Six new countries – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Eritrea, Egypt and Argentina – have joined the Brics. Yesterday’s enemies are ready to join forces in an organization that China would like to see compete with the dollar for the benefit of the yuan and the Russians form an anti-Western group, while India refines its multi-alignment.
Suffice to say that the Brics, or global South, or developing countries, are a basket of crabs where enemies are ready to go part of the way together for political-economic opportunism, but who all look in a different direction, even competitor. People will respond to me that it is the same thing among the members of the G7. All right. But the dissensions within the global BRICS South are visceral, they are linked to territorial issues (India-China) as well as historical and civilizational issues (Iran-Saudi Arabia). But they agree to throw human rights overboard and give no importance to the most basic rights of their citizens, deny to the point of “genociding” ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, consider the freedom like a slow poison and equality like a vast joke. And above all, they are proud of it. They are consistent. Not us.
The Western camp of liberal democracies which (still) stands firmly behind Ukraine and tries to convince the non-aligned countries to align themselves more against Russia, knows how to weave beautiful speeches which smell of harmony, peace, freedom. Joe Biden demonstrated this before the UN on September 19. He looked the world in the eye and posed the equation: Russia is doing to Ukraine what no one would want to do, which is to invade a sovereign territory and cause innocent deaths. All right. But. The day before, the Americans made a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. They exchanged American hostages for Iranian prisoners. And they released more than 6 billion dollars frozen in the name of legitimate sanctions which will directly end up in the black and white turbans of the mullahs.
You have to understand, ladies and gentlemen, you have to understand: the American elections are approaching and the mullahs should not mess with us, we should not spoil the picture of the successes of old Biden and see Trump the puff again at the head of the first power worldwide. Too bad for the anniversary of the assassination of Mahsa Amini, too bad for the Iranians who fight and die, who rise and fall in the name of our values, to live in liberal democracy. To live like us.
Roll up your democratic sleeves
Too bad, for now Ukraine has the leading role, no one will see anything. See how no one saw anything when Hong Kong was emptied of its democratic substance, when all the freedom fighters were rotting in prison. Defending liberal democracy in words, in speeches, in indignation, it’s easy, it doesn’t engage, it doesn’t cause dirt, it purrs and it reassures. But defending the Iranians and the Hong Kongers, the Burmese and the Thais, can be an electoral stain, it can be a long-term commitment and cost lives, it can confuse the future.
Look at what the Iraqi, Libyan or Afghan examples say! Look at what it looks like when we get involved in real life, in real life, face-to-face! All right. For Iraq and Libya okay. It was poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly thought out. But I look at Afghanistan. I only see one thing: in 2001 there were 1 million children in school. In 2018 there were 10 million Afghans. I see women who did not exist before Western intervention. I see women who existed afterwards and who are dying today following the cowardly abandonment of Westerners and the glaring and shameful absence of Afghan resistance.
SO ? So, perhaps we should roll up our democratic sleeves. Perhaps we should start matching speeches and actions. We should start by being proud of what this West, which is hated even in Western speeches, has accomplished. Antonio Guterres, at the head of a moribund UN which is nothing more than a platform for the worst dictators, should remain silent. He should not take advantage of his speech to castigate the West and France, giving credence to the Islamists’ speech: “In certain countries, women and girls are punished because they wear too many clothes. In some countries, women and girls are punished because they wear too many clothes. “others, because they don’t wear enough.” Because everyone knows that women who don’t wear a mini-skirt are tortured and killed in the West. Sometimes we would like shame to stifle certain speeches that discredit liberal democracy and fuel the worst dictatorships.
* Abnousse Shalmani is a writer and journalist committed against the obsession with identity