The reaction of some European politicians, officials and even journalists not only shows their bewilderment but also exposes their prejudices rooted in racism
As Russia continues to pound Ukraine with bombs and missiles — its been a week since the offensive began — citizens in Ukraine caught in the crossfire are grabbing their suitcases — and their pets — as they seek safety in bomb shelters or neighbouring countries. AFP
The response of the West to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine evoked similar disbelief and anger: How can this be happening to us; this occurs only in the developing world, in the dark corners of Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia; it can’t be taking place in Europe and in the United States.
President George W Bush, equating the Al Qaeda terrorist act to a war, told a Joint Session of the US Congress on 20 September 2001: “Americans have known wars but for the past 136 years they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning”.
Europe had not been as fortunate as America. It was devastated by two World Wars and the Nazi genocide of the Jews and others in the first half of the 20th century. But thereafter it had escaped war except in the Balkans, which is only at its fringes, and some small-scale military action. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stated on 24 February, in her first press statement after Putin invaded Ukraine, “It is President Putin who is bringing war back to Europe.” Earlier in the same statement she noted: “Once again, in the centre of Europe, innocent men, women or children are dying or fear for their lives”. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was more direct. He said, “We now have a war in Europe, on a scale and of a type we thought belong(ed) to history”.
The import of Bush, von der Leyen and Stoltenberg’s words are clear. War in the US — even a terrorist attack characterised as war — was unthinkable; it had never taken place after the Civil War had ended in 1865. The only exception was Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. In Europe it was also a matter of the past. Thus, for innocent people to die in war, whether terrorist or otherwise, in the US or Europe was unacceptable. War only happens on other continents that were not as advanced as Europe or the US. Ironically in many cases the great Western powers and Russia have engaged in proxy wars or exacerbated violent conflict causing enormous human suffering.
The victory of the West in the Cold War bred comfort and complacency in its elites. The Soviet Union had been consigned to history and communist ideology’s attractions were globally giving way to ‘greed is good’. The breakup of Yugoslavia and the accompanying violence required intervention and was embarrassing but it did not erode confidence that the West had evolved to a higher plane of existence while the developing world was still enmeshed in the quagmires of the past. New doctrines of intervention such as the right to protect were designed to bypass national sovereignty. It was in this context that terrorism, including of the state-sponsored variety, was shrugged off. It was a problem of the developing world and Europe and the US was considered immune from it.
Through the 1990s Indian diplomats experienced great indifference on the part of their European and US interlocutors whenever they raised Pakistan’s promotion of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. It was not as if they did not know what Pakistan was up to, but its use of the terrorist option was considered a new chapter in an ongoing issue between the two states and partly attributed to the ‘mistakes’ made by India in the valley.
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The growth of Islamist terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda caused worry and their attack on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 rang alarm bells which rang louder with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Still the purposefulness required to combat terrorism and empathise and support countries like India facing terrorist action from a neighbour was absent. The reason obviously lay in the conviction that the US and Europe had gone beyond the stage to face terrorism on their soil. Terrorism was considered a problem that was quintessentially of the age the advanced world had left behind. The shock and horror of 9/11 changed all that.
The reaction of some European politicians and officials and surprisingly Western journalists in the beginning of Putin’s Ukraine war not only showed their bewilderment but also laid bare their prejudices which are, truth be told, rooted in racism. This is notwithstanding that no objection can really be taken to Ukraine’s immediate neighbouring countries to the west — Moldova, Rumania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — as well as others in allowing Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war to find a warm welcome. It cannot also be expected that a similar attitude would be shown towards refugees fleeing African and Asian conflicts.
The logic, however, given out by at least one European politician at the plight of the Ukrainian refugees and the reason why they are allowed to come in when the gates are shut for African and Asian refugees demonstrate deep prejudice. This is what Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Kiril Petrov was reported by the international media as telling journalists: “…these people are Europeans. These people are intelligent. They are educated people…This is not the refugee wave we are used to, people we are not sure of their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.” Howsoever, Petrov may seek to spin these comments as completely unacceptable. Petrov’s affinity towards Ukrainians is fine but his deep ignorance and racist attitude to other refugees can only be condemned. The fact that Putin’s war is entirely wrong, no matter what the past provocations were, cannot lead to papering over such attitudes.
Petrov’s comments found an echo in a Ukrainian official’s remarks but in more graphic language. He said that the war was emotional for him because he saw “European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed every day” in Putin’s war. The official is clearly a racist for naturally one would be emotional if one’s countrymen, women and children are being killed but his words “blond hair and blue eyes” reveal his attitude. Seasoned European and US journalists from the mainstream media were also emotional not at human beings killed and becoming refugees but at the suffering of a specific kind of human being.
A one-time BBC TV journalist now with the Al Jazeera forgetting that he was with a news organisation based in Doha went so far as to say on air: “These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a state of war…They look like any European family that you would live next door to.” And a CBS journalist at the start of the invasion and the aerial attack on Kiev said: “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for years. This is a relatively civilised, relatively European…city where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen”.
Sadly, at least some, in the old colonial countries have not been able to give up their racist attitudes.
The writer is a former Indian diplomat who served as India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and Myanmar, and as secretary, Ministry of External Affairs. Views expressed are personal.
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