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I don't think you trust in my self-righteous suicide

 Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that “if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” The Bush administration began its bombing strikes on the hapless, poverty-stricken country October 7, and ground attacks by US Special Forces began October 19.

Hey soldier, you ain't ready for war/Clearly the embattled star felt he had much to prove

The pundits for the American television networks and major daily newspapers celebrate the rapid military defeat of the Taliban regime as an unexpected stroke of good fortune. They distract public attention from the conclusion that any serious observer would be compelled to draw from the events of the past two weeks: that the speedy victory of the US-backed forces reveals careful planning and preparation by the American military, which must have begun well before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

For contemporary young radical activists, anarchism means a decentralized organizational structure, based on affinity groups that work together on an ad hoc basis, and decision-making by consensus. It also means egalitarianism; opposition to all hierarchies; suspicion of authority, especially that of the state; and commitment to living according to one’s values. Young radical activists, who regard themselves as anarchists, are likely to be hostile not only to corporations but to capitalism.
 - Monthy Review, September 2001

(worth noting: not an endorsement of conspiracy theory nonsense, more a reading of the psychic entrails, something weird in the air, also relevant is this and this. Somebody should write a conspiracy theories post really).

People have found the lo-fi nature of the murders quite shocking

 'They were kind of atrocities but they'd gone unnoticied, unrecognized, they'd been done in the name of leisure almost.'

'The NoW reveals that the video has a further two minutes of footage shot at various intervals. In one sequence, the cameraman is shown an Iraqi corpse and proceeds to kick the dead man in the face twice, whilst a soldier sniggers: “He’s been a bad mother****er.”'

There's a parallel between the charcter of Richard in Dead Man's Shoes (2004) being a soldier, and the film being released a year after Iraq, three after Afghanistan. Like Northern Ireland there is a lot of horror waiting to come out: nobody talks about Northen Ireland today, and barely anyone talks about Afghanistan or Iraq. The topic is taboo. There are no comforting myths to emerge from the War on Terror: in a great act of collective memory it has been entirely forgotten. The BBC have rewritten their history in an attempt to reinforce the commonsense "nobody could have wanted this" storyline that will eventually become the true story, if any story at all. In Dead Man's Shoes (2004) Richard visits supernatural, violent justice on the lowlifes who killed his brother. It is a film about the importance of taking responsibility: slaying the guilty, and once becoming guilty yourself in the process, seeking self-terminarion. Richard's justice is moral: his enemies are the lowest degenerates of the working class, druggies and immoral scum. They even listen to the wrong music, hip hop rather than the tasteful alt-Americana or wistful folk supplied by Warp. Whatever the intention a trawl of youtube comments reveals commenters seem to have incorporated the film directly alongside the likes of Death Wish and Dirty Harry: they deserve it, every one. The post-apocalyptic state of Britain is well described, casual violence, isolation, and no future, propaganda for any leftist reading; the solutions however, a culling of the irressponsible and devolved, is straight out of the right's playbook. The old embers of political struggle were fading out in the early 2000s, a strange period when the organizations and individuals the left assumed were allies began advocated wars they knew could only have the consequences they did if they had any idea of history. Even the BBC couldn't be trusted anymore. The feedback can be observed in popular militarism (which will likely die with the wars) and the stark reactions to send in the army in response to 2011's riots.

The prediction buried within Edge of Darkness (1985) and GBH (1990) was that Britain (England particularly) had become occupied territory: an alien colonizing force was manipulating what seemed like organic commonsense developments for the good of the colonizer's. Dead Man's Shoes is a depiction, along with elements of GBH, about how the colony should be policed and what should make up the policeman. Detatchment, responsibility, and a calm repose are what is required. After a time, as in Kenya, the Congo, or elsewhere, the violence flows naturally. The battles of the 80s and 90s dramas are done with, more history than ever in the wake of the totem of that era's death: with the natives broken and scattered, what becomes of us next?

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

New fronts of terror

For several years during various stints on a business-led Middle East/North Africa magazine, In Amenas represented little more than a pool of data – owners-producers, capacity, products, pipeline routes, end-users (broadly, us in Europe) – that’s what we cared about and reported with repetitive monotony. We could be lulled into false assumptions about its security because, like many such installations in the region, it was a militarised industrial complex in a remote outpost of a huge country used to dealing brutally with terrorists. No danger here, we effectively told subscribers.

Last week’s attack on the workers and the plant, by a bunch of Maghrebis (and, er, Canadians) pledging allegiance to a stateless cause where Salafist beliefs provide the veneer of a crusade (as if one were needed) against western geopolitics, shattered all those illusions. The numbers, around 40 hostages killed alongside 30 kidnappers in nearly five days’ worth of assault and counter-assault, are not as grim as some 90s/00s bombings. Unlike 1998’s East Africa embassy blasts, 9/11, 7/7, the Bali bombings, etc etc, this attack, on a remote plant 1,000 miles from Algiers, was a largely unseen event; in the early hours news editors, especially television editors desperate for images and movement, were forced to make assumptions and perhaps push the story too far on the basis of faintly credible sources. But the fundamentals of the event – a not-quite-successful kidnapping and a ferocious but bungled response – provide for a deeper narrative and strong resonance.

Despite the frustrating invisibility as far as insatiable western media were concerned (leading to an over-reliance on talking heads playing guessing games), there was still more than enough fodder for the endless war on terror (as Phil says, our politicians know no different) and what Cameron has proclaimed as a ‘generational struggle’ (conveniently in a theatre-galaxy far far away). We had the archetypal bad guy, ‘the Uncatchable’ Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Like Bin Laden too wise to actually be there, he was said to be a ruthless veteran of Afghanistan (must have been making the green tea; could have only been about 12) and Algeria’s civil war. We had old players in new situations – not least an Algeria frustrated its Mali peace initiative failed and then reluctantly drawn into it by offering up airspace. We had new motives – not just the broader motive of revenge for French action in Mali, but Belmokhtar’s coming out (!) as leader of a breakaway group. Thus we had new blood curdling names to assign fear to – Katibat al-Mulathameen (Masked Brigade), Those Who Sign in Blood or Signatories in Blood. All this combined with the grisly accounts of survivors.

While the ostensible aim to rush expats out to remote hideouts inevitably twisted into holding a huge industrial complex to ransom – that plant carries way more capital than a few hundred expendable staff – the ‘fluid’ dynamics of the attack resulted in a weird meta-collusion between Algiers and the attackers. A plant producing 10% of its energy and crucial in providing the revenue that keeps Algerians in subsidies and therefore more politically quiescent, gave Algiers little choice in how to deal with it. That made the jihadist raid effectively a suicide attack – attacking a complex like that could only result in a brutal reprisal, despite initial western dismay. Everyone knew the stakes. There was also perhaps an embarrassed realisation that the local security forces’ reaction at the start had been less than the iron fist we’d expected of fortress Algeria. It is worth emphasising here Algiers’ approach to the expat workers who some view as mercenaries working for first-world companies exploiting developing world resources. They were destined to end up as collateral, the ultimate price of a well-paid but highly alienating spell in the desert in the pay of majors such as BP.

‘Once again the good ol' Global War on Terror (GWOT) remains the serpent biting its own tail … As blowback goes, [Mali] is just the hors d'oeuvres’ - Pepe Escobar

So for all the talk of shutting down the Islamist threat, quixotic and inconsistent western policy shows a remarkable capacity for opening up new fronts, in weird double-step with the Islamists they denounce. While in Syria we have seen bearded warriors actively given time, space and materiel to mess up the Shia crescent, Mali was something experts had been warning about with increasing noise since Islamicised Tuareg fighters came back with loads of gear from Libya - more Arab spring blowback to consider there. Though a counterinsurgency campaign would doubtless have won sympathy with those world heritage sites and the region’s beautiful music at threat (Damon Albarn will lead the campaigning here), the west looked on as Mali’s defence structures imploded with a weak coup led by leaders nonplussed at defending the north.

What the geopolitical analysts are talking about now is a cross-Sahel force of Al-Qaida aligned fighters, bringing the pain for diverse reasons: some localised and further afield such as Somalia; others more vaguely for the ‘cause’; still more mere fronts for cocaine, cigarette and people trafficking. Such ‘existential’ crises can be pretty brutal for some. But all in all cause enough to keep the military industrial complex well funded and focused on picking nonsensical fights for decades to come.

Checking Out, Cashing In: The 90s