Publicizing nonviolence
Thank you for your timely issue on nonviolence (NI 381). Too often we only hear about the violent ‘solutions’ despite the increasing successes of nonviolent campaigns. Your readers might like to know about a new project from the Fellowship of Reconciliation called ‘Peace by Peace’ which will highlight good examples of nonviolence in action from all around the world, publicize the groups involved and raise funds to support them. Further details can be found at www.for.org.uk

Roger Morbey Derby, England

Equivocal Muslims?
I was absorbed by The Challenge to Violence (NI 381). There was, however, one rather telling omission, that of international terrorism by devout Muslims. According to a poll in The Guardian (26 July 2005) only five per cent of Muslims in Britain think further violence is justified for political ends, such as suicide bombing of civilians to change foreign policy.

But there is a whole swathe of equivocators, perhaps even a majority. Had there been a perceived insult to the holy Qur’an on 7/7, instead of just 700 dead and injured on London transport there would have been demonstrations across the country in fury. It is a mindset which does not distinguish between good and evil but only between Muslim and non-Muslim. Muslims would probably avow that is the same distinction.

You champion nonviolence. So do I. But when NATO forces went into Kosovo (where there is no oil) without UN approval, how would nonviolence have prevented the genocide of Muslims by the Serbian army? NATO thus saved the lives of millions of Muslims and the Muslim nations and people remained silent.

You point out that G8 members are major exporters of arms. Can this be the same G8 which will spend 1.7 billion pounds to rebuild Gaza after the Israeli departure? The Palestinian Authority is paid for by the EU taxpayer but Palestinians do not appear to want peace. Not the 60 per cent who vote for Hamas whose declared aim is the destruction of Israel.

I would argue for peaceniks everywhere to adopt some balance in their utterances. One-sided thinking is the water in which terrorism swims.

Mat Saleh England

Obscene atrocity
According to UNICEF between the two Iraq wars about half a million Iraqi children and half a million adults were killed surreptitiously by UN sanctions – a million innocent lives sacrificed for our supposed security, compared with a few thousand lost in Islamic terrorist attacks against the West. Two Assistant UN Secretary Generals resigned in disgust, one describing the sanctions as genocide. Yet there was hardly any protest in this country, the media being complicit with our governments in hushing it up.

Was this not an obscene atrocity, much more evil in extent than all the terrorist attacks? Muslims have every right to be outraged at this insidious, unChristian Western indifference to the lives of Iraqi people. Our governments showed them no compassion or mercy.

The innocent Iraqi people have every right to demand justice for their terrorized country. We should not preach to them that ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ is evil. Our governments cannot expect to massacre Muslims in this way, without there being some kind of reprisal.

Jeremy Cusden Gillingham, England

Crossing swords
‘Letters from Gandhi’ (NI 381) was either an attempt to invoke Gandhi’s belief for the 21st century or a parody of truly awful and patronizing taste.

Stephen Zunes’ piece on Iraq effectively missed the point: Saddam Hussein is a fascist who is responsible for the death of thousands and ran a secret state to eradicate dissident voices. Yes, the US-led invasion of Iraq lacked an end plan for the post-conflict situation, but when did overthrowing fascism become a no-go for the Left?

The piece relies on generalizations, particularly on the Iraqi people’s chances of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his regime, or the characterization of all Muslim states. I would go so far as to call this piece similar to those written by members of the Left who worshipped the achievements of Stalinist Russia while ignoring the millions who died in the gulags and purges.

PT Carey London, England

Sacred land
‘Railway to the top of the world’ (Essay, NI 381), was read with an enormously heavy heart. Here, for all the world to see, is a replay of the railways which defiled the land that was America, and the genocide of the Native Americans.

In Tibet, where the land is held sacred by Tibetans, and where they have practised peace for over a thousand years, there is now utter misery and disenchantment, with a world which has forgotten their plight and which did nothing to help remove China from their sacred land.

Now a railway is to be built over this land of snows, and is being heralded as an engineering feat. Well, the only celebration Tibetans will willingly participate in, is when the Chinese pack their bags, roll up their railway lines, dismantle all their industry, replant Tibetan forests, reinstate all that they have destroyed during their brutal occupation, and return to their legitimate country.

D Harvey Chippenham, England

Missing link
Your item ‘Live8 lives in lalaland’ (Seriously, NI 381) does not mention that the Live8 concert detracted press coverage from a rather bigger and more important event taking place at the same time in Edinburgh: the Make Poverty History March. This event must be marked as the largest demonstration ever of its kind in the UK with at least 250,000 people from all over Britain and Europe determined peacefully to make their point of view known. Some waited four hours to join the march, others like myself had to go back to help run stalls or take their families home. We were extremely disappointed that our presence was relegated in the press to later pages because of the Live8 concert and some of the general public in England had not even registered our event’s significance. There was also a link-up from the Edinburgh Meadows to the Live8 concert and we were forced to watch it while we waited. There was no link-up the other way.

John Blair-Fish Edinburgh, Scotland

Lost in translation
While I oppose the war in Iraq, and am not an admirer of Thomas Friedman (generally agreeing with the tone of your Worldbeaters article in NI 381 about him), I do not think it is fair to say that the ‘translation’ of ‘Any war we launch in Iraq will certainly be in part about oil. To deny that is laughable’ is ‘It’s okay to trade blood for oil.’

Britain did not enter World War Two in order to save the Jews or any other groups from the Holocaust. Yet many people supported that war, and enlisted in the armed forces of many countries, for that very reason.

The fact that Friedman acknowledged that part of the reason for the US Government’s invasion of Iraq was oil does not mean that he supported the invasion for that purpose. His reasons for supporting the war clearly had nothing to do with oil, and had everything to do with the belief that the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein and that democracy could somehow be imposed on Iraq for the betterment of the world. Both beliefs may be misguided and wrong, but they’re not in and of themselves morally bad, as ‘blood for oil’ is.

Lawrie Cherniack Winnipeg, Canada

Dalit assertion
As a development worker, I have had a long association of working with Dalits and other discriminated groups across the world (Combating Caste, NI 380). The story of the Indian Dalits is one of continued suffering but we must acknowledge that Dalits are not passively taking everything. Dalits are standing up and fighting back. The greater violence against them is a byproduct of Dalit assertion – the oppressors are losing out and hence the greater anger and violence.

The story of caste will be incomplete if you do not cover this dynamic of change and continuity.

K Pushpanath Oxford, England

Supportive position
Re: Worldbeaters on Pope Benedict XVI (NI 380). I found it a shallow commentary on someone yet to establish himself in a position supported by millions of Catholics and others alike.

Fr Ron Nissen SM Hunters Hill, Australia

Point taken
We in Nigeria need to appreciate that there are also street children (NI 377) in ‘rich’ Canada.

Onimisi Baiye Abuja, Nigeria

An exemplary life
The Challenge to Violence (NI 381) provided a wealth of ideas to counter confrontation around the world. I was intrigued to see the omission of perhaps the greatest defuser of violence in your hall of fame listing of proponents of nonviolence. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and many others in the list gained their insights from the teaching and life of Jesus Christ. Gandhi in particular, although a Hindu, was inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount teachings. A policy of turning the other cheek and walking the extra mile takes courage to practise and may not necessarily have results in our own lifetime, but history shows that it does work. It was Jesus, after all, who was known as the Prince of Peace and who gave his life that others might live.

Nicky King East Kilbride, Scotland

Doubters and dreamers
Sometimes memory can be short and forgetting long, as Reem Haddad discovers.

I stood there at the airport waiting for him to arrive. I even carried his picture around my neck. I didn’t have a choice – it was a press card. After 11 years of imprisonment, the former Christian warlord, Samir Geagea, the head of the once-banned Lebanese Forces party, was about to be released and flown to France for medical check-ups.

His name alone rekindled black memories of the war, of shells and bombs. I shivered as I viewed the excited young faces around me. Their hakim or ‘doctor’, as he is called, was about to appear. None of them looked over the age of 20. They could barely remember the war; many of them had not even been born. As a haggard-looking Geagea appeared, the people in the crowds couldn’t help jumping up and down and hugging each other.

I remember staring coldly yet with interest when I met Nabih Berri and Walid Jumblat – also two former warlords whose very names used to make us tremble during the war. They, like Geagea, were ruthless and the militias they ran were responsible for thousands of deaths. Yet both Berri and Jumblat became prominent politicians after the war ended in 1990.

A twinge of sympathy – albeit a very small one – went to Geagea when he was jailed in 1994 on clearly trumped-up charges because of his opposition to Syrian rule in Lebanon. He was the only warlord who ended up in jail. He was given four life sentences for several murders, including the assassination of former premier Rashid Karami in 1987. He was placed in solitary confinement in an underground cell in the Lebanese ministry of defence.

Many Christians viewed Geagea as a hero who defended their community. ‘He did what he did for our good,’ said Elie, an engineer in his late forties. ‘I believed in him then and believe in him now.’

But other Lebanese saw him as an Israeli-backed militia leader with a lust for power and a readiness to kill anyone who stood in his way.

‘I was hoping he would rot in jail,’ said Ramzi, 40, a teacher at a Beirut school. ‘He put us Christians through hell. Those days still haunt me.’

It was strange to see the thousands of Lebanese Forces members on the streets, celebrating and brandishing the party’s flag in public after years of being banned and persecuted by the Syrian-backed authorities.

Geagea’s release came about after the Lebanese Parliament granted him amnesty in July. The Syrians left Lebanon in April after 29 years’ of military presence. Their departure has led to the re-emergence of many wartime faces.

These militia leaders are older – and, you have to hope, wiser. But it’s the younger generation I worry about.

Blaring music a few days ago made me rush to the balcony. Down on the street below, four teenagers were playing Lebanese Forces anthems, waving and draping themselves in party flags and chanting slogans.

One of the teenagers was a 17-year-old girl who lives across the street. I approached her.

‘The hakim is our dream,’ she said emphatically. ‘We believe in his convictions.’

‘And those convictions are?’ I asked.

The girl looked uncomfortable. ‘Since I was a baby, my parents have been telling me about him. I grew up on his stories,’ she replied. ‘He’s wonderful.’

‘And his convictions are?’ I asked again.

‘He has sacrificed so much. He is the higher example,’ she said.

‘What has he sacrificed? What is this example and what convictions?’ I asked patiently.

The girl looked at me blankly. ‘You don’t understand,’ she retorted and walked away.

She’s right. I don’t understand. Maybe it’s because I remember so well the shelling and the fear. Maybe it’s because I miss my friends who perished. Or maybe it’s because I yearn for the childhood that I spent hiding in shelters. To me Geagea is just like the others: a warlord who ruined many lives.

And so I stood at their airport with his picture on the press card around my neck. I suddenly gave a little laugh. My colleague gave me a quizzical look. I pointed to the press card and the VIP lounge full of MPs – some of them were Geagea’s enemies in the 1980s and would gladly have seen him dead. Now they were here to welcome him back to freedom.

‘Do you see the irony?’ I asked. She smiled sadly. She remembers too.

Reem Haddad works for the Daily Star in Beirut.