Britain has fought side by side with the U.S. for the last
decade in Iraq and Afghanistan. So you would have thought that
President Obama might offer Britain a little support on its most
urgent foreign policy objective — the on-going efforts to stop
Argentina swallowing up the Falkland Islands, lying vulnerably just
300 miles off its South Atlantic coast.
Sadly, Obama seems unconcerned to show such loyalty to his ally.
“Our position remains one of neutrality,” says his administration.
“The United States… takes no position regarding the sovereignty
claims of either party.”
Thanks, Mr. Obama.
No wonder the Falkland Islanders have felt the need to show the
world just how much they wish to stay British — something that was
impressed upon me during my visit there in January. Last Monday
they took part in a referendum on their sovereignty, and a whopping
99.8% of them voted in favor of remaining as a UK territory. Since
the UN Charter enshrines a people’s right to self-determination,
you’d hope they might finally get the backing of the American
president.
Sadly, though, it may not be as simple as that. Argentina
regards the 2,800 Islanders as an “implanted” British population
whose wishes are therefore irrelevant, and is only too happy to
bully them, hoping to undermine their economy and weaken their
resolve. What’s more, it seems that the international community,
with Obama at its head, is letting them get away with it.
In recent months Argentina has threatened to prevent flights to
the Falklands from traveling through its airspace; refused to allow
port entry to cruise ships that have visited the Falklands; and
persuaded the Mercosur bloc, which includes Brazil and Uruguay, to
close ports to all ships flying the Falklands flag. Argentina’s
president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is busy persuading other
countries to back her case and is whipping up nationalist sentiment
at home, declaring that Argentina will control the Islands within
20 years.
It’s deeply unsettling for the Islanders to see their homeland
so aggressively coveted by a giant neighbor, especially since
Argentina’s ill-conceived 1982 attempt to take the Islands by force
is still fresh in the memory. Back then many of the invading
soldiers expected to be welcomed as liberators. Instead they were
greeted with contempt — a sentiment Margaret Thatcher
wholeheartedly shared. She immediately dispatched a massive task
force from Britain, and only two months after they had arrived, the
demoralized Argentines surrendered.
Nevertheless, the conflict and its accompanying horrors are
still intensely resented by Falklands people. They remember being
pushed around at gunpoint, their public buildings being taken over
and their leaders being deported. And they display a steely
determination that their homeland will never again fall into
Argentinean hands.
They have the backing of just about everyone in Britain. In
fact, to Britons of my generation, the Falklands capture the
imagination like nowhere else. I was a teenager when Argentina
invaded them in 1982, and the war that followed was a formative
experience that left me with an intense curiosity about the place,
and the people who live there. So when, a few weeks ago, the
government of the Falkland Islands invited me to carry out a
training project, I was fascinated to see just what this windswept
little community was really like, and how British it could really
be.
Walking along the streets of the main settlement, Stanley, on my
first evening, I was reminded of the archetypal English village in
late-summer sunlight, complete with community store, church, bright
red post box, plenty of pubs, and a proud display of British flags.
There are big physical differences of course — not least the
thousands of penguins nestling in the wind-battered rocks just
outside town. You don’t get those in Stratford-on-Avon. But the
people display those old-fashioned virtues of self-reliance, care
for neighbors and an understated pride in their country. For 180
years, it’s been a tight-knit place where everyone knows everyone
else — and despite living 8,000 miles away from the UK, the
Islanders are as British as warm beer and afternoon tea.
In fact, Argentina’s only obvious claim to the Islands is
geographical — the same one that would make Alaska part of Russia.
Any historical claim is far-fetched, for unlike the South American
mainland, the Falklands never had an indigenous population
vulnerable to European colonists. And Argentina didn’t even exist
in its modern form when the British began to settle there in 1833,
let alone when they first arrived in 1690. Moreover, the Islanders,
many of whom trace their family history back nine generations, have
always done so by free choice, as Argentina discovered to its cost
in 1982.
Ironically, most Argentineans, including President Kirchner, are
themselves the descendants of European settlers, and their families
have been in their country for rather less time than the Falkland
Islanders have been in theirs.
The people of the Falklands shrug their shoulders at this,
merely expressing, with British understatement, their
disappointment at Argentina’s bullyboy tactics. Meanwhile, they
look forward to a healthy economic future based on fishing (much of
the calamari eaten in Europe is from the Falklands), tourism, and
oil.
However, the Islanders also rely on the international community
to dismiss Argentina’s power games, and to accept the rights of
this small, isolated but determined community to decide its own
future. In particular, they expect President Obama to recognize
these rights, and will patiently wait to see how he responds to a
referendum result that is as unequivocal as it gets.
All the Islanders ask for is to live their lives in peace. If
the UN Charter has any force, if the right to self-determination is
paramount, they should surely be allowed to do so.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
