Azmat Khan’s two-part series is truly illuminating. It highlights the chasm between what governments promise, especially about protecting civilian life in war, and the actual delivery of their mandates. It shows that unless there is a public pressure to do so, there is no incentive to preserve civilian life. There will be no accountability, given that investigations into violations are usually conducted by the groups that commit the attacks in the first place. It also led me to a broader reflection on the false promises of technology versus the reality of how it is changing our world. As former Pentagon adviser Lawrence Lewis put it, “we don’t use [these technological capabilities] to bring down risk for civilians. We just use them so we can make attacks that maybe we couldn’t do before”. That is the paradox of technological progress. When we think it will make us more effective at the things we already do, it encourages behaviors that do exactly the opposite. They “create greater legal and moral space for greater risk.”

So the responsibility of determining whether certain actions are the result of real mistakes or deliberate negligence, especially in a war where the victims of military action are often reduced to collateral damage, falls upon the public. When the public does not have access to proper information, we become unable to perform this role. This is something that institutions of power perfectly understand and the reason why they take measures to limit the information that is publicly available.

There are clear parallels with what Azmat Khan reported on and what we see in the Middle East with respect to a disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of military objectives. Israel has reportedly deliberately obstructed journalists’ reporting, censored and even killed those covering the war in Gaza (see sources below). This is why investigative journalism is extremely important, especially in these contexts, because it provides the public with the information it needs to play its part in holding institutions of power to account for their actions. When journalists are prevented from doing their jobs, all of society suffers.

I also enjoyed reading the articles about the integration of Afghan refugees in Missouri or about the Bowling sisters. These wonderful stories shine a light on the agency, innovation, and resilience of the people we usually talk and write about, placing them at the center of their own stories rather than keeping them as objects of our own curiosity.

Finally, I once again found it interesting that the vast majority of Afghan refugees live in neighboring countries – namely Iran (3.4 million) and Pakistan (1.9 million). These statistics remind us that other countries also play a vital role in the distribution of global refugees, oftentimes to a larger extent than places like Europe and North America, yet they seldom sensationalize this issue. That is why I am particularly interested in exploring how the global south handles refugee resettlement and migration in general as I believe there is a lot we can learn from observing these overlooked contexts.

Sources
https://theconversation.com/how-israel-continues-to-censor-journalists-covering-the-war-in-gaza-228241
https://rsf.org/en/pressure-intimidation-and-censorship-israeli-journalists-have-faced-growing-repression-past-year
https://rsf.org/en/one-year-gaza-how-israel-orchestrated-media-blackout-region-war