大英帝国埋下的冲突祸根至今仍清晰可见

大英帝国埋下的冲突祸根至今仍清晰可见 大英帝国埋下的冲突祸根至今仍清晰可见 当今世界许多冲突热点地区，二战前曾是英国的殖民地。这份悲惨的帝国遗产如今仍然清晰可见。为什么半个世纪后仍有这么多地方动荡不安，充斥着暴力？英国《卫报》日前刊登一篇题为《大英帝国造成的悲惨故事今天仍在上演》的文章对此作了解读，文章要点如下：     首先要说的是巴勒斯坦。英国在占领该地区近30年后于1947年放弃了这块殖民地，同时将大多数欧洲殖民者留在了当地人中——这是帝国统治的典型特征之一。对殖民者而言，不幸的是，由于是在帝国没落时期来到这里，他们没有足够的时间，像他们在占领澳大利亚并对澳大利亚实行殖民统治时那样，把当地居民都屠杀光。     就在澳大利亚土著居民在棚户区或保留地苟延残喘之际，巴勒斯坦的当地人却拥有了反抗这种命运的一些能力。在他们所信仰的古老宗教的激励下，在阿拉伯国家的坚定支持下，他们对殖民者发起了持久的抵抗运动。澳大利亚殖民者遭受的只是良心上的谴责，以色列人面临的则是无法消除的持久威胁。     一个类似的帝国冲突热点是塞拉利昂——英国的另一块殖民地。这一次英国将来自本国和加拿大的大量外国黑人(主要是基督徒)安插到已经信奉伊斯兰教的当地人中。该殖民地的历史可以追溯到18世纪，但这个国家的大部分地区是在19世纪末通过军事占领而获得的，在此过程中，当地人进行了顽强的抵抗。尽管最近重返这里的英国军队扑灭了眼看要燃起的战火，但是内战重新爆发的可能性永远都存在。     殖民主义的其他受害者包括南非、津巴布韦和肯尼亚，当然还有可悲的北爱尔兰。这些国家未解决的问题从帝国时代一直延续至今。在这些国家，殖民者现在又都卷土重来了，尽管人数不多，处于劣势，但殖民政权的恶劣影响——表现在社会习俗和旨在保护殖民社会的政府结构上——却流传下来。     在印度，英国在1947年的匆忙撤退导致印度被分割为印度和巴基斯坦两个国家，最终孟加拉国又从巴基斯坦分离出去。这使得英国两个世纪以来维持南亚次大陆统一的承诺变得一文不值。英国在遗弃印度时没有对克什米尔作出明确决定，这在该地区造成了灾难性的后果，这种灾难从那时一直延续到今天。     最后要谈的是伊拉克和阿富汗。这两个现代灾难发源地的根源可以追溯至大英帝国时期。伊拉克是大英帝国最后一个殖民地，但它又是第一个摆脱大英帝国殖民统治的国家，尽管英国驻扎此间的军事基地直到20世纪50年代才最终撤走。50年后，英国人又回来了，英军取代了在一战期间代表英国入侵这个国家的印度兵。英国人在20世纪30年代匆匆离开，他们无疑会再次这样做。     虽然名义上是独立国家，但阿富汗在19世纪的大部分时间里都处于英国的势力范围内，尽管它成功地向英国人发动了3次抵抗战争。现在第四次英国—阿富汗战争正在进行之中，它必将像从前一样以阿富汗人的胜利告终。     看来帝国的故事正在全球许多地方重新上演。由此产生的暴力、造成的破坏在帝国时代几乎是难以想象的。如果英国政府能帮着抚平旧日伤口，至少承认以前真正发生过的事情，而不是火上浇油，那该多好啊。 The brutal story of British empire continues to this day All around the world, from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, the violent legacy of colonialism can still be witnessed Richard Gott Saturday July 22, 2006 The Guardian Many of the present conflicts in the world take place in the former colonial territories that Britain abandoned, exhausted and impoverished, in the years after the second world war. This disastrous imperial legacy is still highly visible, and it is one of the reasons why the British empire continues to provoke such harsh debate. If Britain made such a success of its colonies, why are so many in an unholy mess half a century later, major sources of violence and unrest? Top of the list is Palestine, a settler colony that Britain abandoned in 1947 after barely 30 years, having imposed a population of mostly European settlers on the indigenous people - one of the typical characteristics of imperial rule. Unfortunately for the settlers, arriving during the imperial sunset, they had insufficient time to achieve the scale of defeat of the local people, amounting to extermination and genocide, that characterised the British conquest and settlement of Australia. While the native peoples of Australia, drunk and demoralised, survive in shanty towns or reservations, those in Palestine have had some capacity to struggle against such a fate, organising a lasting resistance to the settlers, inspired by their own ancient religion and sustained by the support of a vast Arab hinterland. The Australian settlers suffer from little more than a guilty conscience - if that- while the Israelis face a permanent and ineradicable threat. Like the medieval crusaders, whose ruined castles dominate the landscape of the eastern Mediterranean, they will be lucky if their state lasts more than a century. Many will surely abandon ship in despair. A similar imperial trouble spot is Sierra Leone, another settler colony where the British imposed an alien, largely Christian, black population from Britain and Canada on to a congeries of native peoples already in thrall to Islam. The original colony dates back to the 18th century, but much of the country was secured through military conquest at the end of the 19th, to which there was energetic resistance. The recurrence of civil war, though suffocated recently by a return of British troops, remains a permanent probability. Other victims of settler colonialism where unresolved problems survive from the time of empire include South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, and of course the tragic statelet of Northern Ireland. In these countries the settlers are all now on the back foot, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, yet the baneful legacy of the colonial regime - in social customs, and in the forms of government designed to protect settler society - lives on. Much unfinished business remains. Settler colonies of a marginally different kind were established in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Fiji, the victims of continuing trouble. In both islands workers from India were imported in the 19th century for the white-owned plantations, creating the basis for an endless civil war that can never be resolved. Here, as elsewhere, endemic violence and conflict have proved to be the lasting legacy of empire. In India itself Britain's speedy and disastrous scuttle in 1947 led to partition and the creation of the "moth-eaten" Muslim state of Pakistan (and eventually of Bangladesh), making nonsense of two centuries of British dominion designed to maintain the unity of the subcontinent. Abandoning India without a clear and agreed decision on the future of the princely state of Kashmir has created a scenario of disaster that has lasted from that day to this. One troubled imperial outpost, often forgotten and now brought to life as a temporary haven for refugees from Lebanon, is Cyprus, miserably divided like India as a result of imperial misrule, and still under British military surveillance today from two "sovereign" bases. Others are Nigeria and Somalia, the first unnaturally cobbled together in a unitary state for imperial convenience, the second occupied and abandoned for purely strategic reasons. Both are currently simmering on the stove. Finally come Iraq and Afghanistan, two modern disasters that have their roots in the experience of empire. Iraq was last in and first out of the British empire, though British military bases were not finally removed until the 1950s. Fifty years later the British are back, British soldiers replacing the Indian sepoys who invaded the country on Britain's behalf during the first world war. The British left in a hurry in the 1930s, and they will doubtless do so again. Although nominally independent, Afghanistan was effectively within the imperial sphere for most of the 19th century, though successfully fighting three wars of resistance against the British. The fourth Anglo-Afghan war is now in progress, to be followed as before by an Afghan triumph. It seems that the story of the empire is being re-enacted over much of the globe, bringing violence and destruction on a scale barely envisaged in the imperial era. How fortunate we would be to have a government in Britain that would help to bind up the wounds of the past, by at least recognising what really happened, rather than to have one that endlessly pours petrol on the flames. · Richard Gott is author of Cuba: A New History, and is writing a book about imperial resistance