Récapinfos

Cameroon – Honor and Loyalty : Brotherhood through sport or the chivalrous mystique of the peacekeeper

Friendship through sport is the motto of the International Military Sports Council. It may seem paradoxical for men of war to advocate friendship through sport, given the dramatic events involving armies in some parts of the world.

War being, by its very nature, the ultimate vehicle for the expression of the most unbridgeable enmity, it may seem obvious that there should be no sign of a compassionate impulse between soldiers on opposing sides. One of the manifestations of this kind of dehumanisation of armed contradiction is the horrors inflicted reciprocally and indiscriminately by the warring parties, whose homicidal impulses of the bearers of the sword are rooted in artful and reassuring allegories that do not leave only the extermination of the other, the idea of submission being radically prohibited because it is presumed to contain the seeds of possible rebellion.

In short, there is a fear of a subsequent conflict, a cycle of death and devastation that is suspended for a moment, but always returns. In fact, the cessation of hostilities, far from reflecting the exhaustion of resentment, continues to feed on the memory of suffering, the effects of injured pride and the loss of loved ones, of whom it is not even certain that all have been properly relocated six feet underground.

In such a context, the warrior’s glory loses substance and succulence as he is tormented by the haunting presence of companions fallen along the way, the never-ending enigmatic whispers of innocent lives needlessly snuffed out, and the dark scars left on a nature that nevertheless invited the enchantment of the gaze and the appeasement of the spirit.

Faced with the exacerbation of ideological specificities underpinned by hegemonic ambitions, diplomacy as practised in the past seems to have been sidelined, replaced by a deceptive and formalistic narrative, warmongering and extremist tendencies, as well as the plethora of short-term perspectives. Sport, and military sport in particular, appears in this combination of logical and sentimental impasses as the outlet par excellence, as an escape valve for the tensions that are constantly building up.