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I am not sure what term is apporopiate for the horrific treatment, but I found the Economist's point quite valid. > By the common understanding of the word, it

I am not sure what term is apporopiate for the horrific treatment, but I found the Economist's point quite valid. > By the common understanding of the word, it is not. Just as “homicide” means killing a person and “suicide” means killing yourself, “genocide” means killing a people. China’s persecution of the Uyghurs is horrific: it has locked up perhaps 1m of them in prison camps, which it naturally mislabels “vocational training centres”. It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. But it is not slaughtering them. [...] > By accusing it of genocide instead, in the absence of mass murder, America is diminishing the unique stigma of the term. Genocide should put a government beyond the pale; yet American officials will keep doing business with the regime they have branded genocidal. Future genocidaires will take comfort

capableweb 6y ago
I don't think there is any strict consensus that genocide is only about slaughtering people as in murder/killing. Sterilisation and making their living conditions worse than others in order to kill their culture and ethnicity can also be considered genocide, as the ultimate goal is to erase them. In this case it just happens slowly in training centers, work camps and prisons. In the larger picture I agree with you however. If you give someone that label there is only one stance that would be acceptable and it would have to be a strong one, otherwise you are diminishing the importance of the word.
dleslie 6y ago
That's not valid; genocide is not simply death camps, it can be the purposeful and systematic erasure of a culture.
- meowing 6y ago
  I took a course on this, and part of it was just arriving at a definition. One way to think about it is literally the name - genocide is anything that prevents future generations of that culture or population
AlexandrB 6y ago
> It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. I think the Economist is being pedantic. The above, applied broadly, would "kill a people" within one generation.
- dleslie 6y ago
  It's not being pedantic; it's moving the goalposts. The UN's definition of genocide does not require death camps. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
CivBase 6y ago
Here's the article: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the-wrong-word-for-the-horrors-of-xinjiang https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the...
mcrae 6y ago
> It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women Forced sterilisation is a form of genocide [0] [0] https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/Publications/Compendium/RomeStatute-ENG.pdf https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/Publications/Compen...
- omginternets 6y ago
  It is neither necessary nor sufficient to meet the definition of genocide. Forced sterilization with the intent of destroying a people, in whole or in part is a form of genocide, but that second part is required.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway894345 6y ago
I agree. Not only does it exaggerate the offense and water down a specific term, it also allows for the predictable digression: "it's not genocide, look at the US/Canada/etc trying to lie and vilify China!". That said, I'm not sure what alternative appropriately weighty term exists. Moreover, the US also does this internally all the time, with various political groups claiming genocide against various minority groups or else "concentration camps".
- reedjosh 6y ago
  > ...“genocide” means killing a people Killing a people doesn't necessarily mean killing individual people. Sterilization is killing a people.
rhodozelia 6y ago
The prime minister of canada declared that canada had conducted a genocide against the pre-european inhabitants of the continent. It looks like Louis Riel's Metis revolt in 1885 was the last [0] real battle or war. The genocide Canada has declared they conducted was also not a violent slaughtering of people. So I guess they are in good company with the Chinese as soft-genocidaires? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_Ame...
- dleslie 6y ago
  Yup, what China is doing isn't so different to what Canada has admitted it has done to its indigenous population, and is attempting to make amends for. Part of making amends must be ensuring that vigilance is taken to prevent it from happening again.
- ygjb 6y ago
  Yes, we are. It is generally acknowledged by our various Governments at every level that Canada has a history of committing and supporting genocidal acts against indigenous peoples. It's not about the wars either; our residential school systems, ongoing issues with child separation policies across the country contribute to our ongoing complicity with this. It turns out that when a country is built on genocide and disenfranchisement it's kind of hard to stop.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  What about the Acadian peoples? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians EDIT: You can downvote all you want, it won't change what happened.
- rhodozelia 6y ago
  Personally i don’t think what happened in Canada is anywhere near on the same level of “genocide” as what is going on in China, but it is impossible to truly know. I Was hoping to get some discussion on the comparison between the two situations, but I got two apologetic Canadians who agree with the prime minister and the upvote/downvote roller coaster. It is a difficult topic to discuss without aquiring a label, and obviously very few are willing to wade in to those treacherous waters.
ygjb 6y ago
The problem with that article is that it focuses on parsing language in the context of similar words; genocide as a word was coined in 1944 with a focus on framing the Holocaust in the context of other historical attempts to wipe out a people. It's explicitly important that genocide can't only be focused on murdering living people, because for the most part, you don't wipe out a race or group of people just by killing them. Trying to scope genocide down to the simple act of murdering people is a bloody-minded case of exceptionalism that overlooks the ongoing attempts to commit genocide around the world by actively destroying cultures, their history, and severing the ties that future generations have to both of those. It's also very easy to understand why folks have a hard time closing the gap; virtually every country in the world has some history of tribalism and violence that falls into the broad strokes of genocide, and several countries are still actively engaged in it; it's worth noting that taken in the context of Central and South American immigrants to the United States, a case could be made that the child separation policy is a genocidal act. There is a reason why the definition of genocide in legal terms steps away from the dictionary definition of the word, and it's documented here -> https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml I would suggest that anyone that doesn't find each of the items of the formal definition of genocide from the U.N. listed below as horrifying as the first line, it's probably worthwhile to spend some time evaluating and learning about the impact policies and governments that have done this in recent history (post World War II) to understand why the scope of genocide can't be limited to murder. Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
lixtra 6y ago
The labeling is not arbitrary but based in the UN definition: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: - Killing members of the group; - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; ... -Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; ... https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
- thesimon 6y ago
  For which the Economist argues > But if conventions are worded with unusual broadness, they must also be used with special care. Until now, America’s State Department had applied the “genocide” label only to mass slaughter, and even then it often hesitated, for fear that uttering the term would create an expectation that it would intervene. It did not call Rwanda’s genocide a genocide until it was practically over.
- yorwba 6y ago
  All three definitely apply to Han Chinese: - The number of executions is treated as a state secret, but most likely a lot of people are killed every year, including for political "crimes". - Chinese prisons used to be labor camps by default and many continue to operate as such, including torture and rape by prison guards. - The one-child policy was all about preventing births and involved sterilizing more than half of all women. Which makes me wonder why the Canadian declaration is limited to Uighurs instead of also applying to persecuted Han Chinese or members of the fifty-odd other recognized ethnic groups in China. Is it just because Uighurs have gotten comparatively more attention recently?
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    The overlooking of certain behavior never was justification of the the same behavior on other occasions. The dilemma faced by China and the West, regarding their ways of life, is that they are operating on 2 systems that are different down to a very fundamental level. In short, China and the West have different values. The sad thing is that outside of China and the West, there are actually more people being entirely left out of the discussion. And neither have the universal systems and resources to bring these people out of their suffering. Til this day, China's treatment on Uighurs are still highly secretive. That leads to the claim of internment of 1 million Uighurs become a superficial paly thing by both sides: * China certainly are very content that no domestic instability because that 1 million figure is obviously not trustworthy to Chinese people. (Note that there is no way to verify the truth, as that's CCP's tactic all along; there is always the national security card prevent any forceful international investigation). * The West are also very comfortable because they can outrageously condemn CCP for various political objectives. Do they really care about the 1 Million Uighurs? Obviously yes, but probably is behind a long list other concerns. This dilemma (or pleasant situation if we think about it as a whole) is a reflection of the incompatibility of 2 systems. It is a clash of civilizations. And that clash is not movable by the seemingly good will of the people: if you ask the people in China and the West they would universally say that they like the people from the other side, and they just dont like their government. But they are merely unconscious of the fact that the clash is happening not because of the government, but really was by the people's will, through the thousands of channels of influences that the puny Human brain will never fully grasp.
dade_ 6y ago
I think there is substantial evidence that organs are being removed from Uighurs while they are alive or are being killed for organ harvest. Depending on how much business the media organization does in China, it gets reported or not. I don't think China should get a pass because they only kill of the very annoying people or those with blood type matches. https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=0D8860DC-A94D-4E9B-80AE-46FAB2902879 https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=0D8... https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-u...
- omginternets 6y ago
  That still doesn't make it genocide. To be clear, it makes it sickeningly evil, but insofar as distinctions matter, it isn't genocide. Genocide implies the intent of erasing a people from existence. Simply detaining them and subjecting them to torture -- however horrible that may be -- is insufficient to meet the definition. A better argument would be that of forced sterilization, but then you'd have to show that this is both systematic and done with the intent of erasing an ethnic group. To be clear: we must take a stand against China's behavior, but we should also label it correctly.
  - ygjb 6y ago
    You are incorrect. The legal definition of genocide under the UN, and recognized as international law by ratified signatories is discussed here. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml The reality is that child separation, sterilization, and the acts taken by the Chinese government to destroy Uigher connections to their cultural history meet the definition. Genocide isn't just about killing people, it's about obliterating a people and their culture, and you can't stop the definition at mass murder.
    - omginternets 6y ago
      You are mistaken. In fact, your link quite clearly supports my position (namely: that intent is key): >In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: [...] (Emphasis mine)
dirtyid 6y ago
It's worth pointing out the self serving and cynical reason for pursing a "genocide" determination when cultural genocide or crimes against humanity is more appropriate. "Cultural genocide" would equivalate Xinjiang forced integration with Canadian self-professed cultural genocide of indigenous peoples. Which would create the difficult position of questioning disparity in reprisal for one event and not another, both domestically and abroad. Canada literally admitted to cultural genocide - explicitly because it's a consequence free label. It's the same reason why Pompeo pressed for genocide on his way out, despite his own state department finding there's insufficient evidence for such determination, compared to more appropriate "crimes against humanity" or "cultural genocide". Bluntly because the latter two have no formal conventions, i.e. there is no obligation to punish. The semantic game is significant and self-serving. If punishment for "crimes against humanity" were ever formalized, it would open up US actions to similar scrutiny (i.e. war crimes). Similarly for Canada, labelling XJ "cultural genocide" and setting norms to punish it would open Canada to punishment. Hence elaborate propaganda, exaggerated word games and non-binding resolutions. To be clear, XJ is absolutely "cultural genocide" / "crimes against humanity" - but it's not genocide. If the US state department, under lying Pompeo can't comfortably rationalize the determination, it's because the accusation is flawed. Rather these efforts are specifically designed to target only Chinese human rights violations while insulate against western ones. A serious campaign actually sympathetic to human rights will attempt to prosecute XJ as "crimes against humanity", for which there is a feasible avenue for prosecution, and start a formalize process for punishing this and future events. But Canada doesn't want to do that, because they will suffer from the fallout. The US doesn't want to do that... because lol, the Hague Invasion Act exists specifically so US can get away with "crimes against humanity". Realistically no country wants to go down that route, not just because no hands are clean, but because no one wants to be punished the next time their hands get dirty. Finally, there's no compelling reason to insist on "genocide" label outside of domestic politics, which will never stick internationally, least of all because China still has plurality international support, from Islamic nations no less, for XJ being a counter insurgency response. TL;DR: it's theatre.

capableweb 6y ago

I don't think there is any strict consensus that genocide is only about slaughtering people as in murder/killing. Sterilisation and making their living conditions worse than others in order to kill their culture and ethnicity can also be considered genocide, as the ultimate goal is to erase them. In this case it just happens slowly in training centers, work camps and prisons. In the larger picture I agree with you however. If you give someone that label there is only one stance that would be acceptable and it would have to be a strong one, otherwise you are diminishing the importance of the word.

dleslie 6y ago

That's not valid; genocide is not simply death camps, it can be the purposeful and systematic erasure of a culture.

meowing 6y ago
I took a course on this, and part of it was just arriving at a definition. One way to think about it is literally the name - genocide is anything that prevents future generations of that culture or population

AlexandrB 6y ago

> It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. I think the Economist is being pedantic. The above, applied broadly, would "kill a people" within one generation.

dleslie 6y ago
It's not being pedantic; it's moving the goalposts. The UN's definition of genocide does not require death camps. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

CivBase 6y ago

Here's the article: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the-wrong-word-for-the-horrors-of-xinjiang https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the...

mcrae 6y ago

> It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women Forced sterilisation is a form of genocide [0] [0] https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/Publications/Compendium/RomeStatute-ENG.pdf https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/Publications/Compen...

omginternets 6y ago
It is neither necessary nor sufficient to meet the definition of genocide. Forced sterilization with the intent of destroying a people, in whole or in part is a form of genocide, but that second part is required.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway894345 6y ago

I agree. Not only does it exaggerate the offense and water down a specific term, it also allows for the predictable digression: "it's not genocide, look at the US/Canada/etc trying to lie and vilify China!". That said, I'm not sure what alternative appropriately weighty term exists. Moreover, the US also does this internally all the time, with various political groups claiming genocide against various minority groups or else "concentration camps".

reedjosh 6y ago
> ...“genocide” means killing a people Killing a people doesn't necessarily mean killing individual people. Sterilization is killing a people.

rhodozelia 6y ago

The prime minister of canada declared that canada had conducted a genocide against the pre-european inhabitants of the continent. It looks like Louis Riel's Metis revolt in 1885 was the last [0] real battle or war. The genocide Canada has declared they conducted was also not a violent slaughtering of people. So I guess they are in good company with the Chinese as soft-genocidaires? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_Ame...

dleslie 6y ago
Yup, what China is doing isn't so different to what Canada has admitted it has done to its indigenous population, and is attempting to make amends for. Part of making amends must be ensuring that vigilance is taken to prevent it from happening again.
ygjb 6y ago
Yes, we are. It is generally acknowledged by our various Governments at every level that Canada has a history of committing and supporting genocidal acts against indigenous peoples. It's not about the wars either; our residential school systems, ongoing issues with child separation policies across the country contribute to our ongoing complicity with this. It turns out that when a country is built on genocide and disenfranchisement it's kind of hard to stop.
908B64B197 6y ago
What about the Acadian peoples? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians EDIT: You can downvote all you want, it won't change what happened.
rhodozelia 6y ago
Personally i don’t think what happened in Canada is anywhere near on the same level of “genocide” as what is going on in China, but it is impossible to truly know. I Was hoping to get some discussion on the comparison between the two situations, but I got two apologetic Canadians who agree with the prime minister and the upvote/downvote roller coaster. It is a difficult topic to discuss without aquiring a label, and obviously very few are willing to wade in to those treacherous waters.

ygjb 6y ago

The problem with that article is that it focuses on parsing language in the context of similar words; genocide as a word was coined in 1944 with a focus on framing the Holocaust in the context of other historical attempts to wipe out a people. It's explicitly important that genocide can't only be focused on murdering living people, because for the most part, you don't wipe out a race or group of people just by killing them. Trying to scope genocide down to the simple act of murdering people is a bloody-minded case of exceptionalism that overlooks the ongoing attempts to commit genocide around the world by actively destroying cultures, their history, and severing the ties that future generations have to both of those. It's also very easy to understand why folks have a hard time closing the gap; virtually every country in the world has some history of tribalism and violence that falls into the broad strokes of genocide, and several countries are still actively engaged in it; it's worth noting that taken in the context of Central and South American immigrants to the United States, a case could be made that the child separation policy is a genocidal act. There is a reason why the definition of genocide in legal terms steps away from the dictionary definition of the word, and it's documented here -> https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml I would suggest that anyone that doesn't find each of the items of the formal definition of genocide from the U.N. listed below as horrifying as the first line, it's probably worthwhile to spend some time evaluating and learning about the impact policies and governments that have done this in recent history (post World War II) to understand why the scope of genocide can't be limited to murder. Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

lixtra 6y ago

The labeling is not arbitrary but based in the UN definition: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: - Killing members of the group; - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; ... -Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; ... https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

thesimon 6y ago
For which the Economist argues > But if conventions are worded with unusual broadness, they must also be used with special care. Until now, America’s State Department had applied the “genocide” label only to mass slaughter, and even then it often hesitated, for fear that uttering the term would create an expectation that it would intervene. It did not call Rwanda’s genocide a genocide until it was practically over.
yorwba 6y ago
All three definitely apply to Han Chinese: - The number of executions is treated as a state secret, but most likely a lot of people are killed every year, including for political "crimes". - Chinese prisons used to be labor camps by default and many continue to operate as such, including torture and rape by prison guards. - The one-child policy was all about preventing births and involved sterilizing more than half of all women. Which makes me wonder why the Canadian declaration is limited to Uighurs instead of also applying to persecuted Han Chinese or members of the fifty-odd other recognized ethnic groups in China. Is it just because Uighurs have gotten comparatively more attention recently?
- justicezyx 6y ago
  The overlooking of certain behavior never was justification of the the same behavior on other occasions. The dilemma faced by China and the West, regarding their ways of life, is that they are operating on 2 systems that are different down to a very fundamental level. In short, China and the West have different values. The sad thing is that outside of China and the West, there are actually more people being entirely left out of the discussion. And neither have the universal systems and resources to bring these people out of their suffering. Til this day, China's treatment on Uighurs are still highly secretive. That leads to the claim of internment of 1 million Uighurs become a superficial paly thing by both sides: * China certainly are very content that no domestic instability because that 1 million figure is obviously not trustworthy to Chinese people. (Note that there is no way to verify the truth, as that's CCP's tactic all along; there is always the national security card prevent any forceful international investigation). * The West are also very comfortable because they can outrageously condemn CCP for various political objectives. Do they really care about the 1 Million Uighurs? Obviously yes, but probably is behind a long list other concerns. This dilemma (or pleasant situation if we think about it as a whole) is a reflection of the incompatibility of 2 systems. It is a clash of civilizations. And that clash is not movable by the seemingly good will of the people: if you ask the people in China and the West they would universally say that they like the people from the other side, and they just dont like their government. But they are merely unconscious of the fact that the clash is happening not because of the government, but really was by the people's will, through the thousands of channels of influences that the puny Human brain will never fully grasp.

dade_ 6y ago

I think there is substantial evidence that organs are being removed from Uighurs while they are alive or are being killed for organ harvest. Depending on how much business the media organization does in China, it gets reported or not. I don't think China should get a pass because they only kill of the very annoying people or those with blood type matches. https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=0D8860DC-A94D-4E9B-80AE-46FAB2902879 https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=0D8... https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-u...

omginternets 6y ago
That still doesn't make it genocide. To be clear, it makes it sickeningly evil, but insofar as distinctions matter, it isn't genocide. Genocide implies the intent of erasing a people from existence. Simply detaining them and subjecting them to torture -- however horrible that may be -- is insufficient to meet the definition. A better argument would be that of forced sterilization, but then you'd have to show that this is both systematic and done with the intent of erasing an ethnic group. To be clear: we must take a stand against China's behavior, but we should also label it correctly.
- ygjb 6y ago
  You are incorrect. The legal definition of genocide under the UN, and recognized as international law by ratified signatories is discussed here. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml The reality is that child separation, sterilization, and the acts taken by the Chinese government to destroy Uigher connections to their cultural history meet the definition. Genocide isn't just about killing people, it's about obliterating a people and their culture, and you can't stop the definition at mass murder.
  - omginternets 6y ago
    You are mistaken. In fact, your link quite clearly supports my position (namely: that intent is key): >In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: [...] (Emphasis mine)

dirtyid 6y ago

It's worth pointing out the self serving and cynical reason for pursing a "genocide" determination when cultural genocide or crimes against humanity is more appropriate. "Cultural genocide" would equivalate Xinjiang forced integration with Canadian self-professed cultural genocide of indigenous peoples. Which would create the difficult position of questioning disparity in reprisal for one event and not another, both domestically and abroad. Canada literally admitted to cultural genocide - explicitly because it's a consequence free label. It's the same reason why Pompeo pressed for genocide on his way out, despite his own state department finding there's insufficient evidence for such determination, compared to more appropriate "crimes against humanity" or "cultural genocide". Bluntly because the latter two have no formal conventions, i.e. there is no obligation to punish. The semantic game is significant and self-serving. If punishment for "crimes against humanity" were ever formalized, it would open up US actions to similar scrutiny (i.e. war crimes). Similarly for Canada, labelling XJ "cultural genocide" and setting norms to punish it would open Canada to punishment. Hence elaborate propaganda, exaggerated word games and non-binding resolutions. To be clear, XJ is absolutely "cultural genocide" / "crimes against humanity" - but it's not genocide. If the US state department, under lying Pompeo can't comfortably rationalize the determination, it's because the accusation is flawed. Rather these efforts are specifically designed to target only Chinese human rights violations while insulate against western ones. A serious campaign actually sympathetic to human rights will attempt to prosecute XJ as "crimes against humanity", for which there is a feasible avenue for prosecution, and start a formalize process for punishing this and future events. But Canada doesn't want to do that, because they will suffer from the fallout. The US doesn't want to do that... because lol, the Hague Invasion Act exists specifically so US can get away with "crimes against humanity". Realistically no country wants to go down that route, not just because no hands are clean, but because no one wants to be punished the next time their hands get dirty. Finally, there's no compelling reason to insist on "genocide" label outside of domestic politics, which will never stick internationally, least of all because China still has plurality international support, from Islamic nations no less, for XJ being a counter insurgency response. TL;DR: it's theatre.