Editorial, The Age, August 30, 2010
THE US is on the eve of ending combat operations in Iraq. After 2721 days of war, in which 4734 coalition soldiers and 9961 Iraqis serving alongside them died, such a moment might in other circumstances be a cause of excitement and celebration. A year-long withdrawal of US troops and equipment leaves an ''advise and assist'' force of 50,000, less than a third of the ''surge'' peak of 2007. Yet when President Barack Obama stands in the Oval Office this week to declare the end of combat, the occasion will be haunted by memories of his predecessor's premature claim of victory back in May 2003.
In contrast to George Bush's declaration, there will be no fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier, no banner declaring ''Mission Accomplished'' after barely six weeks of war. There will probably be no repeat of the declaration that ''Iraq is free'', marking ''one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001''. Mr Obama will not draw the false link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks, which the Bush administration drew upon to justify going to war on the false pretext that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Instead, Mr Obama has overseen a reassessment of the mission in order to fulfil an election promise to bring combat troops home from Iraq, as did the Rudd government in June 2008. If the job is done, it bears little resemblance to the original 2003 goals for ''Operation Iraqi Freedom''.
Far from being established as a regional beacon of democracy, Iraq and its people fear what lies ahead. Almost six months after national elections, a government has yet to be formed and the two main political parties have suspended talks. As the US troops left, co-ordinated bombings across the country killed scores of people and wounded hundreds. According to Iraqi officials, 535 people were killed in July, the bloodiest month since May 2008.
The attacks have been blamed on al-Qaeda terrorists who, although not active in Iraq under the Sunni-dominated dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, are now a dangerously destabilising influence in a Shiite-Sunni power struggle. While Iraqis' courageous support for elections may yet lead to a more stable, pluralistic democracy, which serves as a counterweight to theocratic Iran, the Shiite majority could just as likely align Baghdad with Tehran once the last US troops leave by an agreed December 2011 deadline.
With combat operations at an end in Iraq, the even longer war in Afghanistan is due for reassessment. ''Operation Enduring Freedom'' came under the same rhetorical banner as the Iraq war - although the architects of the September 11 atrocities were at least to be found in Afghanistan. Victory was similarly declared too soon as the US turned its attention to Iraq, at great cost to the mission in Afghanistan. Australian forces withdrew in late 2002, only to have to return in September 2005. Each year since 2003, the annual death toll of coalition soldiers has greatly increased. Of the 2030 killed, 462 have died this year. Twenty-one Australians have been killed - 10 in the past 11 weeks.
In the US and Australia, the loss of lives, including more than 100,000 civilians, and the costs, well over $US1 trillion, have turned the public against wars that were meant to last months, not years. Defence Minister John Faulkner has conceded that recent losses would ''cause some to question why we are in Afghanistan''. However, Labor and the Coalition speak as one in asserting that the mission is vital to Australia's security and that the Taliban must be defeated to ensure Afghanistan is not a base for terrorism. They have at last agreed, though, to a proper debate on a deployment that could continue for years. Mr Obama's timetable for withdrawal from next July has been challenged by his commander David Petraeus, who says the current troop surge must be given time to work. In that case, the mission will have to be better explained and justified to a war-weary public. What exactly does ''until the job is done'' mean?
The prospect of criminal charges against Defence Force commandos is a reminder that this is an ugly and unconventional war. Military force alone will not bring victory, nor is it the best way to deal with the shifting global threat of terrorism. Without a political breakthrough, which also depends on an increasingly unstable Pakistan, the war could last indefinitely. Reining in corruption, achieving basic competency in government and the military and creating enough stability to enable civil society to function would rate as a success.
It is naive to think that when troops withdraw they will leave behind a country that has been liberated from repression, the drug trade and feudal warlords. The coalition forces that invaded in October 2001 are still obliged to restore a level of order. The result is unlikely to live up to the original mission goals, nor compensate for the human and financial costs of the war. As in Iraq, we may get barely a whiff of victory. A realistic reappraisal of Afghanistan - in short, more honesty about our options - is needed to develop an exit strategy that does not amount to defeat. Time, money and public patience are running out.
Source: The Age
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Let's debate Afghanistan, but give us the facts first
Tom Hyland
Sunday Age, August 29, 2010
Where there is no information, there is no hope of a meaningful discussion.
IT HAS taken nine years, the deaths of 21 Australian soldiers and a hung parliament, but now our politicians agree: they will have a debate on Afghanistan. The Greens have long called for one; so have former and serving soldiers. Now Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott reluctantly concur.
But now comes the hard part, because many of those agreeing to a debate want the discussion to reach the contradictory conclusions they cling to. The Greens want the troops out now. Gillard and Abbott say any debate will not divert them from their commitment to the war. The soldiers who want a debate appear to be the only ones with open minds, even though they have the most at stake.
If the debate is to go beyond the reiteration of entrenched views, it would help if the government gave us some unadorned facts about what our troops are doing, why they are doing it, and whether it has any chance of success. The last point is the crucial one.
While media commentators say a rising death toll is undermining popular support for Australia's commitment, the evidence is that it is the perception we are not winning - not that Australians are dying - that is the key factor in the war's unpopularity. This disenchantment, reflected in opinion polls, comes despite strenuous efforts by governments and defence officials to restrict the flow of information about our role in the conflict.
An American academic, in an analysis published by the US Army War College, of all places, has tracked the drop in public support for the war in Australia and five other countries with troops in Afghanistan. The academic, Charles Miller, traces declining Australian support back to 2007, when Australia had lost just four soldiers, when the conflict barely rated in public discussion and when it had bi-partisan political backing.
This is the issue governments fail to address. Instead, there is a constant refrain that we are making ''progress'' in our stated aim, which has settled on training Afghan troops so they can take charge of security and we can leave. We do not know what this confidence is based on, nor do we know how politicians decided to cap Australia's contribution at 1500 troops, a number the government says is ''about right''. The politicians dodge the question by saying they're acting on the advice of the generals. Generals, however, operate within politically imposed parameters.
Without facts free of spin, any debate will take place in an information vacuum. We don't know how the government settled on troop numbers, nor is there any detailed explanation of the work the soldiers are doing, the analysis that underpins it and how this will meet the stated aim.
If the promised debate raises questions for the government, it poses diabolical political and ethical issues for the Greens, soon to gain the balance of power in the Senate.
As they lose their political impotence, they will have to ditch their assumed purity.
The Greens' stated policy is for the immediate withdrawal of troops. Beyond that, there is wishful thinking. NSW Green Lee Rhiannon, for instance, reckons our military budget could be spent on aid programs for Afghan women and children. Yes, but who will deliver that aid when the Taliban think aid workers are legitimate targets, as are girls at schools built by foreign aid money?
There are other questions for those advocating unilateral withdrawal. It might not trouble the Greens, but where would it leave our relationship with Barack Obama, or our commitment to the 46 other countries with troops in Afghanistan?
And what about the Afghans who have worked with us? Do we abandon them?
Independent Andrew Wilkie has highlighted the dilemmas in staying, and going.
''It is clear,'' he says, ''that on one hand there needs to be foreign forces in Afghanistan to create the stability to allow the government to establish itself. But on the other hand, it's the very presence of those forces which is fuelling this ongoing war, mostly by nationalists, not by terrorists.
''Ultimately, we have to get out as quickly as we can and let Afghanistan find its own natural political level and a lot of people will die in the process.''
Our soldiers will not have a say in the debate, even if we know what some of them think. Writing on the Lowy Institute's blog in July, an anonymous soldier lamented the failure of politicians and defence chiefs to spell out a detailed, public policy underpinning the campaign.
''That Australians neither understand the war nor why its soldiers' sacrifice is needed in Afghanistan is shameful,'' he wrote.
''The government, ADF and media are all to blame for this ignorance. If we are to risk life and go to war, the policy must be properly articulated. As it stands, the state of Afghan discourse in Australia is emblematic of our commitment to the war effort and Afghan people: token.''
Tom Hyland is The Sunday Age's international editor.
Sunday Age, August 29, 2010
Where there is no information, there is no hope of a meaningful discussion.
IT HAS taken nine years, the deaths of 21 Australian soldiers and a hung parliament, but now our politicians agree: they will have a debate on Afghanistan. The Greens have long called for one; so have former and serving soldiers. Now Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott reluctantly concur.
But now comes the hard part, because many of those agreeing to a debate want the discussion to reach the contradictory conclusions they cling to. The Greens want the troops out now. Gillard and Abbott say any debate will not divert them from their commitment to the war. The soldiers who want a debate appear to be the only ones with open minds, even though they have the most at stake.
If the debate is to go beyond the reiteration of entrenched views, it would help if the government gave us some unadorned facts about what our troops are doing, why they are doing it, and whether it has any chance of success. The last point is the crucial one.
While media commentators say a rising death toll is undermining popular support for Australia's commitment, the evidence is that it is the perception we are not winning - not that Australians are dying - that is the key factor in the war's unpopularity. This disenchantment, reflected in opinion polls, comes despite strenuous efforts by governments and defence officials to restrict the flow of information about our role in the conflict.
An American academic, in an analysis published by the US Army War College, of all places, has tracked the drop in public support for the war in Australia and five other countries with troops in Afghanistan. The academic, Charles Miller, traces declining Australian support back to 2007, when Australia had lost just four soldiers, when the conflict barely rated in public discussion and when it had bi-partisan political backing.
This is the issue governments fail to address. Instead, there is a constant refrain that we are making ''progress'' in our stated aim, which has settled on training Afghan troops so they can take charge of security and we can leave. We do not know what this confidence is based on, nor do we know how politicians decided to cap Australia's contribution at 1500 troops, a number the government says is ''about right''. The politicians dodge the question by saying they're acting on the advice of the generals. Generals, however, operate within politically imposed parameters.
Without facts free of spin, any debate will take place in an information vacuum. We don't know how the government settled on troop numbers, nor is there any detailed explanation of the work the soldiers are doing, the analysis that underpins it and how this will meet the stated aim.
If the promised debate raises questions for the government, it poses diabolical political and ethical issues for the Greens, soon to gain the balance of power in the Senate.
As they lose their political impotence, they will have to ditch their assumed purity.
The Greens' stated policy is for the immediate withdrawal of troops. Beyond that, there is wishful thinking. NSW Green Lee Rhiannon, for instance, reckons our military budget could be spent on aid programs for Afghan women and children. Yes, but who will deliver that aid when the Taliban think aid workers are legitimate targets, as are girls at schools built by foreign aid money?
There are other questions for those advocating unilateral withdrawal. It might not trouble the Greens, but where would it leave our relationship with Barack Obama, or our commitment to the 46 other countries with troops in Afghanistan?
And what about the Afghans who have worked with us? Do we abandon them?
Independent Andrew Wilkie has highlighted the dilemmas in staying, and going.
''It is clear,'' he says, ''that on one hand there needs to be foreign forces in Afghanistan to create the stability to allow the government to establish itself. But on the other hand, it's the very presence of those forces which is fuelling this ongoing war, mostly by nationalists, not by terrorists.
''Ultimately, we have to get out as quickly as we can and let Afghanistan find its own natural political level and a lot of people will die in the process.''
Our soldiers will not have a say in the debate, even if we know what some of them think. Writing on the Lowy Institute's blog in July, an anonymous soldier lamented the failure of politicians and defence chiefs to spell out a detailed, public policy underpinning the campaign.
''That Australians neither understand the war nor why its soldiers' sacrifice is needed in Afghanistan is shameful,'' he wrote.
''The government, ADF and media are all to blame for this ignorance. If we are to risk life and go to war, the policy must be properly articulated. As it stands, the state of Afghan discourse in Australia is emblematic of our commitment to the war effort and Afghan people: token.''
Tom Hyland is The Sunday Age's international editor.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Compassion needed for homelessness, says Social Justice Council
The Australian Catholic Social Justice Council has called on political parties to address homelessness in Australia with commitment and compassion, saying methods used to forcibly remove an Indigenous community last week raised questions about the current political resolve.
The Council's chairman, Bishop Christopher Saunders Bishop Saunders, said in a statement: "National Homeless Persons' Week provides an opportunity for the major parties to commit to making a real difference for the 105,000 Australians who are homeless on any given night.
"Support is particularly needed for communities throughout the nation where homelessness is reaching crisis proportions.
"Last week I witnessed the forced removal of Indigenous people from the sand dunes of Kennedy Hill in Broome. In the process, possessions such as tents, blankets and food and medication were taken away.
"To witness homeless people losing the only shelter they had makes me question Australia's resolve to address homelessness.
"When I think of how Indigenous Australians are already over-represented in every category of homelessness, the events of last week highlight the need for a more targeted approach to addressing homelessness for particular groups who are most affected.
"At the very least, a practical response to homelessness must bring a level of compassion that ensures the dignity of vulnerable people is respected at all times.
"The strategy of moving people on is no solution at all. An important challenge for Australian communities is to be mindful that those people who are moved on may be 'out of sight' but they remain in great need.
"In this National Homeless Persons' Week, it is time to remember that every citizen has the right to shelter offering security and providing the basis for participation in society," Bishop Saunders concluded.
The Council's chairman, Bishop Christopher Saunders Bishop Saunders, said in a statement: "National Homeless Persons' Week provides an opportunity for the major parties to commit to making a real difference for the 105,000 Australians who are homeless on any given night.
"Support is particularly needed for communities throughout the nation where homelessness is reaching crisis proportions.
"Last week I witnessed the forced removal of Indigenous people from the sand dunes of Kennedy Hill in Broome. In the process, possessions such as tents, blankets and food and medication were taken away.
"To witness homeless people losing the only shelter they had makes me question Australia's resolve to address homelessness.
"When I think of how Indigenous Australians are already over-represented in every category of homelessness, the events of last week highlight the need for a more targeted approach to addressing homelessness for particular groups who are most affected.
"At the very least, a practical response to homelessness must bring a level of compassion that ensures the dignity of vulnerable people is respected at all times.
"The strategy of moving people on is no solution at all. An important challenge for Australian communities is to be mindful that those people who are moved on may be 'out of sight' but they remain in great need.
"In this National Homeless Persons' Week, it is time to remember that every citizen has the right to shelter offering security and providing the basis for participation in society," Bishop Saunders concluded.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Young Palestinians With Cameras Shooting Back
CounterPunch, August 3, 2010, DON DUNCAN
Every Friday, the slingshot-wielding boys, or shabab, of the West Bank village of Ni’lin protest at Israel’s separation wall, which has deprived the village of 750 acres of farmland. But among the shabab are other youngsters with a different weapon – video cameras.
For the past three years, Btselem, the Israeli human rights NGO, has provided cameras and training to young Palestinians as part of its camera distribution project, to collect video evidence of abuses and misconduct by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There are 150 such cameras all over the West Bank and Gaza, and most of the footage captured – 1,500 hours so far – ends on the floor-to-ceiling archive shelves of the Jerusalem office of Yoav Gross, who directs the NGO’s video project.
Footage captured by Btselem’s volunteers has been key evidence in Israeli court rulings in favor of Palestinian plaintiffs. The presence of cameras, now on both Palestinian and Israeli sides, has deterred violence and abuse. But three years after launching the project, Btselem has seen another, unintended consequence. ‘People started to take this tool, the video camera, and use it as a way to express themselves, to tell stories,’ said Gross. ‘We didn’t train them to do that. We trained them to document human rights violations. But pretty soon we got the sense that this can be a powerful tool for them to empower themselves.’
What has emerged is a generation of young Palestinian filmmakers, at ease with the camera and fluent in editing and the language of visual storytelling. Arafat Kanaan, 17, stood back at the Ni’lin protest one recent Friday afternoon. He had been detained by the IDF the previous week and decided to leave his camera at home and sit this one out, obscuring half of his face with a piece of cardboard. Though he has to worry about IDF cameras, he says: ‘The camera is like a weapon for us. It can show everyone in the world what the truth is.’
Arafat’s sister Salam, 19, was a volunteer who captured IDF misconduct – shooting a handcuffed Palestinian detainee in Ni’lin – that led to the successful prosecution of an Israeli soldier. Together with Salam and Rasheed Amira, 17, Arafat has set up Ni’lin Media Group, which produces weekly video packages of each protest and longer-form documentary videos on life under occupation. He posts them to the group’s YouTube channel and screens the films for the community on Ni’lin’s central square. ‘We collect ourselves into a group because it gives us the power to continue the work and to train others,’ said Arafat.
The evolution from documentation to storytelling is evident elsewhere. Diaa Hadad, 17, a Palestinian who lives in the Jewish-settled H2 sector of Hebron, wanted to show the effects of settlement and IDF sanctions on Palestinian movement, and did so through a one-minute film called H1H2. The film is a split screen. On the right is the bustling market street of Bab al-Zawiya, in the Palestinian-dominated H1 sector of the town. On the left is al-Shuhada street in H2, once also a busy market for Palestinians but now empty due to Israeli restrictions and settler violence. ‘I made this film to show the people outside what is happening here,’ Diaa said, outside HEB2, a community media centre for Palestinians. ‘We are living here and a lot of incidents occur here and nobody knows what is happening, even people from Bab al-Zawiya, two kilometres away, in H1.’
Behind him lay the landscape of occupation he tries to document: army CCTV cameras that silently monitor the contested territory, IDF watchtowers and the barbed wires of settlement demarcation. ‘We give the audience the full picture of what is happening here in the West Bank – violations, normal life, occupation, normal life – and what is the connection between the occupation and normal life. This is very important,’ said Issa Amro, 30, director of HEB2, which, using Hebron’s new video-adept youth, has launched a community television service live on www.heb2.tv.
‘If you keep showing settlers throwing stones at a certain family, then you don’t know how this family is living,’ said Amro. ‘If you show how this family is living, you become connected to them in another way and you care about them personally.’ This philosophy is driving grassroots filmmaking in Gaza, a territory with no Israeli army or settler presence but challenged by the siege that prevents information from leaving the territory.
‘The films we are making in Gaza are so important because the world media is not focused on the details on the ground, the real life here,’ said Mohammed al-Majdalawi, 22, by telephone from Gaza. He recently made a short documentary about the Gazan hip-hop scene.
‘There are no Israeli journalists allowed to go inside [the Strip],’ said Yoav Gross, ‘which basically leaves the Israeli public with a very shallow image of what goes on inside Gaza. This sense of a very human existence in Gaza has kind of disappeared from Israeli discourse.’ That’s starting to change. Al-Majdalawi’s work was one of five films from Gaza made available recently by Israel’s number one news site Ynet.com, used by a million Israelis every day. Other films on the site showed the child workers of Gaza’s supply tunnels, the video game craze that has gripped the strip, and a play camp for children.
Back at the wall in Ni’lin, the protest was as expected. Like every Friday, the shabab poised themselves behind the wall while the protestors made their way through an opening in it to yell and wave banners at the IDF stationed behind jeeps on the other side of a barbed wire fence. Then the shabab launched their barrage of rocks, whirring and whizzing over the seven-meter high wall.
During the first and second intifadas, the shabab became a dramatic manifestation of the Samson and Goliath proportions of the wider struggle. Today, the ‘video shabab’ compete for attention and status.
After a few minutes of orders in Hebrew, delivered from the other side of the wall, the IDF sent over round after round of tear gas, scattering the shabab and the activists gathered up the rocky hills. The video volunteers put on their gas masks and kept operating their cameras, despite the haze.
Don Duncan is a freelance journalist based in Beirut.
This article appears in the August edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.
Every Friday, the slingshot-wielding boys, or shabab, of the West Bank village of Ni’lin protest at Israel’s separation wall, which has deprived the village of 750 acres of farmland. But among the shabab are other youngsters with a different weapon – video cameras.
For the past three years, Btselem, the Israeli human rights NGO, has provided cameras and training to young Palestinians as part of its camera distribution project, to collect video evidence of abuses and misconduct by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There are 150 such cameras all over the West Bank and Gaza, and most of the footage captured – 1,500 hours so far – ends on the floor-to-ceiling archive shelves of the Jerusalem office of Yoav Gross, who directs the NGO’s video project.
Footage captured by Btselem’s volunteers has been key evidence in Israeli court rulings in favor of Palestinian plaintiffs. The presence of cameras, now on both Palestinian and Israeli sides, has deterred violence and abuse. But three years after launching the project, Btselem has seen another, unintended consequence. ‘People started to take this tool, the video camera, and use it as a way to express themselves, to tell stories,’ said Gross. ‘We didn’t train them to do that. We trained them to document human rights violations. But pretty soon we got the sense that this can be a powerful tool for them to empower themselves.’
What has emerged is a generation of young Palestinian filmmakers, at ease with the camera and fluent in editing and the language of visual storytelling. Arafat Kanaan, 17, stood back at the Ni’lin protest one recent Friday afternoon. He had been detained by the IDF the previous week and decided to leave his camera at home and sit this one out, obscuring half of his face with a piece of cardboard. Though he has to worry about IDF cameras, he says: ‘The camera is like a weapon for us. It can show everyone in the world what the truth is.’
Arafat’s sister Salam, 19, was a volunteer who captured IDF misconduct – shooting a handcuffed Palestinian detainee in Ni’lin – that led to the successful prosecution of an Israeli soldier. Together with Salam and Rasheed Amira, 17, Arafat has set up Ni’lin Media Group, which produces weekly video packages of each protest and longer-form documentary videos on life under occupation. He posts them to the group’s YouTube channel and screens the films for the community on Ni’lin’s central square. ‘We collect ourselves into a group because it gives us the power to continue the work and to train others,’ said Arafat.
The evolution from documentation to storytelling is evident elsewhere. Diaa Hadad, 17, a Palestinian who lives in the Jewish-settled H2 sector of Hebron, wanted to show the effects of settlement and IDF sanctions on Palestinian movement, and did so through a one-minute film called H1H2. The film is a split screen. On the right is the bustling market street of Bab al-Zawiya, in the Palestinian-dominated H1 sector of the town. On the left is al-Shuhada street in H2, once also a busy market for Palestinians but now empty due to Israeli restrictions and settler violence. ‘I made this film to show the people outside what is happening here,’ Diaa said, outside HEB2, a community media centre for Palestinians. ‘We are living here and a lot of incidents occur here and nobody knows what is happening, even people from Bab al-Zawiya, two kilometres away, in H1.’
Behind him lay the landscape of occupation he tries to document: army CCTV cameras that silently monitor the contested territory, IDF watchtowers and the barbed wires of settlement demarcation. ‘We give the audience the full picture of what is happening here in the West Bank – violations, normal life, occupation, normal life – and what is the connection between the occupation and normal life. This is very important,’ said Issa Amro, 30, director of HEB2, which, using Hebron’s new video-adept youth, has launched a community television service live on www.heb2.tv.
‘If you keep showing settlers throwing stones at a certain family, then you don’t know how this family is living,’ said Amro. ‘If you show how this family is living, you become connected to them in another way and you care about them personally.’ This philosophy is driving grassroots filmmaking in Gaza, a territory with no Israeli army or settler presence but challenged by the siege that prevents information from leaving the territory.
‘The films we are making in Gaza are so important because the world media is not focused on the details on the ground, the real life here,’ said Mohammed al-Majdalawi, 22, by telephone from Gaza. He recently made a short documentary about the Gazan hip-hop scene.
‘There are no Israeli journalists allowed to go inside [the Strip],’ said Yoav Gross, ‘which basically leaves the Israeli public with a very shallow image of what goes on inside Gaza. This sense of a very human existence in Gaza has kind of disappeared from Israeli discourse.’ That’s starting to change. Al-Majdalawi’s work was one of five films from Gaza made available recently by Israel’s number one news site Ynet.com, used by a million Israelis every day. Other films on the site showed the child workers of Gaza’s supply tunnels, the video game craze that has gripped the strip, and a play camp for children.
Back at the wall in Ni’lin, the protest was as expected. Like every Friday, the shabab poised themselves behind the wall while the protestors made their way through an opening in it to yell and wave banners at the IDF stationed behind jeeps on the other side of a barbed wire fence. Then the shabab launched their barrage of rocks, whirring and whizzing over the seven-meter high wall.
During the first and second intifadas, the shabab became a dramatic manifestation of the Samson and Goliath proportions of the wider struggle. Today, the ‘video shabab’ compete for attention and status.
After a few minutes of orders in Hebrew, delivered from the other side of the wall, the IDF sent over round after round of tear gas, scattering the shabab and the activists gathered up the rocky hills. The video volunteers put on their gas masks and kept operating their cameras, despite the haze.
Don Duncan is a freelance journalist based in Beirut.
This article appears in the August edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
The human face of homelessness MATTHEW COX National Times, July 30, 2010
I first met K not long after I began working at the Red Cross. She was 18 and a participant at a crisis support service for young people living on the streets. K ran away from home in her early teens to escape the worst things that can happen to a child at the hands of their parents.
When you first hit the streets, young people tell me, you spend your first nights terrified. The terror and the sadness and the hurt over the things that drove you there in the first place never really go away. Everyone on the streets is hurting, that's what one young man tells me.
I find that people who live on the streets long for the same things I long for. Someone to love, something they can do well and take pride in, something that says they are unique and valued and have a place in the world. No matter how trampled they feel, no matter how desperate or brutal life on the streets can be, nothing seems able to extinguish those elemental human desires.
Today I received some good news. I hadn't heard of K for some time. Today I hear she has not only moved off the streets, but she has got a job and bought a house. I marvel at what she has already crammed into her life at just 22. She has guts and resilience I fear I will never have. Doing my sort of job you occasionally see the worst there is to see in life. But you also get to see the best. Today's news is the best. It keeps you going.
M's story is similar but different. A loving home, a quiet suburban childhood, but things went awry in her teenage years. Wild partying turned into drug dependence. Mental health problems set in and things unravelled. A few years on the streets and a few years climbing back see M with her own landscaping business. I'm talking to her about her newly acquired bobcat driving skills. More news in the "best" category.
J's story is perhaps most compelling of all. She wound up on the streets at 15 and spent three decades of her life there. Now, approaching 50, she wants something different. From somewhere deep she dredges up the motivation to give a different path a go. Somehow she finds enough strength to break from her peer group of long-term streeties and risks going it alone. After 30 years sleeping rough she has lost her family and knows no other life. She places her trust in a group of my colleagues and they help her get some money together and find her a small flat. It's a high wire act. One slip and she'll fall again. But against the odds she makes it work. She sticks at it. She's a reliable tenant and she starts to make plans for a better life. It is a heart-stopping triumph.
These stories are everywhere. But our community has the knowledge and the resources to end homelessness in this country. Collectively we know what to do. We know that access to secure accommodation – bundled with the right kinds of support and sustained for a reasonable period of time — gets results. People with even the most challenging life histories can be housed and develop a productive focus for their life.
We simply need to scale up our efforts to eliminate homelessness in Australia. We need to focus on the task and do the things we know work. With the right planning and persistence, children being born today will inherit a country free from homelessness.
Unrealistic? In the year of my grandmother's birth, 1908, it wasn't uncommon for men to die before they reached 60 and only a handful of children attended high school. High-schooling for girls was seen as a wild fantasy. Today we are closing in on universal completion of Year 12 and life spans have increased about a third to more than 80. These are the staggering achievements of the 20th century. These are the impossible dreams of my grandmother's generation.
They are dreams that didn't come cheap. They required a massive mobilisation of resources and the development of vast systems to support better education and health. But we saw the value and were happy to spend more than half of all state expenditure on those aims.
It costs far more to allow homelessness to persist than to end it. Homeless people are super-users of government services. The bill for their interactions with hospital emergency wards, psychiatric services, ambulance, police, courts, prison, child safety and the like has been calculated variously at between $60,000 and $260,000 a year. If there was a government frequent flyer program, they'd be double-platinum members.
It costs on average one-10th of those figures per head to provide the support to lift people out of homelessness for good. The national saving would be between $5 billion and $10 billion a year.
What to do next: build on the valuable work of the federal government's white paper on homelessness and map out a 20-year plan to end homelessness in Australia. Firm up the economic case for ending homelessness, so the value for money question is conclusively answered. Then roll out resourcing for the support services required in three-year cycles to build capacity steadily, learning from each success. Persist until the mission is accomplished.
We are perhaps the first generation of Australians to have the knowledge and the opportunity to end homelessness in our country. Let's shoulder that load and give the gift of a country free from homelessness to our children.
Matthew Cox is Red Cross Queensland community services group manager. National Homeless Person Week starts today.
Source: theage.com.au
When you first hit the streets, young people tell me, you spend your first nights terrified. The terror and the sadness and the hurt over the things that drove you there in the first place never really go away. Everyone on the streets is hurting, that's what one young man tells me.
I find that people who live on the streets long for the same things I long for. Someone to love, something they can do well and take pride in, something that says they are unique and valued and have a place in the world. No matter how trampled they feel, no matter how desperate or brutal life on the streets can be, nothing seems able to extinguish those elemental human desires.
Today I received some good news. I hadn't heard of K for some time. Today I hear she has not only moved off the streets, but she has got a job and bought a house. I marvel at what she has already crammed into her life at just 22. She has guts and resilience I fear I will never have. Doing my sort of job you occasionally see the worst there is to see in life. But you also get to see the best. Today's news is the best. It keeps you going.
M's story is similar but different. A loving home, a quiet suburban childhood, but things went awry in her teenage years. Wild partying turned into drug dependence. Mental health problems set in and things unravelled. A few years on the streets and a few years climbing back see M with her own landscaping business. I'm talking to her about her newly acquired bobcat driving skills. More news in the "best" category.
J's story is perhaps most compelling of all. She wound up on the streets at 15 and spent three decades of her life there. Now, approaching 50, she wants something different. From somewhere deep she dredges up the motivation to give a different path a go. Somehow she finds enough strength to break from her peer group of long-term streeties and risks going it alone. After 30 years sleeping rough she has lost her family and knows no other life. She places her trust in a group of my colleagues and they help her get some money together and find her a small flat. It's a high wire act. One slip and she'll fall again. But against the odds she makes it work. She sticks at it. She's a reliable tenant and she starts to make plans for a better life. It is a heart-stopping triumph.
These stories are everywhere. But our community has the knowledge and the resources to end homelessness in this country. Collectively we know what to do. We know that access to secure accommodation – bundled with the right kinds of support and sustained for a reasonable period of time — gets results. People with even the most challenging life histories can be housed and develop a productive focus for their life.
We simply need to scale up our efforts to eliminate homelessness in Australia. We need to focus on the task and do the things we know work. With the right planning and persistence, children being born today will inherit a country free from homelessness.
Unrealistic? In the year of my grandmother's birth, 1908, it wasn't uncommon for men to die before they reached 60 and only a handful of children attended high school. High-schooling for girls was seen as a wild fantasy. Today we are closing in on universal completion of Year 12 and life spans have increased about a third to more than 80. These are the staggering achievements of the 20th century. These are the impossible dreams of my grandmother's generation.
They are dreams that didn't come cheap. They required a massive mobilisation of resources and the development of vast systems to support better education and health. But we saw the value and were happy to spend more than half of all state expenditure on those aims.
It costs far more to allow homelessness to persist than to end it. Homeless people are super-users of government services. The bill for their interactions with hospital emergency wards, psychiatric services, ambulance, police, courts, prison, child safety and the like has been calculated variously at between $60,000 and $260,000 a year. If there was a government frequent flyer program, they'd be double-platinum members.
It costs on average one-10th of those figures per head to provide the support to lift people out of homelessness for good. The national saving would be between $5 billion and $10 billion a year.
What to do next: build on the valuable work of the federal government's white paper on homelessness and map out a 20-year plan to end homelessness in Australia. Firm up the economic case for ending homelessness, so the value for money question is conclusively answered. Then roll out resourcing for the support services required in three-year cycles to build capacity steadily, learning from each success. Persist until the mission is accomplished.
We are perhaps the first generation of Australians to have the knowledge and the opportunity to end homelessness in our country. Let's shoulder that load and give the gift of a country free from homelessness to our children.
Matthew Cox is Red Cross Queensland community services group manager. National Homeless Person Week starts today.
Source: theage.com.au
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