In search of Motherland

Where in hell can you go
Far from the things that you know
Far from the sprawl of concrete
That keeps drawing its way
About a thousand miles a day?

Take on last look behind
Commit this to memory and mind
Don’t miss this wasteland
This terrible place, when you leave
Keep your heart on your sleeve

Motherland, cradle me,
Close my eyes, lullaby me to sleep
Keep me safe, lie with me
Stay beside me.
Don’t go.
Don’t you go.

Oh, my five and dime queen
Tell me what have you seen?
The lust and the avarice
The bottomless, the cavernous greed
Is that what you see?

Motherland, cradle me
Close my eyes, lullaby me to sleep
Keep me safe, lie with me
Stay beside me.
Don’t go.
Don’t you go.

It’s your happiness I want most of all
And for that, I’d do anything at all, o mercy me!
If you want the best of it or the most of all
If there’s anything I can do at all
Now come on, shotgun bride
What makes me envy your life?
Faceless, nameless, innocent, blameless and free
What’s that like to be?

Motherland, Cradle me
Close my eyes, lullaby me to sleep
Keep me safe, lie with me
Stay beside me.
Don’t go.
Don’t you go
(Motherland, Natalie Merchant, 2001)

People migrate for various reasons, but each migrant carries their own story, their own history, their own reasons for migrating. Their own hopes and dreams. But the most painful decision to migrate is the destruction of the nurturing ‘motherland’, whether it is caused by war or the destruction of culture, where one culture reviles another’s, or religion, where faith in one god is seen as the only way, and non-believers are persecuted, or of a different interpretation of the same faith.

But each person leaves behind the memories of their ‘motherland’, each yearns for the comfort and safety of a home, of the nurturing culture of a ‘motherland’, whether that is the land of their birth or the dream of a new, safer ‘motherland’.

Since the end of WWII there have been various estimates of how many days there has not been bloody conflict somewhere in the world, guesses say anywhere between 7 and 28 days, and each war has seen people move away, find safety somewhere else, others remain and rebuild from the destruction of war a new life.

Several regions are of particular interest to consider whether there is even a possibility of peace. Factors which have stood in the way of peace are varied, but can be reduced to several keys.

When considering the number of wars and conflicts since the end of World War II, at a rough count, about ninety, many were due to the collapse of empires and the subsequent decolonisation in Africa and Asia, and the geo-political arm wrestle between the remaining ‘super powers’, USA and USSR seeking to influence emerging governments and nation states, building, in effect, new empires. The battles were fought not on the lands of the would be Imperial overlords, but on the lands of those  who were striving to be free of such tyrannies.

Although it relates to the end of World War I, A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin. covers the period of the First World War through to the carve up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of that war, and the ensuing period where lines were drawn on maps to determine which colonial power was to be responsible for the ‘Arabs’ who lived there, a people who could not be trusted to run their own affairs, form responsible governments.

What strikes me, when I look at the remnants of the Ottoman Empire today, the book’s title was indeed prophetic, there has been no peace in that region since the end of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The conflicts, such as those around the ethnic cleansing of Israel/Palestine, the civil war in Syria, the Iraq/Iran conflict, even the current war on Iran have their antecedents in that carve-up. Iran is particularly noteworthy since the development of a democratic government was seen as against the interests of the ‘west’, with the the claim that the resources of Iran were not the property of the oil corporations, but actually of Iran, so the government was over thrown and the Shah, the hereditary king was installed under the protection of the USA and Britain, and the oil was basically given to the oil corporations, Iran receiving as little as 16% of the revenue. During the Shah’s reign, nuclear power plants and the facility to enrich uranium was installed, provided mainly by the US. But then came 1979, the Shah was deposed and Iran became effectively a theocracy.

And now Donald Trump thinks it a good idea to help the Saudis enrich uranium, what could possibly go wrong, they after all are such a fair minded, democratic regime. ISIS ideological underpinnings are deeply rooted in Sunni and Wahhabism, the same as the foundational elements of al Qaida, originating in Saudi Arabia. No red flags to be seen.

The carve up of the defeated empire was done to benefit the remaining colonial powers, Britain and France. It was not that the ‘Arabs’ could not be trusted to run their own affairs, it had more to do with the idea that the interests of the Imperial powers were to be met, so lines were drawn of maps in the Middle East, in Africa, in South East Asia with no consideration given to the territorial scopes of the indigenous peoples, just the interests of the departing colonisers.

A common thread of commentary regarding those wars was essentially those indigenous peoples could not govern themselves, and the wars seemed to prove that contention to be correct, except perhaps in India where over the time of occupation, over the time it was a British colony, Indian people were trained in the running of the country, in the development of a civil service, something that was not part of other colonial possessions from any of the Imperial governments. However, looking at the objectives of colonisation, it appear that the incoming governments learned well from their Imperial overlords who effectively raped and pillaged the occupied lands to enrich the colonists.

The Vietnam war, encompassing other French colonies of Cambodia and, Lao, the departure of the Dutch in Indonesia, the British leaving Malaya and Burma… the list goes on with the departure of the French, Italians and British from their various African interests paving the way for civil wars and power grabs, religious conflicts, and a general disregard for the peasantry or working people of those regions.

There is an incredible irony in colonialism conducted by Europeans. As they ventured further and further into the new lands, they brought with them their religion, the Christian one, you know, the one where laws of the lands were based on the Ten Commandments which included ‘you shall not steal’ and ‘you shall not murder’. Missionaries, supported by the colonisers, taught that ‘new’ religion, salvation through Christ, ‘Jesus loves you’, ’Amazing Grace’ and all the other feel good messages, failing to see that the missions were set up on stolen lands where people had been murdered for having resisted the settlers demands for the land.

A report on a recent West Bank confrontation where an Israeli was killed, there is no sense of saving souls, there is no missionary effort to convert the indigenous peoples to Judaism, rather a call for the complete obliteration of Palestinians.

The exploitation of people in the quest for Imperial wealth, the blatant wealth of the colonisers compared to the poverty of the colonised is a major driver of emigration.

The opening two paragraphs of This Land is Our Land by Suketu Metah read…

“One day my maternal grandfather was sitting in a park in suburban London. An elderly British man came up to him and wagged a finger in his face. “Why are you here?” The man demanded. “Why are you in my country?”

“Because we are creditors,” responded my grandfather, who was born in India, worked all his life in colonial Kenya, as was now retired in London. “You took our wealth, our diamonds. Now we have come to collect.” We are here, my grandfather was saying, because you were there.’ (Page 7).

Similar motivations, but driven by political unrest and the corporatisation of agriculture in Central America is expressed in Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathon Blitzer, in examining the migration crisis in The United States, where driving agricultural workers and small land owners from their lands as corporations took over the production of fruit and vegetable production to feed the growing population of the USA, the time of the Reagan administration in supporting the right wing governments of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala which face civil uprisings because of the dispossessions. Label the uprisings as socialist or communist and instantly America is on board tonight the cause of the wealthy.

‘Motherland’ was being stripped of its ability to nurture and sustain life. The land, instead of being the source of life had been redefined as a resource to enrich the already rich and powerful, continuing the exploitation of that region which has been ongoing since the time of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

Joseph Conrad in The Heart of Darkness refers to the the unnamed European capital where the colonial company exploiting the Congo was based as ‘a whited sepulchre’, in other words, outwardly, a beautiful edifice, but inside it is a place for dead bones, a heartless empty void. Are the people who live in countries that were formerly colonies, and those who live in war torn wastelands, or suffer religious discrimination look into their mobile phones and see how ‘good’ life is in Europe, in the USA and Canada, in Australia, and there unscripted people all too ready to overload boats and send people off to a ‘promised land, a new motherland’, knowing those people will never be seen again, so easy money, an empty promiser some serious cash.

The wealth generated by colonialism built great empires, and continues to feed the insatiable greed of capitalism, continues to exploit the resources to supply the raw materials for manufacturing, continues to seek the cheapest labour in sweat shops to provide the trinkets of consumerism and continues to lure those looking for a better, safer life, a life so visible yet seemingly unattainable, as clearly demonstrated last week as an estimated 60,000 crossed from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, many drowned, most were turned back, denied entry into their land of hope, denied their desire for a better life.