[BRIEF NOTE] Julie Burchill Thoughts

The first Julie Burchill article that I ever read completely was "Out of the rubble", a piece published in The Guardian less than a month after September 11th.

Nevertheless, it remains a fact that, even as a twentysomething flibbertigibbet, I was the only British journalist I know of to back the Soviets in Afghanistan, and to beg, to plead with the west to back the forces of civilisation against the forces of barbarism, so that we could stop the Islamofascists in their tracks as surely as the democracies could have stopped the forces of fascism proper in Spain if only they hadn't looked the other way. But worse than that, we were arming these maniacs up to the hilt!

Basically, at the time, I was treated as some sort of plague-carrying loony; I remember the super-smug Ken Follett on Radio 4 eulogising the forefathers of the Taliban and saying how he chose them as the heroes of his latest potboiler because there was a consensus that they were the good guys; when my opposition was mentioned, you could hear the contempt drip off his voice as he said, "Well, I don't think anyone pays any attention to what she thinks." I've often had cause to wonder wryly since then whether that sexy feminist wife of his has kept him up to speed with what his heroes have done to innocent young women and girls in the name of their peculiar religion, and whether he has the grace to shudder when he sees that novel on the bookshop shelves. Probably not.

For ten minutes after I read this article, I was awestruck. Burchill had managed, in the space of a few paragraphs, to challenge the entire previous generation of Western foreign policy towards Afghanistan. Why did the United States and the rest of the non-Soviet bloc world want Afghanistan to fall under the sway under reactionary local tyrants when a moderately more human alternative was already installed, in the form of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan? Yes, there was the invasion, but what of that? After all, the Vietnamese had chased the Khmer Rouge out of Cambodia and gotten chastised for it, yet no one seriously suggested that Pol Pot's lot be allowed back in to reopen the killing fields. It was only when I reached the eleven-minute mark that I remembered that the Soviet war in Afghanistan used tactics bordering upon the genocidal.

Generally, the lavish use of Soviet firepower masked the relatively modest results of most operations. Although the Soviets repeatedly demonstrated their ability to obliterate villages and drive the resistance into remote recesses of the countryside, they never had any intention of occupying areas where logistical support was nearly impossible to obtain and the inhabitants had largely fled. Indeed, the exodus of the population from many areas subjected to ground and air attacks led one scholar to describe Soviet strategy as "migratory genocide." Although estimates of the migration varied, up to five million Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan or Iran.

In practical terms, the typical Soviet offensive, though spectacular in its immediate effect, was counterproductive. On the one hand, the Mujahideen often suffered many casualties, and the populace could hardly fail to be impressed by the might of the invader. On the other hand, these operations primed the pump of the Mujahideen replacement pool. For example, a general Soviet disregard for civilian casualties, not to mention the destruction of villages, prompted the displacement of many Afghans to refugee camps outside Afghanistan. There, Mujahideen recruiters and trainers harnessed the refugees’ anger and incorporated them into the growing war effort.

Thus, the availability of sanctuaries to the resistance was not merely helpful, it was indispensable. Due to the fragile nature of the agricultural economy in many rural areas, villages were vulnerable targets for Soviet air power. Subsistence was entirely dependent on scarce water sources. As one knowledgeable observer put it, "Let one canal break or simply be poorly maintained, and a village dies." In other words, even if Soviet military might could not directly strike at small resistance bands away from the capital, it could render their sustainment difficult, if not impossible, by systematically depopulating whole areas. If the traditional formula for victory against guerrillas is to "drain the water" so as to defeat "the fish," the Soviets might well have succeeded in Afghanistan had they been able to envelop the country and seal the borders.

I suppose that this shows that self-styled progressives should actually look behind the shiny façades of objectively progressive regimes. Whether or not this leads to conclusions of broader relevance--to Burchill, to progressives--is another matter entirely.

I've a copy of Sugar Rush. I've been meaning to read it.

[BRIEF NOTE] Why I Hate George Weigel

This post was made in reaction to George Weigel's commentary "The Spiritual Malaise That Haunts Europe," in case anyone's wondering.

• He manages to reduce a debate over transatlantic policy differences to Good America versus Bad Europe. I'm so tired of this argument and its reverse, have I mentioned?


• He displays the fetishistic concern of American neoconservatives with European fertility rates, which are so low as to signal Europe's decadence. Yes, that's what they mean.


• He doesn't notice that laic France has the highest fertility rate in Europe, closely followed by the agnostic United Kingdom. Will the Europe of 2100 be majority French? Wait and see.


• He introduces a new and ill-defined term of "spiritual boredom" (only a couple of hundred hits on Google) without bothering to define it for his readership. He doesn't explain why it would discourage people from being politically active, and says nothing at all about why these supposedly apolitical European countries have (for instance) rather higher voter-participation rates than the United States.


• He displays the fetishistic concern of American neoconservatives with Muslim fertility rates, which are so high as to signal Islam's decadence. Neoconservatives, you might notice by now, are quite concerned with the number of children born to people of other cultural backgrounds--shades of Ceaucescu?


• He assumes that Muslims and Islam are more resistant to the lures of Western popular culture and secular hedonism than Christians and Christianity. He's still saying this about Poland, which (he hopes) will reevangelize the European continent the same way that Québec was supposed to energize Catholicism in North America a half-century ago. His child-like faith is amusing.

[LINK] Immigration in Spain

From El Pais via the International Herald Tribune:

IMMIGRATION HAS had a radical impact on the demographic growth of Spain, a country whose zero natural population growth had been pushing it toward old age. If matters had been left to the Spaniards themselves, nothing would have changed. But the arrival of foreigners has changed the situation completely, to such an extent that Spain now has the fourth highest percentage of immigrants in relation to the native population after Germany, Austria, and Belgium - all traditional magnets for immigration - and is even ahead of France. At a global level, this phenomenon is positive, if only because of its impact on economic growth. At the same time, however, imaginative policies will be required if the new arrivals are to have access to health, housing, and above all, education.

According to the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE), Spain's population has now passed 44 million, a figure that until recently was not expected to be reached until 2025. The increase is overwhelmingly due to the arrival of immigrants, whose numbers have risen seven-fold over the last decade. The tendency has been reflected as well in the adoption of overseas children, whose numbers rose 40 percent in 2004. By the beginning of 2005, some 3.7 million foreigners were registered as living in Spain, representing 8.4 percent of the population. This figure is likely to rise considerably by the end of the year once hundreds of thousands of people who have recently applied for legal status as part of a three-month government campaign will have received their working papers.

[NON BLOG] Out and About

I still feel a bit weak. I suppose that's what comes from lying in bed more or less continuously for three days. Fresh air's nice, even if it's Yonge Street air.

[BRIEF NOTE] Kudos to Brazil

From The Guardian:

Brazil yesterday became the first country to take a public stand against the Bush administration's massive Aids programme which is seen by many as seeking increasingly to press its anti-abortion, pro-abstinence sexual agenda on poorer countries.

Campaigners applauded Brazil's rejection of $40m for its Aids programmes because it refuses to agree to a declaration condemning prostitution.

The government and many Aids organisations believe such a declaration would be a serious barrier to helping sex workers protect themselves and their clients from infection.

The demand from the US administration, heavily influenced by the religious right, follows what is known as the "global gag" - a ban on US government funds to any foreign-based organisation which has links to abortion. This has resulted in the removal of millions of dollars of funding from family planning clinics worldwide.

On a related note, I'm disturbed by how happy this American defeat makes me. I'd prefer to think that I wish defeat and ruin only on the Bush Administration, but I don't think I can be certain about that.