Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine, Northern Ireland: The root causes of the world's hottest conflicts lie in the break-up of Europe's colonial empires. But who dares admit it?Do you want to know the real scandal of the year 2005?
According to The Sun in England and the world press, the scandal occurred when Prince Harry (son of British Crown Prince Charles) in January showed up at a party in Wiltshire, wearing a German Nazi uniform.
The picture of the 20-year-old wearing a swastika armband and a Wehrmacht badge with a cigarette and drink in hand, shocked the world.
Rightfully, the prince's flirting with Adolf Hitler's killing of six million Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals was strongly condemned.
But here's the real conundrum: Do you know what Harry's older brother Prince William wore at the same party celebrating their friend's 22nd birthday with 250 guests in attendance?
The answer is "native African" dress. Prince William proudly wore a Zulu outfit with black tights and a leopard skin robe.
The reason? The theme of this upper class birthday party was "native and colonial". The English prince was celebrating his country's brutal colonial rule by dressing in the traditional clothes of one of its conquered peoples – the Zulus of South-Africa.
Not only did Prince William and the elite with their native-mocking costumes pay homage to the military atrocities of their ancestors, but so few in Europe today question the deaths of millions of Africans, Asians, and American Indians.
The real scandal is that nobody views this celebration of colonial brutality as a scandal!
But if one opposes Prince Harry's Nazi outfit, one should also question Prince William's colonial outfit. Hitler did, after all, have the British colonial empire as a main inspiration for his wars for more Lebensraum – living space.
Norwegians and Irish
The only media pundit I have seen questioning the royal party's events is columnist Simon Woolley. Commenting on the theme Native and Colonial, Woolley wrote:
"A more appalling theme would be difficult to find unless you were ignorant and/or arrogant. For black people around the world there was no frivolity within colonialism, only degradation and dehumanisation."Exactly. But tell that to any average European, and what you get back is a blank stare. Citizens of former colonial empires are actually taught to be proud of their glorious colonial past.
The present European celebration of the colonising of "the natives" seems to be caused less by pure arrogance than by pure ignorance. Or, as the motto is for the famous Where is Raed blog of the Iraqi Salam Pax, quoting Samuel Huntington:
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."If we don't know about the mistakes of the past, on all sides, we are doomed to repeat them. It's about time that Europeans also accept historic facts about their former occupation of the world.
I have dedicated the latest decade of my life fighting Huntington's false Clash of Civilisations claims, but this one sentence at least has some truth in it.
Huntington only forgets that Europeans were also victims of colonial occupation. Just ask the Irish. Thousands of Catholics from Ireland were sent aboard slave ships to the Caribbean by the invading protestant Englishmen.
Ask Norway's two greatest authors – Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun – who were full of bitterness against the British empire because of its colonial actions in the 19th century.
In order to understand the present conflict in Northern Ireland – as in Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda, and Kashmir – we need to acknowledge the effects of the unjust European occupations.
Actions of the past have influenced our present world situation. Just as our present actions will influence our common future. Thus, in order to create justice in the future, we need to acknowledge the injustice of the past.
Axis of Evil
I am not bringing up this colonial theme to excuse the problems of the present. We should never point to former crimes in order to not improve our own societies.
Rather the opposite: Basic knowledge of the brutalities both of the Nazi regime and of the colonial regimes are necessary in order to prevent similar atrocities again.
The Axis of Evil has become a popular phrase. Well, here is the original Colonial Axis of Evil: The empires of Britain, France, and Belgium.
And here is how these former empires now treat the suppression of their past:
1. Regret in Belgium: In 1885, King Leopold II received Kongo as his private gift. Belgium's king ravaged the country, chopped off Congolese arms and legs, killed millions, and provided inspiration for Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness in 1899.
This year, as the Belgium state celebrates its 175th year, the country is about to confront its brutal past. That's much thanks to the American Adam Hochschild, who recently documented the atrocities. Official exhibits now acknowledge the colonial crimes in Congo.
Soon the Belgians might also admit their responsibility for the tragedy in Rwanda: The racial identity cards of Hutus versus Tutsis which Belgium imposed in the 1930s – and the recent French Hutu support – paved the way for the Rwandan killing fields in 1994.
2. Silence in France: A new film is confronting French brutality during Morocco's fight for independence in the mid-1950s. The magnificent film is called Le Regard (The Return), the first of its kind.
The film is not made in France, but rather supported by Norway and Morocco. The film director's name is Nour-Eddine Lakhmari, a Moroccan Norwegian.
The French still haven't faced their terrible "civilisation project". They are suppressing the memories of their suppression. While the Americans for decades have made films about their wars, and exported Vietnam-critical films like Platoon, France has refused.
The French public still do not realise how gruesomely their soldiers behaved during la sale gerre, the dirty war, in Algeria in late 1950s. Maybe as much as one million Algerians were killed, not to mention raped and wounded, just because France did not want to leave the illegally occupied country.
3. Pride in England: While France refused to leave their colonies in Vietnam, Algeria, and Morocco, Britain could not have left faster in countries like India and Palestine.
After growing rich on India for almost 200 years, the British empire in 1947 left the continent in just 72 days: Britain did not work either for a unified India, or for a non-violent division, or for a peaceful future in Kashmir with its foggy borders.
The same empire was responsible for the hands-off-policy towards the guerrilla war during the fatal, last days of the British Palestine Mandate in 1947-1948.
So, what is the British attitude towards its former crimes against Indian, Chinese, African and Arab peoples? They are actually proud of their colonial times, as Prince William's party outfit signals.
Prime Minister Tony Blair boasts that the British empire was "a remarkable achievement". Recently, Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, said "Britain should stop apologising for colonialism and be proud of its history".
They are backed by Niall Ferguson's Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World (2003). A bestseller which mocks Mahatma Gandhi and the UN declaration against racism.
He hails the former British empire as a necessity, and does not question its legitimacy. The Times declared Ferguson "the most brilliant British historian of his generation".
So what happened when Harvard Professor Caroline Elkins published in March, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya? Her work was ridiculed in papers such as The Independent.
Elkins documents how the British imprisoned 1.5 million Kenyans and killed tens of thousands of them during the Mau-Mau uprising in the 1950s. But Britain does not answer Kenya's demands for an apology.
The European empires are still the black man's burden.
Yet, we should forgive, we must move on. Maybe we should even forget about the past, so we can focus more on the future. But we should never let the European colonisers forget, nor let them be proud of their brutal suppression.
This is the main problem: They still don't know what they have done.
Dag Herbjornsrud is a Norwegian author, journalist and historian of ideas.