The West’s Cry Wolf!

Selective espousal of universal concerns mars liberal champions and delegitimises their cause!

19 July 2023

In a fortnight from now, #Ukraine will enter a new phase of this hybrid campaign, not just with the advent of cluster munitions into the battle zone supplied by Americans, but beyond the turf of Ukrainian ‘meat grinder’ fields, and outside summits and conferences sponsored by the West and Russia, spilling into the terrain of popular opinion and embrace of icons. When The Economist hosts ‘By Invitation’ Mr George Clooney and Mr John Prendergast, it will be a clear trend with roping in earlier of teen icon Greta Thunberg to tweet about Ukraine as an ‘ecocide’ after the Nova Kakhovka Hydel Power Plant was blasted and the aftermath deluged the whole of South Ukraine, which on ground is Russian territory. ( annexed by Russia after they were captured in March 2022)

While it may be sufficient to describe a mercenary group that is facilitated by the State of American, British or Russian origin as ‘Non State Actor’, we must widen the definition of Non State to include all aspects of popular and global influence that can alter the decision making map of any State to bring these within the ambit of what is ‘State’ and what is ‘Non State’. By such a view, the person of an activist like Greta Thunberg who with her Friday School Strike for Climate Challenge cause has captured popular imagination as a global ecological spokesperson, or now actor George Clooney as an advocate for curtailing the actions of Wagner PMC particularly in Africa where the group has presence and involvement in many conflicts, which is well documented by military think tanks. The link to a documentation of the Wagner PMC by a Pakistani institute CSCR is offered here.( This article is dated, not later than the Ukrainian conflict, definitely prior to the Bahmut victory of the group and the ‘Freedom March to Moscow’.)

So we can see that no serious analyst will accept that a group like Wagner PMC or Black Water ( formed allegedly under the tutelage of Mr Rumsfeld VP of Bush Jr Presidency for Afghan and Iraq operations) or AFGFree ( self described as a ‘non-profit’ and promoted by Lt Col Perry Blackburn) or Mozart Company ( consisting of veterans from France, Germany, UK presumably who are rendering services to Ukraine) is capable of functioning without State support. Firstly, most armaments are outside the kitty of personal firearms that private citizens have access to, secondly, air lift or seaborne effort is rendered by their native countries covertly or overtly, and thirdly there is extensive element of ‘black operations’ with clear hand of their state intelligence officialdom, from mission tasking to deployment to withdrawal. However, these mercenary groups do offer a veneer of mutually acceptable deniability, which is why the West did not notice or protest the extensive footprint of Wagner PMC first in Syria, then in Mali, Central African Republic and other hotspots of Africa where their presence is documented. Nor can the West deny, the presence of their own mercenary groups, shoring up regimes across global hotspots and including services such as personal protection for VIPs in those regions. So when the West points a finger at Wagner PMC it would be the simple case of ‘kettle calling the pot black’…

There is however a larger covenant that governs most of these mercenary groups. Whether American or Russian, those who die in conflict zones as committed professionals, receive the honour that is due as if they were soldiers for their motherland. In fact, Army Sgt Maimer who as a veteran was slain in Bahmut, was identified by Yevgeny Prigozhin who heads Wagner PMC in the battle field, and whose mortal remains returned to the US with full military honours because of the honour that Wagnerites displayed for the fallen while fighting in Ukraine and elsewhere. So these mercenary groups are not rogue, even though, the State may accommodate them as ‘Non State’ only.

It is actually quite oxymoronic how the West is full of its own narrative, trying to paint the Wagner PMC black that in the report filed by Military.com on the death of Sgt Maimer, Wagner is accused of all manner of war crimes and desecrations, even as incredulously the very same report translates Prigozhin from the video as saying:

“Here we have a veteran,” using the name of an American. “So, we will pass him along to the United States of America, we will put him in a coffin, and cover him with an American flag because he didn’t die in his bed an old man but died in war and most likely in a worthy way, right?“A Wagner mercenary next to Prigozhin in the video claims the man died in a firefight.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/16/russian-mercenary-group-claims-american-veteran-killed-ukraine-firefight.html

Those who read war history will know better. The ready example that comes to mind is the 1971 war between bitter subcontinental rivals, India and Pakistan, where the heroism of two units 13 Lancers of Pakistan and Poona Horse of India with their ‘separated at birth’ theme, looked each other in the face of death at the Battle of Basantar. As recounted by Brig Khwaja Naser, this account is about the spirit & honour of soldiering. It celebrates the exemplary valour and sacrifice of a young Indian officer who was honoured with the highest Indian gallantry award after Independence for this event- Second Lt Arun Khetarpal PVC(Posthumous). So how soldiers live and die by and how they honour the fallen irrespective of the flag or creed they belonged to, marks them differently, from the generic ideation that they are ‘guns for hire’. That places Wagner PMC in a different category all together.

The way the Russian GHQ and President Putin handled the Wagner PMC ‘Freedom March to Moscow’, is too recent to delve into. However in the context of narratives abound on the group, it is again seen, that the group compensated monetarily every air crew slain in that brief insurgency, in its public apology and its subsequent handling by Russian establishment. Putin himself in his speeches has never referred to Wagnerites as anything else but ‘heroes’ who fought and died for Russia. He termed the insurgent action as an act of betrayal, and accepted to negotiate, waiving off charges and offering pardon in a deal that was midwifed by Belarusian President Lukashenko.

So while the Clooney attempt to give credence to a point of view in context of Africa where there is enough evidence of French, British American and Belgian horrors in the last 100 years, spawning and spanning from colonies to tinpot dictatorships, where glaringly the Rwandan Genocide was allowed to happen under the watch of the collective West, must be viewed as an opinion, it is also essential to see him and his coauthor as people with a finger in the African misery pie. After all John Prendergast is no novice to Africa, having served in the US NSC as Director for African Affairs. They cofounded an organisation titled ‘The Sentry’ which finances and investigates finances for various military conflicts within the ‘Dark Continent’. Mohamed Mamdani, an Indian African from Uganda’s literary and academic circle, presently Chancellor of Kampala International University has termed Prendergast’s efforts in Africa, particularly in Uganda and Darfur (Sudan) as ‘counter productive’. So when the duo pen about Africa as a call to end Wagner PMC presence there, it needs to be viewed from this running thread of their involvement, especially of Prendergast both as an official of the State and later as an activist.

For context, let us examine the stance of Climate activist Greta Thunberg on Ukrainian Dam burst as part of her established views on capping carbon footprints, the role of fossil fuels, ( she sailed trans Atlantic to attend a conference to avoid carbon footprint) and her position about her core concerns. We can see her silence about the NATO fuelled war as a essential contradiction to her core agenda, her silence encompassing European sanctions, boycott of eco friendly and cheap Russian gas, which led to EU import of wood chips and Compressed Petroleum Gas as replacements last winter, restarting of coal fired thermal power plants and the decision to take a relook at Nuclear Energy. So as a global champion, her advocacy was stymied by Ukraine and the pan European official support for Ukraine and NATO’s eastward expansion which is the primary cause for this conflict. Specifically, the issue of river sustainability has been studied by experts and now universally the agreement is to allow rivers to flow rather than to dam them. For Hydel Power, the present prescription is to have run of the river plants, not those that cage the river. So even if NKHP was demolished by Russia, ( a no brainer actually, but insisted upon by the West which claimed the same Russian hand for Nordstrom too) the eventual benefits of removing a reservoir in the path of the river is not ‘ecocide’, but rebirth of the river ecosystem. So who coached Ms Greta to term it so?

What passes muster for the young activist, must also pass for the seasoned actor campaigner for causes. Both are arguably examples of Non State actors, whose conveyance of causes excites citizens beyond borders of their home states. They become influencers and tools in the hands of State Craft now given to using narratives more cohesively and coercively than ever before, thanks to Internet, to News Media and Social Media bandwidth as part of what we can term- Hybrid War. So if we can see Wagner PMC and Mr Prigozhin as culpable Non State Actors, so must we see Ms Thunberg and Mr Clooney equally. Unfortunately, the cause of peace, the cause for climate action, and for pacifist liberal values in general is laudable and presents existential crises for humanity itself. That is why when selectively pandered to, it causes a great loss for the global commons.

Initially the Western Banners were all fervently hoping for a coup in Moscow rushing to hail Wagner as heroes of a Post Putin Russia. Now that Wagner has been moved to Belarus and look ominous for actions in Europe both overt and covert, they are villains of the piece again. Likewise the biggest casualty of the Ukrainian conflict is climate control, including carbon targets that were first accepted as the Paris Agreement under Obama Administration and now recently in COP25.

If the cause is non negotiable then, these icons need to heed a poignant moment from Vyasa Mahabharata. Yudhisthira, the upholder of the Truth, phrases in a way to his teacher Drona in the heat of battle, that makes the venerable teacher believe that his only son was no more. In Vyasa’s narration, in the commotion of battle, Drithadyumna claims in front of Drona that Aswaththama is dead and dances celebrating it, Bhima and Arjuna join his chorus, after actually slaying an elephant by that very name. So Drona is now asking Yudhisthira to confirm if Aswaththama, his son, is slain. “Aswaththama is slain, the elephant” utters Yudhisthira in reply, with significant pause between the clarification that came as an after thought. Some versions of the Mahabharata say that Krishna blew his conch and drowned this clarification completely. But all of them agree, that Yudhisthira’s chariot which was six fingers always above the ground now dropped to terra firma. His halo as an upholder of truth was gone forever.Many religious scholars of the Indian system of religious beliefs now popularly termed as Hinduism offer that this was the moment when ‘white lies’ became acceptable in Dharma and this heralded the advent of Kali Yuga-the Dark Age of Despondency and Devilry.

The price of credibility loss is not that of personal nature alone unfortunately. It is how the cause itself loses its sheen that makes for icons espousing them to be like angels and tread cautiously… The West also needs to reflect upon how it is using her supply of icons in such a frivolous manner, for the sake of immediate brownie points which no longer have the same salience as they once did before the Global Pandemic… The Global South bore the brunt of Western callousness and narratives over Covid19, and now braces to bear the aftermath of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. For a first, this generation of the Global South will have a view of Western benevolence which will be at variance with that of their preceding one. And the loss of icons will add more heft to this slide.