Values in War - looting in Basra or Bath? |
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Looting in Basra - or looting in Bath?
It
has been a momentous week, with the images of Saddamís statue being
pulled down clearly etched into the global consciousness. But there is
an aspect of this week that has simultaneously interested and troubled
me. Looting.
We
have all seen the TV footage of civilian looting, whilst we also have
read of soldiers delivering humanitarian aid. We have seen videos of
coalition military doctors helping Iraqi civilians. Yet we also hear of
mobs looting major hospitals whilst soldiers looked on ìas they had no
ordersî to stop it.
What
sense can we make of these contradictions? Are the people of Basra any
different to those in my local town of Bath? When a war is ìwonî, is
looting part of the expected process? Without Leaders who are
ever-present, would we all loot? Is looting a political act, or is it
just plain criminal? Do we all need externally given rules? Or can we
self police? And how does a victorious soldier act in the restoration of
law and order?
Is this a question of Leadership, or values, or both? And then, whose values - the soldiers or the civilians?
Let's begin with looking at how this got started in Basra:
British tactics in Basra praised
By Paul Martin, The Washington Times
Coalition commanders have put together battle plans for Baghdad that they say draw heavily on the unorthodox but "very impressive" tactics adopted by British forces seeking the collapse of resistance in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.
"In Baghdad,
we will definitely use a lot of the effective techniques and utilize
some of the larger strategic lessons we learned in the British efforts
over Basra," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
... Two examples of unusual yet successful soldiering in the past two days have drawn praise from U.S.
Central Command ... British 7th Armored Brigade troops, known as the
Desert Rats, deliberately allowed residents to loot a Ba'ath Party
headquarters near Basra within minutes of the office's capture and search.
"Normally
we would stop looting because it's a sign that things have got out of
control and that law and order has broken down," said Capt. Alex
Cartwright to reporters. "But in this case we decided that to allow it
would send a powerful message: that we are in control now, not the
Ba'ath Partyî.
In another incident, when an Iraqi colonel was fatally shot in his vehicle, British
troops found a thick wad of local currency. Instead of handing it in to
officers, the troops decided to dole the cash out to wide-eyed local
youngsters, a monetary variant of candy handouts.
I
admit that initially this seemed reasonable to me. If you want to send a
clear message that a Government (or Regime, depedning on your political
view) has fallen, invite the local people to help tear it down. But
where do you halt teh tearing down?
On
a human level, I was especially intrigued by the soldiers who
distributed the cash that they "liberated" to the local kids. It is
almost certain that the troops were not given a specific order about
what to do in this situation - it was opportunistic. But it is a great
example of soldiers being sure enough of their "Commanderís Intent" to
take independent action, rather than rely 100% on their orders or having
to deal with the uncertainty by taking the problem back to HQ.
"Commander's Intent" is defined as
... a
concise expression of the purpose of the operation [which] must be
understood two echelons below the issuing commander. . . It is the
single unifying focus for all subordinate elements. It is not a summary
of the concept of the operation. Its purpose is to focus subordinates on
the desired end state. Its utility is to focus subordinates on what has
to be accomplished in order to achieve success, even when the plan and
concept of operations no longer apply, and to discipline their efforts
toward that end.
In other words, "Commander's Intent" is a combination of strategy and tactics to drive flexibility and successful outcomes. But
it also should include a sense of values if it is to be truly robust in
complex situations. This seems particularly important if you want
discipline at all levels in the group under your command. In a democracy, people do things because they want to, and personal values are central to this.
The Basra incident strikes me as supportive of this view. The
soldiers seem to have had clear goals, and were understanding of their
responsibilities to the civilian population. Yet the "money for kids"
event also seems illustrative of shared and congruent values. Of course a
development professional would argue that giving money to kids in
streets is counterproductive. But the incident does demonstrate where the soldierís heart was, and also how secure he felt in acting.
By contrast, one wonders what was going through the solders hearts and minds when they witnessed the looting of the Baghdad hospitals. Where was their ìCommander's Intentî? In Bath, would we stand by and see our hospitals looted, even if we had no specific orders on the issue. I think not.
Students of history would say that destroying enemy symbolism is a common characteristic, and transcendent of cultures.
How many decapitated statues litter the world, and how many flags have
been burned? But is it always as clear how to behave towards a civilian
population?
Whilst
there are of course many examples of outright destruction, most
successful victors usually leave the civilian infrastructure as intact
as they can. They realize that
this is essential to future law and order, and to future prosperity.
Even Genghis Khan allowed subjugated peoples to keep their religions and
their local government institutions, as long as they paid him the
necessary tributes and taxes. So, symbol destruction is a rather
generic, human characteristic of conflict. But it must be tempered with respect for civil structures because that is what will allow society to function.
Avoiding hitting civilian infrastructure, mosques or churches has been a very a good start, and is to be very much commended. But
the issue goes beyond the physical to the institutional and the
intellectual. Symbols are not all physical. The Americans donít like
flag burners - the Brits wear flags as underwear. And witness the way
the Arab world (and indeed many others) reacted negatively when the
Stars and Stripes was placed on Saddamís head, albeit briefly. The Pentagon has repeatedly and rightly stopped such flag waving - yet a soldier still did it.
Was
it because the "Commander's Intent" was not clear enough, or that the
soldier did not understand, or that there was insufficient discipline -
or all of these? One personís patriotism can be another persons joke, or
worse yet, insult. A ìCommanderís Intentî must allow for that complexity. Respect
is the key. And only a sense of shared beliefs will break through that
kind of fog. Only a more robust discussion on the values involved would
have prevented this rather tacky incident.
But back to Basra. The looting became more controversial ...
April 5, 2003: UN and Army at odds as troops encourage looting
By Daniel McGorory, The Times (London)
United
Nations officials have rebuked British commanders for urging local
residents to loot buildings belonging to the Iraqi Army and the ruling
Ba'ath Party.
The
British view is that the sight of local youths dismantling the offices
and barracks of a regime they used to fear shows they have confidence
that Saddam Hussainís henchmen will not be returning to these towns in
southern Iraq.
One senior British officer said: "We believe this sends a powerful message that the old guard is truly finished".
Armored
units from the Desert Rats stood by and watched earlier this week as
scores of excited Iraqis picked clean every floor and every room of the
Ba'ath Party headquarters building in Basra after it had been raided by British troops.
Villas
owned by the elite, army compounds, air bases and naval ports and even
some of the regimeís former torture chambers and jails have been
ransacked in the past week.
But UN officials said last night that such behavior was against the Geneva Convention and bred a dangerous mood of anarchy. ...
ìThe
worry is that it doesnít stop here with government property alone and
we are already seeing that. At the moment it appears to us that it is in
danger of getting out of control and should be stoppedî.
If the UN is right, do we all need imposed rules to force us to behave properly?
Yes and no. Yes, in that without impersonal rules, everyone becomes a personal battle. Rules actually make our life simpler - one less thing to be worried about. The ìrule of lawî is a critical principle of 21st century civil democracy and personal freedom.
But no, in the sense that without our own internal compass of right and wrong, we are lost. Even then, our personal set of rules may well change by situation.
In a natural disaster, we assume the ìsystemî will come to our aid. After all, that is why we pay taxes.
In a civil disturbance, there is often looting and lawless behavior. We
are not so sure weíll get the help, but we expect it will turn up
eventually, and then we all come together to make society ìcivilî again -
sometime by just plain ignoring the reasons for the disturbance, and
sometimes with a more active intervention. At root, we just cannot cope with too much ambiguity in our society.
In
war, unfortunately, almost anything goes, depending how threatened we
feel. If there was an armed attack by a foreign power on Bath, what would I do? Run?
Fight? The issue is not really whether the attacker has a better system
than mine - the issue is whether I feel personally under attack, and
how best I can then help my family and friends. What ethical rules would
I apply? It takes strong people to ìstick to the old rulesî in this
situation.
In
fact there would appear to be a hierarchy to how we respond to
different kinds of crisis, virtually independent of our cultural
backgrounds. A few examples:
Natural disaster: My family and I were caught right in the middle of the Kobe earthquake in Japan, in 1995. A couple of things really impressed us. The first was the calmness in the streets right after the quakes - an almost transcendental quiet. The
second was the fact that there was almost no looting, and what there
was unfortunately seemed to be committed by western youths.
Does this make the Japanese culture in some sense superior? Certainly
it does show the power of collective responsibility, which is part of
the culture. It could be argued that the affluence of the population led
to this rather ìpositiveî response. But insurance companies rarely
covered the losses, and many people lost family members and all of their
physical possessions. It was a massive quake, with terrible losses. But there was still no looting.
In the 1989 San Francisco
quake there was only sporadic and minor looting, reflecting a similar
civic duty, common sense attitude and personal affluence. And the recent
responses to Hurricane disasters in the US and Caribbean show
similarity to the 1989 quake - whilst there was some looting, it was
fairly minor given the huge numbers of people involved. The same is true
of other recent quakes, in Turkey and China.
By contrast there was rather extensive looting reported after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Perhaps we have all learned more civilized behaviors?
In any case, my conclusion is that extensive lawlessness is not a given for a natural disaster. In fact natural disasters often bring out the best in all of us. I would encourage readers to check the work of Henry Fischer, Millersville University on this issue.
Civil strife: The very nature of this beast leads to more violence. Many will recall the race riots which occurred a while back in the UK, where looting resulted. We have seen the same in other countries, ranging from the USA to India, Indonesia to Peru. Does anger with the system make looting allowable, or does it simply provide a detonator of frustration?
Wasnít the root cause in many cases poverty and inequality? Wasnít the system letting down some of its constituents? I
am not in any way excusing the behavior, but contrast this to our
relatively benign approach to natural disasters. Ironically the total
loss of control we have in an earthquake seems to lead to less
lawlessness than a civil disturbance, which we can often just run away
from.
Recall the Boston Tea Party?
It was a combination of revolutionary and civil strife, depending on
your viewpoint. But it was very much an example of tearing things down
to rebuild things, and not an attempt at anarchy.
Here is an eyewitness account of what happened in December 1773:
" ... there was a meeting of the citizens of the county of Suffolk
.... At that meeting a committee was appointed to wait on Governor
Hutchinson, and request him to inform them whether he would take any
measures to satisfy the people on the object of the meeting.
...
We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out
all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately
proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests
with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of
the water.
...
In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken
and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while
those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at
the same time. We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt
was made to resist us.
We then quietly retired to our several places of residence.
During the time we were throwing the tea overboard, there were several attempts made by some of the citizens of Boston
and its vicinity to carry off small quantities of it for their family
use. To effect that object, they would watch their opportunity to snatch
up a handful from the deck, where it became plentifully scattered, and
put it into their pockets".
There was looting at the Tea Party? Wow!
It was just small quantities of tea that were stolen, so it was all very genteel and controlled. This was obviously no big deal ;-)
Whilst Basra is no Tea Party, there is one parallel. Both events destroy the old, and usher in the new. And this disturbance in itself makes for some loss of law and order.
On the other hand, the Tea Party did not destroy law and order, although a revolution did follow. One
set of rules was replaced by another set of rules, and in a fairly
seamless process, so anarchy did not prevail. The moral from both is
obviously that you canít ìliberateî the average citizen if you loose law
and order and they suffer needlessly.
Consider these words from ordinary Iraqi citizens:
April 8 2003: British distribute water in Basra; looting is rampant in Iraq's second largest city
By Tini Tran, Associated Press, as reported at Boston.com
British troops began a massive effort Tuesday to distribute water to battle-weary residents of Basra but were unable to quell the spate of looting that erupted when the soldiers moved into Iraq's second largest city.
...''If they (the British) want to liberate Iraq, they must do so by giving us electricity, law and order. That's the only way to liberate Iraq,'' said a young Iraqi man standing in front of a water tanker who did not want to give his name.
''I
want safety now. We want government, we want police. Now it's no good.
Good people, honest people are afraid,'' said an engineer standing in
front of the Sheraton Hotel.
So the civilians want law and order, and so does the military - but the timing seems to be different.
When a soldier is being subjected to suicide bombing threats, it must
be tough to be a friendly policeman. And when a civilian has years of
pent up poverty and anger, it must be tough to behave.
As we noted, lawlessness increases as disaster moves along the continuum of natural - to civil - to military. In retrospect, this is all common sense. But in all of these processes
of massive change, people can loose their moral compass unless we take
the steps needed to reassure and if necessary police.
In Iraq, looting was unfortunately rather predictable. This is a poor people who have been part of a police state, and now there are no police. Lawlessness
was equally predictable. But surely this must have been part of the
battle plan otherwise no real ìLiberationî is possible. If
it was part of the plan, then why couldnít our Leaders (both political
and military) preempt the problem in a more timely fashion? At minimum they could make much stronger statements up front about what will and will not be tolerated.
On a related tack, I would also offer a principle to apply as we strategize about such situations - inclusion.
Happily
inclusion does seem to be an increasingly learned characteristic of
victors - maybe out of pure self interest, maybe because the world is
just too complex - or perhaps it is actually an ìemergent propertyî of a
civilized world (which complexity theorists would enjoy).
Inclusion is a step forward for all concerned. No more heads on pikestaffs at the town gates.
But
inclusion also means accepting the responsibility of assuming
leadership even in negative situations - no one will thank the US
or the British for acting like real policemen and women - but they must
if they are to preserve the society until a local civilian
administration is in place. And
if we are paranoid about being ìwesternersî policing ìMuslimsî, then be
sure to ask the Kuwaiti or Jordanian police to be there the minute they
are needed.
Witness Afghanistan. I offer no political perspective on that - but I do know that outside Kabul aid workers are less secure in carrying out their work today than they were under the Taliban.
So, let us now turn from Basra to Baghdad.
April 11: Instability plagues Baghdad. Law and order has broken down in Baghdad after US troops rolled into the heart of the Iraqi capital and seized control.
BBC Online
There have been serious incidents of looting across the city with two key Baghdad hospitals and many smaller ones being ransacked, International Red Cross officials said.
The BBC's Rageh Omaar in Baghdad says many Iraqis are barricading themselves in their homes for fear of looters and essential services have been crippled.
Looters
sacked the German embassy and a French cultural centre in the capital,
taking furniture, fridges and electrical equipment.
The luxurious homes of senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime, i
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Seye Joseph is a graduate of Mass Communication with core proficiency in Print Journalism from The Polytechnic Ibadan. He's a responsible and positive oriented person with deep passion in connecting and development communication, social media entrepreneurship, management and leadership.
Thursday 20 September 2012
Values in War - looting in Basra or Bath?
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