The Legacy of Freedom

This weekend marked an extraordinary anniversary: 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  I still remember how I felt watching live coverage of those heady, dream-like moments as elated Berliners climbed all over one of the most hated symbols of repression.  They were celebrating their new freedom, ushering in a new era of change and hope. In that moment once again we were all Berliners.

While it stood, the Wall itself stood for injustice, intolerance, repression, despair.  It was the antithesis of all the West believed to be good, and it was the gateway to what lay beyond the Iron Curtain.  Western political thinking has imbued an almost mythical quality to how evil Communism is portrayed, especially by the former Soviet Union. Even as the Wall fell, the fears of nuclear attack were still palpable.

But change raced in, hard and fast, bringing with it new levels of crime and corruption.  The hard realities following the fall of the wall soon dispelled the fairy-tale hopes of prosperity and brotherhood the western world had naively held for those countries once held in communism’s vice grip. Change is never easy, not even when it’s for the common good.

Fast forward twenty-five years later.  Russia is now led by Vladimir Putin, a dangerous throwback to the days of KGB control and a man who has ushered in a new cold war in east-west relations.  He has blatantly usurped the rights and freedoms not only of Russians, but of the Ukraine and Crimea, regions he seeks to control to rebuild the might of what once was.

In the middle east, a new group known as ISIS has engaged in nothing short of genocide to hunt down and eradicate those who don’t conform with their stringent and extremist beliefs.  Like a marauding horde of insects, ISIS strategically terrorizes the region, impervious to global condemnation or the horror of what they inflict on innocents.  They leave the world little choice in how to deal with them.  They are the force we must now eradicate to protect the very freedoms we cherish.

In Mexico, 43 young men paid the price for speaking their minds. They have vanished, and if found will likely be bodies in one of the many horrific mass graves where those who cross the Cartels are buried, along with their desire for change.  The cartels wield unquestionable and terrifying control over every level of government and of security within the country. So long as the world continues to buy their product, the cartels fear nothing and no one.  This is a land where journalists pay with their lives for writing the truth.

The rights of women and children are denigrated by Boko Haram in Africa, and the Taliban in Afghanistan.  But it is in those most vulnerable where we can see hope and strength most clearly. The breath-taking bravery of a girl named Malala has shown the world, especially those who tried to kill her, that freedom is a fight that lives within us, regardless of gender, age or origin, and it burns bright as a torch passed from one soldier to the next.

Twenty-five years have brought new challenges and threats. This week, we will honour those brave men and women who fought two world wars to ensure freedom, if not peace, for those generations to come. It is our duty to defend what they gave their lives for, so that our children know freedom, and cherish it. We have much work to do.

Ebola – One Plane Ride Away

 

On July 29 I wrote a post entitled “The Ebola Outbreak- Just One Plane Ride Away.”  At that time, my concerns were that things were moving too slowly, and that the spread of the virus out of Africa could be as easy as one passenger on a plane. The whole world is now processing the news that a man, infected in Liberia, boarded a plane and landed in Dallas, Texas.

At the end of July, there had been just under 700 deaths and 1200 confirmed cases limited to 3 African countries in what had been deemed the deadliest Ebola outbreak in modern history. Nobody knew how bad things were going to get. The WHO warned that we needed to “step up outbreak containment measures, especially effective contact tracing.” The Washington Post warned that we should be worried, because one flight out of west Africa to North America, densely populated and entirely unprepared, would land the virus in conditions where it could neither be easily contained nor readily detected. The early symptoms are no different than those of the common cold, and tests only find Ebola in the bloodstream after it has developed.

Now, there have been open assertions that things will get a lot worse before they get better. The CDC projects that there may be 1.4 million cases by January 2015. And that it is now possible Ebola will become “endemic among the human population of West Africa” something nobody ever thought would happen. The numbers currently stand at 5843 confirmed cases, 2803 deaths. These numbers, however, are far less than what is actually going on because cases are not being reported.

And Ebola just keeps spreading. We really don’t know where else Ebola has reached within Africa. Or globally, for that matter. Sierra Leone. Guinea. Liberia. Nigeria. The DRC. But according to studies, the growth is exponential and the WHO says the numbers could hit 20000 by the beginning of November.  Brilliant minds are struggling to accurately project what will happen. But calculations cannot factor in the unpredicatability of human behaviour in panic mode. How will the disease be contained if people are crossing borders freely? The massive fear and social stigma regarding Ebola in this region has been the reason for contagion. Those potentially infected will not admit to being sick. The living adhere to entrenched traditions and have bodily contact and exposure with their dead.

Fortunately, the US prepared for the possibility that a traveller could arrive with the virus and not know it. Hospitals were issued a protocol to follow. While there are warning signs posted at airports, and patients in affected areas are checked for fever, nothing has been done to effectively keep the virus from travelling. Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days. One doctor I spoke with who worked in Africa for decades explained part of the problem is due to the fact that Ebola has different strains, which is like fighting different strains of the flu. This particular variant is more aggressive, and proving that much more deadly.

President Obama is pledging money and resources now to fight the problem in Africa – a “boots on the ground” response. But this is what was needed at least two months ago, when we had a chance to get in front of it. Now, all we can do is hope that best-case scenarios in the dire projections bear out as we play catch-up.

And what about what those in the know aren’t saying? There is a vaccine, but we have no stock available to distribute and no real data or efficacy rates. What will panic look like in major urban centers as more cases occur and there is no vaccine or ready cure? If we don’t want Ebola to spread, there cannot be flights out of contagion zones. There cannot be any travel into or out of contagion zones. Will African nations be ready or willing to lock down their borders completely, using armed forces?

The news is grim, but at least it’s out there and knowledge gives people the tools they need to prepare and protect themselves.  We’re more afraid of what we don’t know than what we do. And we know now what to do to bring about an end to this crisis.

The Heart of Darkness

Man’s inhumanity to man – Joseph Conrad literally wrote the book on it, back in 1899.  His travels to the “dark continent” where he witnessed first-hand the negative benefits of imperialism compelled him to write the story. Over one hundred years have passed, but the scars of imperialism have not healed. Instead, greed, hatred and intolerance have spread like an infection to exacerbate the existing tensions between rival tribes, nations, warlords.

The story Conrad penned has evolved into multiple chapters, increasingly horrific. Across the 20th century, every decade had its own African crisis: Eritrea in the sixties; Ethiopia in the seventies; South Africa in the 80s; Rwanda in the 90s; and as the century changed, Sudan. This decade, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have become maelstroms of violence and terror.  What has happened in Africa over the past century is a graphic illustration of how hatred develops and mutates.  In our civilized norm, killing is wrong. To attack women and children is unthinkable. Yet, this has become the legacy of imperialism in Africa.

Case in point: the three hundred school girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria three weeks ago, held by the militant Islamic group Boko Haram. Their name means “Western education is forbidden.” The girls were taken from what was considered an elite private school, where they were encouraged to pursue careers and goals that are disparaged and forbidden by these militant Islamic groups. In pursuit of expressing their hatred of all things Western, the group has staged numerous attacks with impunity. While the group itself is relatively new, founded in 2002, their hatred stems back to events in 1903, when Britain took control over the region that is now southern Cameroon, Niger and the northern part of Nigeria. In an ironic twist, education has become the dividing point, inaccessible to many poor Islamic families, unimportant to wealthier ones, and opportune to Jihadists looking to recruit through their schools. These Islamic schools are now becoming part of the problem while being symptoms of a larger issue.

The legacy of imperialism has spawned successions of governments that collapse from the cancer of corruption and greed.  As decades pass, these countries are left increasingly vulnerable to the ongoing hatreds between tribes, regions and religions. It has reached the point where I think the rest of the world cannot reasonably expect these nations to resolve their issues themselves. In Nigeria, it has taken three weeks and international outcry to make the government there truthfully admit how many girls actually were taken and that they cannot do anything to help them. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathon is going to need more than just good luck to face the challenges ahead for his country. As major powers now step forward to offer their assistance, I would advise they be prepared for more acts like this by Boko Haram, and for more groups like them, because they believe they hold the upper hand.  And for their victims, especially those school girls, they do. Unless we find the way to show them otherwise.

Jihadists don’t play by our rules. Terrorism is how they force us to play by theirs. Verbal condemnation and traditional diplomacy are useless.  What needs to happen is something unprecedented. An internationally-sanctioned alliance that strategically invades the region in Nigeria where Boko Haram’s stronghold is believed to be and removes the militants the way a surgeon cuts out a malignancy. It’s a start, but the problem is that the insurgents will keep coming back, and maintaining that vigilance against them is beyond the ability of many African nations. The result will be the formation of growth of terrorists that spills out into the world. This truly is the heart of darkness. It isn’t just Nigeria’s problem anymore. It’s everyone’s problem, and unless we get involved in helping maintain security there, our own security will not be enough for what is coming.