Campfire Diplomacy

On April 1^st, 2024, an Israeli airstrike demolished the Iranian embassy’s annex in Damascus, Syria, killing sixteen people whom Israel suspected of collaboration with Hamas. On April 13^th, Iran counterattacked with an airstrike in Israel, which critically injured one person but mostly demonstrated Iran’s ability to bypass Israel’s Iron Dome air defense. Against the cycle of escalation and the sobering possibility of a quickly widening conflict in the Middle East, an instance from another very different conflict long ago springs to mind.

In 1807, Emperor Napoleon ordered the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, seeking to close its ports against Great Britain as a form of economic warfare. As the British depended on this commerce, a counteroffensive was quickly organized, which was to support partisans in Portugal and Spain, resisting the French occupation. Over the next seven years, Britain and its allies bitterly fought the French all across the peninsula. In engagements like the Siege of Badajoz, the bitterness descended into unspeakable atrocities.

Yet there was a unique occurrence which began to reverse the vicious cycle towards mutual destruction. Deserters from the Portuguese, Spanish, British and even French began to coalesce around the Luso-Spanish border, not far from Badajoz. They set up camp and lived together, peaceably amongst themselves. They broke bread and regaled each other around campfires with shanties in their native tongues, using the universal of music to overcome linguistic barriers. Men nameless to the distant monarchs who had sent them to murder each other, recognized their common humanity and at mortal risk chose to preserve each other’s lives.

Lest we lionize them too much, it must be said that these deserters had broken contract with the forces which had hired them, which is never honorable. Nor is the theft of munitions and equipment, de rigueur when soldiers desert. And as all their lives had become forfeit, the deserters thought little of plundering the locals for sustenance, since one noose is as good as another.

Nevertheless, against the tinderbox which is the Middle East right now, we have to hope for similar lucidity in the heads of state. Whatever the deserters’ transgressions, over 200 years ago they proved the following, simple truth.

In an olive grove gently stirred by a cool nightly breeze, sit one man at a campfire across his enemy, sharing a cup of wine, a haunch of lamb, some songs and stories of their grandkids. By morning they will find any way not to kill each other

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