I was very sad to see the story about Mumbai this week, as well as the reports that Afghanistan was even more dangerous than last year in the six months to June, (and that four people were killed at Hamid Karzai’s brother’s funeral.)

We should also not forget that there are still significant problems in Sudan and South Sudan, where we hear of “heavy bombing and gunfire,” and while numbers of deaths go unreported (presumably for lack of reliable numbers,) we know of the 70,000 people displaced last month as the creation of the new country was underway, and in Libya, the ongoing civil war continues to claim lives.

It is surprising to me that one of the few commons rules from societies across the world, that killing people is generally considered wrong (even if there are occasional exceptional circumstances), is violated so frequently by people everywhere. To find the causes we need to look in a few different places.

Guns and Ammo

Firstly, we must consider technology. There is a (possibly apocryphal) story that knights of old, wearing armour and carrying a sword onto a battlefield, actually rarely aimed to kill their opponents. The natural human aim in such situations was to disable your opponents; put them out of the fight – but scenes from Gladiator et al of some strident actor slicing off limbs and stabbing people in the abdomen, fire in his eyes, are vastly exaggerated.

The psychological theory is easily understandable; it is harder to kill someone when you can see the expression in their eyes, hear their moans of pain, and so on. Thus, the story goes, killing people with guns, bombs and other weapons which act at a distance makes it much easier to kill much more frequently. I’m not sure I believe in this school of thought, although it may contain an element of truth.

Exceptional Circumstances

The alternative, and in my mind more probable, explanation is that people have chosen to expand the definition of the get-out clauses, to make “allowed killing” more frequent.

I don’t presume to provide any new insight into the Rwandan Genocide, nor to place the blame at the feet of the dutch or native populations, but the radicalisation of the population and the killings that followed were an instance of extending the exceptions to the rules; making killing members of the Tutsi minority more acceptable via a generalised historical and political narrative.

The rules have been twisted in an entirely different way in Libya, where the world’s failure to remove a corrupt, undemocratic and violent leader has led to the justification of a struggle against him, and those who support him. This is also an extension of the normal circumstances where it is considered acceptable to kill someone; Gaddafi’s crimes are not to be tested in a court, but on the battlefield, and most of those paying the price are not in positions of any power in the regime and thus are only marginally responsible at best for the transgressions.

In Northern Ireland during the height of the unionist-republican war, a people who are anecdotally more serious about their christianity than most in the british isles were tearing up the rulebook on what was acceptable, and eagerly murdering and torturing other people simply because they were born on the wrong side of town. This, like Libya, was all justified in terms of a wider political struggle, but ultimately this became hollow, unyielding and uncompromising rhetoric that was eventually defeated by Tony Blair’s devolution pincers – making Northern Ireland’s so-called politicians the exception out of themselves, the Welsh and the Scottish. While we still see riots in Belfast on Orange Day, the politicians have learned that people prefer the language of reconciliation after years and years of polarisation, and the rise of the Alliance Party is testament to this.

I could name many other examples, Gun Ownership in the United States, non-peacekeeping missions by western forces across the middle east (including both Iraq and Afghanistan, which started out as wars against the native governments) and significant amounts of Israel’s “meet stones with tanks” approach to the Palestinian people, as well as their rocket-propelled retaliation, and more, there are always even more instances of this. However, this is a blog post, not a dissertation.

What went wrong?

The examples I have laid out are all failures of several things. Firstly a failure of politics, or rather the failure of politicians to take responsibility for standing up against a populist but dangerous movement. Additionally, a failure of the rule of law, where international crimes are inconsistently and rarely prosecuted, or in the case of the US Gun Ownership where the law itself is plainly wrong. Finally, a failure of morality, where people forgot their common humanity with all members of our unique and wonderful species and descended into insanity.

The third failure cannot exist without at least one of the other two – at least not on the huge scale discussed in all these examples. Political collapse is also only possible if international law is not properly enforced – putting on leader’s shoulders the responsibility to keep their government’s actions within some basic standards is essential to ensuring they act in ensuring the protection of all members of their societies. And so I believe all this comes down to the enforcement of international law – which I’ve already written about.