Returning Jihadists

Donald Trump has said that the British, French and other jihadists, being held in detention camps by the US, and its allies, in Syria, should be returned to their respective countries, to stand trial.  Trump, obviously, is saying that for his own reasons - for one it distinguishes him from Bush and Obama, who transported all such prisoners to Guantanamo - and Trump's policies are often as much dictated by doing the opposite of what Obama did, as anything else.  But, Trump is right, they should go back to their respective countries to stand trial.  It will, in fact, highlight the extent to which, it was Syria that faced a problem of foreign imported jihadists, from Europe, and elsewhere, far more than that it was Britain, France etc. that faced a problem of Syrian jihadists coming to their particular countries!

In a similar vein, but a different context, the decision of China to cancel the visit of Philip Hammond, to Beijing, to discuss trade, following the decision of Britain to send an aircraft carrier into the Pacific, on the basis of a supposed threat to Britain, from China, shows just what an Alice in Wonderland world British foreign policy exists within.  Surely, Britain would have a right to claim that China was threatening it, if it was a Chinese warship sent into the English Channel, or positioning itself off the British coastline, not vice versa!  The issue simply reflects the continued delusions of grandeur that Brexit was based upon, in which the Tories, and the majority of those that voted for Brexit, still live in a fantasy world, in which Britain is still some great imperial power, able to throw its weight around, across the globe, willy-nilly, hence all the comments about "we are not called Great Britain for nothing", and so on, which fly in the face of the reality that Britain, today, is simply a middle ranking economic power, whose status has been declining for more than a century, and which will decline even more rapidly if Brexit happens.

It is quite right that British jihadists that went to fight in Syria, should, first, be tried in Syria, for any crimes they committed there, and that, second, they be repatriated to Britain to face trial for any crimes they have committed in relation to Britain.  However, the latter, is rather problematic, for the same reason as the issue of Britain sending warships into the Pacific, to threaten China.  Britain had no grounds to send troops to Syria.  Syria was not threatening Britain in any shape or form.  Britain, therefore, also did not declare war on Syria.  Nevertheless, Britain sent troops to fight in Syria, and planes to bomb Syria.  Its difficult to see how on any rational basis, British troops had any more right to be in Syria, conducting military operations than did British jihadists to be doing the same thing, and consequently, potentially, fighting on opposing sides.  Indeed, at one point, it could easily have been that they were fighting on the same side, against Assad, and in some cases, they were, where those jihadists had joined up with groups such as Al Nusra, who were being supported by the West, and its Gulf allies.

Obviously, the same reactionary forces that whipped up xenophobia and bigotry over Brexit, are apoplectic at the idea that British jihadists that went to fight and kill in someone else's country that Britain was not at war with, and that posed no threat to Britain, should be allowed to return, though they see no problem with British troops being sent to do exactly the same thing!  The same figures that have cowered in the face of bigotry over brexit, and fears that they might not gain the votes of bigots in their constituency, unless they appease them, can again be heard appeasing the same sentiments over the return of jihadists.  But, the more liberally inclined have been not much better.  Their focus has been on the so called schoolgirl brides, who voluntarily went to Syria, as nothing more than breeding stock for the next generation of jihadists.  The arguments in respect to them have been both paternalistic, and dangerous.

The argument has rested upon the idea that, they were only children, who were groomed, and who somehow, therefore, did not know what they were doing.  Those that went to Syria, were, in fact, only just under 16, the age of legal consent for sex in the UK.  It is also the age that you can legally join the armed forces, so that in addition to 16 year old jihadists fighting in Syria, there could potentially have been 16 year old British soldiers.  The UK, is unusual in recruiting under 18's to its armed forces, a policy which has been criticised by  the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Parliament’s own Joint Committee on Human Rights, and children’s charities amongst others.

But, this also throws up other anomalies.  If you are adult enough to have sex at 16, and with parental consent to marry, to fight and die, in the UK armed forces, and so on, in what rational way can you be considered not to be an adult, and to have the same rights, and responsibilities as any other adult?  Indeed, that is precisely the argument that was raised in justifying giving 16 year olds having the vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum, which was agreed, and which was raised for them having a vote in the EU Referendum.  Claiming that 16 year/15 year olds, are only impressionable children that can be groomed and manipulated one minute, when it opportunistically suits your purposes, because you don't want to argue the real issue, sets a dangerous precedent, when you then want to argue that 16 year olds are competent adults who should have the vote!  Indeed, on Friday, when many of these arguments were being aired, thousands of 16 year olds, and some younger than that, showed their political maturity, and understanding of the world around them better than many from older generations, as they took direct action to call for politicians to take measures to deal with climate change.  The fact is that many 15 and 16 year olds are actually better informed, and more politically aware on a range of issues, from sex, to climate change, to racism, to Brexit, than many in the older generation, for whom their views on such matters have been formed on the basis of a lifetime of ignorance and bigotry, and an education system that focussed more on learning on the basis of faith, rather than critical reasoning, and factual analysis.

Not much more than a century ago, British workers, like my grandmother, started work when they were 9-10 years old.  Marx himself saw nothing wrong with that, provided those workers were given adequate safeguards, in terms of length of working-day etc.  He saw, such employment, alongside the provision of education, in fact, as the best means by which the working-class would quickly surpass the existing ruling-class in developing intellectually and culturally. 

"We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too...

The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes."

(Marx - Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council of the First International)

Earlier, in the 19th century, it was the rule that people married as young as 12.  One reason for that, was that the Industrial Revolution halved life expectancy to around 25-29.  Today, higher living standards mean that such a restriction on the need to marry to procreate has been lifted, but that same raising of living standards, and the improvements in the potential for teaching of young people, means that rather than infantilising them, by removing them from the adult world of work, of politics and the rest of society is even less justifiable.