WAR PIGEONS

Although there is a collective unease amongst the chattering classes regarding the bellicose times we are experiencing, it's still unease rather than panic at this stage. Since the end of World War Two, war has always been with us, although usually – if you're an American or a European – it's happening a fair distance away. But at the current time, war is being waged on the doorsteps of Europe, in Ukraine and on the coasts of the Mediterranean. I'd like to say we are living through a callous age, but again isn't it any worse than many millions have known since the middle of the twentieth century under the seemingly protective umbrella of pax americana? One thing is certain and that is what ever  substance "democracy" and "civilisation" may have contained whilst masking the realities of colonialism and injustice around this planet, the illusion has now been swept into the dustbin of twenty-first century "post history".
I had the good fortune yesterday to attend a book talk by my friend and colleague Rashid Khalidi, historian of the Middle East and in particular of Palestine. He was introducing the French translation of his recent book, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. During the question and answer session, someone asked about the impact of the current Israeli war in Palestine on the Palestinian's material culture, particularly the institutional and private libraries that Palestinians have built up over the centuries. The good news was that despite the collateral and intentional damage – intentional because such repositories of Islamic and Arab cultures are specifically targeted by the Israeli authorities and illegal settlers – most have been digitized and when the day comes libraries will be reborn and restocked.

I'd like also to mention non-human victims of the currently ongoing wars around us and the "collateral damage" inflicted on the biosphere. First and foremost are the human victims of war, whether they be in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine, Sudan or elsewhere, those who suffer directly from the bombing and also endure the deprivations due to the obliterations of infrastructure. But, we tend to forget the impact of war on the non-built environment, the concomitant  destruction of animal life and habitat. Since I left full-time employment in the university, I've had a little more time to indulge my boyhood passion for photography and have been particularly attracted to difficulties and rewards of photographing birdlife. The impact over the past half century of the Anthropocene on birds is news to no-one. Their sources of food have been polluted with pesticides and their breeding sites frequently destroyed. Before you say that thinking about birds and other animals is a luxury in time of war, let us remember how dependent humankind is on the good health of the rest of the biosphere, on the planet-minus-us. As a team of Polish researchers have recently demonstrated, even without war,"in this era of massive biodiversity loss, birds hold the dubious distinction of being at the forefront. Currently, 21% of avian species are vulnerable to extinction, and 6.5% are functionally extinct."* Militarised destruction has made things much worse. A little documented result of Russia's war on Ukraine has been its impact on "avifauna in war-affected areas of Ukraine", where "some of the most vulnerable species in the region – such as eagles, owls, avocets, flamingos, and pelicans" have suffered greatly. Despite what we might imagine as their natural  advantage, their mobility made possible by their ability to fly away, most birds remain in war-torn areas and become  victims, attachment to "breeding grounds and migration routes" exerting "a stronger influence than the adverse environmental conditions caused by war." Still, we may shrug our shoulders and minimise the fate of birdlife, don't they pale into insignificance compared to the loss of innocent human lives?

However, there is one further imbrication of avian life in the ongoing wars. Whilst homing pigeons have been used for centuries as messengers in times of war, birds are now being transformed into biotechnological drones. A Moscow neurotechnology company, Neiry, has implanted microchips into pigeons' brains in order to remote control them for use as instruments of surveillance. The hardware which uses solar power and GPS tracking is carried in a small backpack. Known as PJN-1, the project is seen as "one of the more aggressive attempts to merge invasive neural interfaces with live animals for surveillance and security applications." Other birds such as ravens are being considered for heavier "payloads". Of course, animals have long been used as beasts of burden in times of war as in times of peace. In warfare, the use of horses and elephants as "attack vehicles" is notorious.
After years of nightly televisual exposure to the horrors of war, our senses are becoming dulled to humankind's inhumanity toward fellow humans. Is there room to spare a thought for our feathered friends?

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