Getting hotter

From this distance, it seems unlikely that the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will make any great difference to the situation in Iraq. One violent act seems to beget another and another; the conflict seems far too hot for this latest US military action to make any major difference. The IPS news service, for instance, carries an article headed "US Military hides many more Hadithas", in which the training and tactics of US troops on the ground is revealed as being inadequate at their best and brutal and insensitive at their worst.

Max Hastings in The Guardian, meanwhile, commenting on the acquital of three British soldiers for the drowning of an Iraqi teenager concludes:

"It would have been monstrous to convict three guardsmen for actions that are overwhelmingly attributable to the circumstances into which they were thrust. By contrast, if George Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfel and Lord Goldsmith had been in the dock, a guilty verdict would have been the only proper one."

Here at home, actions by police in Tower Hamlets, apparently to locate some terrorist weapons (and in doing so, shooting one young man) are seen stoking up tensions. Faisal Bodi, writing in The Guardian, suggests that

"... this type of policing comes at a high price: the alienation it engenders not only acts as a recruiting sargeant for anti-state violence, it also lays the foundation of internal civil unrest"

And in the same paper, Timothy Garton Ash reflects that in Frances alienated young ethnic-minorities are still angry.

" 'It's too late,' several people told me in the batter housing estates. A generation has been lost. Despair has turned to fury. Every little spark will produce another explosion. A community activist who has worked on one of the worst estates for 14 years told me that, if something radical is not done to improve the life-chances of the youn, 'C'est la
guerre ... c'est la guerre avec madame la France.' "

The London police's apology today to the people of Tower Hamlets - and an indication of a willingness to build bridges - offers a glimmer of hope that there is a wider understanding that a more collaborative and respectful approach is needed. And on a very different issue, perhaps we can gain some small hope from the government's appointment of a special representative on climate change, charged with building new international partnerships to tackle this burning issue.