, including oil rich North Africa and let’s not forget the trade route through the Suez, the promise of a Jewish homeland through the Balfour agreement without any negotiation with the existing Palestinian population, and ‘protectorates’ which included Palestine, and Egypt under British control. Sudan was in effect two British colonies under an arrangement of dual colonial government, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium from 1899 till 1956, the North, Islamic and Arab speaking, the South, African of mixed ethnicities. The means of control was through a ‘divide-and-rule’ policy. Egypt through this time was politically and militarily subordinate to Britain.

The main issue with colonialism and neocolonialism is that it treats those colonised as somehow less than the colonisers. Not worthy of having a share of the wealth generated through colonialism, the exploitation of resources and labour to benefit the most worthy colonial masters. While there has been ostensibly a decolonisation, with former colonies gaining independence, the measure of control over the former colonies still exists.

An example is the way in which multinational oil corporations now control the oil reserves of Iraq. That wealth does not trickle down to Iraqis; it only benefits the already wealthy oil companies.

Decolonisation is defined in Peace Chronicles as ‘deconstructing or dismantling colonial ideologies and challenging the superiority of western thought and approaches.’ It also digs into thought patterns, biases, politics, values and so forth.

And therein lies the problem: Even though the empires which ruled the world up to the middle of last century, the actions of decolonisation have been to a large extent in appearance only, the power of colonialists and imperialists still controls the region, as it does in most of the decolonised world, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and yes, Australia and New Zealand too.

Power today is with the USA. That power is exerted through around 750 military bases in at least 80 countries, treaty arrangements such as NATO, ANZUS, AUKUS protect not just the treaty partners but give assurance of support at times of threat or war.

Other colonial powers have bases in far flung places too, Britain (UK) has about 145 military bases across 42 countries, France has 16 bases in 12 countries, Russia currently has about 21 bases limited to Asia and Eastern Europe, China, seen as a threat to American economic power a naval base in Cambodia, a military support base in Djibouti, Africa, a military post in Tajikistan and a listening post in Cuba. American Imperial might outshines all others. A different sort of empire, but with far greater reach and far greater military might than previous empires.

The other aspects of neocolonialism are not as evident as the military and economic power used for control and they are the thought patterns, those subliminal attitudes of power, the biases, that somehow others are less because they are not strong in ‘western thought’, for example, IQ is measured on an understanding of western criteria, given to say an Aboriginal person who has lived a traditional life, has a thorough understanding of their environment, knowing food and medicinal sources from the landscape, may not score well in an IQ test, however, play a person with a high IQ score in such an environment, they would probably not do too well would probably not survive.

That same Aboriginal person would have strong relationships with their community, understand the hierarchical structure and laws that govern traditional life, but would not fare too well in understanding national or geo politics.

When we look at the laws being made regarding children in Queensland and the Northern Territory, though they do not state specifically that Aboriginal children are the targets, rates of criminality confirm that the laws are pretty much targeted at those children… the age of criminal understanding reduced to 10 years, of ‘do adult crime, do adult time’, aimed at solving specific ‘problems’ but lacking in any understanding of cultural or social standings. Neocolonialism is alive and well here. In New Zealand, the de-Maori-ing of place names and other aspects which have sought to integrate Maori and European cultures are being wound back.

The song Yusuf Islam sang at that concert in Beirut thirteen years ago was poignant. It was powerful, it was pertinent. Just a few hours drive from the concert venue, in Syria, people were being shot, people were being imprisoned, tortured, oppressed, starved.

Maybe not on the same scale, but when we see the plight of many indigenous people, here and in other former colonised countries, the words ring true.

When we see the millions of people displaced by war, seeking refuge somewhere, anywhere, when we see the incarceration rate of one group of people being far and away high than the rest of a population, when we see poverty, hunger, discrimination, we see neocolonialism, we see that one group of people think they are far, far better than the other group, whether that be based on race, on religion, on ethnicity.

We see dehumanisation, we see discrimination.

We see the seeds of hate being sown.