'To stop war it is necessary to make more war'

We hear this every day in the unified media as Western governments continue to send increasingly sophisticated and devastating weaponry into the field. This obstinacy in failing to see the quagmire into which Europe has been thrown by Russia's invasion of Ukraine - an invasion we strongly condemn - represents a veritable clouding of reason. The more the military solution to the conflict proves to be impossible, the more we are driven to pursue it. Since 24 February 2022 we at Un Ponte Per have argued that neither side, Ukraine and Russia, is capable of winning this war and that only negotiation, accompanied by an immediate ceasefire, can help stop it, opening a real discussion on a common security system in which no state can feel threatened by another.

"There are those who sing the praises of war, even nuclear war, heedless of the pain it brings; those who champion various interests, daily bludgeoning those who think critically, zeroing in on confrontation and transforming dialogue into an absurd polarisation: friend of Putin if you are for peace or defender of democracy if you adhere to sending arms to Ukraine. Even the Pope has been declared an 'extremist pacifist', as if calling for peace were cowardly or worse, inept, incapable of 'taking a stand'."

Gianni Minà wrote this, with great lucidity, in his last editorial published a few days before his death. Very topical words. What relationship exists between wanting to support the Ukrainian people and the British decision to poison them by sending depleted uranium weapons? Despite what Her Majesty's Generals claim, the consequences of the use of these armaments on the health of the population are more than clear. According to scientific research reported by The Guardian, leukaemia rates in Iraq as a result of the use of depleted uranium bullets during the war are worse than those recorded after the bombing of Hiroshima. The Falluja bombing caused a 1,260% increase in childhood cancers and 2,200% increase in leukaemia rates. In Japan, they increased by 660%, some 12 years after the bombing (when radiation levels peaked). In Falluja, the increase occurred in a much shorter time span, averaging only 5 to 10 years after the bombing.

Evidence that Iraqis had been exposed to radiation also lies in the infant mortality rate,820% higher than in neighbouring Kuwait. Not to mention the hundreds of Italian soldiers who fell ill as a result of exposure in places where particles released by the high combustion induced by depleted uranium had been released, and who subsequently died over time.

This is also why there will be no victory brought by weapons. The history of the last thirty years in which no war has been won teaches us this. George Bush, who had the audacity to declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been belied by subsequent events, with tens of thousands of deaths and the growth throughout the Middle East of jihadist terrorism, which has also reached Europe. War is always a bad investment for the peoples, it enriches the arms lobby and the merchants of death, but it brings new hatreds and injustices.

That is why we rebel against the supposed 'realism' of those who plan new walls and iron curtains on our continent. Of those who want us armed to the teeth by diverting immense resources from social to military expenditure. It seems to us an act of unprecedented blindness because not only does it not put war out of history, but it plans it to the point of making it the dominus to which future generations will have to submit.

The very idea of Europe, the one conceived under fascism by the Ventotene internees, dies every day crushed by an uncritical Atlanticism and a muscular idea of international relations.

But the new generations do not want to be cannon fodder for the old and new powers of the planet. That is why we support conscientious objectors in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. That's why we watch closely the mobilisations of the young against the environmental devastation caused by an economic model that is increasingly incompatible with the survival of living species.

We see in the slogan 'Woman, Life, Freedom', born in Syrian Kurdistan and taken up by Iranian women, something very similar to what the slogan 'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité' was for humanity. Evidence of the extraordinary consciousness-raising of women in West Asia can be found in the beautiful book by our own Silvia Abbà - 'My place is everywhere. Voices of women for another Iraq' - which we helped to publish and which we warmly invite you to read.

A well known Italian song says 'only peace is the only victory'. That is why we continue every day stubbornly to weave the web of the bearers of hope.

Editorial by Alfio Nicotra - Co-President of Un Ponte Per - at the opening of the new issue of our biannual magazine - no. JUNE 2023 >>