During World War I, soldiers all along the Western front held a series of informal truces in December 1914 to commemorate Christmas. It was early in the war, and opposition had not yet hardened into implacable enmity. The military command, caught by surprise, could not impose complete battlefield discipline. An estimated 100,000 British and German soldiers participated. They exchanged smokes, sang together, and even, on at least one occasion that has since been widely mythologized, played a game of football.
Imagine how different the world would look
today if that truce had held, if it had turned into a lasting ceasefire, if
Europe had not burned itself to the ground in a fit of nationalist pique. There
might not have been a global flu epidemic spread by soldiers in 1918. The Nazis
might not have seized power and precipitated the Holocaust. World War II might
never have happened and nuclear weapons never used. At the very least, nearly 20 million people would
not have perished in the First World War.
We are now in the early stages of another global war, call it “World War III,” this time against the common enemy of a pandemic. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week called on all countries to observe a global ceasefire to focus all resources on beating back the coronavirus known as COVID-19. “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war,” he concluded.
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Meanwhile, eight countries that have been suffering under economic sanctions — China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Venezuela — have appealed for an end to the economic sanctions that are hampering their efforts to battle the disease.
And a number of civil organizations are
pressing for the release of political prisoners, jailed journalists and as
many nonviolent offenders as possible to reduce the crowding that makes prisons
a potential killing ground for the coronavirus.
Not surprisingly, there has been pushback
to the idea of even temporarily ending these three expressions of state power:
military conflict, war by economic means and mass incarceration. But this
pandemic, for all of its ongoing horrors, can serve as a jolt of smelling
salts. International cooperation needs to take priority right now, and
countries must stop their wars against one another and against their own
populations.
Bombs, sanctions and prisons are not
effective tools in the fight against the coronavirus. Indeed, by aiding and abetting
the enemy, they will only make the war worse.
Silencing the Guns?
There has been much talk of repurposing the US military to fight the coronavirus. Two US Army field hospitals have been sent to New York and Seattle. Some soldiers have already been deployed, the National Guard has been activated in three states, and the Pentagon has been authorized to call up former soldiers to help in the fight. But the military is, to use an apt simile, like a large battleship that is not easily turned. The Pentagon hasn’t even allowed immigrant doctors in its ranks to help against the pandemic.
In the meantime, the Pentagon continues to pursue its prime directive: planning war and killing people. On March 12, the United States conducted airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq, in response to attacks that killed two US service personnel. It was billed as a “proportional” response. Yet the Pentagon has been pushing a far more ambitious plan to go to war against Iranian proxies and, ultimately, Iran itself.
“Some top officials, including Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo and Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, have
been pushing for aggressive new action against Iran and its proxy forces — and
see an opportunity to try to destroy Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq as
leaders in Iran are distracted by the pandemic crisis in their country,” write Mark Mazzetti and Eric
Schmitt in The New York Times.
In nearby Afghanistan, the US and the Taliban signed a peace deal at the end of February. But any end to the war in Afghanistan will require a truce among the factions within the country, indeed within the government itself. After a disputed presidential election that once again pitted President Ashraf Ghani against chief rival Abdullah Abdullah, even the threat of reduced US aid didn’t persuade the two sides to unify.
The fighting continues on the ground, with airstrikes against the Taliban most recently on March 24 as well a series of Taliban attacks in the last week against Afghan soldiers and policemen. In the leadup to the signing of the peace agreement, the US conducted the second-highest number of air attacks for the month of February since 2009. And last year, Afghanistan sustained the most US aerial attacks since 2006.
Wars grind on in other parts of the world, pandemic be damned. All sides declared a truce in Syria in early March, but Turkey exchanged attacks with “radical groups” in Idlib province on March 19. This week, Israeli warplanes targeted a Syrian military base near Homs. And the Islamic State has indicated that it sees the coronavirus as an opportunity to step up attacks — like a recent massacre at a Sikh temple in Kabul — because the last thing the “crusaders” want is “to send additional soldiers to regions where there is a chance for a spread of the disease.” However, COVID-19 will most harm Syrian refugees, particularly the recent wave of nearly a million people who fled Idlib and Aleppo in December.
In Libya, both sides of the civil war agreed to a humanitarian truce that evaporated after only a day and now the fighting there has even intensified. Whoever wins Tripoli will take over a capital with an already ravaged infrastructure and a collapsed economy. The Pyrrhic victor will then have to address a mounting health emergency with ever diminishing resources.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, which is on track to become the poorest country in the world because of its five-year-long war, the combatants agreed to a truce last week. As in Libya, it hasn’t lasted long. The Houthis have since launched some easily intercepted ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia, which retaliated by once again bombing Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.
Conflicts throughout Africa — in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Mozambique and Mali — also continue despite pleas for a truce. Neither has al-Shabab stopped its suicide bombings nor the United States ceased its drone attacks in Somalia. Elsewhere in the world, there’s no pandemic pause for a series of equally deadly cold wars.
Weaponizing Sanctions
For years, the United States has tried to
shut down North Korea’s economic relations with the outside world as a way to
force the government to negotiate away its nuclear weapons program. North Korea
devised a variety of methods to get around US and UN sanctions, including illicit transfers of oil from
foreign ships to North Korean vessels in the middle of the ocean.
But the most lucrative source of goods and
revenues continued to be China, which has been responsible for upwards of 95% of North Korea’s trade.
Washington has intermittently put pressure on Beijing to shut down this trade
to pressure Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table. It hasn’t worked.
Then the coronavirus hit. By the end of
January, North Korea had shut its borders with China to minimize the risk of
infection. It even issued a directive to
guard posts to put a stop to flourishing smuggling operations. What sanctions
couldn’t accomplish in years, the virus managed to achieve in weeks.
Despite these precautionary measures, the coronavirus has no doubt reached North Korea. There have been reports of probable coronavirus-related deaths in the North Korean military. Thousands of people have been quarantined. Even as the North Korean government insists that the country remains pandemic-free, it has quietly appealed to other governments for assistance in addressing the disease.
The US has so far held firm. Even though
sanctions are holding up the delivery of critical humanitarian aid, Washington
has refused to reconsider sanctions. Secretary Pompeo continues to talk as
if a pandemic isn’t raging outside: “The G-7 and all nations must remain united
in calling on North Korea to return to negotiations and stay committed to
applying diplomatic and economic pressure over its illegal nuclear and
ballistic missile programs.”
Pompeo has been even more ruthless toward
Iran, an early pandemic hotspot. Tehran initially fumbled its response to the
disease, which was quickly spreading through the populace as well as the
political and religious leadership. As Human Rights Watch has meticulously detailed,
US economic sanctions have only made a bad situation worse.
Yes, the US government formally permits
humanitarian aid to the country. But its sanctions regime — which includes the
threat of secondary sanctions against entities that engage Tehran — ensures
that banks and companies steer clear of Iran. Pompeo’s take: “Things are much worse for the
Iranian people, and we’re convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise
up and change the behavior of the regime.”
That’s also pretty much the US strategy
toward Venezuela, which is in an even more vulnerable position. Though it only
has a little more than 140 confirmed cases, COVID-19 will likely ravage the
weakened country. “Only a quarter of Venezuela’s doctors have access to a
reliable supply of water and two-thirds are without soap, gloves or
masks,” reports The Guardian. “There are 73 intensive care beds in the whole
country.”
This week, the Trump administration
conditioned any reduction in sanctions on a political deal that requires Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro to step down in favor of a transitional council
that includes the political opposition. The current government has rejected
this regime-change option.
These maximum pressure tactics toward North
Korea, Iran, Venezuela and others recently led Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl, who is no softy on
foreign affairs, to conclude that Pompeo’s “pandemic
performance will ensure his place among the worst ever” secretaries of state.
Emptying the Prisons
Egypt freed 15 prominent oppositionists on March 21. A few days earlier, Bahrain let go nearly 1,500 detainees, but no prominent human rights activists or political oppositionists. Iran has released 85,000 prisoners, but only temporarily. Turkey is planning to release 90,000 prisoners, but none of them political.
Prisons are the perfect breeding ground for
the coronavirus: poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding, minimal medical
facilities. Many countries, including the US, are looking into ways of
reducing the population behind bars.
The Committee to Protect Journalists
is mobilizing support to
pressure governments to release the 250 journalists who are currently in prison
worldwide. UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has urged
countries to reduce the numbers of people in detention, with a special emphasis
on political prisoners. “Now, more than ever, governments should release every
person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners
and others detained simply for expressing critical or dissenting views,”
she said last week.
Those behind bars are frequently the
victims of various government campaigns: against a free press, against
political dissent, against drugs. But when a major war threatens the homeland,
prisoners are sometimes drafted into military service. That happened during the
French colonial period and by different sides in World War II.
In “World War III,” we need everyone on our side. If countries don’t significantly empty out their prisons during this COVID-19 crisis, the inmates and the guards will likely be drafted by the enemy. This foe only gets stronger as our petty conflicts continue and the stiffest sanctions remain in place.
It’s time for a truce on all fronts — or
else we will surely lose the larger war.
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are
the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial
policy.
