Tag Archives: Libya

When Whole Populations Flee

We can understand why Syrians are leaving their country. Were we living there, the anarchy would tempt most of us to leave also. We can see why Afghans flee, too, a country split into corrupt, warring factions. Iraq? Not much better.

Others flee Libya, just as broken as the rest. Still others leave corrupt governments and economic hardships in Yemen and Somalia and Nigeria and a dozen or more other places.

Though neighbors to Syria—Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey—absorb the most refugees per person, masses flee toward the more diverse European countries. Why do so many refugees seek these culturally different countries?

Economic opportunity, of course, and relief from overcrowded refugee camps. Still, we might be surprised that so many flee toward Europe’s secular culture.

European countries uphold freedom of religion, impartial judicial systems, and representative government. Such policies create the societies toward which refugees flee. Do they understand what creates those societies? Can they, someday, replicate policies in their own countries?

Brouhaha Over Benghazi

 

The investigation over security in Benghazi, Libya, where the U.S. ambassador and three others were tragically killed, continues within election year furor. As James Risen has written in The New York Times, however, the security of U.S. embassies and diplomats today is complex.

During the Arabian/Persian Gulf war in 1991, I began my first tour with the State Department at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Once the war was over, my colleagues and I enjoyed weekend trips to ancient ruins, group runs in the desert outside Jeddah, and evenings out in the city’s restaurants. In 2004, long after my assignment ended, al-Qaeda forces attacked the consulate and killed four employees and four of the consulate’s guard force.

When I served in Algiers in 1993, I probably acted foolishly in walking to a church on the weekend down narrow streets of the city. Hints of the extremist insurgency against the Algerian government surfaced, but we hadn’t yet been forbidden to walk around, and I wanted exercise. Besides, as a diplomat, I was supposed to know the people and country where I served. A few months later, as the insurgency increased, all but essential staff were evacuated back to the U.S.

In Tunisia in the late 1990’s, the U.S. embassy where I was posted occupied an old building near the center of town. The location was ideal for a quick lunch in one of the local restaurants. I often walked to work or rode the bus. Sometimes on weekends I parked my car at the embassy, then finished the journey by foot to a church in the old souk. I passed both a Jewish synagogue and a Muslim mosque on the way. (Jews have been in Tunisia since ancient times.)

Today, the U.S. embassy has been moved to a suburban location. Mobs recently attacked and damaged it, but did not gain entry. They destroyed the American school next door.

In short, security for overseas U.S. missions is more demanding and expensive today. Congress has not always been forthcoming with money for security programs.  Diplomats also chafe, as Risen pointed out in his article, at being stuck in buildings when they want to meet ordinary people outside.

Such complex sea changes had best be dealt with away from election hyperbole. All of us knew, even in the years I served, that security and diplomacy may contradict each other. We never supposed that all danger could be avoided.

 

Anger in a Connected World

 

The U.S. State Department has just confirmed that the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed yesterday in Benghazi, Libya. A mob, angered by a movie supposedly made in the U.S. that they considered offensive to Islam, attacked the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city.

As a retired Foreign Service officer for the U.S. State Department, I can’t help but feel a personal involvement in this tragedy, though I didn’t know the victims. The ambassador apparently was an able diplomat, serving his country previously in Libya and other Middle Eastern posts.

I thought back to a sudden demonstration before another U.S. consulate in an Arab country, one where I served. I remember the chants of demonstrators against some perceived wrong that the U.S. government had done. I remember the prickle of fear as we listened to those chants on the other side of our consulate walls and scurried to secure documents and prepare as we had been taught to do in such a situation, should consulate security be breached.

Fortunately, the government of the country where I served was intact, not like the Libyan one, still struggling to form after the overthrow of a dictator. In our case, government troops appeared, and the demonstrators scattered and left.

Another reason for our more fortunate ending, I believe, was that the demonstrators were not organized.  Though the Internet was rapidly expanding, Facebook and Twitter did not yet exist to fan flames of anger and to pinpoint a place to release that anger. The Internet and social media bring us the usual double-edged sword of blessings and curses.

Any people can be incited to commit acts of violence. African-Americans have been murdered by mobs in the not too distant past in our own country. Recently, worshipers have been killed in religious gatherings.

One news article focused on anger points in political campaigns. The purpose is to arouse citizens to such anger that they will vote certain ways. Yet anger, once incited, sometimes catches fire in the minds of deranged or immature individuals, leading to the taking of lives.

In a previous blog I pointed out that the anger and frustration of the German middle class after World War I led them to choose Hitler and the Nazis. They had reasons for their anger, but they were wrong to accept Nazism as a solution. Angry people have, at best, made stupid decisions and at worst, committed murders and terrorist actions against innocents.

We carry grave responsibilities for the handling of our anger, especially in this age of connectedness. In this case, both the mob that killed in Benghazi and the maker of the movie that incited them need to ask if they handled their anger in a responsible manner.