The August Canyons

This is the title of a book by Barbara Tuchman on the beginning of the 1914 war, which shows that summer warms up and is a time for demonstrations, revolts, wars and coups d'état, even though the latter have gone out of fashion and are only maintained in countries with less evolved political structures. Or so I hope. The fact is that this summer has been no exception and there have been several uprisings of varying intensity.

The north is calling for democracy. The situation has exploded in Belarus, where citizens have taken to the streets to protest against the armed robbery of the results of the latest elections by its current president, Alexander Lukashenko, who has been president since 1994 and is therefore known as "Europe's last dictator". The protests, as massive as they are peaceful, have been answered with repression, imprisonment, torture, accusations of foreign interference, calls for nationalism and troop movements towards the borders to prevent attacks that nobody will launch. The Americans are engrossed in their conventions and the leaders of the European Union have said that the elections were neither fair nor free, though they have not demanded their repetition either. I do not think this will move Lukashenko, who knows that no EU citizen is willing to die for Belarus; and, furthermore, the EU already imposes sanctions on it and there is little else it can do. Putin cannot allow disorders to take place so close by and will most likely end up helping him to keep him weak, confronted with his people and isolated from the West... and thus move closer to his goal of progressively integrating Belarus into Russia.

In the south, in Mali, the little democracy that existed as a result of a typical military revolt in which, so that there is no doubt, a colonel dressed as a coup leader (trained in the United States), wearing a beret and camouflage clothes and surrounded by armed men, has deposed President Keita, who in turn came to power in another coup d'état in 2012 which he later camouflaged with a couple of "won" elections (you might say) in a country torn apart by a half-Tuareg, half-Islamic rebellion that wanted to segregate the self-proclaimed Republic of Azawad, and where the French military operation "Barkhane" (in which Spain participated) has been fighting for years at great cost against Daesh. As if Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, were lacking something, the coronavirus is also ravaging the country, although it is difficult to have minimally reliable figures. The risk now is that instability will shift to equally vulnerable neighbouring countries such as Niger and Burkina Faso. The coup leaders are saying the same as always, that they want to put an end to corruption and call elections soon. The truth is that decolonisation has left many states unviable and all ill-prepared for independence, even though in the past 60 years it can no longer be blamed for all the ills.

In the east there has been the resignation of the entire Lebanese government (never better said) following the explosion of many tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored for years in the port of Beirut, in a display of laziness and bad governance. With many dead, hundreds injured and no less than 300,000 people homeless, the Beirut people, fed up with corruption and ineptitude, have taken to the streets, taken over ministries and brought down the government. But this will not solve anything because what Lebanon needs are very deep reforms to put an end to end to endemic corruption and a political structure that caters to religious rifts (a president who has to be a Christian, a Sunni prime minister and a speaker of the Shia parliament), to put an end to the abnormality of Hezbollah, a Shia movement linked to Iran's interests, having an army stronger than the national one, and to stop other countries in the area, from Israel to Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, becoming entangled. The cherry on the cake is the Syrian refugees: one for every three Lebanese. With such wimps, normality would be a luxury. The West, led by France, the former colonial power, is collecting funds to help Lebanon, but this will be another patch that will not put an end to the problems of a country that has been suffering for many years.

And from the USA, there are calls for justice in massive protests against racism and its consequences, after repeated deaths of African Americans at the hands of police who act with brutality because they too are afraid in a country where there are too many guns. George Floyd has been followed by Jacob Blake, who has become paraplegic after being shot seven times in the back inside his car in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and this is the story of never ending. The "Black lives matter" movement is gaining strength and healing that bleeding wound will be one of the dominant issues in the November elections and one of the new president's priorities. For the time being the street violence favours Donald Trump, but for the moment Biden has not found the right tone to address the situation.

Alongside these three major crises, the increasingly weak protests of the drowned out democracy in Hong Kong are pale, to the shame of the British (and Americans), who have been unable to stop China from violating the statute that was to guarantee it until 2047; or that of the same four mindless, vociferous conspirators who are shouting at the Madrid Cibeles because they believe that the coronavirus is an invention of who knows who, and reject the security measures (mask, social distance). ...) demanded by the health authorities... they remind me of those who say that Armstrong did not reach the moon or who still claim that ETA organised 11-M.

And, of course, bloody conflicts continue in Syria, Yemen and Libya as tension grows over gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Egypt, Greece and Israel. The downside is that all these protests have an undercurrent that is the malaise of the economic recession brought on by the coronavirus. A very hard and hot autumn of social crisis awaits us, and some may find certain "distractions" convenient.

Jorge Dezcallar Ambassador of Spain