The Guardian Special

Guardian:
The war gets wider and worse

Saturday July 22, 2006

It would be astonishing if Hizbullah and Israel were not now both reflecting on the old adage that it is easier to start a war than to stop one. A week ago it seemed reasonable to predict that a few days of Israeli bombardment would be followed by a ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners - because the stakes were just too high for any other outcome. Israeli officials spoke then of needing 72 hours to crush their enemy as the US, tacitly backed by Britain, sidestepped increasingly urgent demands - from Lebanon, the UN, France and others - for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Ten days on, the rockets are still flying, bombs falling and innocent civilians dying or fleeing for their lives. Apparent preparations for substantial Israeli ground operations in south Lebanon yesterday opened up new dangers that must include the risk of a clash with Syria.

Through the smoke of battle, several alarming themes have become apparent. The first is that the US has lost much influence as a result of the war in Iraq and its acquiescence in the deadlock of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's siege of Gaza is an indispensable part of the disaster now unfolding further north. George Bush has no leverage with Iran and Syria, Hizbullah's patrons, and backs Israel's actions as part of the "war on terror". But if Hizbullah were just "a bunch of terrorists", as the US envoy John Bolton put it as he played for time at the UN, things would be simpler - just as they might be if the Islamists of Hamas could be dismissed in the same glib way.

Hizbullah is a radical Shia organisation with deep roots in Lebanon, as well as powerful backers in Tehran and Damascus who have agendas of their own and are content to let others die in a proxy war with Israel and the US. If many Lebanese began a dreadful week blaming Hizbullah for provoking Israel, more ended it by directing their fury at Israel for ripping their country apart in a rerun of 1982. Even if Israel could defeat the guerrillas - a very big if, judging by the missiles falling on Haifa - could it do so without destroying Lebanon or triggering a new civil war? As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, put it, Hizbullah is using Lebanon as a human shield as Israel hammers it mercilessly.

A second source of concern is the way Hizbullah is now being feted across the Arab world. The conservative Sunni regimes which are US allies - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states - were already worried about the Shia ascendancy in Iraq and the growth of Iranian influence. But too many Arabs prefer a violent confrontation with Israel to the equivocations of their rulers. And that, thirdly, by feeding hatred, augurs badly for already slim hopes that a peace settlement can ever be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. In Israel it is hard to see Ehud Olmert following last year's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza with a similar pullout from the West Bank.

These bleak future prospects are overshadowed by many clear and present dangers. An immediate ceasefire to halt the suffering must remain the priority for the international community, because every day that goes by without one will make a terrible situation worse. Condoleezza Rice should insist on one before her far too leisurely departure for Israel tomorrow. Until the shooting stops, both sides should reread the Geneva conventions and allow the creation of humanitarian corridors to let civilians flee the killing grounds. Relief agencies and the Red Crescent must be given access to all battle zones. Mediation should be launched to free Israeli soldiers and Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners so there is a mechanism for each side to back down. The US, Europe, the UN and others will then have to work out in good faith just how they will help keep a very volatile peace. For if outsiders do not make the necessary effort, it will only be a matter of time before it all happens again.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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Israel gears up for ground war

Rory McCarthy in Haifa
Saturday July 22, 2006

The Lebanon crisis entered a dangerous new phase last night as Israeli troops and tanks massed on the border in preparation for a sweeping ground operation against Hizbullah fighters.

Israeli commanders plan to clear a 1.5km-wide zone on the Lebanese side of the border, where there are a series of well-fortified Hizbullah positions, a senior Israeli official said. Thousands of Israeli reservists were being called up.

The significant change of strategy to higher-risk ground fighting is a tacit admission that the campaign of aerial bombing has been less successful than hoped. So far the military has said it is only involved in "pinpoint incursions" across the border, but preparations appear to be under way for a much larger and potentially more costly troop operation for the first time since the conflict began 11 days ago. The military would not say exactly how many reservists were being called up, but reports put the number at up to 3,000.

Hizbullah has a formidable armoury of missiles, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank weapons, and is capable of inflicting a high casualty rate, one that could test the strength of Israeli public support for the war.

Israeli Brigadier-General Alon Friedman said yesterday: "It's possible that in the coming days our ground operations will increase." He added that troops on Israel's northern border "are of more than division strength and would allow a large-scale ground offensive if necessary". A division is usually at least 10,000 troops.

As part of its plan for a ground invasion, Israeli jets dropped leaflets over southern Lebanon yesterday warning the population to move north of the Litani river, about 12 miles inside Lebanon. About 300,000 civilians normally live south of the Litani.

The planned ground campaign dashes US hopes that the Israeli operation would be relatively quick and makes it harder to fend off international pressure for diplomatic action. Tomorrow Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is to fly out to visit Jerusalem, Beirut and Cairo to explore peace options. She will also attend an international conference on Lebanon in Rome on Wednesday.

But yesterday she warned that America was opposed to a quick-fix ceasefire that would leave Hizbullah in place. "I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante. I think it would be a mistake." She added that the US was open to the idea of a "robust" international force for southern Lebanon, but said it was unlikely that the US would contribute troops.

The first Israeli ground troops have already found heavier than expected resistance, losing six soldiers in two days of fighting north of the Israeli border town of Avivim. A further 14 were injured in mortar fire and gun battles. "These positions were much more fortified than we expected them to be," a senior Israeli official said. "Give them credit, they are good fighters."

In one clash yesterday, a UN-run observation post near the border was hit. The Ghanaian troops manning the post were in their bomb shelter and unhurt. It was not clear who fired at the post.

Israeli bulldozers have been brought up to frontline positions ready to demolish Hizbullah posts. Once the zone is clear, the Israeli military intends to allow only agreed forces to enter, either the Lebanese army or any multinational force that might be established. Hizbullah fighters will not be allowed back, and it is unlikely civilians could return.

Commanders are warning that the fighting could be prolonged. In the meantime, Israel agreed last night to open a humanitarian corridor to allow aid in to the hundreds of thousands displaced by the conflict.

There is still overwhelming public backing in Israel for the conflict, even though the last Israeli war in Lebanon ended in a deeply unpopular 18-year occupation. One newspaper poll yesterday put support at 90%.

Israel has led 3,000 operational sorties since the conflict started, aimed at 1,500 targets, said Brigadier General Ido Nehushtan, the military's planning and policy chief. "We believe that Hizbullah has suffered a blow, yet we are under no illusion."

When the bombing of Lebanon started after Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others, Israel said it wanted to disarm and dismantle Hizbullah.

Now commanders talk about "crippling" the militia enough to enable it to be disarmed by political negotiations. "We are aiming to cripple Hizbullah in order to enable the Lebanese government to take authority and fulfil its responsibilities, to deploy its forces alongside the border, bring back our soldiers and eventually cause the dismantling of Hizbullah," Brig Gen Nehushtan said.

A wave of Hizbullah rockets hit the north of Israel yesterday, injuring 19 people in Haifa alone.

The Lebanese defence minister, Elias al-Murr, said Lebanon's army was ready to defend the country against any land invasion by Israel.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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After the flood

Lebanon is once again torn apart by vicious strife. But when the bloodletting is over, the warring parties will have no alternative but peaceful co-existence

Brian Keenan
Saturday July 22, 2006

Dawn is cruel in Lebanon.
Rocket holes have gutted this place
Like a blunt blade
In the flesh of a fish.
In the suburbs
An unkempt forest of rushes sprout
Amid minefields
Fed on sewage
Watered by years
Of un-staunched pipes
The ghosts of night have no place
In this hallucinatory city
Here they are masters of the light
Made substantial in the sun.

Today,
L'Orient-Le Jour has a headline,
"Découverte Macabre"
A record of bodies discovered the previous day
Spills out,
Like the innards of a disembowelled animal.
One dawn, perhaps,
Such secrets may not be
The burdensome proof
Of this Lebanese earth.

I wrote that some 17 years ago after I had returned from my incarceration in Lebanon. It's a small fragment of a long narrative poem I was working on. In a very short time I had come to love the place and the people I lived and worked with before I disappeared for five years into the bowels of Beirut's hallucinatory nightmare. Until that moment I had kept a small notebook in which I recorded things that struck me about the place. Somewhere in the pages I had written a quote from William Blake: "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." The ruined city and its people alternately surviving one day then suffocating under another salvo of rocket fire, followed by the defiant ranting of political and religious zealots, seemed to draw it out of me. It seemed an appropriate apocalyptic phrase for an apocalyptic city.

That was nearly 20 years ago, and I recently planned to go back. As you are reading this, I should have been packing my bags for a family holiday in Lebanon. Obviously, I am not now. No one in their right mind takes a holiday in Hades.

Only last year, a friend of mine called to say she was intending to holiday in Lebanon and asked my advice. Without hesitation, I encouraged her to go. "Lebanon is beautiful and the Lebanese are a delight. They are courteous in the extreme, and their hospitality is overwhelming. They love their country and are more than delighted to share this exuberance with strangers.

"You can go skiing in the mountains in the morning and sun yourself on the beach in the afternoon; and the food is to die for. If you can go to the mountains, sit a while under the magnificent cedar and just let the place soak into you. The vistas are sublime. Take a copy of Kahlil Gibran's Thoughts and Meditations, read it slowly under the great tree's shade and you will see beyond the horizon."

I rabbitted on, remembering only the beautiful flower that Lebanon was and completely forgetting the poison hidden in its petals. But then I had every reason to forget the bleak history of this part of the world. A bloody inheritance of betrayal, assassination and religious animosity. I had also forgotten the covert and heinous foreign meddling by America, and Iran, and the invasion and occupation by Syria and Israel. All of whom, it seems to me, cared little about Lebanon and its people. I had believed that these proxy wars fought on the killing fields of Lebanon had been eradicated like the canker in the rose.

I chose to believe in men such as Rafik Hariri who married individual vision with personal wealth and set about rebuilding the biblical cities of Lebanon, disinterring Beirut from the rubble of its past. Even when he was assassinated a year ago, but huge public protests led to the withdrawal of the Syrian army, I was convinced that the resurrection of Lebanon was assured. Beirut would rise from the ashes, garlanded with olive branches and flowers. This would be the reborn Beirut of gourmet restaurants, glitzy boutiques full of handsome young men and incredibly beautiful young women, shops and street-side cafes filled with people watching the world go by. Churches and mosques rebuilt side by side, and plazas and pedestrian walkways that opened up the city. There would be no more green lines that divided the city. No more areas you dared not walk at night.

If I had a dream of the promised land, it was one shared by thousands of ordinary Lebanese who wanted to share it with any who, like me, were willingly beguiled by it. "Call into the Mayflower Hotel and give them my regards," were my parting words to my friend.

Last summer, she made the trip to Lebanon. Her postcard to me confirmed that I had been right to insist that she went. She had also called at the Mayflower Hotel with my message. The owner was almost overcome, and told her he remembered "Mr Brian" with great affection and respect. She underlined these words. Some weeks after her card arrived, I received another written by the hotel owner himself. It was polite and graceful, the way the Lebanese are. Mounir respectfully invited me and my family to come and stay at his hotel. It would, he assured me, give him great pleasure and much delight. I knew the pleasure and delight would be all mine - I immediately scanned my diary to fix a date for this summer.

How could I have been so naive? I am old and experienced enough to know that dreams are fanciful things that disappear with the dawn, and in Lebanon, as I recall, dawn is a cruel time.

Among the many things my dreaming could not erase was the curse of cyclical violence, war and destruction that waits in the shadows to engulf this place with evermore bloody and disastrous consequences. In the past week, I have viewed the television coverage with sickening despair. I have listened to the empty rhetoric of politicians coming at me like an old echo. I have heard and seen it all before. It makes me cynical and angry, and I despise these feelings in myself. Sometimes, I feel myself choke up with tears. Above all, I feel robbed and betrayed.

And if I feel this from the comfort of my home in Dublin, how do my friends in Hamra and Raouché or in those tiny hill villages feel?

In Lebanon, curses are not like dreams. They do not emanate from some psychic other world. The demons in Lebanon are not mythical, they are real and they wear the guise of men. What did the students I taught do to deserve their future subjected to this manmade curse? What did the shoemaker at the end of the street I lived in do? What did my friend Mounir do? What did the old man who sat and peeled garlic all day in my favourite restaurant do? What did the 11 children who were blown to bits while swimming in a canal near Tyre do?

Noticeably, we no longer hear those hideous phrases "collateral damage" or "casualties of war". Everyone knows them for what they are: euphemisms for arbitrary but calculated murder. A leaflet dropped from a passing aircraft informing people to leave their homes or face the consequences redeems no one.

A week ago, I saw a photo of a man holding up a dead child he had just pulled from the blasted ruins of its home. It looked like a rag doll that had been pulled from a rubbish tip. In another context, the image could have been of a man holding up his daughter to receive a blessing. He could even have been handing the child to the care of a friend. But the face of the man holding up the infant confirms the worst. His features bear the emotional numbness of someone who has lived through this horror too many times; somewhere in his soul, he is as dead as the child he holds. His gesture simply asks us to bear witness, and perhaps, with what ever emotional life is left in him, he is also asking us to take this pain from him.

If a cataclysmic Pandora's box has been opened in Lebanon and that dire generational curse of death and destruction is passing over the land, why did we not see it coming? Maybe we did see it coming, but because we are used to it and expect such things from the Middle East, we are immune to it. Assuredly, the seeds were sown long before the poison erupted in the flower in the past few weeks.

A few months ago, the Irish Times carried a photo of a group of Palestinian youths fleeing through a crowd with the dead body of one of their friends, who had been shot for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. The faces of the two boys carrying their friend are imprinted with shock, confusion, desperation and the urgent need to get away. Two other boys at the edge of the crowd stretch out their arms to touch the boy's corpse. They are drawn to partake in his death. Their faces are like a mask, contorted in a pernicious grimace. It is as if some psychotic power is transferred, through the boy's martyrdom, and passes into them. It is a dreadful, revelatory moment. Tomorrow, they will throw more stones; in a few years, they will be firing guns. In a few more years, as the contagion of hate develops, they may put on the martyr's vest and walk into oblivion trailing the remains of more innocent dead behind them. The question I asked myself was where will this cauldron of hate and violence take these children?

I should have paid more attention to this question, but I was still seeing another Lebanon. One where I wanted to take my family and say: "See, this country is not the evil place that imprisoned me and these people don't want to hurt anyone." I wanted to stand in this land and not be afraid because of what had happened. I wanted my children to know that evil does not endure. I wanted them to love this country as I do, and as the Lebanese do. Above all, I wanted them to grow up secure in themselves and passionate about the big issues in life: justice, freedom, happiness, equality and the human right to independent judgment. I wanted them to know, and remember when they are old enough to reason, that their dad took them to Lebanon for this purpose. More importantly, I wanted them to have a great time and meet great people there.

In this star-crossed corner of the world, we should have known, we were certainly warned. Whether you believe in the curse of recurrent violence or not, you have to accept that such events are not things of chance. Even as I write, the Israeli military has declared a timescale for their incursion in Lebanon. Whatever they might say about "de-fanging" the snake of Hizbullah, they are intent on the physical and psychological destruction of their neighbours. Every day, I read reports or listen to the apologists of this crisis accuse each other; Meanwhile, innocents die on either side of their debate. No wonder the curse returns - such mindsets are stuck in a time warp, and nothing less than a purging of the intellect and imagination will ultimately dispel it. But how can that be done?

Drawing on his clinical experience, Dr Nathaniel Laor, a psychiatrist from Israel, illustrates how hate damages psychic structures. Two factors play a crucial role: first, hate gives, or can give, a form of pleasure; second, and more importantly, hate is addictive. And it is contagious; a potential epidemic. Perhaps that is the poison at the heart of the flower. Maybe the protagonists who are butchering the country need to go for a long session of counselling with Dr Laor.

About a dozen years ago, I was an invited speaker at an international conflict resolution conference held in Derry in Northern Ireland. Ehud Olmert was also a guest speaker. In his address, he said: "Political leaders can help change the psychological climate which affects the quality of relationships among people." And he concluded: "How are fears born? They are born because of differences in tradition and history; they are born because of differences in emotional, political and national circumstances. Because of such differences, people fear they cannot live together. If we are to overcome such fear, a credible and healthy political process must be carefully and painfully developed. A political process that does not aim to change the other or to overcome differences, but that allows each side to live peacefully in spite of their differences." I can only ask my fellow contributor, now prime minister of Israel: "What happened, Ehud? How does the havoc and slaughter of your neighbours tally with your inspiring sentiments?"

During my life, I have come to accept that there are very good reasons why Jews hate Muslims and vice versa. Often, they are eloquent in their arguments and can convincingly document reasons for their antipathy and suspicion. Yet wholesale genocide is no solution - and both sides know it. They have no alternative but to coexist.

Coexistence is the minimal, least demanding way for people to relate to one another without violence. It is not the same thing as love, or even as friendship. On the contrary, it is an expression of distance, an acknowledgment that boundaries will remain. It is informed by an attitude of live and let live; that is precisely the message that neither side in the war in Lebanon wants to hear or declare.

It is an ideal without illusions. Its object is not the seamless union of opposites but a practical relationship of mutual respect. It does not deny difference; it disarms it, robbing it of its power to wound or kill. In a pluralist society, ethnic and cultural differences are not abolished. They are legitimated, while society strives to guarantee that the law will be blind to them. It is not easy to achieve but when there is no alternative, it is worth trying.

For now, I've put off my visit to Lebanon. But I might return to that poem and rework it. But then, I think cynically, what's the point? Nothing changes in this corner of the earth.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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The charter is on its last legs

The UN's feeble response to the Lebanon crisis shows that it can no longer protect civilians

Salim Lone
Saturday July 22, 2006

Kofi Annan finally made the headlines yesterday with his call for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East crisis. It was too little, too late. That the United Nations secretary general waited nine days before seriously speaking out has dealt a severe blow to the organisation's humanitarian image. That he twinned his criticism of Israel's "excessive use of force" with repeated condemnations of Hizbullah again showed how deeply in thrall to the US the world is.

With Britain now firmly in the US camp even on the Middle East conflict, the G8, the EU and the UN security council are still not calling for a ceasefire. This international decision to sanction such atrocities is the most troubling dimension of the current war. To make this refusal to rein in Israel more palatable, Tony Blair and Annan have proposed instead an international force for southern Lebanon. It fooled no one: the force will take weeks to put in place.

Complicity in a war with such a high civilian toll is unprecedented in this era. It is particularly odious because all these leaders had, at last September's extraordinary UN summit, solemnly hailed as a historic milestone the declaration on the "responsibility to protect" civilians during conflict, labelling this protection as one of the most urgent global priorities.

The world's carefully constructed international system for maintaining peace and security, built around the UN charter, is now on its last legs. It tackles crimes by the weak but is mute and unresponsive in the face of lawless behaviour by the powerful.

To give currently forbidden actions more legitimacy, there was talk of modifying the UN charter's constraints on the use of force. But changing the charter is immensely complicated, so what is being fashioned instead is a new, looser system in which the powerful may do as they wish. Those who oppose their occupations will be labelled criminals. Thus Hamas's attack and capture of a soldier of an occupying state holding thousands of Palestinian detainees is labelled as terrorism, while the bombing of civilians is proclaimed as self-defence.

The past few weeks have created intense new hatreds against Israel and the US, and radicalised many Arabs and Muslims. Interestingly, Blair had indicated when backing the Iraq war that he would convince George Bush to be more forceful and even-handed in making a major push in resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict. But British Muslims, inflamed by the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, can now add Palestine and Lebanon to their grievances thanks to Blair's militant defence of the Israeli attacks.

Another victim of this new war is the UN, whose standing in the Arab and Muslim world is already deeply fractured. Annan apart, it was astonishing to see his Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, declare, as destruction rained down on the Lebanese and Gazans, that he agreed with Israel that conditions were not yet ripe for a ceasefire. Such a public disavowal of the organisation's primary humanitarian and protection mandates represents a new low in its moral standing.

Thus far Britain has supported the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan - the current crisis has made Britain an indispensable player in the making of the new order that the US and Israel seek. Such a frontline role has obvious advantages in a world with a single superpower - but Britain's dramatic shift from a moderate postcolonial role and its distance from mainstream Europe carry great perils.

· Salim Lone is a former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq
salimlone@yahoo.com

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The brutal story of British empire continues to this day

All around the world, from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, the violent legacy of colonialism can still be witnessed

Richard Gott
Saturday July 22, 2006

Many of the present conflicts in the world take place in the former colonial territories that Britain abandoned, exhausted and impoverished, in the years after the second world war. This disastrous imperial legacy is still highly visible, and it is one of the reasons why the British empire continues to provoke such harsh debate. If Britain made such a success of its colonies, why are so many in an unholy mess half a century later, major sources of violence and unrest?

Top of the list is Palestine, a settler colony that Britain abandoned in 1947 after barely 30 years, having imposed a population of mostly European settlers on the indigenous people - one of the typical characteristics of imperial rule. Unfortunately for the settlers, arriving during the imperial sunset, they had insufficient time to achieve the scale of defeat of the local people, amounting to extermination and genocide, that characterised the British conquest and settlement of Australia.

While the native peoples of Australia, drunk and demoralised, survive in shanty towns or reservations, those in Palestine have had some capacity to struggle against such a fate, organising a lasting resistance to the settlers, inspired by their own ancient religion and sustained by the support of a vast Arab hinterland. The Australian settlers suffer from little more than a guilty conscience - if that- while the Israelis face a permanent and ineradicable threat. Like the medieval crusaders, whose ruined castles dominate the landscape of the eastern Mediterranean, they will be lucky if their state lasts more than a century. Many will surely abandon ship in despair.

A similar imperial trouble spot is Sierra Leone, another settler colony where the British imposed an alien, largely Christian, black population from Britain and Canada on to a congeries of native peoples already in thrall to Islam. The original colony dates back to the 18th century, but much of the country was secured through military conquest at the end of the 19th, to which there was energetic resistance. The recurrence of civil war, though suffocated recently by a return of British troops, remains a permanent probability.

Other victims of settler colonialism where unresolved problems survive from the time of empire include South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, and of course the tragic statelet of Northern Ireland. In these countries the settlers are all now on the back foot, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, yet the baneful legacy of the colonial regime - in social customs, and in the forms of government designed to protect settler society - lives on. Much unfinished business remains. Settler colonies of a marginally different kind were established in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Fiji, the victims of continuing trouble. In both islands workers from India were imported in the 19th century for the white-owned plantations, creating the basis for an endless civil war that can never be resolved. Here, as elsewhere, endemic violence and conflict have proved to be the lasting legacy of empire.

In India itself Britain's speedy and disastrous scuttle in 1947 led to partition and the creation of the "moth-eaten" Muslim state of Pakistan (and eventually of Bangladesh), making nonsense of two centuries of British dominion designed to maintain the unity of the subcontinent. Abandoning India without a clear and agreed decision on the future of the princely state of Kashmir has created a scenario of disaster that has lasted from that day to this.

One troubled imperial outpost, often forgotten and now brought to life as a temporary haven for refugees from Lebanon, is Cyprus, miserably divided like India as a result of imperial misrule, and still under British military surveillance today from two "sovereign" bases.

Others are Nigeria and Somalia, the first unnaturally cobbled together in a unitary state for imperial convenience, the second occupied and abandoned for purely strategic reasons. Both are currently simmering on the stove.

Finally come Iraq and Afghanistan, two modern disasters that have their roots in the experience of empire. Iraq was last in and first out of the British empire, though British military bases were not finally removed until the 1950s. Fifty years later the British are back, British soldiers replacing the Indian sepoys who invaded the country on Britain's behalf during the first world war. The British left in a hurry in the 1930s, and they will doubtless do so again.

Although nominally independent, Afghanistan was effectively within the imperial sphere for most of the 19th century, though successfully fighting three wars of resistance against the British. The fourth Anglo-Afghan war is now in progress, to be followed as before by an Afghan triumph.

It seems that the story of the empire is being re-enacted over much of the globe, bringing violence and destruction on a scale barely envisaged in the imperial era. How fortunate we would be to have a government in Britain that would help to bind up the wounds of the past, by at least recognising what really happened, rather than to have one that endlessly pours petrol on the flames.

· Richard Gott is author of Cuba: A New History, and is writing a book about imperial resistance Rwgott@aol.com

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