The New York Times has started offering a few articles each day to read for free. If you didn't know, reading the NYTimes requires a subscription. I still peruse their headlines daily, so I was excited to see this change in policy.
One of their free offerings this week was a rare interview with Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was a rare interview because most of the work she does is of the utmost secrecy. You've probably never heard of her. Precisely.
Because of the Red Cross work, her work, the Israeli hostages were finally released from Gaza. Ms. Spoljaric, meets regularly with heads of state, with war mongers, all in an attempt to make sure the rules of war, the Geneva convention statutes are obeyed. She enters these meetings on neutral ground. The Houthis, the Ukranians, Hamas, have to believe she is impartial before they will meet for negotiations.
Thus, she never gives interviews. Why now?
She has only come forward because she believes the world is at a dangerous impasse. War can no longer be simply defined and often involves several nations and several different ideologies. When a war is ten years old, and it is renewed with an added country or an added terrorist group, the possibility of peace drifts further away. She is deeply worried about these growing conflicts and has expressed that many world leaders no longer care.
When our own President stood before the United Nations and threatened annihilation of Iran, it established a rogue way of behaving that violated all rules of war. It gave the green light for the perverse to think it was one man's option to destroy another country.
We've already seen what happens with this kind of bravado. Many times.
Ms. Spoljaric meets with all people, the perpetrators or the victims, and her cause is the care of both, for she sees that the violations of war are more destructive to the perpetrators than the victims. The victims fight for and somehow maintain who they are--but the perpetrators cannot.
This in part, is what allows her to remain neutral; she sees the damage on both sides and wants to save both sides: Hamas soldiers and Israeli victims; Russian soldiers and Ukrainian defenders.
It is a long interview, and I couldn’t increase the playback speed. But in the end, I was grateful I had watched the interview in real time. Ms. Spoljaric was contemplative. She thought before she spoke. She listened carefully to the interviewer. She had taken a risk, and she wanted to make sure the risk was worth it.
As a bystander, it was disheartening to hear the words of an international player in world politics, to hear her fears, to listen to her pleas, the pleas that fall on deaf ears: the madmen, the world leaders who prefer conquest, revenge, and chaos over the lives of their own children.
I don't know what to do with her insights and fears.
But I can take it personal. I can remember to cause no harm in this world: with words and deeds.
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