The Dane-geld
It’s always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-‘Though we know we should defeat you, we have not
The time to meet you,
We will therefore pay you cash to go away,’
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Danegeld
The Dane-geld has been the price paid to Libya for trade and commerce and being a western ally, in the ‘War on Terror’ (having had its own problems with Islamic radicals) and supposedly thwarting the expansion of Al-Qaeda throughout North Africa and the Arab peninsula. Many Libyans and others alike believe that the Dane-geld simply equates to hard currency, paid by The West seeking yet another warm welcome on an otherwise cold front. Over the past decade, Britain, coupled with other EU member states has been paying the Libyan regime billions of Euros in financial handouts, in return for promises of human rights progress and democratic reform – there has been little of either. As a thankyou, 85% of Libya’s oil exports are to the EU [International Energy Agency]. Money flowed and consequences of Gaddafi and other Arab leaders' iron rule labelled ‘cultural idiosyncrasies’, thus allowing atrocities to become mere misforgivings. The most prolific and recent case of turning a blind eye, must be the implied BP pressure on the British government to strong-arm Scottish ministers into securing the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, The Lockerbie Bomber. A man widely believed to be a scape-goat, but all the while a convicted terrorist, who has now made a miraculous recovery from his death-bed and an even speedier departure from the public eye. Disregarding injustice is in some quarters, just as terrible as supporting it, to paraphrase Shakespeare in The Timon of Athens - 'Nothing emboldens sin like mercy'.
Part of the reason for paying the Dane-geld, is undoubtedly Islamophobia. Or rather fear of Islamic fundamentalism and that then being hijacked by a crazed group with their own brutally enforced, strict living ideals. For Orwell says that revolutions do not remove dictators, they instill them. So nervous is Viktor Yanukovych [The leader of Ukraine, following the Orange revolution] that he has put up a guarded barrier around Freedom Square in Kiev – recently denying all knowledge of it in a remarkable display of faux-ignorance on Newsnight. The Iranian revolution was a prime example of what Orwell was getting at. The West fears a reenactment of the fallout from The Iranian revolution, which bolstered anti-western opinion in the region and triggered Islamist insurgent uprisings in Saudi Arabia (1979 – Grand Mosque seizure), Egypt (1981 – Assassination of Sadat), Syria (1982 – Hama Massacre) & Lebanon (1983 US embassy suicide bombing). Whilst in the US recently, I’d channel surf and only have to briefly pause on Fox News for a minute (during coverage on the Egyptian Revolution), before the Muslim Brotherhood was mentioned and the supposed dangerous threat they pose. Not the threat to their own people, but Uncle Sam. Of course - all is not well; Egyptian Christians were blown up and attacked during the Orthodox Christmas, by those very militants Fox News fears. Nevertheless, the sensationalism of the American right in reporting such biased views of the events surrounding the current unrest, exposes their short-sightedness and xenophobia.
Was The West right to pay the Dane-geld? You could argue, yes - If done so to bring Gaddafi in from the cold and avert his WMD aims. The West doesn’t want to see yet more unrest and instability in a region essential to the Middle East peace process and the complexities that aim entails. However, it can only be considered right to pay the Dane-geld in the eyes of halting nuclear proliferation in the region not merely for trade & resource. The way in which The West got into bed with the leader was very wrong, knowing that the very weapons sold to the regime, could one day be used on civilians. Recently, there was the odd moment of Cameron being in the Middle East on arms trade talks, whilst British-built tear gas canisters were used on those protesting for freedom & regime change. I often ask myself this simple question [One that the writer A.C Grayling poses and answers in The Meaning of Things ]: "Should the tolerant, tolerate the intolerant?" The answer is a resounding "No!", because tolerance must protect itself in order to survive. It can easily do so, by saying that anyone can have a point of view, but no one must force another to accept it. Coercion can take place through argument, debate & reasoning between differing viewpoints – the democracy The West is so keen to give to the world.
'Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.
And the tigers are getting hungry.’
– 11th Nov 1937, Winston Churchill
The tigers are now starving & tired of being ridden; hungry for regime change, basic human rights and the right to publicly express an opinion other than the one held by those who rule. If there ever was a time for the UN to be seen as a force to be reckoned with by dictators and oppressors the world over, it is now. Ban Ki-Moon doesn’t appear to have done much during his reign as Secretary-General. Let’s hope that he and his member states can do something befitting of their organizational aims. Suspension from the UN Human Rights council is not enough. A No-Fly zone may be too much (at the moment), as it could turn those on the ground against the very people trying to protect them, for intervening [Similar to a situation we have in parts of Afghan – "the unwilling occupying the unwilling on behalf of the unwilling – in the name of democracy" – Johann Hari, GQ Feb 2011]. The EU has faltered at the first hurdle [thanks to Lisbon Treaty protocol] and struggled to produce a coherent view on how to deal with the unfolding humanitarian crises at North African borders. If the ‘international community’ ever get a hold of Gaddafi, they should try him at The Hague (International Criminal Court) for war crimes against his own people – preempting this, in his most recent interview he has already tried to exonerate himself, saying that he has no power whatsoever and has never done so.
Western nations must now reinvent they way in which they deal with oppressive regimes across the globe and decide whether trade & resources, coupled with a little regional influence, is worth negating their own set of self-aggrandizing morals for.
Kipling’s poem ends:
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!