Moscow attack Putin’s cynical blame game 15

A week in the life of the world | Global edition

29 MARCH 2024 | VOL .210 No.13 | £5.95 | €9

Sudan’s
exodus
The victims of Africa’s forgotten war
SPECIAL REPORT
10
Eyewitness  Man’s best frond
Philippines A dog is carried by its owner as worshippers have palm fronds blessed with holy
water at the cathedral in Antipolo. Palm Sunday, which marks the entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem, ushered in Holy Week among Christians worldwide. More than 80% of
PHOTOGRAPH:
AARON FAVILA/AP people in the Philippines are Christian, the vast majority of them Roman Catholics.

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 A week in the life of the world
29 MARCH 2024

4
GL OBAL REP ORT
Headlines from
34
F E AT U R E S
Long reads, interviews & essays
the last seven days Unravelling the enigma
United Kingdom ................... 8 of Hamas
Science & Environment ........ 9 By Joshua Leifer .................. 34
The big story The publicist who represents
Sudan/Chad The humanitarian dead celebrities
disaster on the border ..........10 By Tim Jonze ....................... 40

45
OPINION
Devi Sridhar
51
C U LT U R E
TV, film, music, theatre, art,
Despite Covid, the world is not architecture & more

15
ready for the next pandemic 45  Comedy
▼ Rokhaya Diallo The laughing matter of
France struggles to accept Steve Martin ........................ 51
black success .......................47 Art
Gaby Hinsliff Has Damian Hirst taken a
It’s not about women getting chainsaw to his reputation? ..54
SPOTLIGHT in – it’s men keeping us out .. 48 Sculpture
In-depth reporting and analysis Alabama’s radical act of
 Russia remembrance ......................55
After Moscow’s terror attack,  Books
a political blame game ......... 15 Aya The anxious generation and a
Israel/Palestine warning about technology ....57
Why the UN ceasefire Nakamura’s
very existence

60
resolution matters ............... 19
UK/China
What does Beijing want with challenges white
British voters’ data? ............ 24
UK
supremacy and
How Catherine delivered a its idea that LIFESTYLE
cancer bombshell.................25
Australia people of colour Tim Dowling
The unavoidable truth about
coral bleaching ....................26
should remain The plumber’s third act ....... 60
Ask Ottolenghi
Science on the margins A capsule kitchen .................61
The struggle to raise the San Recipe
José and its treasure ............ 30 Spicy baked eggs ..................61

Join the community Moscow attack Putin’s cynical blame game On the cover
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29 MARCH 2024 VOL

This arresting portrait of Nadifa Ismail was taken

facebook.com/guardianweekly
Instagram: @guardian by the Guardian reporter Mark Townsend, soon
after Ismail had crossed the border from Sudan
into the town of Adré, in eastern Chad. Like
those who had gone before, the 38-year-old
offered detailed testimony that fresh atrocities
Sudan’s
exodus
The victims of Africa’s forgotten war
are happening in Darfur, a vast region in the west
SPOT ILLUSTRATIONS:
SPECIAL REPORT

of Sudan. Photograph: Mark Townsend

MATT BLEASE
4

Global
2 U N I T E D S TAT E S 4 U N I T E D S TAT E S

Apple accused of ‘illegal’

report smartphone monopoly

The US government has filed an
sprawling antitrust case against
Apple, alleging that the tech
giant has illegally prevented
Headlines from the competition by restricting access
last seven days to its software and hardware.
The case is a challenge to the
company’s core products and
1 UKRAINE /RUSSIA At least seven missing after
practices, including its iMessage
Baltimore bridge collapse service and how devices such
Kyiv pleads for air defence
A major bridge in Baltimore, as the iPhone and Apple Watch
aid after missile strikes Maryland, snapped and collapsed connect with one another.
Copyright © 2024 Russia launched several waves of after the Singapore-flagged The lawsuit, filed in federal
GNM Ltd. All rights missile strikes against Ukraine’s container ship the Dali collided court in New Jersey, alleges
reserved capital, Kyiv, as part of its escalating with it early on Tuesday, sending Apple has monopoly power in the
aerial bombardment of the city. a number of vehicles and people smartphone market and uses its
Published weekly by Five people were injured in into the water. At the time of the control over the iPhone to “engage
Guardian News & a strike on Monday, said Kyiv’s Guardian Weekly going to press in a broad, sustained and illegal
Media Ltd, mayor, Vitali Klitschko, as on Tuesday, the extent of any course of conduct”. The complaint
Kings Place, Ukraine’s foreign minister called casualties was unclear. states that the case is about “freeing
90 York Way,
on international allies to supply A video posted on X appeared smartphone markets” from Apple’s
London, N1 9GU, UK
more air defences to his country. to show the vessel striking one anticompetitive practices.
Printed in the UK, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, of the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s “Apple has maintained
Denmark, the US, renewed his appeal to western central supports, causing much of its power not because of its
Australia and partners to provide more the 2.6km structure to give way as superiority, but because of its
New Zealand weaponry to protect against a number of vehicles fell into the unlawful exclusionary behaviour,”
the unrelenting aerial attacks. Patapsco River below. The ship the US attorney general, Merrick
ISSN 0958-9996 “We never tire of repeating that appeared to catch fire as part of the Garland, stated in a press
Ukraine needs more air defence,” bridge appeared to collapse over conference last Thursday.
To advertise contact he said. “This is security for our it, sending plumes of black smoke Apple has rejected the
advertising.
cities and saves human lives.” into the air. The Baltimore fire allegations in the lawsuit, saying
enquiries@
The strikes occurred amid department said it was searching that it threatened the company’s
theguardian.com
Russian attempts to suggest a for at least seven people. core operations.
To subscribe, visit link between last Friday’s deadly
theguardian.com/ terrorist attack on a Moscow
gw-subscribe concert hall and Ukraine. The
3 U N I T E D S TAT E S 5 U N I T E D S TAT E S
attack has been claimed by
Manage your Islamic State, whose media
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Court reduces Trump’s House passes $1.2tn
channel released body camera
subscribe. footage from devices worn by fraud bond to $175m funding at last minute
theguardian.com/ the assailants, who have been A New York court handed Donald The House voted to pass a
manage
identified as citizens of Tajikistan. Trump a lifeline on Monday $1.2tn spending package that
Analysts have suggested as time ran out for the former would fund much of the federal
USA and Canada
gwsubsus
President Vladimir Putin may try to president to secure a bond government through September,
@theguardian.com use the attack, which killed at least covering the $454m loss for his with just hours left to avert a
Toll Free: 139 people, as a pretext to escalate recent fraud case. A panel of partial shutdown. The bill now
+1-844-632-2010 attacks on Ukraine. appellate court judges gave Trump advances to the Senate, which
Spotlight Page 15  10 days to secure a far smaller will have to act quickly to keep the
Australia and $175m bond. government open.
New Zealand The attorney general, Letitia The vote was 286 to 134, with
apac.help James, had made clear that she 101 Republicans and 185 Democrats
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theguardian.com Spotlight Page 32  to pass the proposal.
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The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024

UK headlines p8
6 CANADA
Charity crisis call as man
‘overwhelmed’ by 300 cats
An animal welfare charity in
western Canada needed to secure
the resources to care for about 300
cats after a call came in from a man
who described himself as being
“overwhelmed” by the number of
cats and kittens in his home.
2
Bruce Robinson told the British
Columbia SPCA that he had taken
in cats that had been abandoned
during the Covid-19 pandemic but
that the cost of caring for them
had become a herculean task after
he lost his job.
The charity sent staff to his
home in Houston, western
Canada, to assess the situation,
said Eileen Drever of the BC SPCA.
The cats were sociable and seemed
to be in good condition, she
told the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation. He said he had
named each one of the cats.
7 BRAZIL
Bolsonaro hid in Hungarian
embassy as aides arrested
The foreign ministry summoned
the Hungarian ambassador to
explain why former president
Jair Bolsonaro spent two nights
“hiding” at Hungary’s embassy
in Brasília last month as federal
police investigators closed in on
two of his closest allies.
Footage obtained by the
New York Times showed that in
February – four days after the
aides were arrested on suspicion
of plotting to overthrow the
government – the rightwing
populist took shelter in the
embassy, near the presidential
palace Bolsonaro once occupied.
9 P ORT UGAL
New PM promises to bring
stability after narrow win
New prime minister Luís
Montenegro has promised stable
government after Portugal’s 8
president invited him to try to 1
form a minority administration
that could face a rough ride in a
hung parliament.
3,4
Montenegro, 51, was named
prime minister after a long-
awaited count of overseas votes
confirmed a narrow victory in
10 March elections for his centre-
right Democratic Alliance (AD).
The AD won 80 seats, in the 230- 10 S PA I N
seat legislature, followed by the
Socialists with 78 and the far-right
Chega party, which was founded
just five years ago, with 50.
“There is no internal or external
reason to doubt our ability to have
a stable government,” Montenegro
said last Thursday.
Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia
‘will be completed in 2026’
The Sagrada Familia basilica has
a new completion date of 2026,
which will come 144 years after
8 IRELAND
the first stone for the building
Harris to become country’s was laid.
The president of the
youngest prime minister organisation tasked with
Simon Harris will become completing Antoni Gaudí’s
Ireland’s youngest prime minister masterwork announced the date
after the leadership race in his last Wednesday, which coincides
Fine Gael party ended without any with the centenary of the death of
other candidates coming forward. the building’s architect.
The leadership became vacant Esteve Camps said they had
after Leo Varadkar announced his the money and material to
surprise resignation as taoiseach, finish the building, including
“for personal and political the 172.5-metre central tower
reasons”, last week. dedicated to Jesus Christ, making
Harris, 37, the higher education the Sagrada Familia Barcelona’s
minister, was the only candidate tallest building.
when nominations closed.
Varadkar resigned after
taking responsibility for the
government’s failure in the
recent referendums to update
references to women and the
family in the constitution.
The Guardian View Page 49 
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
 12 L I B YA

Mass grave of 65 people

found, UN agency says
A mass grave containing at least
65 bodies was discovered by
Libyan security services in the
south-west of the country, the
UN’s International Organization
for Migration said.
It added that “it is believed
they died in the process of being
smuggled through the desert”.
More than a decade of violent
instability since the 2011 overthrow
of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi 19
16
in a Nato-backed uprising helped
turn Libya into a fertile ground 20
for people-smugglers, who have 15
long been accused of abuses
against migrants. 17
Big story Page 10 
14 VIETNAM
18
Second president lost in
two years over corruption
The government announced
the resignation of its second
president in as many years amid
an anti-corruption drive.
13 I S R A E L / PA L E S T I N E President Vo Van Thuong’s
alleged “violations and flaws
11 NIGERIA Ceasefire vote passed at
have negatively affected public
UN after US drops veto perception, as well as the
The UN security council voted on reputation of the party and the
Monday to demand an immediate state”, state media reported,
ceasefire in Gaza, after the US citing an announcement from
dropped a threat to veto, bringing the Central Committee of the
Israel to near total isolation on Communist party of Vietnam.
the world stage. The US abstained Thuong held the role
and the 14 other council members of president for just over
all voted in favour of the security a year after Nguyen Xuan
council ceasefire resolution, put Phuc, his predecessor, was
Army rescues students forward by the 10 elected council forced out due to corruption
abducted in the north members. The text demanded scandals involving officials
“an immediate ceasefire for the under his control.
The army rescued 137 students month of Ramadan leading to a
and staff who were abducted by lasting sustainable ceasefire”.
gunmen from a school in the north It also demanded the release
this month, the military said, days of hostages but did not make
before the deadline for a 1bn naira a truce dependent on them
($700,000) ransom payment. being freed, as Washington had
School officials and residents previously demanded.
had said 287 students were taken Spotlight Page 19 
on 7 March in the north-western
state of Kaduna. A military
spokesperson said 76 female and
61 male hostages were rescued in
the neighbouring state of Zamfara.
A security source said the
students had been freed in a
forest and were being escorted to
Kaduna’s capital.

The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024


Global report
15 N E PA L
Everest climbers are told
to pick up their own poo
Pollution from human waste on
Everest has been a problem for
many years. In response, this
season authorities have mandated
that climbers must remove their
faeces from the mountain using
biodegradable bags.
It’s one of the more unedifying
challenges involved in scaling
to the highest point on Earth
– how best to relieve oneself
in the freezing, inhospitable
environment of Mount Everest.
The chairman of Pasang
Lhamu rural municipality,
Mingma Sherpa, wrote in an
email: “By mandating the use
of biodegradable poop bags,
we hope to initiate significant
positive change and protect this
world heritage site from further
damage caused by … human
waste pollution.”
16 I S R A E L / PA L E S T I N E
Unrwa ‘barred from making
aid deliveries in north Gaza’
The UN agency for Palestinian
refugees, Unrwa, said Israel
had barred it from making aid
deliveries in northern Gaza, where
the threat of famine is highest.
“Despite the tragedy unfolding
under our watch, the Israeli
Authorities informed the UN that
they will no longer approve any
@UNRWA food convoys to the
north,” Philippe Lazzarini, the
head of the agency, said on X.
The Unrwa spokesperson,
Juliette Touma, said that the
decision had been relayed in a
meeting with Israeli military
officials last Sunday.
Spotlight Page 20 
The big story p10 
7
17 H O N G KO N G 19 JA PA N D E AT H S
Online criticism ‘could Debut win in top division
breach new security law’ makes sumo history
The justice minister, Paul Sumo celebrated a new hero,
Lam, warned that posting and after Takerufuji became the first
sharing criticism of the city’s wrestler for more than a century Martin
newly enacted national security to win a top-division tournament Greenfield
law could be in breach of the on his debut. There were wild US tailor to
legislation, which lays down harsh celebrations at the Edion Arena presidents from
penalties for sedition. Osaka last Sunday after he Eisenhower to
In a televised interview last ended the 15-day contest with an Biden and stars
Sunday, Lam said that a person unassailable record of 13 wins and from Sinatra and
might commit an offence if two defeats. DiCaprio who
they reposted online critical The 24-year-old from the learned to sew
statements issued by foreign northern prefecture of Aomori in Auschwitz. He
countries and persons overseas, shoved his opponent Gonoyama died on 20 March,
depending on their “intention out of the dohyo ring to secure the aged 95.
and purpose”. Emperor’s Cup, despite injuring
“An extreme scenario could his ankle the previous day, when M Emmet Walsh
be that the person posted [the he had to be taken out of the arena Hollywood veteran
statements] online because in a wheelchair after losing his of more than 150
they strongly agreed with it, and bout. Takerufuji, whose real name films including
they added some comments, is Mikiya Ishioka, revealed that his Blade Runner and
made additional remarks, purely stablemaster had encouraged him Blood Simple. He
for the purpose of inciting to pull out of the tournament to died on 19 March,
other residents’ hatred against spare his injured ankle. aged 88.
the [Hong Kong] and central
governments,” Lam said. Laurent de
The Article 23 legislation, Brunhoff
which came into force last French painter
weekend, includes penalties and storyteller,
of up to life imprisonment who revived his
for five categories of crime father’s Babar
including treason, insurrection, picture-book
espionage, sabotage and series. He died
external interference. on 22 March,
aged 98.
George Darko
18 SENEGAL 20 INDIA Maestro of
Ghanaian highlife
Opposition candidate looks Delhi chief minister
music. He died
certain to win election arrested for corruption on 20 March,
Senegal’s anti-establishment A court ruled on Monday that aged 73.
candidate looks almost certain to Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind
become president after a stunning Kejriwal, will be kept in custody Linda Bean
election victory that is likely to for six days after his dramatic US Republican
steer the west African country in a arrest on corruption charges. activist,
radical new direction. Kejriwal, the capital’s top businesswoman
A little over a week after his elected official, was arrested as and heir to the
release from prison, Bassirou part of an investigation into an outdoor retailer
Diomaye Faye is almost certain to alleged scam involving kickbacks LL Bean. She died
be declared the next president after for alcohol licensing deals. It on 23 March,
his main rival unexpectedly called was the first time a sitting chief aged 82.
him on Monday to concede defeat. minister has been arrested.
Most analysts had expected Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi party Marcello Gandini
the election to go to a tightly came to power in the city in 2015 Italian designer
contested second round runoff on the back of an anti-corruption for Lamborghini,
between Faye and Amadou Ba, movement, and has repeatedly Lancia and Alfa
who represented the ruling come into the crosshairs of the Romeo. He died
administration. national government, on 13 March,
aged 85.
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
8 Global report
United Kingdom
SECURITY
Chinese-backed hackers
accessed 40m voters’ data
Chinese state-backed hackers
were responsible for two
malicious digital campaigns
targeting the UK’s democratic
institutions and politicians, the
security services have found. The
UK holds China responsible for
a prolonged cyber-attack on the
Electoral Commission, during
which Beijing allegedly accessed
the personal details of about
40 million voters.
The National Cyber Security
Centre, part of GCHQ , also found
that four British parliamentarians
who have been critical of Beijing
were targeted in a separate
attack, although the activity was
identified before any systems
were compromised.
Two individuals and a front
company linked to the Chinese
state sponsored cyber-group
APT31, which is associated with
Chinese ministry of state security
and is believed to have been
behind the hack, have been hit
with sanctions by the UK as
a result.
The US government announced
sanctions on Monday against two
individuals and a front company
linked to APT31. On Tuesday,
the New Zealand government
said it had also raised concerns
with the Chinese government
about its involvement in an
attack that targeted the country’s
parliamentary entities in 2021.
Number of Easter Oliver Dowden, the deputy
eggs accidentally prime minister, on Monday told
ordered by the MPs that Beijing’s attempts to
grocery shop interfere with UK democracy and
on the Orkney politics had not been successful,
island of Sanday, although the government has
comfortably more faced criticism for being too slow
than the island’s to respond.
entire population Spotlight Page 24 
of 500 people
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
PENSIONS
Report backs women’s
compensation campaign
Thousands of women are
owed compensation because
of government failings related
to the way changes to the state
pension age were made, an official
ombudsman report said. The
recommended payouts of between
£1,000 ($1,263) and £2,950 a person
fall short of the £10,000-plus that
campaigners were calling for.
However, the ombudsman
cannot compel the government to
pay compensation. Campaigners
claim that almost 4 million
women born in the 1950s had their
retirement plans “plunged into
chaos”, with many of them left
out of pocket after an increase in
the state pension age from 60 to
65, and then to 66. Some say they
received only 12 months’ notice of
a six-year delay to their pension.
R O YA L FA M I LY
Kate ‘enormously touched’
by messages of support
The Princess of Wales and her
husband, Prince William, have
been “enormously touched” by
the messages of support received
since she announced her cancer
diagnosis, a Kensington Palace
spokesperson said.
Catherine said last Friday
she was undergoing preventive
chemotherapy after tests done
following abdominal surgery
in January revealed cancer had
been present. The 42-year-old
called the cancer discovery a
“huge shock”. The news came as
a fresh health blow to the British
royal family: King Charles is also
undergoing treatment for cancer.
Spotlight Page 25 
WILDLIFE
AI on the trail of declining
hedgehog population
Artificial intelligence will be used
to track hedgehogs as part of the
National Hedgehog Monitoring
Programme’s pioneering project.
Images will be captured by
cameras and filtered by AI trained
to differentiate between wildlife
and humans. Human “spotters”
will pick out those featuring
hedgehogs and send them to
analysts, who will record the
numbers and locations.
C U LT U R E
Equality groups urge arts
elite to quit Garrick Club
Cultural organisations and equality
campaigners called on high-
profile figures in the arts to give up
their membership of the all-male
Garrick Club, saying it undermines
attempts to reduce gender bias and
actively encourages inequality.
Their comments come after the
Guardian revealed the Garrick’s
members list, the first time in the
organisation’s history that it has
been exposed.
Politicians, senior civil servants
and legal professionals are joined
on the list by the actors Brian
Cox, Matthew Macfadyen, Hugh
Bonneville, Hugh Laurie, Stephen
Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, David
Suchet and Damian Lewis.
The head of the civil service,
Simon Case, and the MI6 chief,
Richard Moore both resigned from
the club, along with at least four
senior judges. They had faced
criticism of their decision to join
the club, and their decisions to
leave placed pressure on those
retaining membership.
Opinion Page 48 
 Do you have a recently taken picture you’d like to share with
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9
pictures-guardian-weekly and we’ll print your best submissions

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eyewitness
Let us spray
‘This picture
of a surfer
silhouetted
by a breaking
wave was taken
on a pier off
Castlerock
beach, on
Northern
Ireland’s north
Antrim coast, in
early March.’
By Royce
Harper, Belfast,
Northern
Ireland, UK

SCIENCE AND
EN V IRON M EN T
MEDICA L R ESE A RCH
AI tool predicts side-effects
in breast cancer patients
An international team of medics,
scientists and researchers have
developed an artificial intelligence
tool that can predict which breast
cancer patients are more at risk
of side-effects after treatment.
Worldwide, 2 million women are
diagnosed every year with the
disease.
The AI tool was trained to predict
lymphoedema – painful swelling
of the arm – up to three years after
surgery and radiotherapy using
data from 6,361 patients. Those
found to be at a higher risk of arm
swelling could be offered alternative
treatments or additional support
during and after treatments.
FOSSILS
Skull from giant ancient river
dolphin found in Amazon
Scientists have discovered the
fossilised skull of a giant river
dolphin, from a species thought
to have fled the ocean and sought
refuge in Peru’s Amazonian rivers
16m years ago. The extinct species
would have measured up to 3.5
metres long, making it the largest
river dolphin ever found.
The discovery of this new species,
Pebanista yacuruna, highlights
the looming risks to the world’s
remaining river dolphins, all of
which face similar extinction threats
in the next 20 to 40 years, according
to the lead author of new research
published in Science Advances.
Palaeontologist Aldo Benites-
Palomino said it belonged to the
Platanistoidea family of dolphins
commonly found in oceans between
24m and 16m years ago.
C L I M AT E C R I SI S
West African cocoa trees
weakened by heatwave
A searing heatwave that struck
west Africa in February was made
4C hotter and 10 times more likely
by human-caused global heating, a
study has found. The heat affected
millions of people but the number
of early deaths or cases of illness are
unknown, due to a lack of reporting.
The region is the world’s largest
▼ Some exporter of cocoa, and farmers
participants in said the heat weakened their trees,
a recent survey which were already damaged from
claimed that extreme rainfall in December. Prices
souvenir fridge for cocoa, the key ingredient in
magnets were chocolate, have soared in recent
more important years due to climate-related damage
to them than to the crops.
holiday snaps The study, by the World Weather
ALAMY Attribution group of scientists,
found that the heatwave would have
happened less than once a century
in a world without climate change.
P S YC HOL O GY
Fridge magnets can be cool
aid to holiday memories
Whether holding up shopping lists
or hastily scrawled messages, fridge
magnets are highly functional
holiday souvenirs. And a University
of Liverpool study suggests these
trinkets may also provide an
important means of accessing
memories of past trips.
The research, published in
Annals of Tourism Research, found
that these souvenirs could help
to preserve memories and trigger
emotional responses, with some
i
participants claiming their fridge
magnets were more important than
photographs as memory aids.

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

10

Civil war in Sudan

How the conf lict started, page 13 

The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024

The big story
‘Here,
there is no
future’
Almost a year since conflict reignited in Sudan, its
terrified people are crossing borders to Chad and
beyond. An increasing number are trying to reach
Europe as food supplies dwindle in the refugee
camps and the eyes of the world look elsewhere
By Mark Townsend ADRÉ, CHAD
T
hey burst into the room,
yanking the boy out
from under a bed. His
eyes wide open with
terror, they put a gun to
his temple. Two shots.
Nadifa Ismail ran towards the body,
but the intruders shoved the mother
out of her home. Moments later, armed
men set it ablaze, cremating her child’s
body, destroying everything she had.
Weeks later, on 28 February in
Sudan’s Darfur region, Ismail, her
clothing streaked red with dust,
passed the paramilitary group who
had executed her 16-year-old son.
“Hopefully, it is the last time I will see
them,” she said. “They beat me too.”
Ismail was the 212th person that
day to make it through the border
crossing and into the town of Adré
in eastern Chad. Like those who had
gone before, the 38-year-old offered
detailed testimony that fresh atrocities
are happening in Darfur, a vast region
in the west of Sudan.
The latest arrivals offer further
evidence of ethnic cleansing in Darfur’s
unfolding dystopian nightmare.
Women raped in front of their chil-
dren, daughters raped in front of their
mothers. Boys shot in the street. Others
dragged away and never seen again.
Their statements crystallise
concerns that the Rapid Support
Forces (RSF) – the powerful paramili-
tary group in Sudan that killed Ismail’s
Sudan/Chad 11
Tun
un
unisia
Mediterranean Sea
Refugee
direction Egypt
of travel
Libya
Port Sudan
Niger Chad
Sudan
600 km
k
600 miles
Adré
CAR
Darfu
fur
fu
South
Khartoum
Sudan
m
 Children sit in
the shade during
outdoor lessons in
a refugee camp
MARK TOWNSEND
son – along with other allied Arab
militia, remain intent on completing
the genocide against the Masalit com-
munity, a darker-skinned African
tribe, which began 20 years ago. Latest
accounts describe a region sealed off
with innumerable checkpoints and
roving RSF kill squads.
For the first seven weeks of 2024,
Ismail, a Masalit, and her surviving
children, five girls, lived on the run,
dodging the militias. They escaped
as Sudan’s civil war nears its first
anniversary in April, a conflict that is
only intensifying as foreign powers
wrestle for influence within the
strategic African nation.
But Ismail has merely swapped
one hellish existence for another. Her
family made it to Chad just as the world
turned its back. International aid has
collapsed. Global leadership, long con-
spicuous by its absence, has drained
to nothing. The response raises ques-
tions over the viability of the inter-
national humanitarian system.
But senior UN officials also warn
that the “abandonment” of Chad
poses profound challenges, not only
for Africa but soon also for Europe.
From Darfur, it’s a 10-minute walk
through the sand-engulfed lanes of
Adré to the first of Chad’s many refu-
gee camps. Between them, they hold
more than a million people, with at
least 554,000 Sudanese having 
crossed the border since last April.
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
12 The big story
Sudan/Chad
Chad, one of the world’s five poorest
countries, now has more refugees
per capita than anywhere else in
Africa. Numbers tick upwards by the
minute, and as need escalates, help
has melted away.
I
smail and her children will exist
hand to mouth in Adré’s make-
shift shelters. All the official
refugee camps are full. To cope
with the crisis in Chad, the UN’s refu-
gee agency requires $319.5m this year.
So far, it has received just 4% of that.
Across the border, things are no
better. A separate UN appeal for
humanitarian funding in Sudan has
also garnered less than 4% of what
is needed. Refugees will go hungry.
The UN’s World Food Programme has
warned that lifesaving programmes in
Chad will come to a halt as funds run
out. The WFP needs $242m to support
Chad over the next six months. As of
13 March, it had not received a penny.
Chad’s refugees are stranded in the
desert with dwindling food supplies,
zero prospects and little hope of
returning home. “We’ve saved a lot
of people from catastrophe, but have
we given them a new life? Hope?” says
a senior UNHCR official in Chad. “A
teenager will understand in hours that
here, there is no future.”
Europe, for many, increasingly
represents a future. Reports from one
refugee camp in eastern Chad, hold-
ing 40,000 people, suggest the exodus
is under way.
UN officials have heard that since
the beginning of this year, 24 of the
camp’s former occupants drowned
in the Mediterranean. Another 80
were detained in Libya. Up to 2,000,
refugee representatives claimed, had
made it to Europe. Senior UN figures
have noted the significance, even if
the statistics have not been verified.
“Unless the west invests, the move-
ment of Sudanese refugees from Chad
is going to explode,” one says.
In the last six months of 2023, the
numbers of Sudanese people arriving
in Italy rose 456% on the previous
year, to more than 5,000. Last July,
as Sudan’s war intensified and Chad’s
refugee population increased, Italy’s
prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, hosted
a conference in Rome on tackling
migration from Africa. More than 20
countries were present. Chad and
Sudan were not among them. Officials
from Chad lobbied for an invite,
sources claim, but were refused.
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
More than six months ago, the World
Bank’s managing director for opera-
tions, Anna Bjerde, visited a refugee
camp in eastern Chad called Forchana,
and announced $340m in “new financ-
ing” to help Chad “address multiple
shocks”. Yet the money appears not to
have materialised. When asked if any
of the funding had arrived in Chad, the
World Bank did not respond.
It is not the only high-profile
announcement that seems to have
had little impact. Weeks after the
World Bank visit, the EU unveiled a
deal with Tunisia to tackle migration,
including $105m to strengthen borders
and return refugees to places such as
‘We’ve saved a lot of the refugees
from catastrophe, but have we
given them a new life? Hope?’
Chad. Nearly 200 days later it is unclear
if any Sudanese have been returned
from Tunisia, the departure point for
most sea arrivals in Italy.
According to several UN sources,
the controversial deal is in disarray.
Far from creating the artificial border
in Africa that Europe wanted, Tunisia
appears to be struggling with hosting
migrants already. “We have no money,
no available shelter: everybody’s wan-
dering the streets,” says a UN source.
Another project to repatriate refugees
in Tunisia was unveiled in December,
this time co-funded by Meloni and the
UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
▲ Nadifa Ismail Last week, the Home Office would
arrives in Chad not disclose how much money the UK
with her five had actually pledged. The UK is also
surviving children hoping to limit African migration from
MARK TOWNSEND Tunisia’s neighbour Libya, announcing
on 8 March a “substantial financial
package” to return refugees. However,
the £1m ($1.3m) pledged would pay the
bill of housing asylum seekers in UK
hotels for less than three hours.
And the EU – one of Chad’s biggest
donors – has decided to reduce fund-
ing this year, so far allocating 20%
less than in 2023. Analysts say there
is a spike in donor fatigue as Gaza and
Ukraine are taking up all the room.
Kelly Clements, the deputy high
commissioner of the UN’s refugee
agency, believes the global humanitar-
ian model may have reached a cross-
roads, revealing that elements of the
international community were start-
ing to tire of the concept of need. “I was
told last year [by donors] that need as a
concept is something that is not selling
enough to evoke a response,” she says.
Another UN official in central Africa
adds: “The world is ignoring a crisis that
will affect us all. I get Gaza and Ukraine,
but for whom is Chad a priority?”
I
t was another Monday morning
and Huda Suleiman was
making omelette for breakfast.
Shortly after 8am, her home in
Ardamata, a Masalit neighbourhood in
west Darfur, shuddered violently. Pan-
icking, the 34-year-old and her three
children ran outside, Suleiman quickly
losing them in the clouds of debris 
from the nearby explosion.
Explainer
Sudan’s civil war
What caused
the conflict and
how has it led
to one of the
world’s worst
humanitarian
crises?
By Guardian reporters
How did the current conflict begin?
Fighting broke out in Khartoum, Sudan’s
capital, on 15 April 2023 as an escalating
power struggle between the two main
factions of the military regime finally
turned deadly.
On one side are the Sudanese armed
forces who remain broadly loyal to Gen
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s
de facto ruler. Against him are the
paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces
(RSF), a collection of militia who follow the
former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan
Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
The RSF was founded by the former
dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir as an Arab
counterinsurgency militia. He wanted to
crush a rebellion in the region of Darfur
that began more than 20 years ago due to
the political and economic marginalisation
of the local population.
Initially known as the Janjaweed, the
RSF quickly became synonymous with
widespread atrocities. In 2013, Bashir
transformed the group into a semi-
▲ Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as
Hemedti, at a rally outside Khartoum
organised paramilitary force and gave their
leaders military ranks before deploying
them to crush a fresh rebellion in Darfur.
Hemedti’s power struggle with Burhan
can be traced back to 2019 when the RSF
and regular military forces cooperated to
oust Bashir from power. When attempts
to transition to a democratic civilian-led
government faltered, many analysts felt an
eventual showdown between Burhan and
Hemedti was inevitable.
Why is Darfur at the centre of the conflict?
Home to about 9 million people, Darfur,
the vast swathe of western and south-
western Sudan, has been at the centre
of the ongoing conflict largely because
it remains the stronghold of RSF leader
Hemedti. Many of the RSF’s recruits are
drawn from the region.
For years, the RSF has terrorised
communities in Darfur and much of
the region is lawless. Recent evidence
indicates that the RSF is involved in
ethnic rampages within Darfur against
communities such as the Masalits.
The RSF has invested significant
resources in Darfur in an attempt to
control assets such as airstrips, mines and
water sources. If the conflict goes badly for
Hemedti elsewhere in Sudan, he is likely to
withdraw to Darfur. With his force of tens
of thousands of battle-hardened fighters,
the region would be virtually impregnable.
Analysts trace many of the roots of
the latest conflict back to the appalling
violence and human rights abuses –
possibly genocide – in Darfur about
20 years ago.
What has been the human cost?
The conflict has plunged Sudan into “one
of the worst humanitarian nightmares in
recent history”, according to UN officials,
who also warn it may trigger the world’s
largest hunger crisis. Unicef says some
communities in Sudan have been pushed
to the brink of famine.
▲ Displaced Sudanese cross into Chad, where
millions are facing acute food insecurity
13
The conflict in Sudan has also created
the world’s worst displacement crisis,
scattering more than 8 million people
internally and across Sudan’s borders.
Nearly 2 million people have fled into
neighbouring countries to escape the
fighting, putting mounting pressure on
Chad and South Sudan. Officials from the
UN’s World Food Programme warn that
throughout the region nearly 28 million
people face acute food insecurity.
Even before the fighting broke out, the
UN estimated more than 3 million women
and girls in Sudan were at risk of gender-
based violence. Since the conflict, there
have been numerous reports of armed
forces using rape as a weapon.
What is the impact on the wider region?
Sudan lies in a volatile region bordering
the Red Sea, the Sahel region and the
Horn of Africa. Its strategic location and
agricultural wealth have attracted regional
power plays, complicating the chances
of a successful transition to civilian-led
government. Several of its neighbours
have been affected by political upheavals
and conflict. Huge numbers of Sudanese
refugees have fled the fighting to the
country’s neighbours, including hundreds
of thousands who have crossed into Chad.
Russia, the US, Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates and, most recently,
Iran are among the powers battling for
influence in Sudan. The Saudis and the
UAE saw Sudan’s attempted transition to a
civilian-led government as an opportunity
to push back against Islamist influence
in the region. They, along with the US
and Britain, form the “Quad”, which has
sponsored mediation in Sudan along with
the UN and the African Union.
Western powers fear the potential for
a Russian base on the Red Sea, to which
Sudanese military leaders have expressed
openness. Iran appears to have pressed
Sudan – unsuccessfully, so far – to let it
build a permanent naval base on its coast.
▲ Sudanese armed forces advanced into the
city of Omdurman in February
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
14 The big story
Sudan/Chad
A group of militia emerged through
the dust. One carried a large axe. He
asked: “Are you a Masalit?”
Suleiman nodded, immediately
the men began beating her with clubs.
“Then they dragged me into a neigh-
bour’s house, the four of them took it
in turns to rape me.”
Afterwards, frozen with shock, she
realised that two of her children, aged
13 and 16, had been hiding in a toilet
beside where she had been raped.
They had watched the attack. “For
their sake I got myself together,” she
says. “But inside I wanted to die.”
For several days they hid in
Ardamata, waiting for her eldest son,
19, to return after disappearing during
the attack. It was a tense wait. A month
earlier, in November 2023, the RSF
had embarked on an ethnic rampage
through Ardamata, killing hundreds
of Masalit civilians, torturing others.
Videos show Masalits being whipped
and rounded up.
Suleiman was convinced the RSF
would return. “They were going
through the neighbourhood, killing
the men, attacking the women who
were left.” Her son never came home.
After dark, on 8 December, she set off
for Chad, carried by her surviving chil-
dren. Three months on, her trauma is
undimmed. “When upset, I feel physi-
cal pain from being raped,” she says.
T from Chad is going to explode’
he ad hoc refugee camp at
Adré is unsafe, perpetually
under threat from the risk of
cross-border RSF raids. Yet
160,000 refugees are stranded here.
Zahra Amna runs a well-attended
support centre here for sexual violence
survivors. Recently, she documented
an influx of Masalit from deeper inside
Darfur, a town called Kreinik. “They
are never going back,” she says. “The
RSF is telling them, ‘You must go to
Chad. You do not belong here.’”
Few men make it to Chad. Most have
been killed or disappeared. Adré’s
refugees are 90% women and children.
Fatim Khalil, 20, says women keep
arriving who had been raped attempt-
ing to reach the border. “But they are
only killing one tribe: the Masalit.”
No one knows how many Masalit
remain in Darfur: many are undoubt-
edly trapped. Details of perilous
escapes are widespread among those
at Adré. Families describe cowering
for weeks in scrubland, living off
what they can scavenge, hunted by
roving RSF fighters.
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
Aziza Baraka arrived on 27 February
after she and her children were beaten
when they were caught working at a
brick factory. “They are still killing
people,” she says. “We had to leave.”
Lying beneath boxes in a lorry,
Baraka counted at least five armed
checkpoints from west Darfur’s
capital, Geneina. The driver had to
pay a bribe to get through each one.
One man who made it, Younis
Abakar, also reached Chad hidden
in the bottom of a truck. “Through
a gap I saw people being beaten,” he
‘Unless the west invests, the
movement of Sudanese refugees
▲ Classrooms says. “Some were killed.” At an Arab
are crammed in village called Adikong, close to Chad,
Chad’s refugee bodies lined the road. “So many, they
camps were uncountable.”
MARK TOWNSEND Another woman, Awatif Abdullah,
recounted repeated racist abuse as
▼ Younis Abakar she fled from Ardamata: “Blacks! Go!”
saw people She was raped by an RSF fighter who,
being beaten at gunpoint, forced the 28-year-old
and bodies lining into a bedroom and locked the door.
the road as he Throughout the attack, her mother
escaped Darfur tried in vain to break in. “I was scream-
ing for her,” says Abdullah, “She was
shouting, ‘Take me! Take me!’”
It was standing room only in the
Farchana camp’s morning lessons.
Outside, more pupils huddled under
the sparse shade of a tree as tem-
peratures touched 44C. Classes are
unfailingly oversubscribed in the
refugee camp. Ismail’s children learn
in tarpaulin classrooms crammed
with 130 peers.
“The sense of aspiration is
unbelievable,” says an aid worker.
“They believe that education is the
key to a better life, they all talk of
getting to Europe.”
One factor likely to influence how
many get there is the recent change to
the smugglers’ business model. Rather
than pay upfront, UN sources in Chad
say that refugees are now told to pay
when they get to Europe.
Meanwhile, many more refugees
are forecast to reach Chad. Last month
the Sudanese military banned aid
agencies from delivering vital sup-
plies into Darfur, a move that could
provoke a fresh exodus. Antony
Spalton of Unicef warns that 240,000
children in Darfur are at “high risk”
of death from malnutrition if the
blockade isn’t lifted.
Elsewhere, geopolitics continue to
inflame Sudan’s disastrous war. Iran
appears increasingly involved, back-
ing the Sudanese military against the
RSF, itself allegedly supported by the
United Arab Emirates as proxies battle
for Red Sea access.
O
n 27 February, Chad’s min-
ister of foreign affairs,
Mahamat Saleh Annadif,
told officials that Tehran’s
growing presence would mean a more
protracted conflict. It will also compro-
mise the UK government’s diplomatic
influence at a time its political lead-
ership over the crisis is questioned.
During Darfur’s genocide 20 years ago,
Tony Blair said Britain had a “moral
responsibility” to act, even threaten-
ing possible military intervention.
Sunak has not said a word on Darfur, or
its genocide. Neither has he referenced
the unfolding crisis in Chad.
Current UK Foreign Office spending
on development programmes in Chad
stands at £3.04m, 5% of the amount
received by South Sudan, the only
country ranked below it on the Human
Development Index.
In Chad, hope continues to fade.
Laura Lo Castro, the country’s UNHCR
representative, says a sense of opti-
mism had prevailed before last year’s
migration talks in Rome and the failed
ceasefire negotiations in Saudi Arabia
to end Sudan’s bloodshed.
“The outlook’s not good,” she
says. “That glimpse of hope has
gone. Staff are exhausted. Maybe we
have to accept that the money is not
coming.” Observer
MARK TOWNSEND IS A SENIOR
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT REPORTER AT
THE GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER
 15
In-depth reporting and analysis

UNITED KINGDOM
What do Chinese
hackers want with
voters’ data?
Page 24 

RUSSI A

After horror
T
he woman lay in a hospital
bed, staring straight toward
the ceiling. The left side of
The gunmen opened fire into some ▲ A national
of the bodies as they lay on the ground, guard serviceman
she said. “The girl lying next to me was secures an area as

in Moscow, her face was swollen, her left

arm wrapped in gauze. In a preternatu-
rally calm voice, she spoke on camera
killed.” The gunmen then set fire to
the hall, apparently hoping to kill all
those left inside. “Then the flames
a massive blaze
is seen over the
Crocus City Hall
a cynical of how the gunmen in the Crocus City
Hall music venue spotted her and a
flared up … I was lying under the
door, breathing air. After some time,
DMITRY SEREBRYAKOV/
AP

blame game small group of people as they fled the

carnage of the worst terror attack on
Russian soil in decades.
I crawled out … to the exit.”
That was just one of the horrific sto-
ries to emerge in the deadliest terror

takes shape “They saw us,” she told RT, a Russian

By Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer
state-funded news agency. “One of
them ran back and started shooting at
people. I fell to the floor and pretended
to be dead. I was bleeding.”
attack in Russia since the 2004 Beslan
school siege. In videos and eyewit-
ness accounts, a picture of terror and
confusion emerged as the men burst
Continued 
into the concert hall firing automatic
16 Spotlight
Europe
earlier assertion the attackers had indicates indeed that it was an entity
planned to escape to Ukraine before of the Islamic State that instigated this
they were arrested. “Who was waiting attack.” He said it would be “cynical
for them there?” he asked. and counterproductive” of Moscow to
Putin’s statements on Monday suggest Ukraine was to blame.
appeared to further lay the ground- Last Sunday, four suspects appeared
work for blaming Ukraine for the in court in Moscow charged over the
deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in attack. The men were identified as citi-
more than two decades. His comments zens of Tajikistan and were remanded
came after the country’s state media in custody for two months.
intensified its efforts to link Ukraine The court released a video show-
to the shooting. ing police officers bringing one of
At first, Putin had claimed without the suspects into the courtroom in
evidence that Ukraine had aided the handcuffs, as well as photographs
attackers and had planned to “open a of the same man sitting in a glass
window” for the gunmen to escape. cage for defendants. One of the sus-
Although US intelligence services pects was led blindfolded into the
had warned that IS cells in Russia courtroom. When his blindfold was
were plotting to target concert venues, removed, a black eye was visible.
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, Another suspect was brought into the
weapons, shooting at point-blank said Russia’s security services had not Cars drive past a courtroom in a wheelchair.
range into prone bodies, then stalked accepted any help from the west. “No, screen displaying The men, identified as Saidakrami
through venue on Moscow’s outskirts our security services are working on the slogan ‘(We) Murodali Rachabalizoda, Dalerdzhon
for nearly an hour as panicked concert- their own, no assistance is currently on mourn 22.03.24’ Barotovich Mirzoyev, Shamsidin Fari-
goers scrambled through the bowels of the table,” he said during a telephone in Moscow duni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov,
the building to find a way out. call with journalists. AFP/GETTY face charges of a “terror attack com-
On Monday, the Russian presi- On Monday, France joined the US mitted by a group of individuals result-
dent Vladimir Putin conceded that in saying intelligence indicated IS was ▼ People bring ing in a person’s death”, according to
the attack was conducted by “radical responsible for the attack. The French flowers to the Tass. All four pleaded guilty.
Islamists” but reasserted his earlier president, Emmanuel Macron, told Crocus City Hall The men were apprehended in
claims that Ukraine could have been reporters: “The information available concert venue the southern Bryansk region, where
involved in the shooting that left at to us … as well as to our main partners, MAXIM SHIPENKOV/EPA authorities said they disabled their
least 139 people dead.
“We are interested in who ordered
it,” Putin said during a meeting with
government officials, claiming that
the shooting fitted into a wider cam-
paign of intimidation by Ukraine.
“This atrocity may be just one part in
a whole series of attempts by those
who have been at war with our country
since 2014 by the hands of the neo-
Nazi Kyiv regime.”
Putin did not mention the affiliate
of the Islamic State group that claimed
responsibility for the attack, despite
growing evidence that the Afghan
branch of IS, known as Islamic State
Khorasan Province (ISKP), master-
minded the attack.
Kyiv has denied any role in the
attack and has accused Russia of
falsely suggesting it was to blame to
escalate the fighting in Ukraine. IS has
said several times that it was responsi-
ble, and IS-affiliated media channels
have published graphic videos of the
gunmen inside the venue.
Referring to US statements that
Washington had no indication that
Ukraine had been involved in the
attack, Putin said: “The US is trying
to convince everyone that there is
no Kyiv trace.” He then repeated his

The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024


vehicle, and caught several of the
suspects as they fled into a nearby
forest. Videos have been published
showing Russian security forces inter-
rogating the men, at least one of whom
spoke Tajik during an interrogation.
Tajikistan’s foreign ministry initially
denied that the suspects were citizens
of the country.
ISKP has previously been reported
to have recruited radicalised nationals
from central Asia, including Tajikistan.
Some of the videos of the inter-
rogations suggest that the men were
tortured by Russian security services.
One of the clips, circulated by Russian
bloggers, appears to show members
of the security forces cutting off the
ear of a man who is later interrogated
over the attack, and stuffing it into
‘I fell to the his mouth. Another appears to show
security forces beating a suspect with
floor and their rifle butts and kicking him as he
pretended lies in the snow.
to be dead. On Monday, a Moscow court
ordered three more men to be put in
I was pre-trial detention in connection with
bleeding’ the shooting, which is the deadliest
IS-claimed assault on European soil
and the deadliest terror attack by any
group in Russia since the 2004 Beslan
siege. Russia observed a nationwide
day of mourning last Sunday, as the
official number of wounded rose to
154. Authorities said they expected
the death toll to rise.
Astonishingly, many people in the
hall pulled out their mobile phones
and caught footage of the gunmen
methodically firing into the crowds.
At one point, according to the Baza
telegram channel, 28 bodies were
found in a single toilet, where people
had sought refuge. Another 14 bodies
were discovered in a stairwell.
One man described how he and
others sheltered in a toilet that began
to fill with smoke. To escape, they
broke through the plasterboard walls
and lowered themselves down along
the piping to the lower levels of the
building, and then smashed through
a window in reach the street.
From outside, those who escaped
could still see people trapped in
the upper floors, banging their fists
through windows or yelling out from
the roof as the flames and smoke com-
ing out of Crocus City Hall grew higher.
ANDREW ROTH IS THE GUARDIAN’S
MOSCOW CORRESPONDENT; PJOTR
SAUER IS A RUSSIAN AFFAIRS REPORTER
Reuters and the Associated Press
contributed to this story
EXPLAINER
RUSSI A
Aftermath
Why did IS
target Moscow
and how might
Putin respond?
By Jason Burke and
Jonathan Yerushalmy
T
he attack on Moscow’s
Crocus City concert hall
last Friday is the deadliest
attack claimed by Islamic
State in Europe, with at least 139
people killed. The death toll is
slightly higher than the devastating
Paris attacks of 2015, which came at
the height of IS’s power.
Four suspects – identified as
citizens of Tajikistan by a Russian
news agency – appeared in court
last Sunday, pleading guilty to
being involved. Questions remain,
however: the shape that President
Vladimir Putin’s response will
take is unclear, while experts are
seeking to explain the precise
motive for the attack.
Why would IS attack Russia?
In the past 18 months, IS has made
a concerted effort to recruit central
Asian militants through its Afghan
branch, known as Islamic State
Khorasan Province (ISKP).
Being Russian speaking, or even
Russian nationals, these recruits can
easily target Moscow, offering new
opportunities for attacks.
Russia has been in the crosshairs
of IS for many years. IS leaders, like
many Islamic militants, are mindful
of Russian support for the regime
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. A key
point made by IS propaganda from
Pakistan to Nigeria is that Moscow
is part of the broader coalition of
Christian or western forces engaged
in an existential, 1,400-year-old
battle against Islam. IS statements
claiming responsibility for the attack
boasted of “killing Christians”.
Leaders of ISKP may also
17
see Russia as supportive of the
continued rule of the Taliban,
which has repressed them. They
will also remember brutal Soviet
military operations in Afghanistan
in the 1980s and “the jihad” waged
by their fathers or grandfathers
against Moscow’s forces. Russia’s
bloody war in Chechnya in 1999
may be a factor too.
What might Russia’s response be?
Many terrorist attacks seek to
provoke a powerful repressive
response from authorities, with the
aim of further escalating violence.
If this was part of the IS plan for
Moscow, they are unlikely to
be disappointed.
Russian authorities’ interrogation
of the suspects appears to have
been particularly brutal. Videos
circulating of their interrogations
suggest that the men were tortured;
one of the videos appears to show
members of the security forces
cutting off the ear of a suspect and
then stuffing it into his mouth. In
court, all the suspects appeared
heavily bruised with swollen
faces. One of them was brought to
court directly from hospital in a
wheelchair, attended by medics.
Putin has vowed to punish those
behind the “barbaric terrorist attack”
– and Muslim minorities in Russia are
likely to face a wave of repression.
On Monday, Putin reportedly
said the attack had been conducted
by “radical Islamists” without
mentioning IS specifically, but also
reaffirmed a possible link to Ukraine.
“This atrocity may be just a link in
a whole series of attempts by those
who have been at war with our
country since 2014 by the hands of
the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime,” he said.
Last Saturday, Putin claimed
without evidence that the four
arrested gunmen planned to flee to
Ukraine. The Ukrainian president,
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said Putin
and others close to him are seeking
to divert the blame from Russian
intelligence failings. The US has
said it received intelligence that
ISKP acted alone.
JASON BURKE IS THE GUARDIAN’S
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
CORRESPONDENT; JONATHAN
YERUSHALMY IS GUARDIAN
AUSTRALIA’S UK/US SITE EDITOR
Reuters and the Associated Press
contributed to this report
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
18 Spotlight
Europe
A N A LY S I S
RUSSI A
Blind spot
Did Russian
intelligence
neglect the
Islamist threat?
By Shaun Walker, Pjotr Sauer and
Andrew Roth
As Russia observed a day
of mourning last Sunday
for the victims of the
terror attack two days
earlier, along with the sorrow came
the hard question that follows most
similar incidents: how could this
have happened?
Rooting out determined and
well-trained terrorist cells is not an
easy task for security services in any
country, but there are numerous
signs that failing to prevent last
Friday’s attack was in large part
down to a catastrophic security
failure on the part of Russian
authorities.
First, there was the public
warning from the US government
earlier this month that it had learned
of “imminent plans to target large
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
gatherings in Moscow” by terrorists.
The warning, also shared privately
with the Russian government,
suggested Washington had picked
up some fairly specific intelligence
relating to an upcoming attack.
But Vladimir Putin, three days
before the attack, brushed off these
warnings, calling them an “attempt
to scare and intimidate our society”.
In light of Putin’s public dismissal
of the threat, it also seems Russian
authorities did not take additional
security measures to protect such
large gatherings, with numerous
witnesses talking of an extremely
light security presence at the Crocus
City Hall. The police response to the
attacks was so slow that the handful
of attackers were able to roam the
venue at will, kill more than 100
people and then slip away without
being apprehended or shot.
For a country with a giant,
sprawling security apparatus, this
slow response was shocking. Some
Russians pointedly compared the
absent police response last Friday
with the overwhelming police
presence at the funeral of opposition
leader Alexei Navalny, after his
death in a Russian prison.
“The FSB obviously had their
priorities wrong. They had their
main resources on Ukraine and
on the domestic opposition. These
are the priorities placed upon
them from the top,” said Mark
Galeotti, an expert on the Russian
security services.
The crackdown on dissent has
intensified in the two years since
the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,
and thousands of security officials
have been sent away from their
day jobs in Russia to manage the
takeover of newly occupied parts of
the country.
There was also a feeling that
the threat from domestic Islamist
terrorism, ever-present during the
first decade of Putin’s rule, had
subsided. Strong-arm tactics in the
North Caucasus region, combined
with allowing several thousand
 Vladimir Putin radicals to leave for Syria and Iraq
pays respects several years ago, led to a feeling
to thevictims of that the fight against Islamist terror
Moscow’s terror was over.
attack The dynamics at play in last
MIKHAIL METZEL/
Friday’s attack, with most of the
REUTERS perpetrators apparently radicalised
citizens of Tajikistan, are different
from the terror attacks in the early
part of Putin’s rule, when attackers
tended to be from the North
Caucasus.
Galeotti said: “The FSB has a lot of
experience dealing with extremists
in the Caucasus, they have spent
huge resources on that, but central
Asia is more of a blind spot.”
Predictably, in the aftermath
of the attack, rumours and wild
theories abounded about who might
“really” have been responsible, even
as Islamic State took responsibility
for the bloodshed.
Putin hinted at supposed
Ukrainian links to the attacks, and
Russian pro-war commentators
went further, making a concerted
effort to suggest that the Islamic
State claims were a red herring
and the attacks were actually
organised by Kyiv. Ukraine has
fiercely denied this.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military
intelligence and some western
commentators suggested the
whole thing had been a “false flag”
event, organised or facilitated by
The FSB the Kremlin to consolidate the war
obviously effort in Ukraine.
The coming days will show
had their whether the Kremlin’s claims of
priorities Ukrainian involvement are simply
a distraction tactic from the
wrong – intelligence failure, or if they will
they had be used to bolster a ramping up of
their main war rhetoric.
resources SHAUN WALKER IS THE GUARDIAN’S
CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
on Ukraine CORRESPONDENT
 Spotlight 19
Middle East
EXPLAINER widely billed in the media as backing In the end, by the US be anything more than
I S R A E L / PA L E S T I N E an immediate ceasefire, but it said a acknowledged in the resolution’s
ceasefire had to be connected with the US text. This meant the UN could not
the release of all hostages, making accepted be treated any longer as a bystander

UN ceasefire
it a conditional call. The draft also that its to US-led diplomacy on the ground.
made few explicit demands of Israel, The UN had come to its own view
even if many were implied. effort to of what was necessary and that

resolution At the same time a rival draft

ceasefire resolution, much shorter
and less conditional, was being
grab the
UN Gaza
was an immediate ceasefire and
release of the hostages, two self-
standing events.
is a painful circulated at the UN headquarters in
New York by the 10 non-permanent
agenda
had failed
The US faced a difficult choice,
especially since its closest ally the

moment for members of the security council,

including many allies of the US.
When the US text was blocked
UK was not prepared to abstain.
David Cameron, the foreign
secretary, could no longer hide his

Tel Aviv last Friday, it was assumed this

alternative would in turn be
fury at Israel’s prevarication over
the supply of aid.
vetoed by the US. So the US could for the fourth
Over the weekend, US diplomats time block a humanitarian ceasefire,
By Patrick Wintour duly pushed for the ceasefire call or it could instead finally implicitly
in the draft to be linked to the acknowledge that continually acting

D
iplomacy occasionally has release of the hostages. But the as Israel’s diplomatic protection
the capacity to surprise, non-permanent members stood squad had not won it much influence
and when it does it often their ground, insisting that while over either Benjamin Netanyahu’s
portends a deep shift. both the release of hostages and a military or political strategy.
As recently as the end of last ceasefire were imperative they could In the end the US acknowledged
week, few saw much chance that not be linked, since to do so would that its effort to grab the UN Gaza
the UN security council would provide justification for Israel to agenda had failed. The applause at
be able to agree terms for an continue military action in Gaza on the UNSC after the resolution passed
immediate ceasefire, yet on Monday the grounds Hamas had not agreed was an outpouring of relief.
that is what happened, in no small terms for the release of all hostages. Israel had already sensed the
part due to some British diplomatic The absolute priority had to be way the wind is blowing among
persuasion and a significant saving civilians in northern Gaza western allies, but is in no mood to
American change of heart. from imminent starvation, and in ▼ Palestinians stop fighting until Hamas is entirely
As a result the US did not use southern Gaza the displaced had to inspect a damaged crushed. However much sympathy
its veto to block a resolution be saved from a threatened Israel building in Rafah Israel retains, the vote is a significant
demanding an immediate ceasefire ground offensive in Rafah. following an moment in how the world views
in Gaza. What practical difference Similarly the permanent 10 did Israeli attack its conduct in this war.
it will make on the ground in Rafah not allow the talks between Hamas JEHAD ALSHRAFI/ PATRICK WINTOUR IS THE GUARDIAN’S
and Khan Younis was hard to say and Israel that were being overseen ANADOLU /GETTY DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
at first, but judging by the initial
furious Israeli reaction, and cries
of US betrayal, this was about more
than some words in the text of a
UN resolution; it marks another
moment in the painful, almost
anguished US diplomatic distancing
from its chief ally in the Middle East.
Two weeks ago the terrain
looked very different. The US at
the UN headquarters in New York
had started a concerted effort to
reassert its diplomatic leadership
role over Gaza. It felt it had been
pushed on to the back foot, three
times vetoing ceasefire resolutions,
and wanted to show it could draft a
positive policy on Gaza rather than
just being cast in the role of Israel’s
last diplomatic redoubt.
Yet last Friday this plan fell apart
when its lengthy draft resolution
was vetoed by Russia and China and
rejected by Algeria. The draft was
20 Spotlight
Explainer
Aid arriving by sea
Getting aid Sea depth

to Gaza
metres
0
12-metre

The effort to
4 depth
Al-Shati
8
Camp
avert starvation 12
Gaza
Strip Rimal
16>

12 metres
Israel’s siege has created minimum depth for
large ships
what aid of ficials
are referring to as 8-10 metres Fishing port
‘man-made starvation’, At about five metres
Mediterranean deep, Gaza's only port
with Palestinians in the Sea is too shallow to receive
territory facing the threat ships carrying aid
of mass deaths from Al-Rashid
famine in the coming
weeks. Children there are Charity jetty Salah al-Deen
already dying from hunger
1 km
1 mile

By Oliver Holmes Source: Satellite-derived bathymetry by EOMAP. Port depth estimate derived from research by Prof Asaf Ashar

A
s part of its devastating war Famine in Gaza is imminent, according to the IPC
strategy against Hamas, Population experiencing acute food insecurity by severity
Israel has restricted ship- • Stressed • Crisis • Emergency • Catastrophe/Famine
ments of food and medicine
to just a fraction of what Palestinian 0 million 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
civilians need to survive. Mar-Jul 2024
The crisis is an artificially created projection 1.1 million people facing famine
one. Gaza, population roughly 2.3 mil-
Feb-Mar 2024 677,000
lion, is not geographically isolated.
The small strip of land on the eastern Nov-Dec 2023 378,000
Mediterranean coast served as a well-
connected port for centuries.
“Starvation is used as a weapon Source: Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)
of war,” the EU foreign policy chief,
Josep Borrell, said last week. “Israel Aid has fallen to 112 truckloads, down from a pre-conflict average of 500-600
is provoking famine.” Daily truckloads entering Gaza. • Rafah crossing • Kerem Shalom crossing
Gaza used to have multiple land
border crossings, but only two remain 600

open – Rafah and Kerem Shalom. Israel Kerem Shalom pre-crisis average, 2023
500
ripped up the strip’s only interna-
tional airport 20 years ago, and years
400 Humanitarian pause
of blockade and isolation means Gaza
has no capacity for big ships to dock. 300

Aid arriving by road 200

The easiest, fastest and most obvious
way for aid to enter would be by road. 100
Israel controls several land routes into
Gaza that could be used to get more 0
than enough food and supplies in. 1 Nov 1 Dec 1 Jan 1 Feb 1 Mar
GRAPHICS: Israel says it needs to inspect every
HARVEY SYMONS, shipment to make sure no cargo can Source: UNRWA. Note: includes commercial and aid trucks. Daily average calculated for working days. An additional
CHRIS WATSON
AND PAUL SCRUTON be used to the benefit of its Hamas 294 truckloads arrived between 21 Oct and 17 Mar for which an arrival date was not recorded

The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024

 21

200
enemies. Even trucks travelling from Aid routes to Gaza
Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Egyptian route
Israel, are inspected by Israeli forces. Mediterranean Most aid arrives
Aid officials criticise the slow and Sea Gaza
za at El Arish
often arbitrary inspection process, international
which in practice blocks aid, with airport. Dozens of
Rafah crossing
trucks waiting weeks for approvals. trucks, sometimes Tonnes of food aid delivered
The onerous Israeli system means more than 100,
Kerem
to the starving enclave by a
humanitarian convoys travelling from wait in line on
Egypt and Jordan have to take circui- 2 Shalom roads for Israeli
Spanish ship that departed
tous routes. 4 crossing inspections from a port in Cyprus
The few that get into Gaza need to
drive over destroyed roads and avoid 1 People are desperate and starving
hijacking by criminal or militant groups El Arish – aid officials say Gaza has no function-
Nitzana
operating in a near-anarchic situation Airport ing economy due to the war and years
crossing
that has resulted from the war. Israeli of blockade. Prices have soared, with
3 Inspection
forces have also attacked aid convoys reports of 1kg bags of sugar priced at
Egypt site
and bombed warehouses inside Gaza. $20 and nappies at over $50.
Israeli authorities turn back some Israel
aid deliveries at the border because 20 km Aid arriving by sea
of items they claim to be of dual use, 20 miles Israel has maintained a naval blockade
meaning they can be used for civilian for years. However, efforts this month
but also military purposes, such as for Aqaba-Nuweiba to get aid to Gaza’s shores saw the first
making explosives. Border 1 route maritime aid shipment of the war.
Médecins Sans Frontières said it crossing Ga
aza Trucks travel in A Spanish ship departed from
had “consistently been denied the a convoy from Cyprus, the nearest EU country to
import of power generators, water Amman to Aqaba, Gaza, and delivered 200 tonnes of
purifiers, solar panels and other medi- 5 and then board a food. Other ships are expected to
cal equipment”. And a UK aid ship-
4 ferry to Nuweiba. follow, although Gaza does not have
Israel Amman
ment containing 2,500 solar lanterns As they transit a properly functioning port.
and 1,350 water filters was rejected. through Egypt, US forces plan to build a temporary
El Arissh trucks need to dock on the shoreline to allow deliver-
Aid arriving by air Airport have Egyptian ies on a larger scale. But it will be weeks
Delivering aid by air to Gaza is not registration plates. before it is operational.
possible as Israel destroyed the strip’s Egypt Jordan Finally, they travel Palestinians in Gaza have never
international airport two decades ago. from El Arish had a commercial cargo seaport, and
However, after failing to persuade 2 Aqaba to Gaza their only access out to sea is through
Israel to allow sufficient aid into Gaza, a small fishing port in Gaza City that
Nuweiba
the US and other countries such as Jor- is about 5 metres deep. The depth
dan, France and Germany have gained 3 Saudi Arabia needed for a standard cargo ship is
permission to use aid drops. 60 km about 12 metres. A proposal exists for
Gulf of Aqaba
The highly expensive method can 60 miles a new port to be built in southern Gaza
deliver between one and three truck- with a jetty that could accommodate
loads, depending on the aircraft used, King Hussein smaller vessels that could dock in a
with pallets being pushed out the back King Hussein Bridge route depth of 8-10 metres.
and landing via parachute. Aid groups Bridge West Trucks cross from Israel agreed to the construction
Bank Jordan to the West
point out that once the aid is on the of a deeper commercial seaport in
ground, the first people to get to it will Bank and then the 1990s but its forces destroyed
1
often be the strongest, meaning many 2 get inspected at construction work during the early
Border Ga
aza
vulnerable people will lose out. Nitzana 2000s Palestinian uprising. Years
crossing Amman

$20
Reported cost of 1kg bag of
sugar in Gaza, with bags of
nappies selling for $50, as the
economy has collapsed and
prices have soared
later, negotiations restarted for the
4 construction of a new seaport, but
these were abandoned in 2007 when
3 Hamas took power.
Nitzana Israel Alarm over the prospect of famine
crossing in Gaza has increased in recent weeks.
On Monday the Integrated Food
Security Phase Classification said
northern Gaza faced imminent fam-
Egypt Jordan
ine and that the rest of the territory
was also at risk.
60 km
OLIVER HOLMES IS A GUARDIAN
60 miles
JOURNALIST

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

22 Eyewitness
Slovenia

 Leap of faith
Austria’s Daniel Tschofenig
takes to the air during the men’s
individual ski flying event at
the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup
in Planica. Tschofenig finished
in 11th place as his compatriots
Daniel Huber and Stefan Kraft
respectively won the event
and overall titles in the grand
finale to the winter sport’s
European season.

BORUT ZIVULOVIC/REUTERS
23
24 Spotlight
Europe
A N A LY S I S
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Full gamut’
China hacking
threat goes
beyond raid
on voters’ data
By Dan Milmo
In March last year an
integrated review of the
UK’s defence and foreign
policy said it would
protect the country’s “democratic
freedoms” from Chinese state
attacks. A few months later the
Electoral Commission confirmed
why institutions and processes were
on the threat list as it revealed that a
cyber-attack had accessed the data
of 40 million voters.
On Monday the government
announced that a unnamed Chinese
state-backed actor was behind the
sortie and said a Beijing-affiliated
group, called ATP31, was likely to
have been responsible for targeting
the email accounts of four British
parliamentarians who have been
critical of China.
The list of targets cited by the
review went beyond democratic
institutions and processes, however,
and outlined the scale of the Chinese
cyber-threat. The economy, national
infrastructure and supply chains
were also mentioned. Last year
parliament’s all-party intelligence
and security committee said China
had the resources to target the UK
“prolifically and aggressively”,
referring to “hundreds of thousands
of civil intelligence officers” and a
“highly capable and sophisticated
cyber-espionage operation”.
The Electoral Commission was
just the latest target of a data-
gathering operation that is global
and is “being done on an industrial
scale”, according to Alan Woodward,
a professor of cybersecurity at
Surrey University.
While names and addresses on
their own are not enough to pose
a substantial threat to electoral
integrity, they could be combined
with other data to target specific
voters in swing seats, he said.
“The attackers were able to
walk off with what on the face of
it does not sound like high-value
data. But when you combine it
with information elsewhere, like
social media accounts, you can
start to narrow it down to specific
individuals or groups that should be
targeted,” he said.
In a recent report, US
cybersecurity firm Secureworks
said it had seen Chinese hackers
attack organisations around the
▼ The UK world deemed a high priority
cyber-attack was for Beijing’s economic strategy,
carried out by a including biotechnology, aerospace,
Chinese state- renewable energy and microchips.
backed actor The aim of the attacks was to secure
SOLARSEVEN/GETTY/ data and intellectual property.
GUARDIAN DESIGN
Defence industry supply chains
in the west have also been targeted.
In 2022 the director of the FBI,
Christopher Wray, warned western
companies that China was trying
to “ransack” their intellectual
property. In the same year a Chinese
government intelligence officer
was sentenced to 20 years in prison
in the US for crimes including an
attempt to steal aircraft engine
technology from General Electric.
Don Smith, vice-president of
threat research at Secureworks
said the latest incidents outlined
by the UK government on Monday
are consistent with a wide-ranging
strategy that covers intellectual
property theft, targeting rival states
such as the UK and attacking non-
governmental organisations.
“The Chinese are involved in the
full gamut of cyber operations,” he
said. “These range from traditional
cyber espionage for reasons of
national security, to carrying out
cyber espionage for commercial
advantage and targeting those
perceived to be enemies of the
Chinese state.”
One of the areas where China,
and many developed countries,
want to be a world-leading power is
in artificial intelligence. According
to some observers, this could be
where the Electoral Commission
hack, and others like it, have serious
consequences, with half the world
heading to the polls this year.
Darktrace, a British cybersecurity
firm, said on Monday the adoption
of generative artificial intelligence
– which can create plausible audio,
text and image from a simple hand-
typed prompt – has the potential
One of to “increase levels of disruption
and allow for more sophisticated
the areas techniques to sow misinformation.”
where Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime
China minister, said on Monday the UK
“will not hesitate to take swift and
wants to robust actions wherever the Chinese
be a world government threatens the United
Kingdom’s interests”.
power is
DAN MILMO IS THE GUARDIAN’S GLOBAL
in AI TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

UNITED KINGDOM
On a bench,
in sunshine:
how Kate
dropped her
bombshell
By James Tapper and
Kevin Rawlinson
T
here was no carpet of roses
outside Windsor Castle last
Saturday, no bunches of daf-
fodils blocking the entrance
to Kensington Palace – just an occa-
sional bouquet. The royal family
wanted things to be business as usual
after the Princess of Wales revealed
her cancer diagnosis the day before,
and the public has been keen to oblige.
Tourists watched the changing of the
guard at Windsor, while visitors in Lon-
don trooped into Kensington Palace to
see the regalia of past monarchs.
Little more than a year after the
death of the Queen, King Charles is
focusing on his own cancer struggle.
The Prince of Wales is caring for his
wife and their three children, and
there is no sign of an end to William’s
estrangement from Prince Harry.
Among the more junior royals,
Sarah, Duchess of York, is also
dealing with cancer, while the public
is reminded of Prince Andrew’s past
behaviour by two new films. The king’s
optimism about reinventing the royals
as a modernised monarchy could be
soured by a string of anni horribiles.
The royal household will be
heartened by the well-wishers at the
royal residences. At Kensington Pal-
ace, Terry Jackson, who had come to
visit from his home on the Fylde coast
in Lancashire with his granddaughter
Ellie, said it was shame Kate had felt
the need to release the statement.
“It has been tough for them,” the
66-year-old retired kitchen fitter said.
“Unfortunately, that is what they are
in. If they don’t say anything, they get
it. If they do, they get it.”
Katie Nicholl, author of The New
Royals and Vanity Fair’s royal corres-
pondent, said she hoped it would end
“the wild and frankly salacious and
irresponsible conspiracy theories”.
“It really shouldn’t have taken the
Princess of Wales having to issue an
unprecedented personal video mes-
sage to do that,” she said.
Kate was admitted in secret to the
London Clinic for abdominal surgery
in mid-January, a week after her 42nd
birthday. The next day, Kensington
Palace revealed she had undergone
an operation and barely more than
an hour later, Buckingham Palace
followed suit by announcing Charles
would also go into the private hospital
for surgery on an enlarged prostate.
Neither was said to have cancer.
Gossip about the health of the king
and future queen began to seep across
social media. The king’s cancer diag-
nosis, on 5 February, provoked a flurry
25
 The Princess of of interest in cancer charities but the
Wales recording absence of information about Cath-
last week’s erine created space for speculation.
message at People on social media tried to
Windsor calculate her condition from the scant
BBC STUDIOS/PA details about her treatment – newly
minted experts on hysterectomies,
tummy tucks and bowel obstructions.
But the digitally manipulated Mother’s
Day photography unleashed a torrent
of conspiracies. That all came to an end
last Friday when Kensington Palace
released the video message, recorded
in Windsor two days earlier by a BBC
camera crew. She sat on a bench, in
the spring sunshine with a bloom of
daffodils behind her, and told the
world she had cancer.
“Most importantly, it has taken us
time to explain everything to George,
Charlotte and Louis in a way that is
appropriate for them, and to reassure
them that I am going to be OK,” she
said. “As I have said to them, I am
well and getting stronger every day
by focusing on the things that will help
me heal; in my mind, body and spirits.”
Simon Lewis, former communica-
tions secretary to the late queen, said
the “unprecedented” message was
‘It’s been
powerful, brave and dignified. Lewis
said people in public positions should
tough.
If they
not be forced to reveal details of their
private lives, but David Yelland, the
former Sun editor and Lewis’s co-host
don’t say of the When It Hits the Fan podcast,
said it was not so simple for the royals.
anything, “A vacuum of months went by and
they get it. it was filled by social media,” he said.
At Windsor Castle, Ann Anderson,
If they do, from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, said the
they get it’ princess’s video message had been
“absolutely tremendous”. “How can
you sit on a bench like that ... and just
talk about your health?” she said. “My
heart goes out to her.” Observer
JAMES TAPPER AND KEVIN RAWLINSON
ARE REPORTERS FOR THE GUARDIAN
AND OBSERVER
The princess and
King Charles are
both undergoing
treatment for
cancer
FRANCIS DIAS/NEWSPIX
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
26 Spotlight
Asia Pacif ic
AUST R A L I A
Hot topic
Tourism
guides face
up to coral
bleaching
The Great Barrier Reef’s dive
workers used to avoid talk of
the effects of warming seas,
but now they are opening up
By Graham Readfearn
E
lliot Peters works as scuba
diving instructor at a resort
on Heron Island, Queens-
land, in the southern part of
the Great Barrier Reef and, in recent
weeks, he’s had to tell curious guests
why so many of the corals around the
island are turning bone white. “You
can see it on their faces,” said Peters.
“There’s definitely some remorse
and sadness.”
The reef is in the middle of its fifth
mass bleaching event in only eight
years – an alarming trend driven by
global heating in a year that has seen
record global ocean temperatures.
Peters has never seen a mass coral
bleaching event up close before,
but this summer he’s seen ancient
▲ A scientist monitors coral bleaching
at the southern end of the reef
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
boulder corals that can live for
hundreds of years bleaching and
showing signs of death. “If anything
it’s motivating me,” he said. “It’s open-
ing the doors to get people talking
about climate change and the health
of the reef.”
The Great Barrier Reef is a major
source of revenue for Australia, with
one 2017 report estimating the reef
supports 64,000 jobs and contributes
A$6.4bn to the national economy.
But as the impact of global heating
on the reef started to make global
headlines in 2016 and 2017, ten-
sions in the tourism industry began
to emerge.
“The reef is the most significant
natural attraction that this country
has to offer,” said Daniel Gschwind,
a professor at Griffith University’s
tourism institute and the chair of
the committee that represents reef
tourism to the government’s Great Bar-
rier Reef Marine Park Authority. “It’s a
challenge because as a phenomenon,
[global heating] is affecting what we
ultimately sell.”
Gschwind said for many years,
tourism operators were reluctant
to talk to guests about the threat
of climate breakdown. The reef has
experienced mass bleaching in 2002, W H AT I S C OR A L BL E AC H I NG?
2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and now again The impact of rising ocean temperatures
in 2024. But for an ecosystem the size
of Italy, the effects are not uniform.
In any given year, some reefs escape Coral bleaching Corals can
the heat stress, some turn white describes a process survive bleaching if
but then regain their colour, while where the coral animal temperatures are not too
some corals will die. Bleaching can expels the algae that live extreme or prolonged.
make corals more susceptible to dis- in their tissues and give But extreme marine
ease, slow their growth and impede them their colour and heatwaves can kill
their reproduction. much of their nutrients. corals outright.
Government scientists have Without their algae, Coral bleaching can
recently been carrying out in-water a coral’s white skeleton also have sub-lethal
and aerial surveys to assess the bleach- can be seen through effects, including
ing across the whole reef, but it could their translucent flesh, increased susceptibility
be weeks, or even months, before a giving a bleached to disease and reduced
clear picture emerges of how severe appearance. rates of growth and
this year has been. The long-term Mass coral bleaching reproduction.
prognosis for the reef is not good. As over large areas, first Scientists say the
global heating continues, the chances noticed in the 1980s gaps between bleaching
of ever more intense heat stress around the Caribbean, is events are becoming
events is rising. caused by rising ocean too short to allow reefs
“It’s difficult to communicate a temperatures. to recover.
bleaching event accurately,” said Some corals also The world’s biggest
Gschwind. “With an event like this display fluorescent coral reef system –
one, by the time it’s communicated colours under stress Australia’s Great Barrier
to a consumer in London or Shanghai when they release a Reef – has suffered seven
the message received could be ‘the pigment that filters light. mass bleaching events
reef is not worth visiting any more’. Sunlight also plays a role since 1998, of which five
That’s the challenge to the tourism in triggering bleaching. were in the past decade.
industry and it’s why many operators
struggle with this.”

Divers on tourism boats are often
the first to raise the alarm, and this
year operators have sent more than
5,000 observations to the marine park
authority.
“That’s where the industry and
operators see their social role.
They’re the communicators of this
story – operators are the sentinels,”
said Gschwind. “They see what global
warming is doing to the natural envi-
ronment that we all depend on. If the
reef dies, then we die. We’re the early
warning system for what’s going on
on the planet.”
S
ince back-to-back mass
bleaching events in 2016
and 2017, the park authority
has worked with the tour-
ism industry to establish Master Reef
Guides, a growing cohort of more than
120 dive professionals trained by sci-
entists and traditional owners on how
to communicate the health of the reef
and its threats.
Fiona Merida, a marine biologist and
director of reef education and engage-
ment at the park authority, said giving
tourism operators detailed informa-
tion on what was happening at the
sites they visited “takes the emotion
out of it” and gives them confidence
to talk to visitors about bleaching.
But she said some reef guides are
themselves suffering “ecological
grief” this year at seeing the places
they love suffer. Reef guides have
established a “buddy check” system
where guides can check in on each
other’s mental health.
Yolanda Waters is founder of
advocacy group Divers for Climate
and has been diving in the southern
section of the reef in recent weeks.
“It was bleached coral as far as the
eye could see,” she said. “I didn’t want
to get back into the water. It’s a restora-
tive place for me and to not want to go
back in is awful.”
Waters is a former dive instructor
and as part of research at the Uni-
versity of Queensland, she has inter-
viewed more than 650 reef visitors in
recent years.
“I noticed how difficult these
conversations were,” she said. “Tour-
ists ask a lot of questions and it can
feel confronting if people have paid
A$300 [$200] to go on to the reef. A
big question tourism gets asked is: ‘Is
the reef dying? Tell me.’
“The reality is far more complicated,
but they want to know from the people
27
who see the reef every day. We found
[tourists] are actually open to hear-
ing about climate change. In fact
the majority weren’t only open to
the information, but wanted more.
And they wanted to know what
they could do.”
“It’s a tricky line: how do we do
this in a way that motivates action
and does not turn people off ? But
you have to face the reality – there is
still so much to save, and that gets left
out a lot.”
Tahn Miller has been working as
a dive instructor and guide at Wave-
length Reef Cruises in Port Douglas
in far north Queensland for 15 years.
Miller remembers hearing stories
from a decade ago of how some dive
guides in other parts of the reef would
be told not to mention the climate cri-
sis to guests for fear of perpetuating
ideas the natural treasure was either
dying or not worth visiting. But he
said there’s been an evolution in the
industry, and now far more divers are
feeling empowered to talk to visitors
about the climate crisis – but only if
the visitors want to hear it.
“You have climate sceptics in every
group, but I find that’s becoming less
and less,” he said. “I tell them I’m not
▲ Some Great there to change anyone’s minds, but
Barrier Reef this is what I have witnessed. I try and
guides are be honest with them.”
suffering Miller said after the 2016 bleaching,
‘ecological grief’ he saw reefs recovering. But his opti-
@THEUNDERTOW.OCEAN; mism has been eroded in recent years.
@DIVERSFORCLIMATE
There are several tour operators that
are also running small reef restora-
tion projections in the areas they visit,
including replanting corals.
“Some of the corals I’ve planted –
hundreds of them – have already died
[this summer],” he said. “The time
is now … we have to make change
because if we don’t, we lose massive
expanses of reef.”
Back on Heron Island, Peters said
he gets stopped by tourists asking him
what they can do to help the reef.
5
“I start by getting them to
acknowledge their appreciation for
the reef and that we have to do more.
I leave them with one or two tips,”
he said. “I say they should ‘use their
voice’ and find out about the policies
of the people they might vote for. And
Number of mass I ask them to think about where their
bleaching events money is being held – is it in a bank
that the Great that invests in fossil fuels?”
Barrier Reef has GRAHAM READFEARN IS AN
experienced in ENVIRONMENT REPORTER FOR
only eight years GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
28 Spotlight
South Asia
INDIA
Screened out
Bollywood
accused of
pre-election
bias for Modi
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen DELHI
T
he films claim to tell the “real
story” of India’s history,
taking aim at the evils of “left-
ists” and “intellectuals” and
even the freedom fighter Mahatma Gan-
dhi. As Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya
Janata party (BJP) seek a third term in
next month’s election, a feverish pro-
government momentum has gripped
Bollywood, blurring the lines between
entertainment and political campaign-
ing in India’s largest film industry.
Almost a dozen new films
promoting the prime minister and his
government’s Hindu nationalist poli-
cies and ideology have been released
or will come out at cinemas in coming
days and weeks. The election, which
will determine the direction of the
country for the next five years, begins
on 19 April and will run for six weeks.
Film critics and analysts have
accused several titles of pushing Islamo-
phobic narratives, and targeting “urban
naxals” – a derogatory term some Hindu
rightwingers use to describe leftwing
activists and intellectuals. Some in
the industry have raised concerns that
these films will be used to further divide
India along religious lines.
The flurry of pro-government films
is reminiscent of the build-up to the
2019 election, when a biopic of Modi
was deemed to be so positive about
the prime minister that the election
commission halted its release before
the polls.
Sayandeb Chowdhury, a professor
of literature at Chennai’s Krea Univer-
sity who has written on Indian cinema,
described the films as “brazen propa-
ganda which are deliberately creating
wounds and fault lines to serve the
government’s political agenda”.
He pointed out that Modi and other
government officials had directly
referenced many of the films in their
speeches. “Cinema has become a form
of political mobilisation,” he said.
One of the prominent titles about
to hit Indian cinemas is a biopic of
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a divisive
Hindu nationalist leader and activist
Modi has lauded and who fought
against British rule. His writings,
however, promote violence against
Muslims and express sympathy for the
Nazis and Italian fascists.
Article 370, released last month,
▼ A poster for is an unabashed celebration of
Swatantra Veer Modi’s decision to strip Kashmir,
Savarkar outside a the majority-Muslim region, of its
cinema in Mumbai statehood, portraying him as a decisive
RAJANISH KAKADE /AP figure saving India from violence and
corruption. Modi praised the film, while
critics called it “factually incorrect”.
Another film takes aim at Jawaharlal
Nehru University, an institution known
as a hub of leftwing thought and
activism. The film, Jahangir National
University, which comes out in April,
tells the story of a campus where “left-
ists waging love jihad” – a debunked con-
spiracy against Muslims – and “urban
naxals are trying to divide the country”.
Chowdhury said the releases amid
the election campaign spoke to a larger
trend in Bollywood, where – over the
decade of rule by the Modi government –
the film industry had been aggressively
co-opted into Hindu nationalist poli-
tics. He lamented that the film industry,
which had long united people across
India’s vast religious and cultural dif-
ferences, was being weaponised to sow
discord. “If cinema becomes a tool of
‘The scary division, one of India’s more cherished
part is that unifying symbols is in danger of being
lost for ever,” he said.
these films While films propagating the BJP’s
are being narrative are being released with
accepted increasing regularity, streaming plat-
forms such as Netflix and Amazon
now. It’s have faced legal threats and had series
frightening’ and films removed for being seen to be
critical of the government.
Raja Sen Chowdhury said the turning point
Film critic and had been the 2022 release of The Kash-
screenwriter mir Files, which claimed it would
tell the real story of the expulsion of
Hindus from the region. Despite its
negative portrayal of Muslims and
accusations that it was a polarising
distortion of history, it was the big-
gest blockbuster hit of the year.
It has prompted a number of similar
films claiming to portray history,
largely involving the demonisation
of Muslims, which have been seen as
part of a wider BJP project to rewrite
the narrative of India’s past.
Raja Sen, a film critic and Bollywood
screenwriter, told the Associated Press
that many filmmakers were jump-
ing on the bandwagon, realising the
potential for major box office success
of polarising films that generate pub-
lic discussion. “The scary part is that
these films are being accepted now,”
Sen said. “It is truly frightening.”
HANNAH ELLIS-PETERSEN IS
THE GUARDIAN’S SOUTH ASIA
CORRESPONDENT

BANGLADESH
Workers
deported
from Saudi
Arabia tell
of abuse
By Pete Pattisson DHAKA
A
mong the joyful family
reunions at the arrivals gate
at Dhaka’s international air-
port, one group of travellers
stands out. These men appear gaunt
and dazed, most of them carrying
nothing but a thin blanket they picked
up on the plane. They wear tracksuits
and blue rubber sandals or shoes with-
out laces. Some walk barefoot.
All have been deported from Saudi
Arabia, and each day they arrive by
the planeload. Nearly 70,000 Bangla-
deshi migrant workers were deported
from the Gulf kingdom in 2022, mostly
for not having a valid residence
permit, known as an iqama.
They return from one of the
wealthiest countries in the world,
hungry, traumatised and without even
the money for a bus ticket home. The
only thing the men do bring back are
horrific stories of abuse, false contracts
and wage theft that tumble angrily out
of them. One man, Amir Hossein, said
he paid recruitment agents 400,000
taka ($3,650) to get to Saudi Arabia, but
had been sent home after just over a
year, during which he worked for nine
months without payment. Another
said he worked for three months but
was only paid one month’s salary.
Others said their iqama was still
valid but they were deported regard-
less. “I asked them: why are you arrest-
ing me?” said a deportee named Sha-
habuddin. “They told me to shut up.”
Saudi Arabia will rely on tens of
thousands of low-wage labourers such
as these to deliver its dream of host-
ing the 2034 World Cup. The pipeline
of workers from Bangladesh to Saudi
Arabia is expected to increase dramati-
cally if the country is anointed host by
Fifa, as expected this year.
The workers’ allegations of abuse at
the hands of Saudi employers should be
a red flag to Fifa, which was heavily crit-
icised for the severe abuse endured by
many migrant workers in the lead-up to
the 2022 tournament in Qatar. Human
rights groups are warning that if Saudi
Arabia does not make drastic efforts
to stop the abuse of migrant workers,
which is already widespread in the Gulf
kingdom, another World Cup tourna-
ment could be tainted.
Amnesty International said the
situation for migrant workers in Saudi
Arabia is bleak. Despite the Gulf king-
dom announcing it had abolished the
kafala system – under which work-
ers are tied to their employer, Ali
Mohamed, Arabic editor of migrant-
rights.org said “employers wield the
power to revoke or not renew work
permits and can file ‘absconding’
29
charges, rendering workers irregular
and liable to deportation”.
Prioritising the arrest and
deportation of migrants over holding
employers to account “reinforces the
perception that the Saudi authorities
regard migrants merely as exploitable
and disposable labour”, he said.
The workers interviewed by the
Guardian said they were rounded up
and taken to a detention centre, where
they were typically held for one to two
A migrant weeks before being sent home.
worker, deported Conditions in detention centres
from Saudi vary, but some men allege they were
Arabia, attempts kept in huge overcrowded cells where
to arrange his 250 to 300 men slept. There were no
travel home showers, little food and no chance to
back in Dhaka appeal, they claimed.
PETE PATTISSON The consequences of being
deported are particularly dire for
Bangladeshis. Almost all migrant
workers must pay extortionate fees to
recruitment agents for their jobs in the
Gulf, but Bangladeshis are charged by
far the highest rates. Many are forced
home before they can pay off the cost.
One of the last to emerge at Dhaka
airport is 65-year-old Sabir Ahmed,
who spent 26 years in Saudi Arabia.
He carries a small rucksack but there is
nothing in it. He does not even have the
money for the bus home. “My family
will have to pay the bus fare when I
reach there,” he said, before heading
off, his empty bag over his shoulder.
In a statement, Saudi Arabia’s
Ministry of Human Resources and
Social Development said the coun-
try “only repatriates those proven to
have violated the work and residency
Blame game regulations in the kingdom after taking
Bangladeshi all legal measures to verify their vio-
labourers are not lations and coordinating with the
usually to blame for embassies of their countries”.
failing to have the Detention centres meet the highest
correct residency international standards and ensure
papers. Many workers’ rights to healthcare, nutrition
arriving back in and a clean and safe environment, as
Bangladesh claim well as the right to appeal, the state-
their employer or ment continued.
sponsor failed to Staff from workers’ embassies have
obtain or renew the right to visit detention centres, and
their iqama the Saudi human rights commission,
document, which “makes routine visits … to assess the
they need to legally integrity of all procedures and ensure
live and work, after
that the appropriate laws and regu-
they arrived in
lations related to human rights are
Saudi Arabia.
adhered to”, the statement added.
Fifa and the Bangladesh government
did not respond to multiple requests
for comment.
PETE PATTISSON IS A VIDEO AND PHOTO
JOURNALIST BASED IN KATHMANDU
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
 Spotlight
The San José was sailing
Science to Europe with treasures
to fund the war of the
Spanish succession when
it was sunk by the British
off the coast of Colombia

A RCH A EOLOGY

Sunken S
ince the Colombian navy
discovered the final resting
place of the Spanish galleon
San José in 2015, its location
access the historical and archeological
information at the site.”
The San José was returning to
Europe with treasures to help fund

treasure
has remained a state secret, the wreck
– and its precious cargo – left deep
under the waters of the Caribbean.
Efforts to conserve the ship and
the war of the Spanish succession
when it was sunk by a British squad-
ron in 1708, close to the Caribbean port
city of Cartagena. Historians say the

The battle recover its cargo have been caught up

in a string of international legal dis-
putes, with Colombia, Spain, Bolivian
Indigenous groups and a US salvage
wreck could help reveal much about
the Spanish empire at the height of its
power – and the shared, overlapping
histories of Europe and Latin America.

to raise the company laying claim to the wreck.

The gold, silver and emeralds
onboard are thought to be worth as
much as $17bn. When Colombia tried
Eventually, Caicedo’s team hopes
to raise the wreck itself, and put it on
display in a custom-built museum. But
as exploration continues at the site,

San José to auction off part of the bounty to

A Spanish galleon that was sunk in
the 18th century has been at the centre
of a dispute over who has rights to the
fund the colossal costs of recovering
the ship, Unesco and the country’s
high courts intervened.
But eight years after the discovery,
officials now say they are pushing
politics to one side and could begin
lifting artefacts from the “holy grail of
shipwrecks” as soon as April.
the scale and complexity of the chal-
lenge is coming into focus.
Few ships like the San José have
ever been recovered – and none has
ever been salvaged from warm tropi-
cal waters. “This is a huge challenge
and it is not a project that has a lot of
precedents. In a way, we are pioneers,”
said Caicedo.
PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY

wreck and its estimated $17bn in booty
By Luke Taylor BOGOTÁ
“There has been this persistent view
of the galleon as a treasure trove. We
want to turn the page on that,” Alhena
Caicedo, director of the Colombian
Institute of Anthropology and His-
tory, said. “We aren’t thinking about
treasure. We’re thinking about how to
The closest comparison would
probably be to the Mary Rose, the
flagship of Henry VIII’s fleet, which
sank in 1545 while in battle with the
French fleet off the coast of Ports-
mouth. That 16th-century wreckage
was explored by hundreds of divers for

The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024


The Colombian
government has funded
the first stage of
exploration with $7.3m
and says it will not sell
any of the precious
artefacts after Unesco
intervened in 2018
a decade before being carefully lifted ‘This is not
in 1982. The surviving section of the
ship’s hull is now on display in a £35m a project
($45m) museum. that has
Colombia’s navy has been studying a lot of
the Mary Rose and other such marine
conservation projects to see how it precedents.
could lift and conserve the 40-metre- In a way,
long ship and its contents without it
all crumbling to dust.
we are
“The San José is a very, very special pioneers’
ship. It’s comparable to the Mary Rose
 Contents from in that it was in action at the peak of
the San José, Spanish technology and shipbuilding,”
including cannons said Ann Coats, associate professor in
and ceramics, lie maritime heritage at the University
on the seabed of Portsmouth.
BIC GSJ ARC-DIMAR The San José’s cargo includes
VERIFICATION CAMPAIGN
articles of glass, porcelain and
leather. Historians hope the haul
could inform their understanding of
global 18th-century trade networks,
Spain’s complex colonial hierarchy
and the lives of the 600 souls onboard.
But while the Mary Rose lay in frigid
coastal waters the San José sank in
deep, tropical waters which will prob-
ably have been cruel to the ship.
“The contents are really varied and
we have no idea how the remains will
react when they come into contact
with oxygen. We don’t even know if
31
it is possible to raise something out of
the water,” said Caicedo.
The wreck’s precise location is a
state secret to protect the site from loot-
ers, but Colombian authorities have
revealed that it is 600 metres below
sea level – too far for divers to reach.
The country’s military is currently
developing underwater robots that
will first photograph, video and map
the wreckage before carefully attempt-
ing any retrieval.
E
xactly how much can be
salvaged from the wreck will
depend on myriad factors:
currents, sea temperature,
the type of silt the wreck is submerged
in, how the ship’s 60 bronze cannons
plunged to the seabed, and even
what kinds of marine life are now
living there.
“It was also set on fire,” said Alex
Hildred, the head of the Mary Rose’s
research programme. “Lifting the ship
and creating a museum will be really
difficult, really expensive and incred-
ibly challenging.”
Although the wreck was found in
Colombian waters, Spain has argued
that the San José was part of the Span-
ish fleet and was returning from what
was then part of the Spanish empire.
Meanwhile, Sea Search Armada
(SSA), a US-based salvage company,
has been locked in a legal battle with
Colombia, arguing that it located the
area in which the San José sank in
1981. SSA has argued that Colombia
agreed to split any profits, but in 2011
a US court declared the galleon the
property of the Colombian state.
Indigenous communities in Bolivia
have also voiced a claim to any possible
riches, arguing that their ancestors are
likely to have mined the silver and gold
used in many of the artefacts.
The Colombian ministry of culture
says the government has self-funded
the first stage of exploration with $7.3m
and it will not sell any of the precious
artefacts as Unesco pleaded in 2018.
“Money has always driven the story
of the San José. The British wanted to
capture it to deny money to Spain, then
the money onboard drove the archae-
ological search for the wreck,” said
Coats. “Then disputes got in the way
of studying the ship. It would be nice if
for once money wasn’t driving things
and a huge cultural collaboration could
take place to study it properly.”
LUKE TAYLOR IS A JOURNALIST
COVERING LATIN AMERICA
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
32 Spotlight
North America
U N I T E D S TAT E S
Trump fans
the flames
for mayhem
in test of US
democracy
By David Smith WASHINGTON
T
he end of democracy, riots in
the streets … Donald Trump
has made such apocalyptic
imagery a defining feature
of his presidential election campaign,
warning that if he does not win – and
avoid criminal prosecution – America
will enter its death throes.
The prophecies of doom have
raised fears that the former president
is making an electoral tinderbox that
could explode in November. While
much commentary has assessed the
implications of a Trump win, some
experts warn that a Trump defeat
could provide an equally severe stress
test of American democracy.
“Regardless of whether Donald
Trump wins or loses, there’s going to
be violence,” said Michael Fanone, a
retired police officer who was seriously
injured by pro-Trump rioters at the US
Capitol on 6 January, 2021. “If Donald
Trump loses, he’s not going to con-
cede, and he’s going to inspire people
to commit acts of violence – just like he
did in the weeks and months leading
up to January 6.”
Trump has long sought to sow
distrust in the electoral system while
dehumanising opponents and immi-
grants and portraying the US as a
nation on the verge of collapse.
During his first run for president,
in 2016, he encouraged his supporters
to “knock the crap out” of protesters
and said he would pay their legal bills
if they got into trouble. Should he be
denied the presidential nomination at
the Republican national convention,
he warned: “I think you’d have riots.”
In the summer of 2020, Trump is
said to have called for the military to
shoot peaceful protesters in Wash-
ington during the Black Lives Matter
demonstrations. When he disputed
his election defeat that year, he sug-
gested that an adverse ruling by the
Pennsylvania supreme court would
“induce violence in the streets”.
Then, at a rally before his supporters
stormed the US Capitol on 6 January
2021, Trump said: “You’ll never take
back our country with weakness …
If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not
going to have a country any more.”
Since declaring his candidacy,
Trump has intensified inflammatory
and racist statements on the campaign
▼ A Trump trail. He has promised to pardon
fan fuels the January 6 insurrectionists, suggested
stolen election Gen Mark Milley should be executed
conspiracy theory and asserted that immigrants who are
during a 2022 in the US illegally are “poisoning the
rally blood of our country”.
MICHELLE GUSTAFSON/ In November, in New Hampshire,
BLOOMBERG /GETTY
he promised to “root out the commu-
nists, Marxists, fascists and the radical
left thugs that live like vermin within
the confines of our country”.
History has shown that his words
are taken literally by his base. “That’s
what we saw on January 6. His tweet –
‘Be there. Will be wild!’ – led to activity
online that led people to organise and
come to DC,” said Hannah Muldavin, a
former spokesperson for the congres-
sional committee that investigated the
January 6 attack.
Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist
at Harvard University and co-author
of How Democracies Die, said: “Since
1945, I don’t think there has been a
politician in a democracy who’s used
such authoritarian language, ever.
It’s hard to think of anybody. Viktor
Orbán, Vladimir Putin when run-
‘Whether ning for office don’t use the kind of
language that Donald Trump uses, so
Trump that’s pretty notable.”
wins or Ziblatt added: “No matter what
loses there’s happens, there will be some effort to
deny the results of the election if he
going to be loses. My best-case scenario is a deci-
violence’ sive defeat so that his claims of a stolen
election are just simply not credible.
Michael Fanone But if it’s close, then I would expect
Retired police violence and threats of violence, and
officer at least protests of the sort that we
experienced in 2021.”
Trump’s divisive rhetoric in 2020
culminated in the attack on the US
Capitol. But members of Congress
returned to certify Biden’s elec-
tion victory, and Trump reluctantly
departed the White House two weeks
later. This time, Biden is the incum-
bent and Trump has no control over
the levers of government, making a
replay of the insurrection less likely.
Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution thinktank in
Washington and former policy adviser
to President Bill Clinton, added: “What
I fear is that the repetition of violent
rhetoric will lead to the normalisa-
tion of violent acts. There’s no sugar-
coating it. This is a dangerous period
for American constitutional govern-
ment.” Observer
DAVID SMITH IS THE GUARDIAN
AND OBSERVER’S WASHINGTON
BUREAU CHIEF

Spotlight
Global
A N A LY S I S
SOCIETY
Young people
Dwindling
prospects may
lead to a beaten
generation
By Phillip Inman
Something is going
wrong for young people
between the ages of 15
and 24 across Europe, the
US and Australia. The latest World
Happiness Report shows that while
not all teenagers and young adults
are suffering, a large and growing
number cannot cope with being left
adrift with few qualifications on an
economic sea that is more testing
with each passing year.
Social media is believed to play
a part in driving down self-esteem
and robbing young people of
their wellbeing. But it is the lack
of education, skills training and
affordable housing that underpins
the decline in the positive outlook
traditionally displayed in surveys
of those broadly fitting the gen Z
age group.
The report found that young
people are becoming more like
their beleaguered parents, who
have always reported themselves
to be exhausted and weighed down
by life’s cares, and not like older
people, who still score highly on the
happiness index.
University is less of a guarantee
of financial and psychological
wellbeing, and those that do
not go into higher education
are left with only limited access
to apprenticeships and further
education courses that might lift
their social standing, income and
self-respect.
As the Intergenerational
Foundation charity said in response
to the report: “Young adults are
being hit from all sides by a toxic
combination of government policy,
a housing affordability crisis,
stagnating wages, and a high cost
of living.
“No wonder their generation is
experiencing unprecedented levels
of mental ill-health as their futures
look so bleak.”
The older generations report the
highest levels of life satisfaction.
And no wonder when spiralling
stock markets and a global property
boom have given the over-55s a
level of wealth unknown in human
history. Wealth brings with it a
sense of wellbeing, and so do higher
incomes, which have also improved
for most people nearing retirement
or already collecting their pension.
State-sponsored retirement schemes
have been largely protected from
Books p57
33
the ravages of inflation, meaning
that average poverty levels have
declined among the over-65s.
Where the young and old
previously had a positive outlook
and those middle-aged less so, this
has been flattening out with time.
The situation was more exaggerated
in Britain, which dropped from 19th
to the 20th happiest country overall,
but was ranked 30th when only the
views of people under 30 were taken
 Social media into account.
is also believed Richard Layard, a professor at the
to play a part in London School of Economics and
to driving down one of the report’s authors, is clear
young people’s that the findings show more effort
self-esteem is needed to support the education,
GUARDIAN DESIGN/
training and mental health of
GETTY younger people. Even if young
people are only considered to be
economic units of production, the
evidence shows the whole economy
benefits from them having a better
sense of wellbeing.
Another study by Layard for the
LSE and the Resolution Foundation
2030 Inquiry found that the UK
was the only country among the
38 members of the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and
Development where the literacy
and numeracy of 16- to 24-year-
olds is no higher than that of 55- to
65-year-olds. And almost a third of
people aged 18 in the UK are not in
education or training, about double
the average in France and Germany.
It showed that little had changed
since 2007 when Unicef published
a table of 21 economically advanced
countries, comparing 40 indicators
– including poverty, family
relationships, health and safety,
education and children’s own sense
of happiness – that might affect the
wellbeing of children. At the bottom
of the Unicef study, in 21st place, was
the UK, just below the US. As with
the World Happiness Report, the
The lack of Nordic countries filled the top places.
education, This latest report is a warning sign
to governments. If young people
training cannot establish themselves in the
and workplace with a decent home and
time and money to visit friends
affordable and family, the ramifications will
homes boomerang on the old. There will be
underpins slower economic growth and fewer
funds to support the retired.
the decline
PHILIP INMAN IS A GUARDIAN AND
in positivity OBSERVER ECONOMICS WRITER
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
34
How Israeli, Palestinian and US
THE
political actors understand Hamas
ENIGMA
is not merely a theoretical question
OF
– it will determine how an end to
HAMAS
the war can be found By Joshua Leifer
N LATE OCTOBER 2023, the veteran Israeli peace
activist Gershon Baskin published an open
letter denouncing a man he had long called a
friend – Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official.
Baskin, an architect of the deal that freed the
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity
in 2011, is one of the only Israeli citizens who
has maintained consistent contact with leaders
of the Palestinian Islamist movement. Hamad, a former
journalist with a degree in veterinary medicine, was also
involved in the Shalit negotiations and served as deputy
foreign minister in the 2012 Hamas government. Prior to
the 7 October attacks, for more than a decade and a half,
Hamad and Baskin had exchanged frequent phone calls
and text messages. These mainly concerned negotiations
around prisoner swap deals, and sometimes the possibil-
ity of a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas. The
pair developed a warm working relationship based on
mutual trust.
After 7 October and the start of Israel’s ground invasion of
the Gaza Strip, that relationship started to unravel. Hamad
insisted that the attacks were entirely justified, and denied
that Hamas fighters had carried out atrocities during their
incursion into Israel. On 24 October, in an interview for a
Lebanese TV channel, Hamad vowed that Hamas would
commit the same acts “again and again”. He said that “Al-
Aqsa Flood”, Hamas’s name for its armed offensive, “is
just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a
fourth”. Once considered a thoughtful observer of Pales-
tinian politics, Hamad now declared that “nobody should
blame us for what we do – on 7 October, on 10 October, on
October 1,000,000. Everything we do is justified.”
To Baskin, this did not sound like the man he had come to
know. The proclamations by Hamad, “thought to be one of
the most moderate people in Hamas”, Baskin noted, landed
like a betrayal. Baskin had long argued that it was possible to
broker an agreement with Hamas for a “hudna”, or a fixed-
term armistice, in exchange for opening the land, air, and
sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Israel has enforced,
with Egypt’s support, since Hamas came to power in 2007.
Baskin had believed that Hamad could help move Hamas
toward acceding to a two-state solution. In the months
before 7 October, Baskin had been trying to organise a
meeting with him in Europe to discuss the prospect of a
long-term truce.
But after 7 October, Baskin, too, shifted his position.
“Hamas has forfeited its right to exist as a government of
any territory and especially the territory next to Israel,”
he wrote in an article for the Times of Israel on 28 October.
“Hamas now fully deserves the determination of Israel
to eliminate them as the political and military body that
controls Gaza.” More recently, Baskin has proposed exiling
Hamas leaders such as Yahya Sinwar from Gaza as part of
a potential ceasefire deal. He has also proposed Hamas
be barred from elections unless they renounce violence.
It is not that Baskin has given up on peace – he remains a
lonely, even desperate Israeli voice calling for an end to
the war. It is that he no longer believes Hamas can be part
of the equation. Since October, many Israelis have gone
on a similar journey.
In late December, I sat with Baskin in the basement of his
home, in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Born in
New York, Baskin is a stocky, energetic man in his late 60s.
He answered the door wearing a silver dog tag engraved
with the words “Bring them Home”, which has become an
emblem of the movement calling for the return of the more
than 100 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
One question looms over the story of Baskin’s exchange
with Hamad: did Hamas change, or did Baskin misunder-
stand the group all along? Baskin believes it was the former.
“Most of the years previous to 7 October, there was a will-
ingness to explore pragmatic, long-term ceasefires,” he
told me. “In retrospect it became clear that from two years
before 7 October, Hamas had made a decision that there
was a no-go on a long-term modus vivendi [with Israel]
and that they were beginning to make their plans for an
eventual attack.”
Baskin recalled his final exchange with Hamad in late
October. “During the early days of the war, when I heard
that his house was bombed, and I didn’t know he wasn’t in
Gaza, I said to him: ‘Ghazi, if they’re going after you, there
is no one in Hamas who is safe.’” (Ahead of the war, Hamad
had departed for Beirut.) “He responded to me: ‘We have
lots of surprises, and we will kill lots
Flag bearer of Israelis.’”
A supporter at That was when Baskin posted his
a pro-Hamas open letter to Hamad on social media.
rally in Jerusalem “I’m sorry to say that you were
in 2006 someone who I actually trusted 
ODED BALILTY/AP and thought that we could help
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

Hamas is a fact of political life in
Gaza. If anything, it is much more
relevant today than it’s ever been
▲ Political reality bring a better future to our peoples. But you and your friends
A pro-Hamas rally have brought the Palestinian cause back 75 years,” he wrote.
in Gaza in 2021 “I think you have lost your mind and you have lost your
JOHN MINCHILLO/AP moral code.” And with that, Baskin severed their ties.
F
IVE MONTHS INTO ISRAEL’S BRUTAL WAR in
Gaza, more than 30,000 Palestinians, most of
them civilians, have been killed. The Israeli
ground invasion has displaced 2 million
Palestinians within the Gaza Strip, many of
them now forced into makeshift tents in and
around the southern city of Rafah. In northern Gaza, vast
swathes of which have been flattened by relentless Israeli
airstrikes and artillery shelling, international experts warn
that “famine is imminent”. Gazan children have already
begun to die from lack of food.
As the war continues, how Israeli, Palestinian and
American political actors understand Hamas is not merely
a theoretical question; it is as much a material factor on the
ground as bullets and tanks. It is one of the factors shaping
military strategy, and will determine what kind of agree-
ment can be reached to bring the current war to an end,
and what the future of Gaza will look like.
The disintegration of Baskin and Hamad’s relationship
thus reflects a larger and older debate about Hamas, one that
has only become more urgent. At its core is a question about
the essence of the organisation: whether it is primarily a
nationalist group with an Islamist character, which could
be a constructive player in a meaningful peace process, or
whether it is a more radical, fundamentalist group, whose
hostility to Israel is so unwavering that it can only play the
role of violent opposition.
One camp in this debate, chiefly composed of western
counterterrorism experts and US and Israeli security
analysts, has long seen the group as defined by its vio-
lent hostility to Israel’s existence. According to this view,
there was nothing surprising about 7 October. Instead, in
the words of Matthew Levitt, a former Bush administra-
tion official and the author of a 2007 book on Hamas, it
“demonstrated in the most visceral and brutal way that
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
Hamas ultimately prioritised destroying Israel and creating
an Islamist Palestinian state in its place”. Analysts of this
school tend to point to Hamas’s vast tunnel infrastructure
as evidence that the group protects its own fighters while
leaving Gazan civilians above the surface to fend for them-
selves, without any system of bomb shelters.
An opposing, more heterogeneous camp, comprised of
academics and thinktankers, many of them Palestinian, sees
Hamas as a multifarious, complex political actor, divided
between radical and moderating tendencies. Hamas, they
argue, is the product of the reality under which Palestin-
ians live – brutal occupation and blockade – and therefore
potentially responsive to changes in those conditions. The
problem, according to this view, is that even when Hamas
leaders have appeared open to moderation, Israeli policy
has made it impossible for the group to pursue this line
without losing its credibility among Palestinians as the
last-standing bastion of meaningful opposition to Israel
and its occupation.
When we spoke in January, the Palestinian scholar Tareq
Baconi said that “the major misconception” at the core of
the dominant discourse about Hamas is the idea that “if
Hamas as a security threat was undermined, Israel will
have no issue with the Palestinians”. But if “Hamas were to
disappear tomorrow,” he said, the Israeli blockade on Gaza
and military rule in the West Bank would remain. “There’s
this tendency to suggest that this is a war between Israel and
Hamas rather than a war between Israel and Palestinians,
which places Hamas outside of Palestinians,” he added.
Khaled Elgindy, who is a former adviser to the Palestinian
Authority (PA) leadership on negotiations with Israel and
now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute thinktank,
argues that any postwar arrangement that excludes Hamas
will be doomed to repeat the mistakes that led to the cur-
rent war. “It’s exactly this notion of: ‘We’re going to make
peace with this group of Palestinians while we make war
with that group of Palestinians,’” which had served as the
rationale for Israel’s economic suffocation and periodic
bombardment of the Gaza Strip, he said. “That’s nonsensi-
cal in terms of conflict resolution.”
“Hamas is a fact of political life in Gaza and in the
Palestinian scene in general. And if anything, it is much
more relevant today than it’s ever been,” Elgindy said.
In an article for Foreign Affairs published late last year,
he expanded on his view that Hamas must form part of a
postwar settlement. The goal, wrote Elgindy, should be to
incorporate Hamas and other hardline militant factions into
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the umbrella
group dominated by the secular-nationalist party Fatah,
which is recognised as the sole official representative of
the Palestinian people on the world stage.
Elgindy believes that Palestinian politics could contain
Hamas’s rejectionism alongside the Palestinian Authority’s
cooperation with Israel, just as Israeli politics includes par-
ties that support and those that oppose engagement with
the Palestinian Authority. In the short term, he acknow-
ledged, that might make “achieving a two-state solution
harder, because they’re going to have a veto the same way
any opposition does”. But in the long run, Elgindy contin-
ued, integrating Hamas into the PLO might begin to heal
the persistent split in the Palestinian national movement,
which has provided Israel with a convenient excuse for
refusing to participate in any negotiations. If Hamas were
to agree to abide by the agreements signed between Israel

and the PLO, not only would this increase the chances that
a peace agreement might last, it would also curtail Hamas’s
ability “to act as a free agent and be the spoiler it can be”,
Elgindy said.
At present it seems highly unlikely Hamas leaders would
be willing to agree to a programme of the kind that Elgindy
and others have sketched out.
But it is equally difficult to imagine a future without
the militant group. “I think people believe this basic line,
that if we destroy or at least marginalise Hamas, that will
make peace more likely,” Elgindy said. In practice, he con-
tinued, this position rationalises Israel’s continued assault
on Gaza. This view is wrong, he said – not just strategically
but morally.
H
AMAS WAS FORMED IN 1987 by members
of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim
Brotherhood during the first intifada.
The group’s name, which means “zeal”,
is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawamah
al-Islamiyyah, or the Islamic Resistance
Movement. Historically, Palestinian Islamists had inclined
toward political quietism, believing that Palestinian society
had to be Islamicised if the fight against Israel were to be
▼ Backchannel successful. Yet as demonstrations mounted, the struggle
Gershon Baskin appeared to them as one they should lead.
kept a line of Hamas’s founding leaders were, for the most part,
communication refugees who had been born in what is now Israel and forced
with Hamas to flee to the Gaza Strip during what Palestinians call the
AMNON GUTMAN Nakba, the displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians
during the 1948 war. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the group’s
spiritual leader, was born in 1936 in the village of Al-Jura,
near the city of Ashkelon, in the south of present-day Israel.
Diminutive and softly spoken, Yassin, who dressed in a
white shroud and used a wheelchair owing to a childhood
accident, seemed to his followers to embody the suffering
of his people. In 2004, Israel assassinated Yassin, as it would
many of Hamas’s leaders, when Israeli helicopters fired on
his entourage as he left a mosque at dawn.
The organisation’s 1988 founding charter is a mixture
of Qur’anic quotations, disquisitions on Islamic doctrine,
nationalist declarations and conspiratorial antisemitism.
The document defined the land of Palestine as a waqf, or
Islamic trust, “consecrated for future Muslim generations
until judgment day”, of which no inch could be given up.
It accused Zionists of instigating the French and Bolshe-
vik revolutions and labelled groups like “the Freemasons,
the Rotary and Lions clubs” as “destructive intelligence-
gathering organisations” that facilitated the “nazism of the
Jews”. It subsumed the Palestinian national struggle under
the banner of religious war. It was an unlikely charter for a
movement that, within a decade, would bid to represent the
Palestinian cause, which had for the previous half-century
been led by avowedly secular groups.
Whether the Islamic radicalism of the charter represents
the operative ideology of the organisation has been debated
almost since the group’s creation. Some scholars of Islam-
ist politics see Hamas’s religious rhetoric as mainly a
framework in service of its nationalist goals. According to
Azzam Tamimi, author of the book Hamas: A History from
Within, the movement’s leaders realised that, as it grew,
it needed a more accessible way of defining itself to the
broader world. A document titled This Is What We Struggle
For, written in the mid-90s in response to a request by a
37
European diplomat for clarity on the group’s objectives,
defined Hamas as “a Palestinian national liberation move-
ment that struggles for the liberation of the Palestinian
occupied lands and for the recognition of Palestinian legiti-
mate rights”. In a sense, the question of how to understand
Hamas grows out of the gap between these two rhetorical
modes: between uncompromising jihad and the language of
anticolonial resistance, between fundamentalist ideology
and political pragmatism.
“There is no single ‘Hamas,’” Tareq Baconi writes in
his book, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of
Palestinian Resistance. There are hardliners and pragma-
tists, religious conservatives and comparative moderates,
those who prioritise the armed struggle against Israel, and
those, at least until recently, who sought gains through
political means. Hamas has “always sought to play between
the violent and the diplomatic tracks, to shift from one track
to the other, whenever it saw its best interests as either”,
says Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East expert and senior policy
fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Yet if Hamas’s leadership was not always unified on
matters of vision, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza gave the group unity of purpose. In 1993, when
the PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, recognised the state of Israel
and renounced violence with the first Oslo accord, it was
Hamas that claimed the mantle of armed resistance and
commitment to liberating all of historic Palestine.
Throughout the 1990s, Hamas, adamantly opposed to
Oslo, intensified its fight against Israel. In its early years,
its attacks had mainly taken the form of small arms fire,
low-intensity roadside bombs and low-tech attempts to
kidnap Israeli soldiers. That changed on 6 April 1994, when
a man blew himself up at a bus stop in the northern Israeli
city of Afula, killing eight Israelis. It was expressly an act of
vengeance in response to the massacre of 29 worshippers
at the Ibrahimi mosque, carried out two months earlier by
an Israeli extremist hoping to derail peace talks between
the Israeli government and the PLO. The suicide bomb-
ing was also an expression of Hamas’s emerging military
strategy. Hamas leaders saw civilian deaths as Israel’s weak
spot, believing they would erode Israelis’ sense of personal
security and reduce Israeli resolve.
The collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, and the
eruption of the second intifada, marked the transforma-
tion of Hamas into a genuine challenger to the PLO and the
institutions of the recently formed Palestinian Authority.
The more Israel pursued settlement construction, and the
more it entrenched the apparatus of military occupation,
the more Fatah and the PA appeared to have capitulated,
and the more Hamas’s uncompromising position gained in
appeal. As the group mounted more suicide attacks through
the 2000s, it also diversified its arsenal. In 2001, Hamas
fired its first rockets from the Gaza Strip.
For Hamas’s leaders, this strategy of violence appeared
to be vindicated in August 2005, as Israel began to withdraw
its military and more than 8,000 settlers from the Gaza
Strip. “Today you are leaving Gaza humiliated,” proclaimed
Mohammed Deif, the then commander of the Qassam Bri-
gades, in a message after the disengagement. “Hamas will
not disarm and will continue the struggle against Israel
until it is erased from the map.”
One perhaps surprising outcome of the Israeli
withdrawal was that while it seemed to many in 
Hamas to reflect the success of armed struggle, it
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
38 The enigma of Hamas
was at this moment that the group appeared to shift its
focus toward more conventional politics. Hamas contested
the January 2006 legislative elections, running on an anti-
corruption and law-and-order platform. To the shock of
many in the PA, Israel and the Bush administration, Hamas
won an outright majority. The group that had long rejected
the institutions created by the Oslo framework now had a
popular mandate to lead them.
Hamas appeared to be deprioritising violence in favour
of political engagement. “There are certain fundamental
principles that they will not relinquish, but ultimately,
they are not rigid in their approach,” said Tahani Mustafa,
Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. “That
doesn’t mean they’re going to give up the fight to liberate
Palestine,” Mustafa added. “It’s just recognising what they
want, and what reality will allow, and then trying to figure
a middle ground between them.” Ahead of the legislative
election, Hamas, led at the time by Khaled Meshaal, had
signed on to the 2005 Cairo declaration, which affirmed
the PLO as “the sole legitimate representative of the Pal-
estinian people” and called for the establishment of the
Palestinian state.
In response to Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory, Fatah
members refused to join the Hamas-led government.
Israel tightened its enclosure of the Gaza Strip. The US
and European Union soon cut off aid. By the autumn of
2006, groups of Fatah and Hamas gunmen were carrying
out assassinations, kidnappings and torturing each other’s
loyalists, even as unity talks between Abbas and Meshaal
continued. On 14 June 2007, after five days of fierce gun
battles in Gaza, Hamas expelled the PA from the territory
– and suddenly Hamas found itself in an entirely new role.
It was now responsible for daily life in Gaza.
▲ Breakdown
S
Ghazi Hamad had HEIKH YASSIN ONCE CLAIMED that, during the
stayed on good first intifada, he had turned down an Israeli
terms with Baskin offer to take over the Gaza Strip. “It would have
for 17 years been crazy for us to consent to be mere stand-
WAEL HAMZEH/EPA ins for Israeli rule,” he said. But now Hamas
found itself with the task of administering a
territory besieged by air, land and sea, and subject to near-
routine aerial bombardment and artillery shelling.
Gradually, Hamas consolidated its rule. To some,
it seemed that Hamas had transitioned from a militant
group with an ideology of armed opposition to a pseudo-
state governing force. A quarter of its first elected cabinet
boasted US graduate degrees. “They were never democratic
or soft authoritarian, as some of the literature says,” Khalil
Sayegh, a Gaza-born peace activist, told me. “They were
hard authoritarian, but they were smart enough to deceive
the west in how they dealt with the situation.” To clamp
down on dissent and enforce conformity, Sayegh added,
Hamas relied on tactics that ranged from public shaming
to blackmail and torture.
Hamas developed its elaborate system of tunnels to get
around the harsh conditions of the blockade, as well as to
shield its fighters from Israeli airstrikes. In particular, the
tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt became the besieged
territory’s economic lifeline and a conduit for the smug-
gling of weapons. According to one estimate, in the mid-
2010s, tunnel revenue provided the Hamas government
with roughly $750m a year. Yet this was not nearly enough
to prevent what the political scientist Sara Roy has called
the “de-development of Gaza”. While the first years of
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
Hamas rule saw economic growth, between 2007 and 2022,
real GDP per capita declined at a rate of 2.5% a year, as the
population rose sharply. For much of the last decade and
a half, UN officials have warned that Gaza was on the brink
of a humanitarian crisis.
During these years, Hamas and Israel developed a mode
of relating to each other – what Baconi calls an equilib-
rium of belligerency. Hamas rocket fire from Gaza became a
means of negotiating with Israel. In return for pausing fire,
Hamas would seek eased restrictions of the blockade or
work permits for more Palestinian labourers crossing into
Israel. In turn, Israel would retaliate to Hamas rockets with
airstrikes and shelling until it could claim it had sufficiently
“deterred” Hamas from fighting until the next round.
For Israel, Hamas became useful as the functional
government in Gaza, responsible for supporting the
besieged Gazan population and containing the activities
of other armed militant groups, much like the PA did in the
West Bank. “There seemed to be some kind of modus viv-
endi between Israel and Hamas,” said Zaha Hassan, a human
rights lawyer and senior legal adviser to the Palestinian
negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership.
To Netanyahu, this arrangement had an additional
advantage. By keeping the PA-run West Bank and the
Hamas-run Gaza Strip under separate administrations,
Israel also kept the Palestinian national movement divided,
and therefore easier to manage. Over the course of a dec-
ade, Netanyahu’s governments helped prop up the Hamas
administration in Gaza, facilitating the transfer of billions
of dollars from Qatar to the Islamist group. “Netanyahu has
always had a strong unspoken partnership with Hamas,
which he has regarded as an invaluable asset in preventing
the creation of a Palestinian state,” Hussein Ibish, a senior
resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told me
via email. “His incredibly cynical divide-and-rule strategy,
which he does not appear to have fully surrendered yet,
led inexorably to 7 October.”
But Netanyahu was not merely cynical. He, like much of
Israel’s defence establishment, appears to have genuinely
believed that the burden of governance had led to a fun-
damental shift – that Hamas, in effect, had been pacified.
It is now clearer than ever that Israel’s policy towards
Hamas was built on a contradiction. On the one hand, Israel
justified its punitive blockade and periodic bombardment
of Gaza on the grounds that Hamas was a bloodthirsty ter-
rorist group that sought Israel’s destruction. On the other, in
Israel’s actual dealings with Hamas, it behaved as if Hamas
had abandoned not just its commitment to destroying Israel
but any alternative vision to occupation.
From within Hamas and among its supporters, however,
the perception was very different. “2008-2009, 2012, 2014,
2021 – it’s continuous war,” Azzam Tamimi said. “Hamas has
not been pacified. It’s just been fighting, and then there are
breaks in the fighting.” This analysis is not so different from
how much of Israel’s security establishment sees the group.
Indeed, within Israeli defence circles, the failures of
7 October have been taken as proof that Netanyahu’s gov-
ernments understood Hamas all wrong. “We felt that if
we bribed the organisation by providing it money or by
enabling it to develop the economy, then it would become
a more responsible and accountable sovereign,” said Kobi
Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National
Security Studies, a thinktank with close ties to Israel’s mili-
tary. “This is an illusion.” As Michael sees it, Israeli leaders

failed to recognise that Hamas, at its core, is a “messianic”
organisation that cannot be managed. “Theirs is a very
religious way of thinking, which is irrational,” he said. “It
was convenient for us to think that they are similar to us.”
As the war grinds on, Israeli policy analysts increasingly
argue that the bellicose, maximalist rhetoric of Hamas’s
leaders should be taken literally – that when they pledge to
fight until Israel is destroyed, they mean it. “I read the other
side’s writings in their original language, and I believe them,
I simply believe them,” Michael Milshtein, an Israeli former
intelligence officer, has said of Hamas’s Arabic publications
and communiques. In his view, one major reason for the
Israeli military’s colossal failure on 7 October was that intel-
ligence agencies and political leaders forgot the nature of
their enemy and failed to take notice of the manifold public
threats issued by Hamas that a massive armed operation
against Israel was in the offing.
In the eyes of most Israelis, any semblance of peace will
only be possible when Hamas no longer exists. Yet when Ger-
shon Baskin and I spoke again in March, he told me that he
and Ghazi Hamad had reconnected. The re-establishment
of contact was mutual. “The first communication was about
two months ago, which was an unpleasant back and forth,”
he said. “The basic question is, could it be possible for us to
have a constructive role [in making] a secret back channel,”
Baskin added. “It’s not yet clear.”
T
ODAY, AS 30 YEARS AGO, Hamas derives
much of its popularity from Palestinian
despair. “When oppression increases,”
Sheikh Yassin told the Guardian journalist
Ian Black in 1998, “people start looking for
God.” A survey conducted in December by
▼ Beginnings the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki found that 72% of
Sheikh Ahmad Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank believed that Hamas
Yassin, founder was correct in launching the 7 October attacks, despite the
and spiritual destruction Israel has unleashed. If, as many believe, Hamas
leader of Hamas will remain a force the day after the fighting stops – in what
MOHAMMED SABER /EPA form, and with what consequences?
They were never democratic. Hamas
relied on tactics that ranged from
public shaming to torture
39
Proponents of incorporating Hamas back into the
structures of Palestinian politics argue that the group’s
leaders were once serious about pursuing the interim solu-
tion, of a Palestinian state on only part of historic Palestine,
and that, under the right conditions, they might be willing
to do so again. “It was real,” Hugh Lovatt said of Hamas’s
openness to a two-state solution, which was expressed in
the group’s 2017 revised charter. “There clearly is a political
and relatively moderate wing within Hamas,” he continued.
“The question is, what happens to them? Do they split from
the movement? Will they be completely overwhelmed by
the hardliners? Or do they find a way to steer the movement
back toward the political track?”
Those who see a future role for Hamas in Palestinian
politics as a necessity argue that excluding Hamas would
be undemocratic, as well as likely to guarantee future
bloodshed. “Their inclusion is a prerequisite for creating
a Palestinian leadership that is representative of its people,”
Baconi told me, “regardless of what we think about their
tactics or their ideology.”
At the same time, when I asked Baconi about the
prospects of a return to the two-state paradigm after the
war, he was not optimistic. “If there is a political process
which would achieve a Palestinian state on ’67 borders –
which I don’t think will ever exist, as in a state with real
sovereignty – I do think Hamas, politically and strategically,
would engage with it very effectively and would, I think,
be pushed to recognise the potential of such a diplomatic
process,” he replied. But against the backdrop of the total
devastation of Gaza, talk of restarting the two-state process
is mainly a distraction, Baconi added. “I don’t see any kind
of effective political process coming out of this older dis-
course that takes us back to the 90s and early 00s.”
In all likelihood, the Hamas leadership’s willingness to
re-engage in the political track may not be tested. “The idea
of incorporating Hamas [into the PLO] is, I think, a brilliant
one that is now politically impossible,” said Nathan Brown,
a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Interna-
tional Peace. “You basically need the existing generation
of American leaders to die off before it becomes politically
feasible,” Brown said of the possibility of the US shepherd-
ing a process that saw Hamas enter the PLO.
Israeli public opinion has lurched even further right
after the 7 October attacks. Netanyahu’s popularity has
tanked, but his replacement will not be a dove. And though
it is true that, in the late 1980s and early 90s, the Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to talks with the PLO
and Yasser Arafat, considered by most Israelis to be an
unrepentant terrorist, the signing of the Oslo accords was
only possible after the PLO had agreed to comply with a
raft of preconditions. By contrast, no Hamas leader could
ever totally renounce armed struggle or agree formally to
recognise Israel.
There is a tendency to view events such as 7 October
and the continuing war through the prism of rupture. The
death and destruction on such a massive scale appear to
signal a shift in paradigm, the emergence of a new phase.
But part of what makes Israel’s prosecution of the current
war so chilling is that, after killing more than 30,000 Pal-
estinians, and after 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas on
7 October, the basic political framework of Israel/Palestine
may, the day after the war, remain the same as it was on
6 October •
JOSHUA LEIFER IS A JOURNALIST, EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
 Afterlife
Roesler’s roster,
from left to right:
Marilyn Monroe,
Malcom X,
Elvis Presley,
James Dean,
Albert Einstein,
Maya Angelou and
James Stewart
Mark Roesler is a publicist
with a dif ference – most of
the clients he represents are
no longer alive. And thanks
to AI, holograms and social
media, being dead famous is
more lucrative than
ever. By Tim Jonze
42 Summon my agent! PORTRAITS BY ROBERT GALLAGHER

HE CELEBRITY AGENT MARK ROESLER is telling me

about a new client he’s just taken on – a big name with global reach.
Roesler has already managed – in the four months they’ve been work-
ing together – to secure him a top advertising gig that went out during
this year’s Super Bowl to an estimated 120 million viewers. “I’ve
really learned just how big he is, that’s for sure,” enthuses Roesler.
He’s talking about Albert Einstein.
Roesler, you see, is a celebrity agent with a difference – the 68-year-
old works predominantly with famous people who are no longer
alive. Also on his books are Neil Armstrong, Aaliyah, Rosa Parks,
Burt Reynolds, Bette Davis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Ingrid Bergman,
Alan Turing and hundreds more dead celebrities – or “delebrities”

PREVIOUS PAGES: SNAP, GRANGER/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES; ALAMY; JACK SOTOMAYOR/NEW YORK TIMES/GETTY; RKO/ALLSTAR
as they’re sometimes called. It’s a roster that has made him one of
the world’s most successful agents to the afterlife, and an expert in a
field that is growing all the time. Because, according to Forbes, being
dead doesn’t necessarily mean being unprofitable. Their stats show
Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley both raking in more than $100m
each year, with other big hitters including Dr Seuss ($40m), Prince
($30m), Arnold Palmer and Marilyn Monroe (both $10m).
In the four decades since he started as a delebrity agent, Roesler
says his company, CMG Worldwide, has represented 3,000 deceased
entertainment, sports, music and historical personalities. And the
opportunities to earn a crust from beyond the grave have never been
better, with holographic and AI technology resurrecting dead stars’
voices and likenesses so that they can get back on the live circuit (most
recently George Michael was reported to be returning to the stage
as a hologram). Roesler takes out his phone and shows me a project
that he recently put together with the Calm meditation app – it’s a
bedtime story, narrated by the US actor James Stewart, who died in
1997: “Well, hello,” it begins. “I’m James Stewart, but, well, you can
call me Jimmy. Tonight, I’m going to tell you a story, a story all about
a fellow called Montgomery. OK?” Smart business? Or a bit creepy?
Being dead wasn’t always so good for the bank account. When
Roesler started the company in 1981, the delebrity landscape was
very different: “There were no rights for deceased personalities in
their name and a lot of products – posters, greetings cards, calendars
– were being made with James Dean or Marilyn Monroe on them,” he
says. “Levi’s was doing a campaign using James Dean’s image – that
was the lay of the land back then.”
Roesler hadn’t planned on getting into this line of business. He had
actually started his own roofing company in order to fund his journey
through law school and was enjoying it so much that he viewed it
as a potential career. But when the roofing work slowed down, he
“stumbled” into working for a company that was licensing copyrights
for the artist Norman Rockwell’s images. From there an opportunity
to work with Elvis Presley’s Graceland came up – they were about to
open the Memphis tourist attraction but were in dispute with the
King’s former manager Colonel Tom Parker and needed some advice.
Roesler ended up representing the Elvis Presley estate – not a bad first

client to have. He began thinking about other dead celebrities. Down
the road from where he grew up, there was a constant pilgrimage of
people visiting James Dean’s grave in Fairmount, Indiana. He went
to meet Dean’s family and the late actor became his second client.
“People thought they could do whatever they wanted to with these
celebrities’ images,” he says. “Many of them were taken by a host of
different photographers, so there wasn’t really copyright protection
we could rely on.” Roesler set out to register various trademarks
for his client’s names and some of their famous images, but it soon
became very expensive. So they decided to work with different state
legislatures, resulting in laws in certain states – California, Texas,
Nevada – that recognised that famous deceased people could protect
their name and likeness. Every territory has a different law, Roesler
explains. For instance, in California, protection covers 70 years; in
Indiana it’s 100 years. The statute in Tennessee guarantees 10 years,
but continues until there have been two consecutive years of non-
use. “So theoretically, somebody like Elvis could last for a lot longer
than 100 years,” says Roesler.
Roesler can’t protect everyone. He recalls someone asking if CMG
could represent one of their family members: it turned out he was
the great, great-grandson of Abraham Lincoln. “I said, ‘Wow, with
all those pennies and $5 bills out there, if we could protect the intel-
lectual property, we’d both be very rich!’”
A laid-back figure who likes to recline in his seat and demonstrate
complex image rights issues using his phone case and a water bottle,
today Roesler is speaking to me from the company’s Nashville office
which is where they handle their music business – he’s just flown in
from the company’s HQ in Beverly Hills. He tells me how CMG recently
acquired a controlling interest in Worldwide XR, a tech company that
specialises in everything from holograms to augmented reality. “So
suddenly, people like James Dean can star in movies again and appear
in ads,” he says. One recent project involved a Neil Armstrong range
of augmented reality NFTs.
LL THIS IS A FAR CRY from what Roesler thought
he was getting into in 1981. Does it ever seem
strange on some ethical level to be working with
people from beyond the grave? After all, we
can never know if they would have approved
of what’s being done in their name.
“That’s an interesting question,” he says.
“But you know, James Dean had a famous
quote: ‘If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can
live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.’ So I think
he would be happy that future generations continue to be inspired
by his work. Obviously, these celebrities have gone to great lengths
during their lifetime to protect their legacy, so wouldn’t want to see
it abused. That’s why it’s important to have somebody continue to
handle it. And that’s what we try to do.” It’s not just about making
43
Suddenly,
people like
James Dean
can star in
movies and
appear in
ads again
▲ Late developer money, he insists, but also keeping someone’s
Delebrity agent memory alive.
Mark Roesler Protecting a legacy means turning down a lot
in his Beverly of ridiculous requests. “We’ve had people who
Hills office wanted to market Elvis Presley sweat and James
Dean condoms,” he says. “Someone wanted to
do a James Dean theme park in Japan, but we didn’t think it would
be successful and you don’t want to be married to a failure.” He says
what he does is no different from being a living celebrity’s agent:
“You have to analyse all the opportunities and see if it’s going to come
back to make you look bad, either because it’s been poorly executed,
under-financed or is just not appropriate. You could guide a living
celebrity down the wrong path in the same way – make a couple of
flops and tank their reputation.”
There are some personalities represented by CMG Worldwide who
have especially important reputations to preserve: civil rights icons
such as Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou and Malcolm X (when Spike Lee
started selling merchandise around his 1992 biographical film, Roesler
entered a legal battle with him, successfully establishing that it was
X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, and not Lee, who controlled the rights).
When dealing with such sensitive figures, Roesler says his company
will always advise what they think is the best path to take to avoid
reputational damage.
Roesler was not involved in the cautionary tale of Ram Trucks’s
2018 Super Bowl advert, which used a segment from one of Martin
Luther King’s speeches (the idea being that Ram trucks are “built
to serve”, just like King). It backfired – not just because the idea of
Martin Luther King as a car salesman is a murky fit, but because MLK
denounced car adverts themselves in the very same speech. “We are so
often taken by advertisers,” the key passage goes. “You know, those
gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of
saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be
a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make
your neighbours envious, you must drive this type of car.” MLK’s
estate is run by Intellectual Properties Management, an Atlanta-based
firm controlled by King family members.
It’s far from the only delebrity disaster out there. When Dr Martens
ran an ad featuring Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain wearing its boots in
heaven, Cobain’s ex-wife Courtney Love described it as a “despicable
use” of her husband’s picture. The agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, ended
up getting fired and the company apologised.
Pleasing the family is only half the battle. Bruce Lee’s daughter
approved when Johnnie Walker Blue Label used CGI technology to
resurrect him for a Chinese campaign – but plenty of fans were left
nonplussed at the idea the teetotal martial arts expert would sign
up to sell whisky.
Roesler says that commercials are typically high stakes.
Their own Super Bowl advert with Einstein (in which the 
scientist joins a host of other historical figures singing along
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
44 Summon my agent!
to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now) was a tie-in with Heaven sent
Pfizer and, despite the clear scientific connections, Bette Davis
he says the company and the ad agency were both (left) and Burt
anxious about what reaction it might get. “There Reynolds
was a lot of pressure to make sure it sent a positive are also on
message. And for the most part, the reaction was Roesler’s books
positive. But you can’t please everybody.”
It’s often said, half-jokingly these days, that the best thing a
celebrity can do to boost their image is die, but Roesler insists that’s
not the case. He tells me that we all have two sets of rights: our per-
sonal services – for example, our ability to write songs or perform in
concert – and our intellectual property. “Someone like Taylor Swift
can generate unbelievable amounts of money from live tours and
writing,” he says. “Whereas on death, you’re left with just intellectual
property. And there’s a lot of data that shows that this will decrease
in value every year after someone has passed away. Of course, there
are things that we’re doing to change those averages – especially with
digital humans.”
OLOGRAM TECHNOLOGY isn’t easy to pull off,
of course. When Whitney Houston (not one
of CMG’s clients) returned from the grave for
a tour, the Guardian called it a “ghoulish cash-
in”, writing that “Whitney” had “unusually
floppy arms, occasionally jerky movements
and barely moves a foot each way from
centre stage.”
Roesler says CMG takes a proactive approach with clients, putting
together potential projects and marketing plans it thinks will work.
“Some will want us to generate a lot of money, and others prefer us
to be very selective in what we do. So we take orders from the client.”
There can be issues. CMG looks after Jim Thorpe, a renowned
athlete who died in 1953, who has 64 different beneficiaries – a lot of
people to keep happy. Some families disagree on what they want from
their association, while others are adamant that their relative is a lot
more famous than he or she actually is. “You can get a lot of mixed
messages,” Roesler says. “Some family members need the money
and others don’t. But at the end of the day it’s in your vested interest
not to do anything that makes their name look silly.”
Roesler admits to being gobsmacked when his son once told him
that some of his friends had never heard of Diana, Princess of Wales,
one of his current clients. It made him realise that you need to put
the work in to keep even very famous people’s memory alive. Social
media is one tool he uses, from Instagram to TikTok. James Dean
has a particularly active social media presence – a recent post of his
wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s Day prompted fellow delebrity
(and CMG client) Natalie Wood to send a heart in response. Both have
blue tick verification, as if they’d never died.
“You don’t want to be tacky,” insists Roesler. “You don’t want to take
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
Even though
there’s a
f inancial
opportunity
with what we
do, you have
to tread a
thin line
James Dean, who only starred in three movies, and have him star in 10
more movies, and then future generations think, ‘Oh, James Dean was
in this movie and that movie and this other movie was a total flop.’”
It’s hard to know where to draw the line, especially when it comes
to politics. Can we say for sure that Marilyn Monroe would have posted
a black square to her Instagram page as part of #BlackoutTuesday – a
2020 protest against racism and police brutality? Not definitively, yet
her ghostly social media presence did it regardless. Stranger still, so
did Elvis Presley’s, despite the fact that the singer had an undeniable
conservative streak and approval of authority.
When you’ve worked with dead celebrities for as long as Roesler
has, you become an expert in certain areas. One of these is being able
to evaluate a person’s intangible assets – ie not the bank accounts, cars
or houses that someone leaves behind but the patents, trademarks
and film ideas that are typically harder to put a price on. When Michael
Jackson died, Roesler’s company spent eight years working on a case
regarding the discrepancy between his estate’s valuation of the star’s
image and likeness (around $3m) and that of the IRS ($161m). CMG’s
evaluation that it was actually worth around $4m was eventually
agreed on by the judge, “almost to the dollar,” he says proudly. Roesler
was also called as an expert witness during the OJ Simpson civil trial,
after being asked by the families of the murder victims to put a value
on Simpson’s future worth. “The stakes were high, because it was such
a high-profile case,” he says. “I was reluctant to get involved because
I thought, gosh, if I come up with a value and they didn’t accept that,
it could really damage my reputation.” Fortunately for Roesler, the
judgment of $33.5m was the exact amount that he had testified to.
Roesler is keen to point out that CMG has represented a fair few
living personalities – including Pamela Anderson, Ivana Trump and
Charles Oppenheimer (grandson of Robert). Some come to discuss
estate planning for after they’ve gone – as well as the thorny tax con-
siderations that will ensue if everything hasn’t been expertly managed
in advance. But there are advantages, he says, to focusing on those
no longer with us: “There’s unlikely to be a scandal,” he says, “unlike
with some celebrities we could mention.” Although as we know with
names such as Michael Jackson, this isn’t a watertight guarantee.
Roesler’s line of work has, inevitably, put him much closer to death.
He met with the friends and family of Diana, Princess of Wales shortly
after she died. “I’m never happy to be there because of someone’s mis-
fortune,” Roesler says. “Even though there’s a financial opportunity
with what we do, you have to tread a thin line. It can be daunting.”
It has also made him think about his own life – and what might
be left after he’s gone. “Working in this industry has made me think
about reputation, just how important it is,” he says. “It’s also made me
realise how quickly time goes by – and how fast things can change.”
Roesler is currently listed as one of the many speakers CMG represents
– but whether or not he carries that on as a hologram after he’s gone
remains to be seen •
TIM JONZE IS AN ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR GUARDIAN CULTURE
 45
Comment is free, facts are sacred CP Scott 1918

ROKHAYA DIALLO
She’s French –
but clearly not
French enough
Page 47 

H E A LT H
I advised US on the next pandemic.
But what I learned is alarming
Devi Sridhar
FRANK AUGSTEIN/AP
‚
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
46 Opinion
our years on from the first Covid
lockdown, life feels to be largely back
to normal, although legacies of the
pandemic remain. Collective amnesia
seems to have set in. Politicians seem
eager to move forward and not relive
the decisions, delays and deaths that
characterised public policy and press
briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when
Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people
worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy
to decline in 84% of countries. Pandemics aren’t a one-
off event. There’s still a risk of another happening within
our lifetimes.
Fortunately, what to do about the next pandemic is
still very much at the top of the global health agenda. In
2021, I was asked to co-chair the US National Academy
of Sciences’ committee on advancing pandemic and
seasonal influenza vaccine preparedness and response.
This group was sponsored by the US government
to provide recommendations on how to improve
preparedness for influenza, which is seen as one of the
most likely candidates for the next pandemic. I was
also involved with the Lancet Covid-19 taskforce,
which brought together global experts to look at how
to improve on the Covid response, and what challenges
there were going forward. These groups represent
some of the world’s best thinkers on global health and
pandemic preparedness. Here’s what I learned.
First, most governments are working towards the
100-day challenge: that is, how to contain a virus
spreading while a scientific response, such as a vaccine,
diagnostic or treatment, can be approved, manufactured
and delivered to the public. In the US, the suggested
timeframe is 130 days from detecting a pathogen until
the entire US population is offered a vaccine, and 200
days until there’s enough of a supply for the entire world.
The strategic learning here from Covid-19 is to plan for
maximum suppression of a new disease until there’s a
tool to make it less deadly, and faster and wider delivery
of treatments. I wonder how many could have survived
had governments found a way to buy time and delay
infections in their populations until mass vaccination.
But this kind of plan is easier said than done. The
first requirement is to invest in and create “plug-and-
play platforms”, which mean new medical products
are pretty much ready to be created once the genetic
sequence of a pathogen is identified. Think of this like
a video game console that is ready to go, and is simply
waiting for the new cartridge (the specifics of the
In meetings I’ve been in,
the sentiment is one of
frustration as political
priorities have shifted
away from public health
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
pathogen) to be inserted. Influenza already works like
this, with existing vaccine platforms ready to be tweaked
to address a new strain relatively quickly. To make this
faster, we need appropriate surveillance in all parts
of the world to detect if a new virus is spreading, and
to genetically sequence it. Ebola spread in Guinea for
several months in 2014 before anyone knew it was the
Ebola virus and not something else.
Second, we need to work out how to keep the rigour of
clinical trials, which test for safety, efficacy and optimal
dosage, while moving fast enough to approve treatments
that can affect the trajectory of a pandemic. Going too
fast can undermine trust in a medical product, which
is why there’s a strict approval process by government
agencies, which require phase 1, 2 and 3 trials to ensure
safety, identify side-effects and the impact of the
intervention on immune response, and ensure hundreds
of people are included, with a range of characteristics
such as age, gender, physical health and racial
background. These trials can take months, if not years.
Even if all goes to plan on the scientific side, trying
to delay a virus – especially one that is respiratory –
spreading from human to human for 100 days is no easy
task. Shutdowns are an extreme policy response, and a
lever that many governments used in 2020 when faced
with healthcare collapse. We now have time to develop
better ways of containment and examine how to safely
keep schools and businesses open using more precise
public health interventions, including on knowledge
of transmission (such as more ventilation), diagnostics
(testing for infectiousness) and better data (surveillance
on prevalence in the community).
These are the challenges facing experts as we try
to plan for a future pandemic. However, progress is
stalling. In the meetings I’ve attended, the sentiment
is one of frustration as political priorities have shifted
away from public health. In the US, President Joe Biden
has been actively engaged in global health security, and
his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, invited several
experts – including myself – to brief him directly on
post-Covid-19 response. However, Biden now faces
re-election and a fight against Donald Trump, who did
not show any interest in this issue during his presidency.
Here in the UK, it feels difficult to
Devi Sridhar make the case for a potential pathogen
is chair of global when the NHS is falling apart.
public health at It reminds me of a meeting we held
the University of in 2019 at Edinburgh University on
Edinburgh how best to convince low- and middle-
income countries to take pandemic
preparedness seriously. The response from ministers in
these countries was that they were more concerned with
getting basic healthcare to their populations rather than
face up to the prospect of existential threats. Sadly, the
UK is falling into this camp: it’s hard to make convincing
arguments about investing to protect against risks in
the future when people are today facing delays in life-
saving cancer treatment, long waits for ambulances and
inaccessible GP appointments. But pretending we won’t
face another pandemic threat in our lifetimes is naive at
best. Surely, there must be a way to do both? •

FR ANCE
No medals for guessing
why Aya Nakamura
is not French enough
Rokhaya Diallo
ince the start of her career, Aya
Nakamura has faced setbacks,
discrimination and harassment. She is
the most-listened-to French-speaking
artist in the world, and the only
woman to feature in the country’s top
20 bestselling albums of 2023. When
she announced two concerts at the
legendary Bercy arena in Paris last year, tickets sold out
in 15 minutes – unprecedented for a French-speaking
artist. Yet from shows where presenters struggle to
pronounce her name to public debate about the way
she uses a mixture of French and other languages in her
lyrics, the French-Malian singer can, it seems, never be
judged solely on her music. When speculation appeared
in the media that the French president Emmanuel
Macron had asked Nakamura to sing at the opening
ceremony for this year’s Paris Olympics, a backlash from
the far right was in some ways predictable.
Anxiety is running high about the readiness of the
City of Light to host the games. In this context, even an
unconfirmed rumour gave some people the opportunity
they craved to whip up antagonism about a Black French
performer’s right to call herself French. The suggestion
that Nakamura had talked to the president about
performing an Edith Piaf number was greeted as an
added provocation.
Far-right politicians turned the discussion into an
BERTRAND GUAY/
outraged narrative about how a Black woman from the
AFP/GETTY banlieues could appropriate La Vie en Rose or any of the
47
cherished repertoire of a national treasure such as Piaf.
Éric Zemmour, who stood on a far-right ticket in the
2022 presidential elections (and has previously been
convicted of racist hate speech), said he could hear only
a “foreign language” in Nakamura’s songs. An extreme-
right faction that calls itself Les Natifs unfurled a banner
on the banks of the Seine, declaring: “No way Aya! This
is Paris, not the Bamako market.”
This episode could be explained away as just another
example of the controversies routinely deployed by
culture warriors on the French far right to score political
points. But this feels different because hostilities to
Nakamura seem to extend even further. According to
one poll, 73% of French people think that Nakamura
does not represent “French” music, while 63% oppose
the idea of her headlining at the opening ceremony.
That says a lot about the inability of many French
people, including many who would deny that they are
racist, to imagine France being represented by a person
of colour.
When I interviewed Nakamura last year for GQ
France, she told me that she could feel the visceral
“disgust” she aroused among people who are not used
to seeing “girls like me” in public roles.
It is not the first time that a prominent Black figure
has faced a racist backlash over a role that involves
representing France. In 2016, the
Rokhaya rapper Black M was set to perform for
Diallo is a the commemoration of the centenary
Guardian Europe of the Battle of Verdun. The show had
columnist to be cancelled, after what the mayor
of Verdun called a surge of hate and
racism driven by the far right. Christiane Taubira, the
first Black woman to become France’s justice minister,
was repeatedly targeted by the most crude racial
insults. Pap Ndiaye, the first Black minister of education
– a short-lived career – endured an incredible surge of
racism from the moment of his appointment.
France appears to have a problem with people of colour
who become successful or who reach positions of
influence. They seem to elicit deep resentment – even
more so if they wear their achievements with pride.
Nakamura’s public persona is unapologetic, which
may be why she draws such a hostile reaction in a
country that tends to demand humility and gratitude
from minorities. As a beauty brand ambassador, she
challenges the classical image of the Parisienne, making
tall and dark-skinned features mainstream instead.
Almost as punishment, her words are policed and her
lyrics are made fun of. It reminds me of the attitudes
that prevailed when colonial France’s mission was to
“civilise savages”.
Nakamura is unique because she is an artist of
colour who has succeeded on her own terms. Her
very existence challenges white supremacy
and its central idea that people of colour should
remain on the margins.
Some of us have long argued that France is unwilling
to accord people of colour the status they deserve.
The Nakamura controversy confirms just how deeply
entrenched that refusal really is •
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
48 Opinion
UNITED
KINGDOM Garrick row shows up
the dinosaurs desperate
to shut women out
Gaby Hinslif f
ast week, the woman likely to become
Britain’s first female chancellor was
invited to give a lecture at the heart
of the economic establishment. And
in it, Rachel Reeves briefly paid credit
to a woman who went before her. Not
Margaret Thatcher – Reeves came
more to bury than to praise her – but
Mary Paley Marshall, the pioneering economist who in
1874 became one of the first two women allowed to sit
her finals at Newnham College, Cambridge, in what was
then called moral sciences.
PA/SIPA/AP/REUTERS/
ZUMA/SHUTTERSTOCK/
Though Marshall passed with flying colours and went
REX/GUARDIAN DESIGN on to lecture in economics at Cambridge, she was never
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
awarded a degree, because those were only for men.
So jealously was this privilege guarded that almost two
decades later, proposals to award degrees to women
sparked a riot. A hostile mob of male students threw
eggs, let off fireworks, started a bonfire in the street and
marched on the all-female Newnham College.
Staggeringly, it was 1948 before Cambridge began
formally awarding degrees to women and 1988 before
its last all-male college, Magdalene, grudgingly voted
to admit them. And even then, some students paraded
around in black armbands as if something important
had died. But it was the Oxford and Cambridge Club that
held out longest; women with Oxbridge degrees could
not become full members of a club that exists only for
Oxbridge degree holders until 1996. Until then, men who
scraped thirds were favoured over women with firsts.
When men wonder why women won’t just let them
have their cosy little clubs in peace, one answer is
that we fear the mentality those cosy little clubs can
sometimes produce. Which brings us to the defiantly
all-male Garrick Club, and the list of members published
last week by the Guardian.
The classic gentlemen’s club defence is that it’s just
more relaxing to socialise without the opposite sex
around; that they’re little different from a girls’ night
out or a men’s Sunday five-a-side game. That might be
 Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust

more convincing, however, if the average girls’ night out

involved hitting the prosecco with a couple of cabinet
ministers, a swathe of senior judges, the head of MI6,
Varadkar’s political touch
several A-list actors and a monarch.

What on earth are the levelling up secretary, Michael

deserted him – but he stood
Gove, and the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden,
doing in a men-only club in 2024?
Simon Case, the head of the civil service, explained
f irm against Brexit’s threat

L
when challenged by the select committee chair Liam eo Varadkar’s liberal, Mr Varadkar was a
Byrne to justify his Garrick membership that he was resignation as Fine generational trailblazer who
trying to “make the change from within”. Sadly for the Gael leader and Irish has now become the youngest
future of feminism, he has now resigned, which just taoiseach was as close ex-taoiseach. As the leader
leaves the task of reforming Whitehall from within. to a total surprise as modern who presided over Ireland’s
No doubt we’ll hear all about that when he appears politics is capable of springing. successful abortion legalisation
before the Covid inquiry, which has shown keen He is 45 and seems in robust referendum in 2018, he was
interest in allegations of “macho posturing” and rank health. Ireland’s economy is in seen as emblematic of a new
misogyny inside Downing Street. comparatively resilient shape. and less conservative Ireland.
Robert Chote, former head of the Office for Budget There is another year to run Britain’s 2016 vote for Brexit
Responsibility, has also quit the club. Richard Moore, for the three-party coalition. overshadowed Mr Varadkar’s
who as head of MI6 has led a diversity drive, also And, while his political touch relations with both Belfast
resigned, only to be branded a wimp by an anonymous had seemed to desert him in and London. He was seen
Garrick member in the Daily Mail. The club, the the two recent referendum with outright prejudice and
unnamed correspondent huffed, is merely a place for campaigns, he had not seemed suspicion by many Northern
men to “exchange ideas and learn from each other under imminent threat. Ireland unionists and by some
without being cancelled for having the “wrong opinion”. Mr Varadkar said his reasons in the Tory party. “Typical
Based on that description, the Garrick may not be were “personal and political, Indian,” said the former Ulster
knocked down in the rush if it ever does invite women but mainly political”. This Unionist MP Lord Kilclooney.
to join, though it would be an interesting place for the implies he meant it when he “Why isn’t he called Murphy
equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, to continue her said that he was “no longer like the rest of them?” Boris
crusade against corporate diversity initiatives. the best person” for the job Johnson was alleged to have
When women have so many of securing the re-election sneered. A Belfast newspaper
Gaby Hinsliff bigger battles to fight, a large part of the coalition with Fianna dubbed Mr Varadkar “the
is a Guardian of me admittedly struggles to care Fáil and the Greens next greenest taoiseach in decades”.
columnist about a few old buffers snoozing in March. Mr Varadkar has been Yet Mr Varadkar stood up
their armchairs. grappling with healthcare and both to the unionists and to
I can still remember the relief, as a young lobby housing crises, and lost the London. It is in no small way
reporter, when female MPs started pushing back referendums. But it is possible down to him that there is
against Westminster’s culture of evening boozing and the problem of burnout in now no hard border between
schmoozing. I didn’t really want to spend my evenings modern 24/7 politics may have north and south. It is his
in the beery fug of the Strangers’ Bar any more than they claimed another victim. genuine legacy that the revised
did; and doing business in the daytime left evenings free Simon Harris, the education Northern Ireland protocol
to see your real friends – or get home in time to see the minister, emerged rapidly remains the basis of UK-Irish
kids while they were still awake. as both Fine Gael leader and trade relations, in spite of
But there was, and still is, a cost in politics to being taoiseach. At 37, he is an even perfidious efforts in Belfast and
deemed “not clubbable”, or unwilling to spend endless younger taoiseach than Mr London to overturn it.
nights sucking up to people who might one day be Varadkar was in 2017. With Sinn Mr Varadkar’s resignation
useful. No matter how effective you are from nine to five, Féin still leading the national may offer the prospect of a
there was, and still is, a penalty in many professions to polls, and with Fine Gael and fresh start in relations between
skipping the five to nine: that fuzzy, early-evening area Fianna Fáil well adrift, he the newly re-established
of winding-down drinks after work, optional events faces an uphill task. The first Northern Ireland executive in
and trading inside gossip. big test will come in European Belfast, under Michelle O’Neill
For the problem with power is that it retreats. Force parliament elections in June. and Emma Little-Pengelly,
the door to the room where everything happens, and Nevertheless, Mr Varadkar’s and Dublin, but that may
power slips away through a side door into a room you departure is more than just be premature. A long-term
didn’t know existed. As the visible professional sphere another political roll of the reset in UK-Irish relations
becomes more accessible not just to women but to all dice. He may not have always is much needed. But it will
those previously underrepresented, the value of these commanded Irish politics, have to await the outcomes of
hidden spaces, exclusive to white men, may increase. It’s but he has been its highest elections in both Britain and
not that we’re necessarily desperate to get into your club. profile figure, including to Ireland, particularly if Sinn
It’s more that we learned the hard way to be suspicious the outside world. Gay, mixed Féin becomes part of a new
of men who want to keep us out • race, economically and socially government in Dublin •

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

50 Opinion
Letters
WRITE Time for Germany to
TO US step up on Ukraine
Simon Tisdall’s
assessment of Germany
(Germany’s renown as a
Letters for leader is in tatters when
publication
Europe needs it most,
weekly.letters@
Opinion, 15 March) is right
theguardian.com
— in saying that German
Please include a leadership is really rather
full postal address non-existent at present,
and a reference and that this ought to
to the article. change – fast.
We may edit letters. Germany needs to
Submission and untangle itself from its
publication of all obsessive austerity laws,
letters is subject and increase its defence
to our terms and
budget considerably. It
conditions, see:
THEGUARDIAN.COM/
needs to get tougher on
LET TERS-TERMS Russia, and it needs to
give more weaponry to
Editorial Ukraine. If it doesn’t do
Editor: Graham this, it isn’t leading.
Snowdon It is absurd that a
Guardian Weekly, country in the heart of
Kings Place, Europe, with a population
90 York Way, of 85 million and the
London N1 9GU, world’s fourth largest
UK
economy, should be doing
so little on important
To contact the
editor directly:
matters surrounding
editorial.feedback defence of its allies. It
@theguardian.com shouldn’t be left to Poland
and France to champion
Corrections Nato in Europe.
Our policy is to Sebastian Monblat
correct significant Surbiton, England, UK
errors as soon as
possible. Please Russia still has a strategic
write to guardian.
toe in the Baltic sea
readers@
Sweden is now in Nato
theguardian.com
or the readers’ but that does not make
editor, Kings Place, the Baltic Sea an entirely
90 York Way, “Nato sea” (Global report,
London N1 9GU, 15 March). Russia has
UK naval bases in Kaliningrad
and St Petersburg. If
Putin decides to invade
the Baltics, he will most
likely first attack Poland to
close the Suwalki Gap, the
only land-link between
the Baltics and other Nato
countries. If it is blocked
by Russia, Nato would
have to defend the Baltics
by air and by sea: the Baltic
Sea, not a “Nato sea”.
Reiner Jaakson
Oakville, Ontario, Canada
• It defies comprehension
that megalomaniacs such
as Putin seem unaware
that their policies and
statements are a joke with
the outside world (Putin
triumphant as he claims
biggest ever vote, Global
report, 22 March).
A “Putin election”
could easily enter the
world lexicon as the exact
opposite of democracy.
Unfortunately the body
count of the opposition is
so chilling that we can’t
dismiss him as a clown,
but history’s opinion will
bring some belated justice.
Alan Swafford
Takaka, New Zealand
Christian role in slavery
known before Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta was not
the first of many Africans
(and a few Europeans)
who recognised church
involvement in the legacy
of slavery and colonialism
long ago (Letters,
15 March). For example,
in a 1902 sermon, the
influential Nigerian Rev
Dr Mojola Agbebi said:
“European Christianity is
a dangerous thing. What
do you think of a religion
… which points with
one hand to the skies,
bidding you ‘lay up for
yourselves treasures in
heaven’, and while you are
looking up grasps all your
worldly goods with the
other hand, seizes your
ancestral lands, labels
your forests and places
your patrimony under
inexplicable legislations?”
Lindy Moore
Holywell, Wales, UK
Biden must point out he’s
surrounded by experts
Regardless of his age, Joe
Biden should reassure the
US electorate that, like
any effective leader, he
surrounds himself with
experts and relies on their
wise counsel to make
smart decisions (Most
voters think Biden too old
to be effective president,
Global report, 8 March).
Only a fool would hire
gullible yes men and
expect anything other
than a disaster.
Andrew Lugton
London, England, UK
Language not intent sank
the Irish referendums
Instead of lamenting
the result of the Irish
referendums (A big no, no,
Spotlight, 15 March), we
should be congratulating
the Irish people on their
good sense and judgment.
While endorsing the
intention behind the
attempted reforms, the
way in which the first was
framed would, if carried,
have led to a lawyer’s
feast. It would lead to
fortunes being made and
enormous sums of public
treasure being expended
on court cases seeking
particular interpretations
of the meaning of ,
“durable relationships”.
John Raby
Kenmore, Queensland,
Australia
How many more ‘idiots’ in
the Tory ranks?
“I don’t think we have 53
idiots in the party,” says
a former minister in your
report (Racism row leaves
Sunak weaker than ever,
Spotlight, 22 March).
I wholeheartedly agree.
Judging by the standards
and conduct of many
ministers, I’m sure the
figure is much higher.
Rick Kempster
Waterlooville, England, UK
• Perhaps the
Conservatives are
postponing the election
until later in the year
so more people can
have a turn at being
prime minister?
Lesley Edgar
Preston, England, UK
COR R ECTIONS
The feature Facing Arizona
(22 March) should have
reported that it was the
state senate, not the
“state legislature”, that
sponsored the audit of
votes in Maricopa county.

A WEEK
IN VENN
DI AGR A MS
Edith Pritchett

The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024

 51
Film, music, art, books & more

VISUAL ARTS
Has Damien
Hirst jumped
the shark?
Page 54 

A laughing matter
Steve Martin was comedy’s f irst megastar. As a f ilm about his life
is released, he talks about glorious highs and humiliating lows

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

52 Culture
Screen
didn’t expect Steve Martin to be funny. Sure,
it was his skewwhiff sensibility that made The
Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, LA Story and
Bowfinger so deliriously inspired. And he was
comedy’s first double-platinum-record-selling,
stadium-touring megastar. He crafted riotous
slapstick crescendos in All of Me and Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels and displayed a literary
INTERVIEW flair even at his silliest. No one who has seen Roxanne,
By Ryan Gilbey the modern-day interpretation of Edmond Rostand’s
COVER Cyrano de Bergerac that found Martin investing his comedy
PHOTOGRAPH with emotional weight for the first time, will dispute the
Rick Wenner Edward-Lear-like genius of the line “earn more sessions
by sleeving”.
But when he isn’t starring in the crime-comedy series
Only Murders in the Building, which he co-created, he is
a serious sort. He writes plays, makes bluegrass records,
collects art – knows everything about art, in fact. (He once
sold an Edward Hopper for almost $27m.) Now, he is the
subject of Steve! (Martin), a two-part, three-hour-plus
survey of his life and career from the Oscar-winning docu-
mentary supremo Morgan Neville. The chance today of
MGM/KOBAL/REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK; APPLE
laughs looks low.
TV+; LARRY HULST/ But blow me down if the first thing out of his mouth
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/
GETTY; HBO/HULU; isn’t a gag.
CINETEXT/SPORTSPHOTO/
ALLSTAR; AQUARIUS /
All I have done is ask him and Neville, who are speaking
COLOMBIA; CBS to me from separate locations via a video call, whether they
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
• Pennies From • Performing • Martin’s first
Heaven, with in Sacramento, starring role, in
Bernadette Peters c1975 The Jerk in 1979
• Playing banjo • A shot from • The Man With
in a scene from Only Murders in Two Brains in
Steve! (Martin) the Building 1983
can hear me clearly. “I’m not sure,” says Martin. “It sounds
like you have some kind of British accent on mine.”
The 78-year-old actor is in his New York City apartment,
a heaving bookcase and mint-coloured sofa behind him,
peering at his screen through brown-framed glasses.
Why did he agree to make the documentary? “You can’t
analyse your own life and work,” Martin says. “I know what
it looks like on the inside: a big mess, a big jumble. But how
about from the outside?” What did he learn? “Well, I’ve only
seen it once. I’ll know what to think when other people look
at it. The one thing I did after I watched it was to call Morgan
and say: ‘Shouldn’t you have mentioned the awards?’”
Neville is a lifelong fan. “I didn’t totally get what Steve
was doing when I was a kid, but there’s an absurdity you
respond to,” he says from his home in Pasadena, California.
“Once you grow up, you see the sophistication as well.”
What did he need from Martin for the documentary to work?
“He had to be open. And it became clear from our initial
meeting that he was genuinely curious about his life.”

The first half of Steve! (Martin) covers Martin’s childhood,
his teenage job in the Disneyland magic shop, his innova-
tive early standup, all the way up to when he made his
leap from stadiums to screen with The Jerk in 1979 – then
quit live comedy. In the second half, we get the rest of the
story, including the failures and disappointments that pre-
ceded his present professional and domestic bliss. (He has
been married since 2007 to Anne Stringfield, who used to
factcheck his pieces at the New Yorker magazine.)
The film’s title, with its razzle-dazzle exclamation mark,
reflects Martin’s shtick as a one-man showbiz parody. “It’s
the phoney self-aggrandising position I’ve held my whole
life,” he says.
As the documentary illustrates, Martin’s live act was
an avant garde experiment in sustaining jokes without
discharging their tension. He realised that if he didn’t
give audiences the customary signposts of comedy (feed
line, payoff ), they would have to pick their own place to
laugh and the humour might never climax.
His confected self-belief, his facade of
arrogance even as he stood on stage with a
plastic arrow through his head, made him
invulnerable.
I know what
The ironic embrace of showbiz extended my life looks
to his treatment of fans. At the height of his
70s fame, he carried with him a set of cards
like on the
on which was printed: “This certifies that inside: a big
you have had a personal encounter with me
and that you found me warm, polite, intel-
mess, a big
ligent and funny. Steve Martin.” jumble. How
Mentioning it brings a smile to his face.
“The card had a signature printed on it,” he about from
says. “I’d give them out, but people would the outside?
just be puzzled. Then they’d ask me to sign
it, so it didn’t really work.”
It must have been odd for him, in the
70s, to be deconstructing showbiz conventions only to be
• With Daryl embraced by the establishment. Steve! (Martin) features a
Hannah in clip of Sammy Davis Jr hugging him on The Tonight Show.
Roxanne “I felt so proud,” he says. “And then I found out that Sammy
hugged everyone.”
• On Johnny Did it feel as if he had been anointed? “I didn’t think of
Cash and Friends it as anointing, because if you’re anointed tonight, you
in 1976 can be dumped on tomorrow.” Only as he is mid-answer
do I appreciate the supreme pleasure of hearing him say
“anointed” in that primly precise diction, just as he did in
The Man With Two Brains while reciting Pointy Birds by
the fictional writer John Lillison, AKA England’s greatest
one-armed poet: “O pointy birds / O pointy-pointy / Anoint
my head / Anointy-nointy.”
Martin worries that accepting acclaim today means
looking foolish tomorrow. Jerry Seinfeld refers to him
in Steve! (Martin) as “the most idolised comedian ever”.
Martin says Seinfeld’s comment “makes me cringe. Idola-
try is so fleeting. When I was a kid, there was this come-
Then and now dian, Joe Penner, whose catchphrase was: ‘Wanna buy a
The documentary duck?’ If you said: ‘Wanna buy a duck?’ everybody would
chronicles fall down laughing. And now it’s embarrassing. So I don’t
Martin’s meteoric invest too much in that stuff.”
rise in part one, Part of his humility must come from the way he was
while part two treated by his father, Glenn, a real estate salesman with
focuses on thwarted showbiz ambitions. In Born Standing Up, Martin
the present recounts instances of physical abuse. When Martin first
APPLE TV+ appeared as a host on Saturday Night Live – a position
53
he would occupy a further 15 times – his father wrote a
negative review of the performance in the newsletter of
the Newport Beach Association of Realtors. Immediately
after the premiere of The Jerk, Glenn said his son was “no
Charlie Chaplin”.
Of course, he was wrong. In his pomp, Martin really was
one of modern comedy’s closest equivalents to Chaplin.
“Absolutely!” agrees Neville. “This will make Steve blush,
but he was a cultural phenomenon.”
Neville sees Martin as “the ultimate puzzle-solver. It’s
in everything he does, from magic to standup to playing
the banjo. He never sits back and says: ‘That was great.’ It’s
always: ‘How do I make it better?’”
Having committed in Steve! (Martin) to showing low
points as well as highlights, it was incumbent on Neville
to feature the infamous clip of the British comic Paul Kaye,
in the guise of the irksome celebrity-insulting hobgoblin
Dennis Pennis, ambushing Martin on the red carpet in 1996.
“It was nasty,” says Neville. “And I wanted to
show how the world judges you when all you’re
trying to do is be creative.”
It’s still painful to watch an evidently weary
Martin deciding to oblige after he clocks the BBC
logo on Kaye’s microphone. “What’s the ques-
tion?” he asks good-naturedly, only for Kaye to
deliver the killer blow: “How come you’re not
funny any more?” Martin then turns back to the
throng, fatigued and deflated, and continues his
dead-man-walking trudge past photographers.
“It hurt because I was at a very vulnerable
moment in my career,” he says. It took place
at the premiere of Sgt Bilko, which might be
Martin’s worst movie. He had turned down the
lead role in The Birdcage to make it, only for
that gay comedy to become a $185m worldwide
smash while Sgt Bilko limped towards a $38m
lifetime gross.
Martin hasn’t crossed paths with Kaye since then. Before
I go, however, I mention that the line has come back to
haunt Kaye: he has said it is now the one thing strangers
say to him in the street. Hearing this, Martin tips back his
head and lets out an almighty laugh, warm and rich, yet
curiously lacking in schadenfreude. “I hold no grudges,”
he says. “Things have gone well.” •
RYAN GILBEY WRITES ABOUT FILM AND THEATRE FOR THE
GUARDIAN
Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in Two Pieces is on
AppleTV+ from 29 March
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
54 Culture
Visual arts
P
C OM M E N TA RY erhaps we should have pity for
Damien Hirst. Artistic decline is
a terrible fate, even if you have
immense wealth to cushion the blow.
Damien Hirst What artist, what person, wants to think all the
good stuff is in the past? But Hirst apparently
does think that. He could hardly confess it
has sawn his more clearly than by pre-dating formaldehyde
animal sculptures made in 2017 to the 1990s, as
electrifying whistleblowers have revealed to the Guardian.
The young Damien Hirst lived fast and
thought constantly about death. At 16 he posed
past in half for a photo with a severed head in a Leeds
morgue. As an emerging artist he came up
with a totally new spin on the ancient theme
of the memento mori by putting dead animals,
The pioneering British including a four-metre-long tiger shark, in
tanks of formaldehyde and exhibiting them as
artist changed my life – but art. Dry, dusty disputes over whether ready-
by creating new works and made objects can be art paled into irrelevance
backdating them to his before Hirst’s reminders of our fleshy fragility
– and for a generation that had grown up with
nineties golden era, he has Jaws it was a nightmare come to life.
cast doubt on his legacy It was Hirst that came into my mind, not
Rembrandt, as I paced the hospital where my
By Jonathan Jones mum was having heart surgery in the 1990s. I
have told Hirst that. I also truthfully told him
that he helped inspire me to become an art
critic. That shark changed my life.
Can I tell the difference in quality and
significance between Cain and Abel’s two
calves side by side, “brothers” kept apart in
their separate tanks, which Hirst dates to 1994,
▲ In a pickle and actual works from that period including
Damien Hirst Mother and Child (Divided) which won him
in front of the 1995 Turner Prize? No, since one pickled
Myth Explored, beast really does look like another. Hirst now
Explained, claims that some of the dates he gave his
Exploded in formaldehyde works denote the year they
Hong Kong, 2017 were made, while others relate to the year of
K Y CHENG/SOUTH CHINA
conception. Yet the baffling time shift threaten
MORNING POST/GETTY to poison Hirst’s whole artistic biography.
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
Hirst says the dating of a conceptual
artwork represents the date of conception, and
that there is no industry standard. But let’s be
clear, this is very far from standard practice,
even in conceptual art. In fact, because so
much of it is ephemeral and has to be remade
for museums and exhibitions, conceptual art is
particularly keen on accuracy and detail. This
long tradition of careful dating of such art was
established by none other than the inventor
of conceptualism and the ready-made, Marcel
Duchamp, who “chose” ordinary objects as
art before the first world war. By the time he
became pop-star famous in the 1960s, his
legendary ready-mades such as the bicycle
wheel, snow shovel and urinal were long lost.
So he authorised replicas – but each is honestly
catalogued as such. Hirst followed this proper
Duchampian precedent himself when he made
a new version of Mother and Child (Divided):
on the Tate website it is carefully described as
“exhibition copy 2007 (original 1993)”.
Hirst has leapt into truly bizarre territory
by showing new works with dates which
indicate to anyone remotely familiar with
artistic convention that they were made more
than two decades earlier than they were. Two
decades – that’s another artistic lifetime. What
was he thinking? One clue could be his show
Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable,
which opened in Venice in the same year, 2017.
It comprised a spectacular museum of fakes;
a deadpan, fabricated assembly of armour,
jewels and erotic statues purporting to be from
ancient civilisations. It was his best exhibition
this century, absurdly kitsch and mind-
boggling but also witty. Did it sow the idea to
intervene in his own timeline?
What he’s done feels to me like a bitter
private joke, not just on the art world – which
probably deserves it – but on history itself.
Hirst’s formaldehyde animals will always
be part of the story of late 20th-century
Britain. Or so I assumed. Now he has not just
raised questions about the origins of his back
catalogue but also destroyed any belief we
might cling to in his creative future.
Today, Hirst paints dreadful seascapes
and gardens and plays pointless games
with digital tokens and the market. His
creation of sculptures that are backdated
to his younger, better days reveals an artist
who’s so comfortably numb he can meditate
philosophically on his own creative death.
“What was so different about me then?” he
seems to be asking, like a horror story by
Henry James or Oscar Wilde in which the ghost
of a cynical, exhausted old master haunts
his young, brilliant self. But you can never go
back. By doing so, the talentless older Hirst has
pissed all over his youth. This is a parable of
some sort, and a devastating one.
JONATHAN JONES WRITES ON ART
FOR THE GUARDIAN
 Culture 55
Visual arts

Alabama
cemeteries of the formerly enslaved are buried
under highways, shopping malls or car parks.
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-
profit organisation that already runs the Legacy
Museum and National Memorial for Peace and

remembers Justice in Montgomery, seeks to close this gap

with the 7-hectare site built for an estimated $12m
to $15m. Visitors can arrive by boat on the same
waters that once trafficked enslaved people, then
step inside 170-year-old dwellings from cotton
plantations as well as recreations of holding pens
and railway carriages.

The Freedom Monument
Sculpture Park in the state’s
capital city is an expansive
experience that aims to
pay an honest tribute to the
horrors of enslavement
By David Smith
 Storytellers
Images from
the Freedom
Monument
Sculpture Park
VASHA HUNT/AP; EQUAL
JUSTICE INITIATIVE ⁄
HUMAN PICTURES
‘T
he morning after our whipping, we
all had to go to work, as if nothing
had happened. I was so sore I could
hardly do anything,” recalled James
Matthews, who, like many enslaved people after
a severe whipping, ran away into the woods. “I
have known a great many who never came back;
they were whipped so bad they never got well,
but died in the woods, and their bodies have been
found by people hunting. White men come in
sometimes with collars and chains and bells,
which they had taken from dead slaves.”
This quotation from Matthews’s Recollections
of Slavery by a Runaway Slave (1838) appears on
a panel in the woodland setting of the Freedom
Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery,
Alabama, a seamless blend of art and history that
opened on the banks of the Alabama River this
week. It is one of many first-person accounts that
serve as a rebuke to historical amnesia, to deletion
by indifference. The park’s artefacts and sculp-
tures and its climactic monument are a radical
act of remembrance rooted in a sense of place.
Tracing the memory of the 10 million Black
people enslaved in America can feel like a succes-
sion of absences. Plantations survive but with a
built environment that makes it hard to avoid the
centrality of the enslaver. Countless graves and
Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the EJI,
says in an interview: “We’ve done a poor job in
America of reckoning with our history of slavery.
There just aren’t places people can go and have an
honest encounter with that history that centres
on the lives of enslaved people … I do hope that
people will come here and be sobered by the his-
tory but also inspired by the people who survived,
endured, persevered and went on to commit to
building an America that has so much potential.”
The river is the first artefact. Forming just north
of Montgomery, it was bordered by plantations
and forced labour camps and traversed for dec-
ades by boats carrying enslaved people. To be
trafficked south by steamship was to be “sold
down the river”. Visitors follow a path through
the sculpture park’s trees and survey art in an
evocative natural landscape. Eva Oertli and Beat
Huber’s 2014 concrete sculpture, The Caring
Hand, presents five giant fingers protruding from
the earth around a tree as the river flows beyond.
It is one of several pieces that achieve the
monumentality the space demands. At the
entrance, Simone Leigh’s Brick House is a 5-metre-
tall bronze bust of a Black woman without eyes
and a torso combining the forms of a skirt and a
clay house. The Ghanaian sculptor Kwame

Akoto-Bamfo’s bronze We Am Very Cold

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

56 Culture
Visual arts
depicts figures contorted as if in a perpetual storm.
David Tanych’s steel Free at Last is a 2.4-metre-
diameter ball with a giant chain and open shackle.
Brad Spencer’s From the Ground Up depicts a
life-size man, woman and child made of brick. An
accompanying panel notes that the tiny finger-
prints of enslaved children who turned bricks
as they dried can be seen today on the bricks of
historic buildings in Charleston, South Carolina.
For more than three centuries enslavers often
decided what enslaved people were called; the
US census recorded them only with a number.
After the civil war, 4 million newly freed Black
people were able to formally record a surname in
the 1870 census. All 122,000 of these surnames
are inscribed on the National Monument to Free-
dom, a 13-metre-tall, 48-metre-long wall angled
like an open book, its concrete clad with a bronze-
gold metal facade that changes with the light.
There is no more fitting venue for the park than
Montgomery, capital of Alabama and crucible of
American contradictions. It has witnessed one of
the most conspicuous slave trading communities
in the nation but also an act of courage by Rosa
Parks that ignited the civil rights movement.
On a 2.4-hectare rise overlooking the city,
Stevenson built a memorial to more than 4,400
Black people killed in racial terror lynchings
between 1877 and 1950. But this is a city where
the Alabama state capitol still features a heroic
monument to the Confederacy, the breakaway
southern states that fought to preserve slavery.
The Legacy Museum,
▼ Hold on which opened in 2018 and
The Caring Hand, moved to a new, greatly
by Eva Oertli expanded building on the
and Beat Huber site of a former cotton ware-
house three years later, has
few original artefacts but draws a compelling line
from slavery to mass incarceration through nar-
rative, interactive, newspaper excerpts, photos,
statistics, videos, works of art and imagination.
Now it is the turn of the Freedom Monument
Sculpture Park to make the intangible tangible.
Stevenson says: “The existence and emergence of
these truth-telling spaces allows us to say, look, if
we can do this in Montgomery, there’s not another
place in America that can say, ‘They did that in
Montgomery but we couldn’t possibly do it here.’”
DAVID SMITH IS THE GUARDIAN’S
WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
Reviews
FILM
Robot Dreams
Dir: Pablo Berger
★★★★★
It’s an almost entirely dialogue-
free animation, captured with
pleasingly simple, almost naive 2D
character design. The warm and
disarming storytelling is bolstered
by the film’s unassuming use of
humour. But come to Robot Dreams
well stocked with tissues: Pablo
Berger’s exquisite, bittersweet,
Oscar-nominated buddy movie
about the bond between a dog and
a robot matches Spike Jonze’s Her
as one of cinema’s most devastating
and profound studies of loneliness
and the fragility of emotional
connections.
Berger has created not just one
of the finest animations of recent
years; it’s also one of the most
persuasive love letters to New York.
The time and the location are etched
in loving details into every frame,
from the period-specific graffiti
to the cultural references (Dog is
visited by a trick-or-treating sloth
dressed as Freddy Krueger), to the
East Village in-jokes. It’s a city that
is vibrantly present in the film’s
evocative sound and meticulously
captured in the background design.
But, as Dog and Robot discover, it
fully comes to life when it’s shared.
Wendy Ide Observer
Podcast of the week Wiser Than Me
Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s superlative podcast where she talks to older
(and wiser) women returns for a second season. Billie Jean King,
Patti Smith and Sally Field are among the sensational subjects
offering pure inspiration this time. Louis-Dreyfus says it has
“unbrainwashed” her thoughts on ageing. Hannah Verdier
MUSIC
Simple Minds
First Direct Arena, Leeds
★★★★☆
Simple Minds’ singer Jim Kerr has
recalled how, in the early 2000s, the
band would drive past stadiums they
used to sell out en route to playing
a club that wasn’t. Now, they’re
back in arenas, as more people
have woken up to the pioneering
brilliance of their early albums.
Meanwhile, a retooled seven-piece
line-up including two women has
brought a new energy. Sarah Brown
shares lead vocals occasionally and
Cherisse Osei is an outstanding
drummer. Decades-old songs arrive
waxed and polished, while 1995’s
Hypnotised and 2022’s Vision Thing
have a contemporary shimmer.
Opening the tour in a city Kerr
describes as “mad, but in a good
way”, the setlist otherwise draws
mostly on 1980s glories but delights
both fans of Simple Minds’ chart
reign and post-punk era. The band
hit the ground running with a triple
whammy of Waterfront, Love Song
and The American. Big hits include
Once Upon a Time, an inevitable
Alive and Kicking and Belfast
Child. They dig deepest into their
catalogue for 1979’s Premonition
and 1980’s This Fear of Gods, which
sound thrillingly dark, mysterious,
esoteric and European.
As teenagers from Glasgow tower
blocks, Kerr and guitarist Charlie
Burchill hitchhiked around the
continent and dreamed of a future
where everything was possible. Now
in their 60s, their great adventure
has obviously never stopped. As the
arm-swaying crowd’s massed “la la
la”s extend Don’t You (Forget About
Me) into a wonderfully ridiculous
10th minute, Kerr can’t resist joking:
“Hurry up, my dinner’s going cold.”
Dave Simpson
Touring Europe to 4 August
 Culture 57
Books
global conflict and political perma-crisis. But Haidt
makes his case persuasively. Earlier generations
have also grown up in the shadow of war and global
instability, he points out, and collective crises don’t
typically produce individual psychological ones.
Instead, the evidence linking mental illness to
smartphones and social media use is mounting.
The British millennium cohort study, which
followed 19,000 children born in 2000-02, found
that, among girls especially, rates of depression
rose in tandem with hours spent on social media.
Girls who spent more than five hours a day on
social media were three times more likely to
become depressed than those who didn’t use it
at all. This study alone isn’t enough to prove that
social media causes depression – but there’s more.
So why might “phone-based” childhoods have
this effect? Smartphones pull us away from our
immediate surroundings and the people closest
to us, rendering us, as the sociologist Sherry
Turkle puts it, “forever elsewhere”. Teens are
not only the most compulsive smartphone
users but they are also the most vulnerable,

A
H E A LT H , M I N D A N D B O DY t the start of the 2010s, rates of teenage partly because adolescence is a period of rapid
mental illness took a sharp upward social and emotional development. Smartphones
turn, and they have been rising ever are “experience blockers”, Haidt writes: consider
since. Among US college students, how many enriching activities were displaced
Pocket full of poison diagnoses of depression and anxiety more than when young people began spending hours a
doubled between 2010 and 2018. More worrying day online, substituting the richness of real-life
An urgent and still, in the decade to 2020 the number of emer- friendship with shallow online communication.
gency room visits for self-harm rose by 188% Social media encourages constant social com-
persuasive warning among teenage girls in the US and 48% among parison, and it can be unforgiving and cruel.
about the toll of ‘phone- boys. The suicide rate for younger adolescents also Haidt’s theory that overprotective parents are
increased, by 167% among girls and 91% among contributing to the mental health crisis is much
based childhoods’ boys. A similar trend has been observed in the UK less substantiated than his research on phones.
that miss out on many and many other western countries. The American He argues that children are “antifragile”: they
social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes this need to experience setbacks to develop resil-
enriching activities mental health crisis has been driven by the mass ience. Mollycoddled kids become defensive and
adoption of smartphones, along with the advent insecure, Haidt writes, starting to view ideas as
By Sophie McBain of social media and addictive online gaming. He dangerous and demanding safety from beliefs
calls it “the Great Rewiring of Childhood”. they find challenging. This is an argument he
Children are spending ever less time advanced in his 2018 book, The Coddling of
socialising in person and ever more time glued the American Mind, co-written with Greg Luki-
to their screens, with girls most likely to be anoff. In the years since, it has become painfully
sucked into the self-esteem crushing vortex of apparent that the groups most likely to treat
social media, and boys more likely to become ideas as dangerous are the ultra-conservatives
hooked on gaming and porn. Childhood is no who organise book bans. I agree with Haidt that
longer “play-based”, it’s “phone-based”. Haidt children ought to be given greater freedom to
believes that parents have become overprotec- play unsupervised, but he overstates his case.
tive in the offline world, delaying the age at which The Anxious Generation is nonetheless an
children are deemed safe to play unsupervised or essential read, and ought to become a foundational
run errands alone, but do too little to text for the growing movement to keep
protect children from online dangers. smartphones out of schools, and young
Haidt is a professor at New York children off social media. As well as
University and often collaborates calling for school phone bans, Haidt
with the American psychologist Jean argues governments should legally
Twenge, who was one of the first to assert that tech companies have a
attribute rising rates of mental illness duty of care to young people, the age of
among gen Z (those born in the mid to B O O K O F internet adulthood should be raised to
▲ Screen shot late 1990s) to smartphones. Sceptics of THE WEEK 16, and firms forced to institute proper
Children are this research sometimes argue young The Anxious age verification – all sensible and long
spending more people simply have more things to feel Generation overdue interventions.
time on phones anxious and depressed about, between By Jonathan Haidt SOPHIE MCBAIN IS AN ASSOCIATE
WESTEND61/GETTY climate change, rising inequality, EDITOR OF THE NEW STATESMAN

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

58 Culture
Books
FICTION
Wounds of history
The Native American
story is vividly and
painfully alive in
Tommy Orange’s
impressive follow-up
to his debut novel
By Yagnishsing Dawoor
▼ Ancestral wounds
A painting of Sand Creek massacre
FICTION
Lessons in life
A gay teacher, the
son of working-class
immigrants, struggles
with intimacy. Can
he find answers?
By Kit Fan
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
T
he Cheyenne and Arapaho author excoriates Lt Richard Henry Pratt’s “campaign-
Tommy Orange’s astonishing 2018 debut style slogan directed at the Indian problem”,
novel, There There, offered a kaleido- “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”, tracing its ruin-
scopic portrait of urban Native Ameri- ous implications for Native children who, in the
can identity. Composed of an all-Native cast, it 19th and 20th centuries, were impelled to attend
ruminated on power, storytelling, dispossession, special off-reservation boarding schools in a phi-
erasure and historical memory. The novel’s off- losophy of forced assimilation.
the-wall structure placed its central event – a mass Jude escapes the massacre but is imprisoned
shooting at an Oakland powwow – at the book’s for “crimes committed by Southern Cheyennes
end, leaving its aftermath largely unattended. against the US Army”. He spends three years in
Now comes an emotionally incandescent and a “prison-castle” in Florida, made to dress like
structurally riveting second novel, Wandering “the very kind of men some of us had seen wipe
Stars. A companion to There There, it our people out”. He learns to read
brings news about Orvil Red Feather, and write in English by memorising
who was hit by a bullet while dancing verses from the Bible, including one
at the event. It tells, too, the story about false prophets – the corrupt
of Orvil’s younger brothers Loother and doomed “wandering stars” of
and Lony; their great-aunt Opal Viola the book’s title. A generation later, his
Victoria Bear Shield, in whose care son Charles, a student at the Carlisle
they have been since losing their Wandering Indian Industrial school, will relive his
drug-addicted mother to suicide; Stars ordeals. Father and son will also share
and Jacquie Red Feather, Opal’s half- By Tommy a history of addiction – to alcohol and
sister and the boys’ estranged “real Orange opium respectively.
grandma”, a recovering alcoholic. The One character in There There asserts
novel’s first sections, however, belong not to these that “the problem with Indigenous art in general
people but to their ancestors, beginning with Jude is that it’s stuck in the past”. This sentiment
Star, a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre. resurfaces in Wandering Stars in Lony’s remark
In an impassioned prologue, Orange samples that “everyone only thinks we’re from the past,
the eliminationist rhetoric of Colonel John but then we’re here, but they don’t know we’re
Chivington, who led US army troops at the mas- still here, so then it’s like we’re in the future”.
sacre: “There were children, and then there were Orange’s achievement in these first chapters,
the children of Indians, because the merciless then, lies in his ability to distil the deep wounds
savage inhabitants of these American lands of history into intimate episodes and slices of
did not make children but nits, and nits make memory that come vividly and painfully alive, as
lice, or so it was said by the man who meant to though they were happening now, in the present.
make a massacre feel like killing bugs at Sand There are some wrenching details: incarcerated
Creek.” Orange uses the prologue to remind the Natives put on view, made to perform their Indi-
reader of language’s dual capacity for goodness geneity, selling art and curios to white people. In
and evil, and how this slippery doubleness has an episode that Jude describes as “some kind of
been wielded in the context of America’s long death”, measurements of their heads are taken
war with its Indigenous populations. Orange to demonstrate “why they were savages”.
‘O
ur People. Scattered to your four that of a caring teacher. On most fronts, he has
winds … They land, but do they grow landed on his feet. But there’s always something
where they fall?” This “half-dreamy, missing in anyone’s life, and in Kwame’s case,
half-sad” question, addressed by it’s men. His self-imposed Grindr ban has lasted
a Ghanaian father to his son Kwame, haunts eight months. Can he grow as a Black gay man
Michael Donkor’s second novel. It casts doubt on without sex and intimacy? Why is he so uptight,
the promised land of dream and opportunity that and “a master at gracious refusal”?
drives so many diasporic narratives: one where The novel’s dual timeline provides some clues.
first-generation immigrants sweat and save, so It begins in 1997, when the 10-year-old Kwame is
that the second generation enjoys a attracted to Yaw, a charismatic 22-year-
better education and life. old distant cousin from Ghana. It then
Education is key here, as Kwame is moves swiftly to 2018, when the adult
an out gay English teacher in a London Kwame prioritises work over intimacy.
state school. He has a good life – a The episodic, alternating structure is
stable job, supportive parents and col- informative, suspenseful but risky. The
leagues, a flatshare with a posh white two timelines move in tandem, so that
sommelier friend, Edwyn. As the son Grow Where the past isn’t just a prop for the present,
of working-class immigrants, he is well They Fall or vice versa. Donkor gives generous
versed in his parents’ pride and sacri- By Michael space to the young Kwame’s idolisa-
fices; he has his ears tuned to racist Donkor tion of Yaw. Idealisation rarely leads
microaggressions, while his heart is to a happy ending, and it’s to Donkor’s
 59

Meanwhile, in the topsy-turvy, post-shoot- BOOKS OF THE MONTH

ing present, Orvil is at home, recovering. A The best recent crime books and thrillers
star-shaped bullet shard is lodged in his body,
threatening to burst into his bloodstream and
poison him. His mind is busy with images of vio- By Laura Wilson Laura, an air ambulance ensuing game of cross
lence. “Most of the dreams he had now were of doctor, Olivia, a heart and double-cross has fatal
shootings of one kind or another. The sounds, the surgeon at the same consequences. Like its
running, the heavy feeling of being shot.” Opiates London hospital, and predecessor, The Hunter
provide him with solace. A guitar that Opal gives Anjali, a GP, met at takes time to get going,
him is similarly a kind of life raft. medical school. They but as with all French’s
But despite film nights and games of are well established in novels, it’s beautifully
dominoes, nothing feels right for Orvil and the their careers when their written and an absorbing,
rest of the Bear Shield-Red Feather family. There shared past, in the form immersive read.
is the grudging knowledge, since the shooting, of a wild student party
of time split into a before and an after. They during which things went
move ploddingly through their days, hypera- The Last Murder at horribly wrong, threatens
ware of hauling their familial history. Lony has the End of the World to overshadow the
nightmares of being crushed by it, all that his By Stuart Turton present. Old loyalties are
ancestors “couldn’t carry, couldn’t resolve, Turton’s third novel challenged and the bonds
couldn’t figure out, with all their weight” knock- explores life, death and of friendship morph into a
ing him down. Orange replicates these feelings the point of existence pact of mutually assured
by filling the narrative with a glut of circular dead itself. A dystopian race- destruction, where every
time. “Every day is a loop … Every day is the sun against-time whodunnit, choice comes with a
rising, and the sun going down, and the sleep we it is set 90 years after the terrible price. The three How to Solve Your
must sleep … Every day is life convincing us it’s world has been destroyed women pass the narrative Own Murder
not a loop.” It’s a risk for a writer to use inertia in by a fatal fog. All that baton, flipping between By Kristen Perrin
this way, but it becomes a refreshing provocation remains is a small Greek 1999 and the present day The secretive village
against the very notion of progress: personal, island, inhabited by three for a complex examination trope is deployed rather
intergenerational, historical. scientists and 122 villagers. of ambition, betrayal, differently in Perrin’s
Wandering Stars asks: what becomes of a Abi, a mysterious AI voice moral obligation and debut. Summoned by
person and a family when the things they inherit who can read thoughts, ethical grey areas. her great-aunt Frances’s
from their forebears are overwhelmingly the bad ensures that life in the solicitors to discuss her
stuff – wounds and torments, ill luck, curses concrete ruins of the inheritance, no sooner
and injurious predilections? What kind of life is island’s old naval base has Annie Adams arrived
possible after genocide and colonisation? Toni is peaceful and that the in Castle Knoll, Dorset,
Morrison once said: “A writer’s life and work villagers don’t – with than she discovers her
are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.” the single exception of a relative dead in suspicious
Hyperbole be damned: Orange’s work feels, curious woman, Emory – circumstances. In 1965,
to me, as vital as air. ask questions. When one the 17-year-old Frances
YAGNISHSING DAWOOR IS A of the scientists is killed, had her murder foretold
MAURITIAN WRITER AND CRITIC and the island’s defences by a fortune teller, a
are shut down, Emory The Hunter cryptic prophecy that
has just 92 hours to solve By Tana French shaped her life. Annie
credit that his meticulously observed prose holds the murder and save the The sequel to The Searcher learns that, in order to
back a heartbreaking secret until the final pages. last of humanity. This is finds American ex-cop Cal inherit the considerable
Donkor gives a punchy, ironic account of the an ambitious, compelling Hooper still ensconced in fortune, she must build on
young Kwame being taught about the slave trade novel in which nothing is a remote west of Ireland Frances’s own detective
by a white teacher. As his young self tries to digest what it seems. village. Having helped work to solve the case,
this terrifying knowledge, his older self is being clever, angry teenager and there’s a time limit
drawn to the new Black head, Marcus. Trey Reddy discover what of one week. Appealing
In a novel exploring sexual abstinence, happened to her missing central figures and
Donkor writes beautifully about the meaning brother Brendan, Cal has plenty of twists and red
and meaninglessness of sex. Each erotic moment become the girl’s surrogate herrings compensate
in the book – anonymous hook-ups, friends with parent. When Trey’s for thinly sketched
benefits, or daydreaming – is described with well- charming but deadbeat secondary characters,
measured excitement and puzzlement. biological father, Johnny, overmuch exposition,
The school is a microcosm of society and returns from England with and some fairly cloth-
provides the novel’s heart and soul. Donkor is also a a stranger who claims local eared dialogue; this is
teacher, and through Kwame, he critiques “Assess- Moral Injuries roots, the pair’s proposed entertaining enough
ment Objectives and Grade Boundaries”, the ero- By Christie Watson get-rich-quick scheme for lovers of cosy crime
sion of funding by Tory governments, and inequity The sins of the mothers soon has the village in to suspend disbelief
in the British education system. And there’s no are visited on the children uproar. Cal’s doubts about and enjoy.
shortage of humanity, humour and depth. in former nurse Watson’s Johnny and the stranger LAURA WILSON
KIT FAN IS A POET, NOVELIST AND CRITIC superior medical thriller. are proved right, and the IS A CRIME WRITER

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

60 Lifestyle
MODER N LIFE
Tim Dowling
Plumbing lesson
was nothing
like an episode
of Columbo
W
hen I find my phone
where I’d left it, on the
bedside table, I see
that I have a text from
my wife. It reads: “Let me know
when you have this message.”
This strikes me as something to
ponder. If she meant “when you
have seen this message”, then my
answer is overdue. If she meant
“when you have understood this
message”, then, well, who can say?
It takes me a moment to work
out that she is actually referring to
a hidden, immediately preceding
text. This one reads: “Mike is coming
around 10 – I’m stuck in traffic.” I
look at the time: it’s 9.48.
Mike is the plumber who has
promised to discover the reason for
our central heating’s mysterious
failure – “I’ll find out what it is,”
he said, “and put it right.” But he
couldn’t promise when – he’s busy.
The prospect of his near-immediate
appearance is a little overwhelming.
I feel like tidying up.
My wife and I spent last weekend
outside our freezing house,
STEPHEN COLLINS
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
stomping around central London,
visiting galleries and eventually
securing some discounted matinee
theatre tickets. We have never done
this sort of thing.
In the end my wife gets home
before Mike does. We open the
cupboard where the boiler is,
remove all the shelves and pull out
the false back that conceals the
pipework. We have done this dozens
of times since January, when the
radiators went cold.
“I’m afraid to hope,” my wife says.
“It’s gonna be OK,” I say. “He’s
bringing a new canoe filter.”
The canoe filter – I looked it up
– is a little plastic basket that stops
larger bits of debris from getting
into the boiler’s delicate guts.
But the canoe filter can itself get
clogged, impeding the flow of water
through the system. This is how I
want this long and expensive saga
to end – with the installation of a
nine quid replacement part. But I
am also afraid to hope.
Mike arrives with Will, his
apprentice. He shows me the canoe
filter. Mike instructs Will to turn off
the water supply, and guides him
through the draining down of the
boiler. When I realise there’s going
to be a plumbing lesson involved,
I forget about going to my office
and sit down with my laptop at
the kitchen table.
“Let’s go ahead and remove those
screws,” says Mike.
“This is like the end of a Columbo,”
I say. But actually, you always
found out what happened right at
the beginning of Columbo. In this
case, the episode would start with a
closeup of a gunked-up canoe filter.
“Put that O-ring in first, please,”
says Mike to Will. I decide sitting
here with my laptop is slightly
too close to the action to get an
overarching sense of the drama
unfolding. And I can’t imagine
my presence is helping – it must
look as if I am simply typing
everything that’s happening, like a
stenographer. I go out to my office
to wait for someone to come and tell
me it was the canoe filter all along.
“It was your diverter valve,” says
Mike, referring to a more expensive
part that directs the flow of hot
water to either your taps or your
radiators. It can become stuck, or
blocked, or both.
“You’ll never really know, unless
you saw the whole thing apart,” says
Mike. “But it’s definitely knackered.”
I tell my wife later: “On top of
that, the canoe filter was also pretty
clogged up. So it still could have
been a contributing factor. Along
with some blocked radiators and
the faulty pump that got replaced
I decide in January.”
“Who cares?” my wife says.
sitting “It’s warm.”
here with “I’m just saying: after all that,
there’s no smoking gun.”
my laptop “Well, no,” my wife says. “It’s
is slightly not a play.”
“If it was, it would have a very
too close baggy third act,” I say.
“It’s roasting in here,” she says.
to the “You’ve still got two jumpers
action on,” I say.
 ASK OTTOLENGHI
The essential pots, pans and tins
that no kitchen should be without
I’m setting up a new kitchen
after downsizing. What are the
three most important and/or
useful pots and pans, and the
same for bakeware?
Kate, Des Moines, Iowa, US
A great question, and one that
everyone will have a slightly
different answer to depending
on how they cook and how many
they’re cooking for and possibly
even the season.
Assuming that downsizing
means you’re now mostly
cooking for one or two, I’d say
there are three must-haves: a
small saucepan (to boil or poach
eggs, say, or to heat up soup
or to make a small amount of
pasta sauce); a medium, roughly
22cm saute pan (for frying eggs,
making crepes and to give onions
plenty of space to sweat down
properly before becoming the
base of all sorts of stews, curries
and stir-fries) and a larger, high-
sided casserole pot, or dutch oven,
which has high sides, (for longer
braises, searing meat and any
batch cooking).
Make sure they all have a
lid and, crucially, that they’re
ovenproof, too. Whether they’re
nonstick or non-nonstick as
well is up to you: cast iron is the
dream for many, but it doesn’t
work for everyone, it can be
CLAIRE WORTHY
Got a kitchen question
for Yotam Ottolenghi?
Scan the QR code
expensive, and you need to
look after and treat it.
And buy only what you will
definitely use and find practical in
everyday reality, rather than what
you’d use in the film version of
your life.
Baking-wise – and I’m assuming
we’re off the stove and into the
oven now – I’d say a 20cm round
springform tin (ie where the sides
release from the base), a square
brownie tin (which can double
up as a cake tin or be used for
making American-style biscuits), a
standard loaf tin for making banana
and regular bread, and a quarter
baking tray for swiss rolls, cookies
and slab pies.
Once you have your set of pans,
don’t hold back on using them
even if a recipe calls for a different
shape or a slightly different size
( baking doesn’t allow for too much
variability, though, so only do that if
it’s 1cm-2cm different).
Again, be practical – go
with what you actually see
yourself using regularly – rather
than aspirational.
It’s like shopping for clothes:
how often do we actually wear
that “bold” outfit we bought on a
whim imagining a day when we’d
be feeling fly?
YOTAM OTTOLENGHI IS CHEF-PATRONN
OF THE OTTOLENGHI DELIS AND THE
NOPI AND ROVI RESTAURANTS
T H E W E E K LY R E C I P E
By Ed Smith
№ 260
Eggs in creamed
ed
spinach with spiced
butter seeds
Prep 10 min This baked-egg dish does what it
Cook 15 min says on the tin: lightly spiced seeds
add bite and verve to a luscious,
Serves 2 creamed spinach base. I think this
works best with just one egg per
person, but see what you think.
Method
Put a 26cm saute pan or shallow
casserole with a lid on a medium
heat. Add the still-wet spinach and
cook for about six minutes, prodding
Ingredients and turning it occasionally, so the
250g baby spinach, leaves wilt evenly.
washed Push the wilted spinach to one
5-10g butter side of the pan. Put the butter in the
1 shallot, peeled
empty space, then add the shallot,
and very finely diced
1 garlic clove, peeled
garlic and a pinch of salt, and saute
and thinly sliced for three minutes without colouring.
Flaky sea salt and Stir the spinach back into the
freshly ground middle, add a really generous
black pepper grating of nutmeg and black pepper,
Freshly grated then add the cream and parmesan.
nutmeg Give it a good stir, then create two
100ml double cream wells within the bubbling spinach.
(or creme fraiche)
Crack an egg into each of these, turn
20g parmesan,
finely grated
down the heat a little, cover and
2 eggs leave to cook for two to two and a
Bread or toast, half minutes, until the whites are
to serve set. Take off the heat; if by this point
the whites aren’t quite firm, keep the
For the seeds pan off the hob, cover it with the lid
2 tbsp mixed seeds and check again after 30–60 seconds.
30g butter Meanwhile, toast the seeds in a
¼ tsp sweet
dry pan on a medium heat for two
smoked paprika
¼ tsp pul biber
to three minutes, until there’s a
(aleppo pepper flakes) hint of colour and the smaller seeds
are starting to pop. Create a space
in the middle of the seeds, add the
butter and let that foam and brown
for a minute or two more, until
it smells nutty. Take off the heat,
stir in the spices, then spoon this
over the eggs.
Divide the spinach and eggs
between two shallow bowls and
serve with something soft on the
side: bread or toast, say, to mop up
the creamy
c greens and egg yolks.
29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

62 Diversions
QUIZ
Thomas Eaton
1 The word “phony”
appears 35 times in which
1951 novel?
2 Mammals of which order
have no stomach?
3 Which 1913 exhibition
introduced the US to
modern art?
4 Blondie, in November
1978, were on the first
cover of which magazine?
5 What device is often
marked PRNDL?
6 Which Swiss
psychiatrist developed
the inkblot test?
7 Bondye is the
creator god in which
Caribbean religion?
PUZZLES
Chris Maslanka
1 Wordpool
Find the correct definition:
GYMNURE
a) fanatical trainer
b) rubber gear
c) secondary schooling
d) moonrat
2 E pluribus
Rearrange BREATHE IN to
make a single word.
CHESS
Leonard Barden
Freestyle Chess, which
made an impressive debut
last month, has firmed up
its plans to expand into
five continents next year,
as well as enlisting the
top 25 elite grandmasters
into a new club for its
competing players.
The variant, also known
as Fischer Random and
Chess 960, has the back
rank pieces on both sides
on random squares, with
Black’s pieces placed
equal-and-opposite to
their White counterparts.
Top grandmasters are
enthusiastic. Freestyle
offers a generously
The Guardian Weekly 29 March 2024
8 The Blandy family have
sold which drink for more
than 200 years?
What links:
9 LB Jefferies; Peter
Parker; Laura Mars;
Jimmy Olsen?
10 Clare Hall, Cambridge;
Byker Wall, Newcastle;
The Ark, London?
11 390BC; 410; 455; 546;
1084; 1527?
12 Katharine Hepburn;
June Allyson; Winona
Ryder; Saoirse Ronan?
13 Blocky; dome; dry-dock;
pinnacle; tabular; wedge?
14 Google; Cisco Systems;
Hewlett-Packard; Capital
One; Nike?
15 Gilded urn; Frederick,
Duke of York and Albany;
Horatio Nelson?
3 Words Without End
Which 4-letter word
may be appended to the
beginnings making a
word which rhymes with
neither of the others?
fl—; or—; r—.
4 Same Difference
Identify the words that
differ in the letters shown:
***I*** (unreliable type!)
***C*** (slower than horse,
but stronger)
© CMM2024
rewarded escape from the
many hours of drudgery
spent preparing for
classical games.
If Freestyle is to gain
traction, The German
promoter Jan Buettner,
who heads Freestyle
along with the world No 1
Magnus Carlsen, will have
3912 Jin Yueheng v Rithvik Raja,
Doha 2023. Black to play. What was
his winning move?
8
7
6 territory in South America
5 and South Africa with
4 the full $1m, may face
3 logistical problems.
2 mates.
1
a b c d e f g h
CINEMA CONNECT
Killian Fox
Name the films and the director
who connects them.
4 Same Difference TRAITOR, TRACTOR
3 WWE FLANGE, ORANGE, RANGE.
1 Wordpool d). 2 EPU HIBERNATE.
directed by Céline Sciamma. Maslanka
Fire, Girlhood and Petite Maman were all
Cinema Connect Portrait of a Lady on
Monument; Duke of York; Nelson’s.
15 Sit on top of London columns: the
founded by Stanford University alumni.
of iceberg. 14 Major US companies
March in films of Little Women. 13 Types
11 Sackings of Rome. 12 Played Jo
10 Designs by architect Ralph Erskine.
Man; The Eyes of Laura Mars; Superman.
photographers: Rear Window; Spider-
Vodou 8 Madeira wine 9 Fictional
6 (Hermann) Rorschach 7 Haitian
Hits. 5 Car’s automatic gearstick.
and echidna). 3 Armory Show. 4 Smash
2 Monotremata (monotremes: platypus
Quiz 1 The Catcher in the Rye.
Answers
to justify his declared
ambition of “making it as
commercially successful
as iconic sports events”.
The next Slam in India
in November, with a $500k
prize fund, looks sure to
be a success, as Indian
chess fans will want
to watch their teenage
heroes take on Carlsen.
February 2025, back
in north Germany with
$750k, should also go well,
but the later events, where
the Tour goes into new
3 Nxg4 Re1 mate or 3 Kf1 Qh3+ and
Rh5+ 4 Kg1 Rh1 mate. If 2 g4 Qxg4+!
3912 1...Re5! 2 Qxc3 Qxh2+! 3 Kxh2
Notes and Queries
The long-running series that invites
readers to send in questions and
answers on anything and everything
COU N T RY DI A RY
MANI
Peloponnese, Greece
T
he almonds here, which at
present are blanketed in
blossom, may be the most
colourful crop-bearing
trees in this part of mainland Greece.
For sound, however, the olives win
hands down. The groves surround
every Maniot village and are more
full of winter migrants – many of
them summer birds further north –
than any habitat I’ve seen in Europe.
Every line of trees holds dozens:
blackcaps, song thrushes with
chiffchaffs and black redstarts.
While none of them probably nest
here, they’re all starting to sing, a
kind of experimental pre-season
rehearsal for the moment they
occupy true breeding places. It is
vigorous but cacophonous, and
in one glorious moment, near
Exochori village, up it blasted like a
choral wind full of motes of fluted,
warbling and harsher “takking”
sounds, and it felt like spring made
both audible and palpable.
Yet that wasn’t the most powerful
encounter in this landscape. That
honour goes to the flowers, whose
colours fountain up from every
roadside verge, bank and grove.
If I had to name the key
constituents of the colour chaos,
I’d suggest the deep pink of some
cranesbill species, often in a wider
white or yellow matrix. They are
richest in the smallest, stony fields
so strewn with limestone shards
that the field’s main purpose is not
to house stock or serve agricultural
roles, but merely to arrange rocks in
neater quadrilateral patterns.
The indisputable star of these
stone–scapes – and it often ran in
constellations through the wider
galaxy of colour – is the peacock
anemone. Each is a sphere of
crimson centred with a lighter straw
tone, then an inner iris of pure black
stamens. Every one is a treat. Fields
of them are pure joy. Mark Cocker
ILLUSTRATION: CLIFFORD HARPER
 Guardian Puzzles & Crosswords
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Quick crossword
No 16,807
9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

11 12 8 9

13 14 10 11

All solutions published next week

15

16 17 18 19 12 13 14

20 15 16

21 17 18 19 20

22

23 24 21 22

25 26 23 24

The Weekly cryptic By Pasquale Across 7 One’s obsessed with tiny details (6)
1 Sudden, surprise attack (6) 9 Proud one’s (anag) – dull and
No 29,334 4 Wheel’s cover (6) slow (9)
8 Elite squad (5) 13 Orange bit (7)
9 Humourless (2-5) 14 Result of adding bacteria to milk (7)
Across 12 Bird had to protect its home in
10 Barnum, perhaps (7) 15 (A) hoot – or yell (6)
1 Sweaty Conservative confronting national property (5,6)
11 Vast expanse (5) 16 Sign of a cold or hay fever (6)
Labour politician (6) 13 Exceptional arbiter’s primarily
12 It’ll unlock several doors (6,3) 18 Enter information to a computer (5)
4 Meat in cold paper to dispatch all around (5,3) real legal expert (9)
17 Hold on tight (to something 20 Liking – a morsel (5)
9 Shine as one wanting desperately to 15 Aged with hint of spasms in the heart
or someone) (5)
be heard (6) – the effect of a virus (4,4)
19 Eight-sided shape (7) Solution No 16,801
10 Strange capital with unknown content, 17 City right for some foreigners outside
21 Speedy service (7)
not as you would expect (8) – and for their sort occupying it (7) S O L D P I L C H A R D
22 Relish – impertinence (5) T O N O V U
11 Engineer vets car on site where one’s 19 I blush – woman ultimately hugged
23 Evolve (6) A S O F S T A N D O F F
been brought in – here? (7,7) and treated disrespectfully? (7)
24 Strength of character (6) M S F U S W F
13 What’s put on the table, raised audibly 20 Sheep tick evident around Ireland (6)
P R E C O C I O U S
by directors? (10) 22 Female and male who survived the Flood (4)
E E C T L L S
14 City’s sexual stimulant knocking six out (4) Down
D E N I A L S T R I C T
16 Daughter entering one town or another (4) 1 Hold responsible E D L T A T R
18 Trendy program on old computer location (for wrongdoing) (6) A P P R E N T I C E
not appropriate (10) 2 Place to retire to? (7) B D O A T G N
21 One restructured NHS attendance, 3 Old engine driver? (5) E Y E P I E C E T A N G
becoming more influential (2,3,9) 5 Dismiss from the priesthood (7) T A N E T T
23 ‘Up-to-the-minute’ is about right for 6 It stores data on a computer (5) S O L I T A R Y Y E A H
‘very hot’ (8)
Solution No 29,328
24 Scottish river visible around posh quarter (6)
25 Artist endures rooms that aren’t very nice (8)
Sudoku
26 Old woman blamed for being awkward? (6) D E B R I E F S P H Y L U M Easy
E R N R I O E Fill in the grid so
C H A N D L E R S T R O B E that every row,
Down O Z O U W C P R every column
1 Young player left in bed (4)
D W E L L D E A T H M A S K and every 3x3
2 A superior holy person before becoming
E N E I L P A box contains the
self-abnegating (7)
I N C A N D E S C E N T numbers 1 to 9.
3 Mum showed great enthusiasm when
C G C N O L R S
given one old coin (8) Last week’s solution
H A R L E Y S T R E E T
5 Lion perhaps a pet? That leads to
A E L F E S H
explosive disaster (11)
6 Seem to have a change of direction? R E A L I T I E S P A U S E
That could be it (6) I T L P A M P I
7 Attractive but not loud, creating S T A T I C F L O O R I N G
an impression (7) M P A A D N H
8 Describe energy policy during appointment (9) A G E N D A A D H E R E N T

29 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly