INTERNATIONAL ANTI-MILITARIST CAMP 12. – 17. SEPTEMBER 2012 AT THE GÜZ ALTMARK/GERMANY
DISCUSSIONS AND ACTIONS AGAINST THE COMBAT-TRAINING-CENTER OF BUNDESWEHR AND NATO
Enemy behind window. Cover, aim, shoot. At cyberspeed, the Laser-Duel-Simulation-System informs those in combat in real time. One man down, another hits his target. One man will continue training, another will remain on the ground in the steppe of Saxony-Anhalt. The German army but also soldiers from most of Nato armed forces train at the GÜZ Altmark. They learn how to invade and occupy a village in Afghanistan, Kosovo, or – following a Nato prospect on wars to come – any old city on Earth. In 2012, construction will begin for a city of 500 buildings, with streets, an airport and a subway. This to train for urban warfare under any circumstances in neighborhoods, city centers, slums, industrial estates and shopping malls.
“This city could exist anywhere in the world” – GÜZ chief executive
For the Bundeswehr (German military forces), for Nato and the EU, the GÜZ is a major hub. In GUZ, they nurse the dispositions for the war they wage worldwide. In the camp, we will create a central place for anti- militarist struggles. Whoever wants to counter militarization is invited to join. We want to share our different evaluations, proposals and suggestions in order to develop an effective strategy against their strategy. We intend to achieve practical experience in the sabotage of war. It is where war begins that we can bring it to a halt.
Today we can see how all systems are go to make war a daily routine. Events are imposed – more combat operations, more corpses in the Meddierranean, more soldiers in the streets. Efforts are concentrated to legitimize military crisis managment. Wars waged in our names must always appear to be fatally unavoidable, a catastrophe as natural as a thunderstorm. Meanwhile, the beaming disaster relief aid turns into the policeman-soldier, who inforces ban on public reunions and chases away looters. And, seeing today the army is run like a corporation, we are supposed to think of ourselves as customers of state authority services. In professional jargon, security is praised as governance performance. In order to achieve this performance, the humble public will surely understand that some freedom or another cannot be granted any longer.
Beyond the metropolis this pretty varnish needs not last longer than a distant glance. This comes from a long tradition. Today, the UN doctrine “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) justifies “humanitarian interventions” and foreign aid, as the German minister Niebel so honestly said, is bound to German interests and cooperation with its army. This carries the putrid smell of classical colonial chauvinism. Oh! the pride taken in “protecting” the naked lives of people… just in order to ignore all the more their right to self- determination. The perpetuation of an economical order which has nothing to offer for a vast majority of people, insures in itself that the demand for “protection” will never, can never, run out.
Meanwhile, the EU lines up and harmonizes laws and procedures. Still, the states and the governments have many points on which they do not yet agree. Still, militarization is not yet advanced as in the Italian Val di Susa, where paratroopers coming straight from Afganistan were deployed against demonstrators. However, in Spain the military were called to enforce the end of a strike of air traffic controllers. In Germany, however, many still pretend there is no real war, while German warmongers are in the front line of those internationally pressing for comprehensive warfare. Time has come to organize across borders against the attacks with which the ruling powers are attempting to save themsleves. Today, the question of “failed states” is everywhere, not just in Africa and it is up to us to turn it against the establishment. Let´s get our lives back.
CIVIL-MILITARY NORMALITY
The more total everything is organized to serve war, the clearer it becomes that the fight against war and militarization is not about the bare survival of some, but concerns the lives of all. Despite differences in social realities, and despite different levels of violence, the various aspects of militarization have one thing in common: each and every perspective of self-determination and emancipation is to give way to a permanent management of misery. As such aggravation of living conditions can only be installed and sustained by force, this goes hand in hand with the comprehensive legitimization and legalization of violence as a way to handle dispute and manage conflict which has yet always been connected to enforced patriarchal shaping of society.
A society ready for war has to understand, that violence is not only inevitable, but desirable and even heroic – if carried out by security forces. For its legimization it is always necessary to keep divergent approaches, solutions and problems in the shadows. Complex structures have to be perceived as simple contradictions, so that in the end only one answer is possible: war. By limiting everything to simple dual poles, state violence appears to be the only efficient mean to resolve conflicts within society or between states. All that exists then is democracy or islamist extremist dictatorship, women or men, the wild or the west, civilization or barbarians, order or chaos. The real world with its many connections might serve the military forces as an argument to up higher defense and security spendings. For combat, this would only be disturbing. Then the real men are needed.
Sexualized violence and war always go together, and militarized counter-insurgency is no exception. Armed hordes of men fighting to overule the claim on property and rule of other men. This property claim includes the power to dispose and protect „their own women“, therefore humilitating and raping civilian women and female soldiers, along with sexualized violence against male prisoners permanently happen in all war zones. As violence relations are fundamentally intertwined with the bipolar gender order, hence directly connected to militarization, this allows only for one conclusion: gender roles and military have to be attacked, undermined, dissolved.
ASYMMETRY? NOT A BAD IDEA
To efficiently build up resistance we must firstly understand what we find ourselves up against in these new wars. Not in the form of long winded expert analysis read by no one, but rather as shared knowledge. What has changed since the Cold War? How do our analysis differ from those of the military? Is it relevent for us whether the asymmetric threats used to legitimize war against populations are real? Do we consider it to be relevent whether there really is an insurrection behind counter- insurgency? How do we position ourselves in the ongoing war? How do we confront the logic of friend or foe, if despite our deep disdain of war we see the need to fight?
How is the Nato strategy “Comprehensive Approach” applied worldwide? Do the tactics differ depending on the target group? To many in the EU the abolition of boundaries for military intervention sounds new, that the population in the homeland should no longer be excluded from the deployment of military violence. Does war render all people equal? or is it only equally lethal, the old notion of “Divide-and-Conquer”still standing strong? Which role does counter-insurgency play in that? Is counter-insurgency a tactic or a leitmotiv of governance? In order to avoid misinterpretations, we should take into considereration that, while we re-enact their strategies in our minds, we should not get lost in militarized thinking. Not everything the military is dreaming of, it can put into practice. Where does their cybernetic perspective of using all parts of society for war operate, that negates – except in tactical respects – all ethical questions? Where do they themselves fall behind their rational aspirations, remaining chained to old ideologies of inate Supremacy? Or is all of it only a show? All of it, from women in uniform to cooperations with the African Union?
One thing’s for sure, we walk on contradictory grounds – on the one hand we are submitted worldwide to the same belligerent principles, on the other hand there is always a “real” war somewhere: in some places people die, and in others they don’t. And somehow this makes a difference. And we ourselves can’t neither escape this contradiction. So certainly “we in the west” are priviledged. There will always be more doors open for us in dangerous situations than for those from a less lucky birthplace. But when war will come to our homes, we shall see how serious we are in abolishing our own privileges. Not by chanting our shame, but by putting these privileges at risk, by using them as part of another We – a We that fights for liberation all over the world. The practice of a We that will, starting with the relationship to the other, likewise make a difference.
FLUTTERING FLAGS ON THE GENERAL`S HILL
So what information do they give us? To begin with, there is the Nato strategie paper “Urban Operations in the Year 2020”. As more and more people worldwide live and empoverish within cities, it is thought to be necessary to upgrade operational deficits in combat inside urban areas. As the military doesn’t consider averting empoverishment, unrest is simply a challenge to be expected. Besides specific architectural features, operation within inhabited areas are what poses the toughest problems for the army: these places where combattants can hardly be distinguished from population. Civil victims (CDs in Nato shorthand) make protests quickly emerge – leading to less efficent or even cancelled missions! Therefore, the military wants to get forever closer, and even inside society. For this purpose they use scientific spies as well as units equipped with the less lethal weapons of crowd-control.
In 2008, Nato in the text “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World” states the only way to overcome these threats would be to assume a “comprehensive joint approach, including military and non-military ressources”. However, in 2010 the “Nato Research Commission” assesses the results to be not encouraging, as states’ sovereignty and problems in cooperation hinders efficient implementation. Their tip: “new ways for pragmatic collaboration below the strategic level”. Is this strategy finally not a strategy but a substitute for a strategy? Is the headline “Integrated Security” first of all intended to reassure us, to give us no facts but the feeling of knowledge? To give us not the content of what is discussed and decided, but only the form in which they are integrating their knowledge and strucutres in situation centers, data banks, police congresses and joint exercises? Does collaboration with universities, postal services and NGOs, does the privatization of military tasks change anything in the structures of decision making? Or is it that Civil-Military Cooperation is nothing but brave new marketing for old totalitarian police state fantasies?
INTEGRATED SECURITY –
JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR COUNTER-INSURGENCY?
Commonly used as a synonym for riot-control in the German debate, counter-insurgency might be a wider range concept of governance. Not aiming at settling conflicts but at maintaining a state of emergency once it has been reached. The unsettling of a society also creates the legitimization for ongoing police and military control, up to the setting-up of protectorates – without having to present any politically negotiable alternative. What appears to be a shortcoming of plans for a post-war order or the current incapacity to implement it in Iraq or Afghanistan could be the core of the matter. Counter-insurgency as a long-lasting crisis management. Seeing as long as the crisis persists there will be no time for social change, it is a lot easier then to create acceptance for restrictions in freedom of movement, for paternalism and oppression.
Counter-insurgency aims at soothing society. Contrary to what the word suggests, open repression is far from being its preferred mean of operation. More important than to silence those who fight, is that the others will not understand what the rebels talk about. Perception is counter insurgency´s first combat terrain and certain questions should not even come up in the discussion. Arming its forces with less-lethal weapons show that counter-insurgency is not about “solving” conflicts, but about controlling their outbreak, or when possible, avoiding it. Cost-benefit analysis, risk calculation, like an insurance. As counter-insurgency is derived from the creativity of insurrections and is in essence always slightly behind, it tries to make up for its deficits by meticulous studies, violence, gigantic apparatus and prevention. Restructuring districts, intimidating anyone sympathizing, isolating the enemy, creating figures of enemies from which the population will dissociate, therefore disarming itself. COIN (Counter-insurgency, in Nato slang) wants to coin a passive depoliticized public, and in that sense it is constructive. As a strategy of pure power preservation, it remains at once as deadly and reactionary as colonial wars, for which it was developed. As a model of governance it stands for switching off the political: withdrawing from public debate the question of what causes the current situation, the termination of the search for even remotely different perspectives. Organized amnesia.
Counter-insurgency yet remains a double-edged sword. If a system needs to prepare itself to counter insurrections, it indirectly admits that we are no longer talking about a machine otherwise running smoothly. Whether the insurrections really exist is of secondary importance. That they could exist, that the power itself thinks them conceivable, is enough to redirect the focus on possible reasons for an upheaval. The blind spot, the naked emperor. Maybe talks on security are put in place to avoid talking about counter-insurgency? For the tables could turn anytime. Because even talks of countering insurgency contain in themselves echoes of liberation from a regime – and that in times to come it will not only be a few radicals who take up the fight.
LET`S BRING TOGETHER EXPERIENCES
BUILT IN OUR STRUGGLES
When everything is to be turned into a front, we can no longer think of the opposition against war and militarization as the sole responsibility of peace movements and antimilitarists. Militarization will aggravate the conditions of all struggles aiming at emancipation, which is why we think that all of you should come to discuss the questions brought up in the camp! We assume cross-over exchanges are necessary in order to build up effective resistance. Given the accelerated militarization of societies worldwide, we consider it appropriate to send this invitation as internationally as possible. We will translate the call to other languages and make it known to all interested within reach. Translations on the camp will be organized collectively and help will be welcome.
TO PROVIDE AN END TO THE SHAPING OF OUR WORLD OF WAR
Our intention for the GÜZ-Camp is to discuss the militarized strategies of power preservation in order to find their Achilles’ heel. Since we will continue to hold on to the freedom to ask ourselves beyond recommended hopelessness the bold question. „how do we want to live?“ Since we refuse an image of man that demands either blood or control, we consider it feasible to drain dry the principle of war, to refuse to be taken in by paternalistic incorporations („What’s best for Afghanistan?“) and to render impossible the “utilization” of even the most tiny quantum of this world and our lives for military objectives. Since we believe all this can be done practically, of course, we arrive at the second significant concern of our camp.
THOSE WHO CAN THINK, HAVE TO ACT!
The GÜZ is one of the major places in Germany for the preparation of war. With its regular weapon transportations, the foreseeable construction works on the new urban combat training city, its high tech laser installations and much more, the GÜZ offers to us the opportunity to learn from each other practically, to invent how to bring to a standstill a war machinery. It’s here, that all units of the German army practice for two weeks before they are deployed in Afghanistan or some other war zone. They arrive with their own vehicles, equipments and weapons. The GÜZ ist gigantic and hardly fenced in. The schedule for military training is fully booked, delays are not supposed to happen. Ever. We want to practically show, that it is possible to stop the war here, where it begins. In this sense we welcome all forms of action that mark, block and sabotage the ongoing training in operation!
For all these reasons we call you to come to the antimilitarist camp at the Gefechtsübungszentrum Altmark the 12.-17. September 2012 to fight with us for a better world.