New story, and a little bit about Africa this time · 1:59am Aug 16th, 2014
Hey folks,
In a few minutes I'll be posting a new story: The Last Trumpet's Call. Like most of the stories I've published while in Afghanistan, it has a little bit of this war in it. The Carnivore's Prayer includes among its themes what killing does to the killer; a large part of Salvation is about the loved ones that war leave bereft; For Whom We Are Hungry is mostly about love, but also about slowly growing to accept an alien culture.
I don't intend to ever write an actual pony-war story. I just don't think FiM's ponies blend well with industrial warfare. Besides, wars are enormous things; it is much easier to write about them by taking out tiny pieces and crafting those into a story. That lets us write about war without writing a war.
The Last Trumpet's Call is about someone who survives a conflict and the burden he carries for having done so. It's about the limits of obligation. And I hate to say this, because it sounds so dramatic, but it is the story I have poured the most of myself into.
It's also my entry in EqD's Outsider Insight contest! The competition for this one is already looking pretty fierce. I barely squeaked out a win in Obs's Most Dangerous Game contest, so I'm feeling pretty nervous walking into this one.
Today's little aside isn't about Afghanistan. It's about the war in South Sudan, thousands of miles away. I've been studying it for years; I wrote my masters thesis about it. Part of it is in The Last Trumpet's Call.
South Sudan won its independence from Sudan three years ago. It was a long and messy process, but it ended peacefully with a vote for independence. The whole world celebrated the creation of a new state in June 2011.
Six months later, the country was falling apart.
South Sudan is home to many ethnic groups, but the two dominant are the Nuer and the Dinka. They are pastoralists – they wander with their huge herds of cattle, tens of thousands of them, from fertile place to fertile place, following paths set down hundreds of years ago.
These two groups have always raided each other for cattle and children. In years past, when their most advanced weapons were spears or arrows, such raids caused little damage. They were an accepted part of the social fabric. But when the Colonial era ended, and modern weapons like AK-47s began to appear, the raids changed in character. What was once a periodic bit of bloodshed became a profound ethnic conflict that saw both sides calling for the extermination of the other.
There is a town in South Sudan called Pibor. In early 2012, there was a United Nations garrison set up there. The UN mission was chartered for humanitarian purposes, as peacekeepers. That is important to note – the UN soldiers had no authority to enforce the peace, only to monitor it. They were under no direction to use their weapons on anyone except to defend themselves.
A few months earlier, there was a raid. Dinkas attacked Nuers, killing hundreds and kidnapping dozens of children. It happens.
As always, the Nuer found their revenge. They gathered a huge army and marched toward Pibor. Thousands of Dinkas fled before them. Some tried to take shelter with the UN garrison.
The UN had no room for them – theirs was a tiny post, and thousands of Dinka refugees were in danger. The UN allowed in the few that could fit and closed their gates.
Outside, hundreds were slaughtered. Maybe a thousand. No one ever counted, but the trail of bodies led right up to the UN compound's gate. When asked why they didn't try to defend the Dinka, the UN commander said what was obvious: they were outnumbered and outgunned. If they had tried to fight the Nuer, they would have died too.
“Then you should have died,” was my first thought, hearing that. They were soldiers; they had an obligation to protect those civilians. The fact that they may – or would – have died in the process should not have made a difference.
Other, wiser people disagreed with me. I had a long debate with Eakin on the topic, and he took the perspective that the UN soldiers had no reason to waste their lives. It simply would have added more bodies to the toll.
I'm not sure what I believe anymore. I know I'm not confident in my old answer. I think, were I in their place, I might have fought, but I'm not sure I would have been right to do so. There have been many other times, here in Afghanistan, where I've been a part of something that I wasn't sure was right, or I didn't take a stand when I should have. There have also been times when I did take a stand, and later realized I was wrong.
That's what The Last Trumpet's Call is about, in part. Not about being right or wrong, but about not always having the luxury of knowing the difference.
Yep. Scraped my entry, Pride, in a few hours ago.
Good luck, Bruce!
-Scott
I'm putting the last touches on my entry as I type. I'm hyped to see how it pans out.
And based on the second half of this post, I'm hyped to see how yours pan out as well.
Damn. I wish I had even a shred of the knowledge of writing and general things that you have. I just have to accept the fact that I'll never be a deep thinker or an intellectual, which is why I haven't read a majority of your stories (even though I want to).
They're just too smart for me and my simple mind. I bow to you and your greatness, and I thank you for the advice you gave me a while back, even though I may never be able to understand it.
Stay safe, and keep being awesome.
I can't promise I won't win in a knifefight, but good luck to you all the same, my good sir.
Well, you know what I think, obviously. Not so sure if I'm I'm wiser (or even older) than you though. I'm sure a hundred years from now folks will still be arguing about the relative values of honor vs. utility in such murky situations.
I, myself, favor the latter. That doesn't make it comfortable to do so. Still if they'd fought and been overrun...
They couldn't have saved them all. But by their actions they at least saved a few who wouldn't otherwise have lived. I'd still call that a win, if an unsatisfying one.
I look forward to reading the new story.
CiG, 2373741,
In Rwanda, the UN commander's (Canadian General Romeo Dallaire) warnings about the situation were ignored by the UN until it was too late and the genocide started. He did what he could to keep his troops safe, and even then, some were killed because of colonial backlash against Belgians. He still has PTSD because of the experience. He also wrote a book about it: "Shake hands with the Devil".
2373863
Sounds like it's worth checking out, another addition to the 'To Read' list!
It's hard to say. If the effort were truly futile then at best you're risking your own lives for nothing. But worse: If by putting up a fight you ensure those few hundred refugees you take in would die after you did, then taking a 'moral' stand is actually worse not only for yourself but for the very people you're trying to save. Moral decisions get complex and sometimes go against our very instincts.
War always bums me out. I do love stories and stuff about philosophy and psychology, though. Definitely gonna read.
I've never seen war, and I truly hope never to see it. But from all I've heard and read, I've come to understand that deadly situations where there are no good choices and no right way out, are almost the definition of war.
It's a difficult question, to be sure. How is one to know what effect one's death will have? Some people have died in hopeless conflicts, and through their martyrdom, spurred great change. Some have nobly sacrificed themselves for an ideal, only to be forgotten.
Maybe if the UN peacekeepers had fought, their deaths would have been enough to draw some much-needed attention from the rest of the world. More likely not. But we don't know. We can never really know whether we made the right choice, only whether we made a good choice. And sometimes we can only wonder if there was actually a good choice after all, and we just missed it.
I feel as though you are kind of writing stories, about characters having life experiences, where the experience (or experience gained) is more important than the characters.
Similarly to how you somehow prioritize the experience of dying nobly in battle over those who are dying nobly in battle.
No one experience is ever worth more than one single experience. A life is countless experiences. That's what "character" is. You apply this concept to the scope of a war, above.
That . . . is a difficult one.
To be honest, if I -- in my present state -- were in that exact same position, I would probably be terrified. Could I make the "right" decision? Maybe, but not without some bravery, and not without having a fair dollop of bias driving my choice.
As a spectator, I have the liberty to be a little more precise in my decision. But it's still messy.
If they had fought, would that have delayed the Nuer long enough for the Dinka civilians to reach safety?
Fighting might have been worth it, then.
Were there any nearby reinforcements that could have assisted the base should they be able to last out the assault for a certain period?
Once again, fighting might have been worth it. (Although this case is a lot riskier, and would probably be turned down by a commander, who has to think about his troops first.)
Were there any settlements in the path of the Nuer that would have been in danger should they reach them?
In that case, it might be worth fighting. Even if the army was not defeated, the casualties might be enough to turn them back or slow them down.
. . .
There are so many what-ifs. I don't envy that commander. In the circumstances, if fighting would have ended in the base being lost and everyone inside slaughtered, then he made the right choice. Saving some lives is better than saving none but killing some of the enemy -- in this circumstance, at least.
If your story captures even half of the ache of such a decision, I'm going to be a very happy(?) reader.
The problem is, if the UN soldiers had opened fire, what would have happened to those few people under their protection? The UN's neutrality is the only thing that allows them to protect anyone. When they're so often utterly lacking the resources to do anything else, at least they can still act as human shields.
For what it's worth, the un guards did the right thing. It is States like America (though they are far from the only one) that think they have to police every little conflict rather than just provide a platform for peace when the sides in conflict finally decide there may be a better way, that cause minor skirmishes to boil over into full on sectarian bloodshed.
From a purely personal viewpoint, such distance is monstrous, but if you treat the symptoms instead of the cause, then you've just adopted yourself a civil war that will not end until, most probably, the parties in question decide that murdering you instead of each other is the more noble pursuit...
Gardez, I've often heard in a great deal of debates on morality when lives are on the line that people have the freedom to consider the situation and pursue the best possible thing. I then immediately see a series of self-justifications for saving one's own skin, and I have to wonder just what kind of freedom that is. When the world becomes harsh, or cruel or undeniably immoral, it is called freedom when people adapt to the situation, go with the flow, and in doing so, become a part of it.
Gardez, I am with you on your opinion. Freedom within adversity is to not let the world change you for the worse. It is in sticking to one's principles; that little voice that tells you that you can be a rock in the coursing river, and the calm in the storm even if one's life itself should end in doing so.
I'm a retired USAF MSgt with 31 years of service and little or no College experience (school of hard knocks mostly). I find it very interesting that you would probe the moral ambiguities of modern conflict. When to fight and when not to fight is a horrific grey area that, many times, has no good answer. Personal feelings of the soldiers involved are generally not taken into account. We are not robots and do not follow orders blindly.(Though my next few statements sound as if that's exactly what I did). I was trained for conflicts from the "Cold war" clear out to the latest series of "Middle East" conflicts. I have participated in Operation Southern Watch, Operation Noble Eagle, OEF and OIF (Twice with AARP card in hand). My feelings of "Why" did not come into play. I had a job to do, and those around me would suffer if I failed at that job. Over my career I have read about every book I could about the conflicts of my time. None have had a black and white reason or moral compass set to "Right". Grenada, Panama, even Desert Storm seem to be "Knee jerk" responses to world conditions. The cry of,"If we don't do it, who will?" seems to be an overbearing reason for all of them. 911 was about as cut and dried as you could get for a major conflict. Yet the invasion into Iraq was as iffy as the reason Johnson escalated into Vietnam via the Ton kin Gulf incident.
Tennyson may have said it best..."Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd:Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die:Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred."
The line most people forget is.."Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd":.....Most quote the "Do and Die" part as "Do or Die"....Santayana is rolling in his grave. History tends to color in.. "What was right and what was wrong".....I hope to live long enough to read the many volumes that come out of this conflict....Right or Wrong....The biggest joke is....WE SURVIVED. Please take care of yourself and come home to us soon! P.S. Love your works!
The thing that strikes me most about your post is there seems to be an implicit vote for who is right and should be protected in this case. For the UN to fight against Neur, they would have been taking sides in a conflict that was not theirs. Ultimately, in this situation, there is no right. Both sides have shed each other's blood, and as so aptly shown in this blog, violence only breeds more violence. Once it has begun, the other side will always be crying for the blood of "them", this dehumanized other who can't eat, drink, laugh, or love quite like "the right side". There will always be some sort of resentment for the victors, always stories of how it used to be from the oppressed. The cycle of vengeance will never end at that rate.
It seems the only way to truly end conflict is to have it not start in the first place, but what an impossible task. Once it has started, how do we pick sides? How can we decide one side is bad and wrong? Who are we to do that? Why should the soldiers of UN outpost have done that?
The question of necessary violence has haunted me for much of my life. I put on a pedestal the ideals of peace, but what about questions of the holocaust? Is it wrong to not act when others are in danger? What if my loved ones were threatened? When is violence correct and right? Is it ever?
In the end, I, like everybody else, cannot say what was right in this situation. I can only hope and wish with extreme naivete that the need to make such decisions will someday be memorialized in history books.