Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Tutta colpa degli Inglesi!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1826361,00.html
The brutal story of British empire continues to this day
All around the world, from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, the violent
legacy of colonialism can still be witnessed
Richard Gott
Saturday July 22, 2006
The Guardian
Many of the present conflicts in the world take place in the former
colonial territories that Britain abandoned, exhausted and
impoverished, in the years after the second world war. This disastrous
imperial legacy is still highly visible, and it is one of the reasons
why the British empire continues to provoke such harsh debate. If
Britain made such a success of its colonies, why are so many in an
unholy mess half a century later, major sources of violence and unrest?
Top of the list is Palestine, a settler colony that Britain abandoned
in 1947 after barely 30 years, having imposed a population of mostly
European settlers on the indigenous people - one of the typical
characteristics of imperial rule. Unfortunately for the settlers,
arriving during the imperial sunset, they had insufficient time to
achieve the scale of defeat of the local people, amounting to
extermination and genocide, that characterised the British conquest and
settlement of Australia.
While the native peoples of Australia, drunk and demoralised, survive
in shanty towns or reservations, those in Palestine have had some
capacity to struggle against such a fate, organising a lasting
resistance to the settlers, inspired by their own ancient religion and
sustained by the support of a vast Arab hinterland. The Australian
settlers suffer from little more than a guilty conscience - if that-
while the Israelis face a permanent and ineradicable threat. Like the
medieval crusaders, whose ruined castles dominate the landscape of the
eastern Mediterranean, they will be lucky if their state lasts more
than a century. Many will surely abandon ship in despair.
A similar imperial trouble spot is Sierra Leone, another settler colony
where the British imposed an alien, largely Christian, black population
from Britain and Canada on to a congeries of native peoples already in
thrall to Islam. The original colony dates back to the 18th century,
but much of the country was secured through military conquest at the
end of the 19th, to which there was energetic resistance. The
recurrence of civil war, though suffocated recently by a return of
British troops, remains a permanent probability.
Other victims of settler colonialism where unresolved problems survive
from the time of empire include South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, and
of course the tragic statelet of Northern Ireland. In these countries
the settlers are all now on the back foot, outnumbered and
outmanoeuvred, yet the baneful legacy of the colonial regime - in
social customs, and in the forms of government designed to protect
settler society - lives on. Much unfinished business remains. Settler
colonies of a marginally different kind were established in Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka) and Fiji, the victims of continuing trouble. In both islands
workers from India were imported in the 19th century for the
white-owned plantations, creating the basis for an endless civil war
that can never be resolved. Here, as elsewhere, endemic violence and
conflict have proved to be the lasting legacy of empire.
In India itself Britain's speedy and disastrous scuttle in 1947 led to
partition and the creation of the "moth-eaten" Muslim state of Pakistan
(and eventually of Bangladesh), making nonsense of two centuries of
British dominion designed to maintain the unity of the subcontinent.
Abandoning India without a clear and agreed decision on the future of
the princely state of Kashmir has created a scenario of disaster that
has lasted from that day to this.
One troubled imperial outpost, often forgotten and now brought to life
as a temporary haven for refugees from Lebanon, is Cyprus, miserably
divided like India as a result of imperial misrule, and still under
British military surveillance today from two "sovereign" bases.
Others are Nigeria and Somalia, the first unnaturally cobbled together
in a unitary state for imperial convenience, the second occupied and
abandoned for purely strategic reasons. Both are currently simmering on
the stove.
Finally come Iraq and Afghanistan, two modern disasters that have their
roots in the experience of empire. Iraq was last in and first out of
the British empire, though British military bases were not finally
removed until the 1950s. Fifty years later the British are back,
British soldiers replacing the Indian sepoys who invaded the country on
Britain's behalf during the first world war. The British left in a
hurry in the 1930s, and they will doubtless do so again.
Although nominally independent, Afghanistan was effectively within the
imperial sphere for most of the 19th century, though successfully
fighting three wars of resistance against the British. The fourth
Anglo-Afghan war is now in progress, to be followed as before by an
Afghan triumph.
It seems that the story of the empire is being re-enacted over much of
the globe, bringing violence and destruction on a scale barely
envisaged in the imperial era. How fortunate we would be to have a
government in Britain that would help to bind up the wounds of the
past, by at least recognising what really happened, rather than to have
one that endlessly pours petrol on the flames.

 impoverished, in the years after the second world war.
*ROTFL*
Purtroppo abbiamo l'ennesima riprova che sul Guardian gli idioti
abbondano :)
(e che quel *FESSO* del Torrieri li pesca tutti :) )
-Stefano

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
Gia'. Quello che non dice l'autore, presumibilmente laburista, e' che 
l'abbandono frettoloso fu appunto da imputare al partito laburista, che 
voleva ricompensare le forze operaie per i loro sacrifici di guerra, 
piuttosto che continuare a dissanguare lo stato con la difesa 
dell'impero.
Oggi,nelle universita', le posizioni antimperialiste e quelle di 
rivalutazione del ruolo imperiale *in illo tempore*  si confrontano.
L'unita' politica e infrastrutturale dell'India, la piu' popolosa 
democrazia del pianeta, potrebbe essere la rivenedicazione della seconda 
scuola.
Am.