Conflict and Safety

(Refugee camp photo from Wikimedia)

This will start out sounding like it’s about the UK. It’s really about something happening more and more around the world.

Britons once again face bungling and bias as a nation when we need to get our people out of a trouble zone. It took a while to evacuate embassy staff from Sudan. The UK made no effort to extract other UK citizens or visa holders. Other countries were evacuating their people and even graciously brought some of ours out, but UK government insisted that before anyone other than embassy personnel could be extracted, we needed a plan and a ceasefire.

Then a ceasefire began, brokered by countries that didn’t wait for us to catch up. The UK needed most of the ceasefire to get ready to bring people out. People were showing up at Wadi Seidna airfield outside Khartoum or making their way to Port Sudan, and then sometimes being turned away.

Several NHS medical staff who have indefinite leave to remain (ILR, similar to a USA green card) were on holiday in Sudan visiting kin. When they made the hazardous trip to the airport, they were rejected. They made the dangerous trip back to wherever they had been staying. After public outcry and a wobbly extension of the ceasefire, UK government changed its mind. If NHS staff who have ILR could get to the airport again, on their own, through checkpoints and firefights, in a matter of hours and bring proof of their employment, they would be put on an evacuation flight.

This smelled like what I call British No, the common practice of saying yes but only if nearly impossible conditions are satisfied. Who brings proof of employment on vacation? (Did I mention that proof of anything in the UK usually must be specific original paper documents. Copies won’t do. Neither will other documents proving the same thing that aren’t on the list of acceptable documents.) This isn’t the USA with a highly fragmented health care system. Why would we not be able to use a passport to look up whether a person is employed by the NHS?

Some of the NHS staff didn’t get there. Fighting had broken out again. If only we had our act together about evacuation a few days earlier…

Sudan is in Africa. People holding dual UK and Sudanese citizenship are likely not to be white. People who have ILR and went to visit relatives are probably not white. The UK’s “hostile environment” policy about immigrants is at full throttle.

In light of the current government’s track record, it crosses my mind that sometimes what looks like bungling is deliberate.

As I said at the start, what’s going on is not just about the UK.

Sign of the Times

Conflict in Sudan right now is violent. News articles still say if it becomes a civil war, that will be terrible, but what’s happening there certainly sounds like it already is a civil war.

UK government response in terms of bringing our people out reflects a different type of conflict, one that has the appearance of being “just” a matter of politics and policy out of step with what the majority of voters seem to want. It caters to a rabid minority who want to shut the door to everyone other than themselves. It doesn’t become minor simply because it isn’t being advocated at the deadly end of guns.

Every time I hear news updates about the Illegal Immigration Bill going through Parliament, it doesn’t register to me as a bill about people coming into the country illegally. It registers to me as an immigration bill that is itself illegal, violating obligations we signed up to under international law, designating asylum seekers as illegal and deportable by relabeling the ways they could get here as forbidden.

It's all part of a pattern. Brexit, failing to bring out of Afghanistan so many people who helped the UK there and were promised our protection, deporting Nepalese guards that we did bring out of Afghanistan (even deporting some to whom we granted visas)…

Not Just for the UK

It’s not only part of a pattern, it’s part of a much larger pattern.

The UK is not unusual in becoming so much more isolationist.

It’s a trend shown by more and more countries, making it harder for foreigners to enter and in some nations making it harder for citizens to leave. Remember the previous USA government’s obsession with building a wall? Or how many European countries refused to take more than a modest number of refugees who came across the Mediterranean in desperation? (Germany bucked the trend in 2018, taking in thousands from the flood of refugees from the Middle East. It didn’t last. A few years later the welcome soured.)

This was all predicted years ago. Slimming it down to not much more than an outline…

Climate change and population growth combine to put more pressure on resources. When essential resources such as water or food become short, people contend to be the ones who get at least enough of what is available. Those who are on the losing end don’t have enough to get by, so they start moving in search of what they need… or they start moving because the winners are now a threat to safety and survival.

As the people on the move reach borders, nations they attempt to cross into often turn them away. Politicians tend to call them migrants now. That word used to be applied to people who cross move around and maybe cross borders temporarily for seasonal work. Lumping together asylum seekers fleeing deadly danger, refugees running from a disaster, hungry people seeking food, smart people seeking better opportunities and seasonal workers is a sleight of hand that makes it easier to cast aspersions on everyone who is “not born here” as though they are all the same, all part of one huge flood.

Perhaps I should say as though we are all the same. When Gordon Brown started trumpeting “British jobs for British workers,” I remember being turned away from work for which I was very well suited with a sneering “You’re not British enough.” The beast of xenophobia doesn’t limit its targets to color or language. It is easily turned against any group that people in power want to push down or throw out. It can attack me today, you tomorrow and someone else next week or next month or next year.

This no longer lies ahead of the world as a hypothetical situation if the future goes wrong in a particular way. It’s here now. More shortages, more hunger and thirst, more conflicts, more violence, more uprooted people wandering desperately in search of a haven, more people who have a haven trying to shut the door and keep what they’ve got for themselves. Like people who were visiting relatives in Sudan for a religious holiday, anyone can unexpectedly be caught on the scary side of the way the world is changing.

That’s only looking at the climate-driven part of it. That’s setting aside any added complications from outbreaks of disease, which are predicted to happen with increasing frequency as our world gets hotter.

It also isn’t drilling down into how the same pattern unfolds within a nation. In the UK it is evident in the wealthiest growing more wealthy and hoarding more resources. Our Prime Minister has set an example there, putting in a swimming pool and paying to upgrade the local electric grid so he can heat it. He’s doing this while many people who used to be able to get by resort to food banks to get something to eat, and politely decline to accept anything from the food banks that requires cooking because they can’t afford to use the stove.

Forethought, Anyone?

At our house, we’ve given some thought to how we want to approach these increasingly fraught times. Our decisions are shaped by personal experiences which include some tough years.

It occurs to me that in a sense, we chose a path somewhat parallel to that of the main characters in Octavia Butler’s books in the Parable series, although definitely nowhere near as intense. (Disclosure: This is an affiliate link.)

We’ve done some preparing, putting in solar panels and making our garden more productive. Preparation is good. It’s fine to grow veggies, set aside emergency supplies, and so on. But no matter how well we prepare, things can go wrong in ways we don’t anticipate.

At the heart of our discussions, we are not inclined to try to hide far off the grid and keep everyone else out. Especially in such a crowded country, being a fortress doesn’t seem like workable. Yes, I know there are many castles here and those functioned as fortresses. But that was then, much less densely populated, and this is now. We aren’t in a walled or gated community. We are just a little off to the side.

To us, it seems better to team up with a few compatible other people. There is strength in community.

We are friendly with neighbors. We do little things to establish and maintain a sense of connection. If you are in a country where people are less reserved, this may sound normal and easy. With Brits it is not so easy. We have the good luck of being in a little neighborhood with a high proportion of residents who are willing to bend the famous British reserve a little, have conversations and exchange small favors. We also have good friends, the type who stick around and pitch in when needs arise, and we try to be such friends in return.

Forethought isn’t entirely about planning and prepping. It’s also about gradually, patiently finding and establishing relationships with a few good people…

Because at the worst of times, the most important saving grace people have is each other.