“You wouldn’t understand this country if you stayed here for five years. I don’t understand it,” says Nestor Cummings-John, the head of the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement (“faute de mieux,” he replies when I ask why the group is run by a man).

I take his point. After six weeks in Guinea-Bissau (plus a lot of background research), I felt I had a fairly good grasp of how the society worked, why things are as they are, and what the prospects are going forward. But after six weeks in Sierra Leone, my mind is full of confusion, as chaotic as Freetown’s deranged street markets. I can only hope that a few weeks of quiet reflection somewhere sane like Burkina Faso will help me sort through the jumble of impressions, fears, questions and competing explanations that are clattering around my head.

One of the questions I’m grappling with is whether Sierra Leone is knitting itself together after Siaka Stevens’ ruinous dictatorship and the even more damaging civil war, or if in fact the country is in danger of slipping back into conflict.

Tony Blair, who visited Freetown last year, believes Sierra Leone is “thriving.” The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, on the other hand, which was set up to investigate the causes of the war, argues that the same levels of poverty, corruption and youth alienation pertain today as prevailed twenty years ago, before the war started. As Paul Collier showed in The Bottom Billion, moreover, most countries that go through one civil war endure another within a decade or two.

Blair’s view is buttressed by the fact that the country has been at peace for nine years, that it held uneventful elections in 2007 which were widely judged to be fair, and that dangerous neighbours like the Liberian thug Charles Taylor are off the scene. Exiles are returning, drawn by peace and the still-tantalising prospect of mineral riches. And many Sierra Leoneans have told me their compatriots have learned their lesson from the war and are extremely reluctant to go down that road again.

Not everyone is so sanguine, however. While the wealthy are generally quite optimistic about the future, the poor remain disgruntled, railing against the corruption of the rich and the ineffectiveness of government. “The poor don’t love their country,” says Joseph, a young Freetonian working with Amnesty International. Edward, an old man in a Freetown slum, says the poor have no reason to be patriotic. Most young people I’ve met have asked me to help them acquire visas for Britain. (more…)

- The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber has an in-depth profile of President Obama’s under fire right-hand man, Rahm Emanuel, explaining why “laboring as chief of staff during the first year or two of a presidency can be a prolonged form of torture”. Over at The Daily Beast Richard Wolffe gets perspectives from three former presidential enforcers. Elsewhere, Robert Kagan explores the growing bipartisan consensus in US foreign policy.

- Writing in Der Spiegel, Sascha Müller-Kraenner and Martin Kremer assess how the new European External Action Service (EEAS) might help the EU exert greater influence over climate governance post-Copenhagen. The new diplomatic corps will offer “a unique opportunity to increase analytical capacity and to design the right instruments and institutions for confronting climate change”, they suggest. Reuters meanwhile reports on the failure of EU member states to meet their commitments on development aid, and the implications for climate funding.

- Over at World Politics Review, Frida Ghitis explores how natural disasters can shape the national political narrative, with last weekend’s Chilean earthquake proving only the most recent example.

“No matter where disaster strikes”, she argues, “the script opens with shock, heartbreak and compassion. Then, it inexorably moves towards a cold political calculus about the performance of political leaders responsible for managing the aftermath.”

- Finally, in the midst of ongoing nuclear negotiations and two months before the crucial NPT Review Conference, the Moscow Times assesses the Kremlin’s “stubborn” approach to talks. British Ambassador John Duncan offers his perspective on UK-Russian nuclear cooperation here.

Among the many, many gems in Andrew Rawnsley’s gripping new book on Labour’s last two terms of office, students of resilience will especially enjoy his account of how the British government actually worked during 9/11. It emerges that:

- Tony Blair’s hurried journey back to London from Brighton, where he had been due to deliver a speech to the Trades Union Congress, was made not by helicopter or a 90 mph motorcade with armed escort - but by train. Blair’s Special Branch protection officers “created a makeshift area for the Prime Minister and his aides by sealing off part of a carriage with police ’scene of crime’ tape”.

- Sir Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, found out about the attacks not through being alerted by Number 10 or the intelligence services, but from his driver on his way back from lunch – and then in more detail from the car radio.

- Jeremy Heywood, Blair’s Principal Private Secretary at Number 10, then rang Wilson to say: “We’ve been told that the White House is evacuating. Should we be evacuating?” Wilson’s reply: “If you evacuate, where would you evacuate to? I think it is a good rule not to evacuate unless you have an idea where you are going to evacuate to.”

- David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, learned about the attack not from MI5 or the Home Office, but from one of his sons, who rang to tell him what he’d just seen on the news.

- Although the Cabinet Office’s Civil Contingencies Secretariat had been created to deal with national emergencies after the fuel protests a year earlier, all its staff were away at a team-building session in Yorkshire.

- The entire staff of the Cabinet Office Overseas and Defence Secretariat was en route to a meeting in Herefordshire – and had taken all the keys to their offices with them.

- And to top it all, the Cabinet Office telephone system – which had been installed the previous week – then crashed altogether.

Rawnsley’s conclusion: “Had terrorists or a foreign power planned an attack on Britain, there would rarely have been a better time to strike than on 9/11.”

MEP and internet superstar, Daniel Hannan is up in arms at what he sees Barack Obama sucking up to ‘Peronist Argentina’ on the Falklands.

“When matters last came to a head,” he writes, “Ronald Reagan had no difficulty backing Margaret Thatcher: the Gipper knew who America’s friends were.”

Of course, it wasn’t nearly as simple as that, as I am sure Hannan (a huge Thatcher fan) knows well. Michael Moynihan (no foe of Hannan’s, by the way)  sets the record straight:

Before the British took military action in 1982, the Reagan administration was, to the consternation of the British foreign office, very much on the fence and, initially, wedded to the neutrality position… In a letter to Thatcher, Reagan said that his government would take a neutral position on the matter—again, causing great anger—but would come out in favor of its ally if the Argentinians decide to start shooting…

It was only a communications error that prevented the United States from abstaining, rather than vetoing, a United Nation Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire—which Britain strenuously opposed.

Hannan’s fudging gives me a chance to plug James Rentschler’s superb Falklands diary. Rentschler was the Reagan official who ended up responsible for US policy on the islands after Argentina invaded. He was nonplussed by the task:

Never heard of [the Falklands], right? Me neither at least not until last evening when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent an urgent message through the Cabinet Line requesting the President to intercede with the Argies. 1800 British-origin sheepherders, pursuing a peaceful life on some wind-blown specks of rock in the South Atlantic, now targeted by Argentine amphibious assault units – who, in turn, may soon be attacked by the largest naval armada ever to steam out of British ports since Suez? Yes indeed, the thing certainly does sound like Gilbert and Sullivan as told to Anthony Trollope by Alistair Cooke. But what started out as comic opera now looks to become not only quite serious, but exceptionally nasty. The Argentines have clearly misjudged the British temper, and this guy Galtieri, speaking first in broken mafioso-type English before the State Department interpreter tactfully intervenes, sounds like a thug. (more…)

- As the diplomatic temperature continues to rise in the South Atlantic, Simon Jenkins suggests that the Falklands are “the Elgin marbles of diplomacy” and a “post-imperial anachronism” that should lead Britain to the negotiating table. Hugo Rifkind, meanwhile, explains why he won’t be shedding tears for Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, while The Economist highlights her failure to see the current crisis as an economic rather than a political opportunity.

- Rob de Wijk explores (pdf) the future options for NATO as it come to terms with changing geopolitics. Andrew J. Bacevich, meanwhile, cites a failure to sufficiently “reignite Europe’s martial spirit” and carve a global role for NATO in the 21^st Century as cause for the US to draw back engagement in the alliance. Let it return to its origins and “devolve into a European organization, directed by Europeans to serve European needs”, he argues.

- Elsewhere, the London Review of Books blog offers reaction to plans for the new US Embassy in London. Associated Press, meanwhile, has news of an internal State Department report criticising its media operations.

- Finally, VoxEU explores the emergence of “cloud computing” and its potential impact on our lifestyles, business innovation, and economic growth. Charles Leadbeater assesses the associated rise of “cloud culture” and the importance of guarding this new space from the overbearing influence of government and big business. Elsewhere, over at Brookings Mark Muro wonders if the rise of Amazon’s Kindle could be a “symbol of American decline”.

The fifth edition of the Center on International Cooperation’s Annual Review of Global Peace Operations is out today.  Is it any good?  Let’s ask an expert:

Few bestselling books read as well as this annual gem; few text books have even half as much useful and well-presented information on a crucial subject; few publications hold a candle to the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations.

—MICHAEL O’HANLON
Director of Research and Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Ooh yeah, peacekeeping fans, this one’s a keeper!  Buy it here.

“It’s not diamonds that are the problem,” says Ali, a Lebanese diamond dealer in eastern Sierra Leone. “Diamonds are just stones. It’s people that are the problem.”

Sierra Leone has some of the highest quality diamonds in the world. Like a lottery winner who wastes his fortune and sinks into misery, however, the country has been unable to cope with its windfall. “Blood diamonds” have been blamed for causing its horrific civil war, which saw rebel militias, Liberian thugs, mercenaries, Sierra Leone’s army, and UN and Nigerian “peacekeepers” killing and maiming in a desperate struggle to gain control of the gem trade.

Since the war finished in 2002, Sierra Leone has languished among the world’s poorest countries, with nothing to show for its rich treasure trove of minerals. Economists see it as a classic example of the resource curse, which plagues many poor nations endowed with valuable natural commodities: mineral wealth allows governments to neglect the rest of the economy, enrich themselves, and ignore those outside their circles, forcing the excluded to resort to violence to obtain a share of the loot.

But the failure of resource-rich nations is not inevitable. Botswana has thrived on the back of its diamond mines. South Africa, brimming with gold and diamonds, is Africa’s largest economy. Australia, another diamond producer, doesn’t do too badly.

Earlier this week we spent the day at a diamond mine near Kenema. Johnny, a Sierra Leonean who has spent most of his life in England, has come back with his wife Suzy to dig for diamonds. Using borrowed money, they have leased an acre of land deep in the jungle and hired fifty men from surrounding villages to dig a forty-foot-deep pit and sift through the mud and gravel it throws up.

It is easy to see the allure. When we arrive, Johnny shows me yesterday’s haul of eight small stones. The first looks like an undistinguished lump of glass, but the second, flawless, looks like a diamond and, although rough (it will be cut in India or Antwerp), its different facets glitter as I turn it around in the sun. It is worth about £1,000. On the neighbouring plot last year, a Lebanese found a thirty-carat diamond worth £4 million. From one moment to the next, Johnny could get rich.

Or die trying. Another nearby plot was mined for two years by some Americans. They didn’t find a single gem. Prices fell by 80% in the recession, prompting many miners and dealers to switch to gold, which provides a steadier, less risky income. Ali’s business partner almost bankrupted him by giving him a fake cheque for £100,000-worth of diamonds. “We say the profit from diamonds reaches from your toes to your knees, but the losses reach up to your throat,” he says, making a strangling gesture. He is currently pursuing the man through Interpol.

(more…)

I’ve just returned from the UAE, where the Center on International Cooperation, NYU’s Abu Dhabi Institute and Brookings organized a conference on “Emerging Powers, Global Security and the Middle East”. Discussions ranged pretty far and wide but (unsurprisingly) kept coming back to whether or not the U.S. and China are trapped in a cycle of confrontations, and how this will affect the Iran issue this year. Julian Borger of the Guardian was there, and gives an excellent summary of this strand of debate:

The conference was under Chatham House rules, but broadly speaking: the Chinese were furious about the Taiwan arms sale, arguing it had come at a time when relations between the island and mainland China were at their best for years. They warned that Chinese nationalism was slowly awakening and should not be provoked. The current political turmoil in Iran actually serves to harden China’s resistance to sanctions, because it makes them appear more like interference in another country’s affairs – anathema to Beijing.

Others hit back at a rising nation they saw as seeking more global power than responsibility. The westerners urged China to play more of a broader role in the Middle East, beyond its immediate energy needs. India is angry at what it sees as China’s increased assertiveness along their common border. The Gulf Arabs accused China of allowing Iran to get away with its nuclear manoeuvring. Interestingly enough, it was clear at a public function put on as part of the conference, that “ordinary” Arabs, outside the government and think-tanks, were more sympathetic to Tehran’s case.

More broadly, I was struck by the fact that most participants – not only from the US and China, but also from India – were hung up on “old” hard security issues. There was a rough agreement that the Copenhagen climate talks were a mess, but that it should be possible to start making some real progress on climate again soon – although not through the UN framework. By contrast, almost everyone was extremely downbeat about the odds for alleviating classic inter-state competition (be it over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Sino-Indian border or the Gulf). A number of participants highlighted the need for great power cooperation to handle failing states, but this was overshadowed by talk of big power rivalry – an excellent panel on Afghanistan concluded that the odds for real Sino-US-Indian cooperation there are low.

Given conversations like these, we need to take a long hard look at how we think we advance international cooperation. Good multilateralists like the authors of this blog are very good at saying “transnational threats require transnational responses” and assume that new threats like climate change and pandemic disease can be used to persuade governments to think beyond classic inter-state rivalries. David, Alex and Bruce Jones make a compelling version of this case in their recent paper on Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization:

In his 1948 classic, Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau exhorted his readers to “assume that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power.” This assumption, he argued, allowed all foreign policy decisions to be placed on a single “intelligible, rational continuum, by and large consistent within itself, regardless of the different motives, preferences, and intellectual and moral qualities of successive statesmen.” While this focus on national interest and the primacy of nation-states had explanatory power in the 19th and 20th centuries, it is outmoded in the post-Cold War context.

Now, David, Alex and Bruce know me well enough to know that I’m unlikely to agree with this. And, yep, I think it’s fallacious. They argue that today’s statesmen are constrained by so many transnational factors (capital flows, etc.) and threats (H1N1, etc.) that a state-centric approach falls apart. And so it should in theory. But in practice, today’s statesmen seem extraordinarily adept at sticking with “national interest”-based thinking – and many are having to struggle with rising nationalist and populist forces at home. Territorial disputes still get people awfully worked up. Military-industrial complexes still follow their own logic. And politicians assume, not wrongly, that there are more votes in these issues than in swine flu.

Oddly, it’s possible to believe all that and still share Alex and David’s concerns about transnational threats. Actually, they terrify me. And we need to completely retool how we respond to them (again, when it comes to the threat-by-threat specifics, I concur with my GD colleagues on what needs doing).  But I’m increasingly convinced that we can only construct our responses to those threats on a traditional, balance of power foundation – which means prioritizing hard security talks, and basing deals on transnational threats on agreements on the global division of influence.

Goddamit, I feel like John Bolton this morning.

“Meandering” is an excellent new-ish blog on peacekeeping and its discontents by Ed Rees, who works for the Peace Dividend Trust.  Ed recently asked readers with UN experience to contribute anonymously to a “working list of what host communities ‘pick up’ from peacekeepers” (with the important qualification that “STDs don’t count”).  Here’s a sample of the answers he’s got so far:

• A taste for double standards
• Disrespect for rule of law & due process
• Poor morals
• Poor discipline
• A poor work ethic
• A ID card fetish
• A propensity towards meaningless platitudes – ie “this is the year of development”
• A lack of accountability
• A Big Car fetish
• Having a driver to ferry one to important meetings in one’s Big Car
• Obsession with titles and status
• Posters announcing important initaitives that are adorned with many logos
• Long lunches
• Organograms
• The inability to fire people, rather selecting a move them up option
• Making “decisions by committee”, resulting in no decision
• An understanding that money derives not from labor but from being at the right place at the right time
• Keen understanding of the micro-gradations in classiness cocktail party venues
• Precise knowledge of per diem rates for international organizations

This one will run and run…

Blogs hosted by large institutions can often be a bit hit-and-miss, but the World Bank’s blog on conflict and development is an exception to the rule. The blog is a tie-in with the 2011 World Development Report, which will be on state fragility and violent conflict; most of the WDR core team – including Bruce Jones (David and my co-author on Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization, who’s on secondment to the team as its senior adviser on multilateral issues) - are posting on the site.

As part of the research process, the project team are engaged on a grand tour of the globe’s troube spots, blogging as they go. Yesterday Nigel Roberts, one of the report’s directors, was in Gaza City, wondering “what the %*$& happened here”; last month he was in Helmand, pondering Gerald Templer’s lessons on counter-insugency; in November he was in Nepal, reflecting that “peoples’ expectations of what ethnic federalism can deliver seem out of all proportion to what any devolved Nepalese state can do”. Meanwhile, the report’s other director, Sarah Cliffe, was in Haiti shortly before the earthquake, looking at drugs and gang-related violence. At the same time, the team have commissioned a flotilla of research inputs – no less than 37 background papers and case studies designed to review the data, explore thematic issues, and draw lessons from a battery of geographical case studies. (The full list of background studies is here.)

This WDR comes amid changing times on the conflict front. As the project’s overview paper notes, the incidence and severity of state-to-state and civil war have declined significantly in recent years – but it’s not all good news. Not only are there ongoing problems such as long-running conflicts that have resisted resolution, post-conflict countries at risk of relapse, and regimes who’ve been isolated without conclusion; a range of new issues also seems to be coming into play… 

Some countries once seen as stable have experienced recent violence. Sub-national conflict in otherwise stable middle-income countries is a significant phenomenon, and organized crime and drug trafficking now make use of cross-border networks which threaten poorer regions, middle-income countries and high-income nations. The WDR will examine new datasets to assess the implications of these trends, as well as potential triggers of future conflict, such as rising youth unemployment; water, land and fuel shortages; nuclear proliferation; religious militancy; and climate change.

I’ve just finished writing the team’s background study on what climate change and resource scarcity mean for the risk of violent conflict (more on that at a later date). It’s been great to work with such an interdisciplinary team – and sobering to reflect on the risk drivers that lie ahead.

The big problem with catching Osama bin Laden is that everyone has forgotten what he looks like.  That, or he’s hiding in an ungoverned quarter of Pakistan.  One of those two.  Just in case it’s #1, the FBI has put out new photos of what the world’s most wanted man might look like today.  Here’s the FBI’s best shot of our man pre-9/11:

And here he is as he might be today… perhaps living on your street, caring for your children, or maybe just hiding out in some ungoverned corner of Pakistan:

Whoa! I mean… who’d have believed it?  Look at the guy.  It’s almost impossible to think it could be the same person.  For a start, he has got rid of the blanket over his shoulder.  And everyone (MI6, CIA) thought that the Bin-man wouldn’t go anywhere – like, for example, a well-guarded cave in an ungoverned quarter of Pakistan – without his beloved safety blanket.  He’s like Linus in Peanuts: no blanket, no identity.

And the turban!!! Where’s the cheeky bit of extra cloth flapping about? Gone. Is there nothing this man won’t do to hide his whereabouts?  He’s even started wearing (look closely) a brown shirt with a silver floral pattern!  Lucky the FBI put that photo out.  Without it, hell, anyone could have stumbled upon a well-guarded cave somewhere in, ooh, the Afghan-Pakistan border area, and met this blanket-free, small-turbaned, crap-shirted dude and thought “hey, isn’t that… no, my bad, that’s definitely not OBL. No resemblance.   Sorry about that fine sir, I’ll be on my way…”.

Some unexpected data comes in from the BBC:

Of more than 1,500 Afghans questioned, 70% said they believed Afghanistan was going in the right direction – a big jump from 40% a year ago. Of those questioned, 68% now back the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, compared with 63% a year ago.

The survey was conducted in all of the country’s 34 provinces in December 2009. In 2009 only 51% of those surveyed had expected improvement and 13% thought conditions would deteriorate. But in the latest survey 71% said they were optimistic about the situation in 12 months’ time, compared with 5% who said it would be worse.

Compare that with these Gallup figures, released last week:

Sixty-three percent of Americans describe their outlook for the United States during the next 20 years as “very optimistic” or “optimistic.” Americans expressed greater optimism about the country’s future near the beginning of the 1990s and 2000s, but the current level optimism exceeds that of Americans heading into the 1980s.

So, there you go: there’s 7% more hope in Afghanistan!

- Writing in E!Sharp magazine, David Charter examines some of the contentious debates surrounding the shaping of the new European External Action Service (EEAS). Jan Gaspers, meanwhile, suggests that the EEAS will mark the “real vanguard of a stronger EU in international affairs”, and given time could pose a significant challenge to national diplomacy.

- Bruce Schneier offers his take on the reaction to the attempted Christmas terror plot. “The problem”, Schneier argues, with the solutions being proposed (full-body scanners, passenger profiling, etc.):

“is that they’re only effective if we guess the plot correctly. Defending against a particular tactic or target makes sense if tactics and targets are few. But there are hundreds of tactics and millions of targets, so all these measures will do is force the terrorists to make a minor modification to their plot.”

[…]

“What we need is security that’s effective even if we can’t guess the next plot: intelligence, investigation and emergency response.”

- Elsewhere, Samuel Brittan, argues in favour of taking a “fresh look” at certain liberal values – “[h]owever difficult it is to define a liberal”, he suggests, “it is not hard to spot anti-liberals.” John Gray, meanwhile, explores the relationship between neoliberalism and state power, suggesting that “[t]he consequence of reshaping society on a market model has been to make the state omnipresent.”

- Finally, the FT’s Gillian Tett has an interesting piece on the potential social impact of fiscal cuts and the implications of this for bond markets and national standing over the next decade.

The next stage of our journey presents a dilemma. We have to get from Guinea-Bissau, where we are now, to Sierra Leone.

The overland route would be by far the most attractive option, but the violence in Guinea-Conakry, which lies between our starting point and our destination, rules it out. There is a very long overland route which bypasses Guinea, but which takes you through Liberia and Ivory Coast which, like Guinea-Conakry, are both on the UK Foreign Office’s blacklist of places to avoid (being on this list invalidates travel insurance, so if you fall ill or get shot or blown up, you will be skint as well as dead). There are no flights from Guinea-Bissau, so that leaves flying from Gambia or Dakar, Senegal as the only options (and you take your chances with West African airlines).

To get to Gambia or Dakar, however, is not easy. You either have to go by land through the Basse Casamance region of Senegal, where there has been a low-level but dangerous rebellion for years and where a 9-year-old girl was murdered by bandits a week ago and where gunfights between rebels and soldiers are common. Or you have to endure a gruelling two-day road journey east through Guinea-Bissau, up into Senegal and around Gambia to Dakar. We have done this journey once, and the idea of doing it again makes me suicidal. It too is not without risks, for the roads are atrocious and littered with overturned or burnt out vehicles.

So there is no easy option. The road up through Casamance is also on the FCO’s blacklist, although if we can make it the 18km to Ziguinchor tomorrow we can then ask in town whether it is safe to go overland up to Gambia. If it’s not safe, we can go by boat to Dakar (safeish if the boat doesn’t sink, as it did a few years ago). We have decided on the latter course, which means 18km of danger – approximately half an hour. Ziguinchor itself is quite calm and well guarded by police.

I will post again when we get to Ziguinchor. I have been reading Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Another Day of Life, where he got caught up and regularly fired on in the Angolan war of independence, as reassurance. This would have been a cakewalk for him.

Yesterday on our way back to Bissau from the south, we were stopped at a military checkpoint and forced to empty our rucksacks. Well, empty them until the soldier got bored halfway through and told us to stop – he didn’t look at the other half.

The reason for this sudden rigour (at the same checkpoint a few days previously mentioning Manchester United was sufficient to avoid a bag check) is the return to Guinea-Bissau of General Bubu, the former head of the navy. Bubu had to flee the country 18 months ago when he was discovered plotting a coup d’etat against the then president, Nino Vieira. He took sanctuary in Gambia.

Last Monday, weary of exile, the general returned secretly to Guinea-Bissau in a dugout canoe, entering via one of the country’s many rivers. Eluding checkpoints such as the one we passed through, he arrived in Bissau, walked into the United Nations building and claimed refugee status. There he remains today.

The government wants the UN to give him up so they can try him for his crime – although Nino Vieira is now dead and Bubu claims he has come in peace, you can’t trust anyone around here, especially someone with his popularity. But the UN constitution makes handing him over impossible, so there is deadlock. All that can be done is for soldiers at checkpoints to make sure people like Bubu don’t get through in future (although checking only half of one’s bag and not asking for ID may not be failsafe). After us, the regional governor passed through the same checkpoint. His bag was searched too, and he angrily asked the soldiers why they were shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. The soldiers, chastened, shrugged.