The "G" Word

If you’ve been following the news or reading my modest edification on the Balkans, then you’ve probably been retaining a lot of numbers and figures by now. Including the most recent figures, after 15 years of peacekeeping, the remaining British troops have left Srpska, as part of a withdrawal plan in which some 600 of ‘em were phased out of the country. (The British contingent was part of the EUFOR, a security body in place after the war, following NATO’s mission.)

But as a whole, most numbers relayed in relation to Balkan history is a human matter.

After the World Court hearing in March, in which genocide was declared in part on Serbs collaboration in exterminating 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica; a number of other “numbers” have surfaced to be taken up in court.

Sierra Leone: Tens of thousands
Rwanda: Estimated 500,000
Darfur: Estimated at 30 -70,000 people.

These figures are related to estimated deaths as a result of genocide, which if factoring other causes for death, i.e. war, famine, disease; the number of fatalities is significantly greater. In dealing with genocide crimes, there must be evidence and proof of intent to destroy a population. For example, Milosevic was not found guilty of genocidal crimes in the Samura whose work on the diamond trade in West Africa evoked the Hollywood blockbuster “Blood Diamond,” said in an interview that anything deemed valuable on the continent is a curse. That is to qualify not just the bloody trade of diamonds, but also blood gemstones (Madagascar); blood coffee (Kenya); and blood oil (Nigeria), for example.

Economists call this “the resource curse,” a reference to countries with great natural wealth that fail to diversify their industry or invest in education, which leads to long-term economic decline.

Genocide is not an isolated event that occurs in Africa based on its own discordant history and culture. This train of thought is warped in racist imperialism in which the Western powers have no impunity in their involvement of orchestrating developing regions. One can chronologically trace how banana republics and straw men cum dictators are raised by Western Powers—i.e. Chile, Nicaragua, Iraq, Liberia, and so on.

To extrapolate this Western hand or the consumer dollar in Africa’s nightmares, for example, perpetuates the adage of the “dark continent.” This wholly outdated premise of approaching the nether world, as less than, in which developing societies are not understood to be fighting “civilly” (as if war was civil), for any real reason, but gain public attention from Amnesty International or Bono, provided the sheer amount of barbaric imagery on hand. The very hesitation to intervene in such intensified places that the West has set up is barbaric.

But this is after all, the United States’ legacy to play ref, come Arkansas, Texas or holy high waters. The US' obstinate foreign policy that determines where to intervene and when to cry foul is entirely exempt from international protocol. And that perhaps is the constant theme in US history: a refusal to acknowledge the world at large.

Even now, perhaps in admonition of being indicted for war crimes, the US the US refuses to join the International Tribunal for War Crimes.

Bypassing international protocol for UN anything altogether, this is one of many instances in which genocide is used as a means for intervening and thus deploring other parts of the world, which are consistently, economically disadvantaged.

In Brendan O’Neill’s “Pimp My Genocide,” he writes that the G-Word is prostituting Third World to justify whatever means needed to assert power and moral authority. He writes, ‘…genocide’ becomes the language of international relations, effectively a bargaining chip between states, then it can lead to a grisly competition over who is the biggest victim of genocide and who thus most deserves the pity and patronage of the international community.”

Thus Israel calls genocide on Palestine; Milosevic called genocide on NATO; and the Bosnian Serbs can cry foul on Bosniaks. In a sense we have made genocide competitive.

And now, the most recent number:
Turkey: 1,000,000 Armenians

France passed a bill last year declaring it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide. A historical date that began in 1915, in which a million plus Armenians were slaughtered by Turks. This bill placates Armenian immigrant-voters in France and was also used as a means to chastise Turkey and block their entry into the European Union.

And guess who gets to "diplomatically" clean up the interplay at hand? Therefore having to deny the genocide in part? Turkey's friend, the USA. ..

Is there any place in this shrinking world where the US can be isolated, exempt, entirely uninvolved?