How can anyone ignore imperialism and not question one's place in the world?
The first time that I was blinded by rage was the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. I promised myself to never set foot on US soil. In 2012 , I went to the US to deliver Kavita in a 'neutral' country because the British divided India in 1947 and, Americans colonised Liberia in 1822.
I worked for the WFP from 2002 to 2004 in two countries destroyed by imperialism and, the invasion of Iraq was being discussed during tea break months before the invasion. I can never forget the American Director of Operations casually chatting about it excited about the expansion of work in Iraq for our small subsidiary of WFP, a logistics cell to coordinate humanitarian logistics. Our expatriate leadership was full of Americans and Europeans, ex military staff, and private sector consultants. Our logistics cell had a direct line to CENTCOM.
Don't let anyone tell you the UN is a neutral independent body. It's a an organisation set up after World War 2 by the West. It was a piece of the re ordering the global system along with the Bretton Woods institutions. The majority of the funding is Western. The Americans sabotage key resolutions passed the GA as well as the Security Council. Key positions in the World Bank, IMF and specialised UN Agencies are held by Americans. The Global South is reeling with debt incurred to the IMF and poor citizens suffer conditional consumer taxes and austerity. And, perhaps the key aspect of the UN is that it's not anti capitalist. It promotes pro growth policies without addressing class. In fact these bodies are staffed with apolitical ignorant salaried class with directors and bosses pulled from multi national corporations.
I was so enraged with the Iraq war that I wanted the UN Headquarters to move to a capital in the Global South. Why couldn’t Kofi Anan stand up? These misplaced feelings preceded the understanding that I eventually arrived at concerning the close alliance the UN has with imperialist wars especially in the 9-11 era. The UN has either rubber stamped invasions or pretended to mop up the mess afterwards. The UN has brokered peace agreements legitimising war lords. The UN has managed corrupt Food for Oil schemes. The UN and the NGO sector work together to implement soft programmes that don't build any real infrastructure because the poor don't need advanced well equipped hospitals, roads, or electricity. The poor need to be taught liberal democracy and how to take out loans without disturbing the system. Why? The Americans don’t build anything. They fund media training that is gender sensitive but can't produce an Independent media that would ever question the global world order. They create states fro scratch in post war scenarios to open up the countries to neoliberal resource plunder or allies that would never boycott American policy at the UN.
Kofi Anan or Antonio Guterres have proven to be lame show pieces that feign morality and international law in the face of imperial wars of aggression or genocide.
These past 8 months of genocide in Gaza have been excruciatingly painful and enraging. I can’t find the words to express my rage, shock, grief, disgust. The death toll has surely now become a statistic that now feels like is easy to process. In the first hundred or thousand deaths, they felt like blows to one's head. I watched how the babies in incubators died because Israel bombed hospitals. Now after 40 000 deaths and so many children slaughtered and maimed and orphaned, it is numbing. I now use bigger analysis to feel hope.
- That Israel cannot survive in this shape and form.
- Students and workers in the West are protesting and shaming their governments, companies and universities. They demand an end to to support to Israel.
- Yemen's Houthis and Iran and Lebanon are the resistance. And they stand alone in directly fighting the West and Israel.
- Countries like Columbia and South Africa have shown us what solidarity is.
- Palestinians are still fighting! We can't ever lose hope.
In all of this, how do we think our place in this world? I remain as anti West as ever but Pakistan is a also a useless state that is clearly a vassal, an entity created in the name of communalism and built a huge Army that is used against the people or its neighbours. Its laughable to imagine Pakistan send forces to fight the Zionists. As for Liberia, it is an American colony.
Every time I entered a hospital I was grateful it wasn't being bombed. I discuss what's happening with my friends and deepen my knowledge of how the genocide in Palestine connects to settler colonialism, history of imperialism, geopolitics, how imperialism really is advanced stage of capitalism, and what forms of resistance are taking place.
One's soul is not only an individual feeling but has to be alive and awake in relation to others.
