Is there still time?

The horrendous images of the mortally wounded Twin Towers, of people desperately calling for help from top-floor windows, bodies plummeting downwards in what seemed like a never-ending fall (so small, so defenceless), the gigantic towers finally crumbling,... hurt me, as they hurt millions of human beings all over the world, deep down. But I did not weep. I have not done so for months now. For three years now, every month, at this very moment even, an average of 80,000 human beings dies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, invaded by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi (the USA's protected). This harsh reality, to which I have been a constant eye witness, has left me "dry". Three million victims in the last three years, plus over three million victims in Rwanda since 1990, total more than six million in one decade. Over the last few months, the bitter realisation that our "civilised" world remains indifferent to this and other major tragedies, which they do not see as their own, has gradually generated a kind of emotional shell around me, and bleak pessimism for the near future.

In September 1999, in the company of the president of one of the most important organisations of the opposition in Rwanda, I had an interview with Ramsay Clark, former Attorney General of the USA. His office is located in south Manhattan, so I made the most of the rest of the day to do some sightseeing in this emblematic island. Now, two years on, everything that I saw at the time seems like a flash-forward metaphor to me.

On the one hand, the Statue of Liberty. I gladly ascended to the zenith of this monumental sculpture, a gift from France, which evokes the noblest links between North America and Europe. That selfsame North America which contributed so decisively and generously to the liberation from Nazi oppression. The North America of the movies and comics of my childhood. The North America I admired so much, and still do. The North America of heroes invariably fighting an unjust majority. Of Ramsay Clark and so many other lucid North Americans who are critical of their latest governments and of the broad sector of their society that supports them, as well as the large information agencies with their powerful lobbies (the ultimate leaders of "this" pitiless globalisation that engulfs us).

On the other hand, the World Trade Center. This whole complex, and particularly the Twin Towers, represented the very heart of financial capitalism. I am sure that knowing this was what rendered the idea of entering its sophisticated entrails devoid of any interest for me. I simply sat down for a few minutes in the square which until that fateful 11th of September had nestled between the towers, watching the hubbub in that human termite nest that rose impressively above me. Thanks to its location and its characteristics, we had all afforded it, albeit not without a certain degree of Manichaeism, the status of the symbol of that sovereign financial power. In fact, some 10% of the operations carried out in New York took place there. But not all the powerful were there then, and neither were all those who were there then powerful.

A few days before the attack I had started an article with the same title, "Is there still time?" in which I tried to explain how for several years several small organisations had lived in the hope that once our most developed societies learnt of the magnitude of the genocide that is going on in the Africa of the Great lakes they would somehow react. But we were wrong. We felt that the whole problem lay precisely in the fact that we, the denouncers, were so small, that we were devoid of any clout, in the face of the powerful psychological and social mechanisms which entrust authority to those who are supposedly in the know. We trusted that things would change when people with greater influence than we had began to speak out. For a good year and a half now we have been listening to the following kind of reproaches: "Who do you think you are? You must be joking! How can 80,000 people be dying every month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo without organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International or specialised journalists denouncing it".

But in recent months this whole situation has begun to take a U-turn, the ignominy is coming out. The great oracles of the politically correct progressivism of our global world have spoken at last: Agencies such as the UNO, NGOs such as Amnesty International, major media such as El País (which, along with others such as Le Soir or Le Monde Diplomatique, and unlike others such as Libération, El Mundo or Avui), had adopted a rather unfortunate stance vis-à-vis this situation. Now, the plundering of the Democratic Republic of the Congo actually "exists". And so too do the 80,000 victims every month. And it is now clear that the aforementioned loot lies at the heart of these huge massacres. But hardly anyone seems to care. The destruction of so many millions of human lives and the looting of the region's exceptional resources, such as coltan, is now irreversible. Major mining and financial corporations, mainly from the United States, have already taken their money and run. And their African allies are now in possession of their by no means small share. However, there can be no doubt that putting an end to such suffering is still important. Which explains the title of the article: "Is there still time?"

I feel pessimistic about the times mankind is going through. The sheer lack of awareness in most of our developed societies of the magnitude of the suffering which some of our economic and political leaders are wreaking in several regions of our planet reminds me too much of that same lack of awareness in a large part of the German society who supported Nazism. Our televisions incessantly repeat the pictures of the destruction of the Twin Towers, or the Palestinians supposedly celebrating the attack on New York. But there is not one single shot of the ongoing devastation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not a single shot. Control over what we see in this gigantic medium we call television is undoubtedly the most important key. It matters not that some of us know what is going on in the Africa of the Great Lakes. If the major TV channels do not repeat these pictures, it is as if they did not exist for the bulk of society, the part that chooses political leaders.

But any civilisation that washes its hands of the pain of an immense mass of dispossessed, which increases the gulf between that selfsame mass and the more fortunate, has no future, it is too vulnerable. Like the Twin Towers. Like the verticality of power and its privileges. Devoid of a territorial or social base. So ostentatious and provocative in the midst of a world sown with a million small and foul-smelling mud huts. How can anyone who failed to realise the great vulnerability of these towers, of its financial power and the system they symbolise ever be called leaders or experts? What IQ could a bunch of military leaders capable of dubbing their new crusade "infinite justice" have?

It has been said that violence is the midwife of history. Will this prove to be true once again? The USA has failed to listen to numerous voices and gestures speaking out against violence over the last few decades. And I am speaking from experience. The letter sent by the S´Olivar Foundation to president Bill Clinton at the beginning of 1997, signed by 19 Nobel prize-winners and by the presidents of the political groups of the European Parliament (denouncing, with a 42-day fast, his serious responsibility in the genocide of thousands of Hutu refugees in the former Zaire) simply went unanswered. Now, after so many deaths and so much destruction in their own back yard, will the current leaders of this great power and its most "patriotic" sector maybe start to really wonder why there is so much hatred towards the USA?

I am not naive enough to believe that fanaticism is born only of injustice, nor to believe that goodwill, declarations of rights and denouncements of violations of such rights, legal action or laws and international solidarity alone will enable our better-off societies of the North to guarantee their safety from future aggressions by militant fanatics. I have always defended the need for armed corps under the orders of legitimate international authorities, a stance which has brought no end of problems to an anti-violence person like myself. I am only too well aware that there are still too many irresponsible people out there with too much power of decision, albeit not only in the less developed countries, which makes the question a rather difficult one.

Religious fanaticism is not the only fanaticism, and nor are Islamic fanatics the only fanatics. Moreover, this terrible attack cannot be explained only as an attack by fanatics or for reasons of fanaticism. This self-immolation can only be understood if we recall the great asymmetry between the media of those whom the terrorists see as their enemies and their own media. But their logic is the same war-fuelled logic devoid of ethical rules that one day destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which aims to impress and even terrorise the enemy by means of the mass and indiscriminate elimination of civilians. Neither is this attack the same as an opening attack like Pearl Harbor. Many of these kamikazes have relatives who had already been violently murdered. And for years, many of the countries they hail from have been devastated by conflicts in which the great powers also had a major say. I think that the real criterion that allows us to plot some type of dividing line between acts of barbarism and legitimate defence is the degree of irrationality, disproportion, hate and thirst for vengeance driving them. Or does Bin Laden, who used to work for the CIA, only become a fanatic terrorist when he switches sides?

Those who still believe that our safety is merely a question of armed forces are truly naive. And there are too many people in the higher echelons of decision-making in our society who prefer to forget that education will be, in the medium term, more decisive against fanaticism than the most sophisticated defensive technologies. And the truth is that in the face of abject poverty and secular injustice, or against revolutionary explosions, surging, yet again, from marginalisation and despair, the only alternative is cooperation and solidarity. But budgets are budgets. Military expenditure is always there, and goes up every year. And the chicken feed the government assigns to international cooperation has not budged since the national campaigns in favour of the 0.7% which could be voluntarily assigned to these causes from personal income tax return (particularly for the countries and NGOs that are not to the liking of the government that happens to be in power).

But reality is stubborn, and this civilisation and this globalisation just do not work. At least not for the bulk of mankind. And that is why neither the well-off nor the highest towers are safe. Once again we are facing a decisive watershed in history, and once again the question arises: Is there still time? Will we find our way again? In what new hell will the new warrior messiahs of Good land us? We can only hope that NATO, when decision-making time comes, does not forget that throughout history all empires have elevated themselves to the divine status, underestimated the power of the "barbarians" from the "fringe" and finally, bereft of justice and reason, were plunged into a process of decadence, eventually crumbling, like the Twin Towers. And one wonders whether NATO might not be on the brink of its first major Vietnam, although the crisis has yet to reach such proportions. Such is the global entanglement of collective and narcissistic subjectivism, blatant injustices, pregnant silences and media lie-mongering that maybe it is too late to extricate ourselves by ourselves, maybe there is no time left for fairness, cooperation and education. Is the hour of the hardcore dictators, those who will free us from Evil, nigh?