How best to protect them

Civilians in war - How best to protect them | Culture | The Economist

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THE idea of a limited war, in which certain groups of people should be protected, is not new. In the fourth century St Augustine was already advocating the doctrine of a “just war”, based on civilian protection, proportionality and restraint. The same principles were enshrined in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and in the mandates of the various international tribunals set up over the past 15 years. Yet the moral ideal of civilian protection remains very much a minority view. 

As Hugo Slim explains in “Killing Civilians”, marking out a special category of people called “civilians” from the wider enemy group in war “is a distinction that is not, and never has been, either clear, meaningful or right” for many perpetrators of war—nor even for many civilians themselves. A former humanitarian field-worker, Mr Slim is now chief scholar at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland. In this book he begins by examining in great and gory detail the appalling ways in which civilians have suffered in wars down the ages—by rape, massacre, torture, mutilation, famine, disease, trauma and so on. He goes on to look at why unarmed, supposedly harmless civilians so often turn out to be the victims in war.

The reasons, he suggests, include a desire to exterminate an entire group of purportedly inferior beings (genocide); a lust for power and domination (Genghis Khan); a thirst for revenge (as in so many of today's African wars); necessity (claimed by Palestinian suicide-bombers in their “asymmetrical” war against Israel); or plunder (common in the past, but rarer today). Civilians may also be killed or wounded through calculated recklessness (as when Israeli bulldozers raze Palestinian homes) or the inevitable accidents that are associated with inaccurate weapons (“collateral damage”).

But who qualifies as a civilian? International law provides only a negative description: someone who is not a member of the armed forces, who does not carry a weapon, who does not take part in hostilities. This is clearly inadequate. An estimated 60% of the world's weapons-bearers are civilians (hunters, for example). On the other hand, many of those who do not carry arms (or wear uniforms) may be very much part of the war effort—ammunition workers, porters, victuallers and the like. And what of the ideologues whose hate-filled doctrines fuel the conflict, the newspaper editors who disseminate the propaganda or the taxpayers who pay for the war? Should they be afforded special protection when the unwilling teenage conscript is not?

As Mr Slim himself concedes, there are rarely totally innocent bystanders in wartime. Osama bin Laden deems all the citizens of any democracy that goes to war to be “non-innocent”—and therefore legitimate targets—because their political systems allow them to choose their leaders and thus to choose their wars. Although Mr Slim would not go that far, he agrees that it is a “fallacy” to suggest that all civilians are equally harmless in wartime. But, he argues (not totally convincingly), “it is a necessary fallacy if we are to try to limit the killing in war.”

 Although most people the world over say they prefer non-violence, ordinary people can get sucked into organised violence with relative ease, Mr Slim notes. Psychological studies, such as the one Stanley Milgram carried out at Yale University and published in 1974, have repeatedly shown that, given certain conditions, 80% of most populations will either collude or directly take part in acts of violence. Only 10% will refuse outright, while another 10% will actively resist. 

Some of the conditions that turn people into killers are well known: extreme coercion, obedience to authority, dehumanisation of the enemy, social bonding, hatred, indoctrination, revenge, survival. Alcohol, drugs, rituals, warpaint, even dark glasses can also help produce an “altered state” conducive to violence. Bloodletting can itself be intoxicating, even erotic. Mr Slim cites American soldiers in Vietnam saying that killing was like “getting screwed for the first time”, producing “an ache as profound as the ache of an orgasm”. 

In the last part of the book, Mr Slim suggests ways in which others may be converted to the ideology of limited warfare with its central concern of civilian protection. Simply repeating that civilian suffering is illegal and wrong, as many human-rights groups tend to do, will do little to change potential perpetrators, he says. Appeals should rather be made to their self-interest, sense of fairness, even to old-fashioned virtues like mercy and honour. Some hope. Even Mr Slim admits the likelihood of success is slender. 

This is a clear, impartial, honest work. It is scholarly yet free of jargon, compassionate yet not over-emotional, moral without being preachy, stuffed with facts and figures yet brought alive by a myriad of vivid historical, contemporary and personal anecdotes. In short, it is very good.

Civilians in war

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How best to protect them

Culture February 16th 2008

From the February 16th 2008 edition

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