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POLITICA >> International Justice | ||||
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The Myth of International JusticeIn the present hysteria about Iraq, there has been a lot of rhetoric concerning flouting of UN Security Council resolutions. If a country is to be judged by its flouting of UN resolutions, then a simple calculation should allow us to identify the worst rogue states of this world. For example, Israel has ignored over 30 security resolutions relating to serious and well-documented breached of human rights in Palestine since 1948, but not once has the UN taken action against this country (1). Not to mention that 32 other resolutions against Israel have been vetoed by the United States in the past (1). So flouting UN resolutions cannot be the reason we are considering bombing Iraq. It must have committed some other crime. Well, it definitely did. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Security Council passed a resolution asking it to withdraw. When it refused, the Council allowed the USA and allies to take remedial military action. However, no similar action was ever taken against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or even the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In fact, Turkey has ignored over 50 UN resolutions calling for an end to the occupation of Cyprus. Similarly, Indonesia was allowed to illegally occupy East Timor for over 20 years. Even more illogical was the way Serbia was reprimanded for its "occupation" of Kosovo, which according to international law is an integrated region of Serbia. Can you be guilty of occupying your own country? In any case, it seems we are once again looking at the wrong crime: according to the examples above, illegal occupation of foreign territory does not automatically justify the punishment of your own civilian population by western bombs. The Bosnian war created huge numbers of refugees, based on religious rather than ethnic lines, and war crimes may have been committed in Kosovo, but as the trial of Milosevic has shown, the prosecution has very little evidence as to the ex President's involvement in these crimes. In the eyes of NATO, which had ignored the bitter civil war in Bosnia, the Kosovo crisis apparently justified the destructive bombing campaign of 1999, which caused the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Neighbouring Croatia was spared such a fate, despite well-documented massacres and ethnic cleansing of Serbian civilians in Krajina, for example. To this day, Croatia still refuses to hand over a general indicted of war crimes to the Hague tribunal, with no serious consequences. Similarly, the continued implantation of Israeli colonies deep inside Palestinian territories, the destruction of Palestinian houses, the massacres of Jenin in 2001 and those of Arabs by Israeli-supported militias in Lebanon in 1984 have led to nothing more than verbal criticism. In a similar way, Turkey has been importing farmers from Anatolia to Northern Cyprus since 1974, trying to alter the population balance on the island in its favour (many Turkish Cypriots were quite willing to reunite with their Greek neighbours to the South, which is not the case of the new arrivals). But of course, Turkey has never been punished for its demographic manipulations. Brian Whitaker from the Guardian replies to Bush's claim about Iraq that we cannot stand by and do nothing about Iraq: "But in the case of Israel, we not only can do nothing - we do nothing". This comment could easily also apply to Turkey in Cyprus, to Croatia in Krajina and to countless other injustices committed across the world. Iraq itself was allowed to use poison gas against its Kurdish population in the 1980s without raising eyebrows in Washington, for whom he was waging a proxy war against Iran (2). These disgusting breaches of the Geneva convention did not prevent Reagan to re-establish diplomatic relations with Baghdad, nor even American companies from exporting material to Iraq which had the potential to be used for biological weapons (2). This brings us to the real issue, the real crime committed by Hussein: the accumulation of an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Surely, possession of these abhorrent arms should automatically lead to an automatic bombing campaign? Well, this could be a bit tricky. After all, we all know who possesses the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet, we all know which country is the only one ever to have used nuclear weapons in a war. This country happens to have a veto at the Security Council, as do four other nuclear powers. But it is obviously not the possession of weapons of mass destruction which makes places a nation on the axis of evil, otherwise we would see France, the UK, the USA, Russia and China on the list of the accused. As we know, these countries cannot be evil, so there must be some other factor that I have forgotten. This additional factor is clear: one needs not only to possess nukes, but also to be a dictator and to harbour terrorists. Now we begin to understand why Iraq should be bombed. Or do we? In that case, why is no war being considered against Pakistan? Doesn't Pakistan meet the required criteria for being bombed back into the Stone Age? Many Al-Qaeda members are said to be hiding out in Pakistan (a far more likely hypothesis than the recent statements by G. W. Bush concerning links between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein), Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal, it has a dictator, and yet it is our ally in the war against evil. Of course, we are not advocating war or crippling sanctions against Turkey or Pakistan or Israel, for that would be futile, and would punish the populations for the crimes of their leaders. In a democracy, it may be argued that the people share some form of diluted responsibility for the actions of their elected leaders, but this premise can definitely not apply in the case of a dictatorship. In a dictatorship, the people are the victims. War and sanctions serve only to victimize them further. For example, the sanctions imposed against Iraq since the gulf war were misguided and inhuman. If, as Tony Blair's recent dossier about Iraq is correct, and the sanctions have not prevented Saddam Hussein from building a massive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, then as Robert Fisk from the Independent asserts: "it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us - for nothing." (3). If the dossier is just a series of unfounded assertions, then these Iraqi children once again died for no reason. In other words, for the sake of clarity, those Iraqi children died for nothing. "Well, but we can't just do NOTHING" will repeat the Hawks, ignoring the fact that in most cases we do nothing anyway. In Noam Chomsky´s words (he was writing about the bombing of Yugoslavia, which accelerated the exodus of Albanians from Kosovo), "when you have a choice between doing nothing and making things worse, it is better to do nothing at all" (4). But if we really want to do something constructive, we should first begin by being fair in our criticism. If we detest dictatorship, then we should not ally with such brutal ruling dynasties as the Saudi Monarchs. If we detest weapons of mass destruction, then we should start by reducing our own arsenals. If we fear terrorism, then we should think twice before supporting, training and arming terrorist groups when it serves out interests (as was the case for Al-Qaeda during the cold war). If the USA believes in international law, in the principles of the United Nations, then it should begin by signing up to the International Criminal Court (ICC), leading by example. The USA, has nothing to fear from the ICC, since it claims to respect human rights and the Geneva Convention. The Economist recently expressed the wish that Saddam Hussein should join Milosevic to be tried for several serious crimes (5). This is a rather short wish list, and we hope the International Court will have many other "guests" such as Ariel Sharon, General Pinochet, and those responsible for the massive civilian casualties resulting from the bombing campaigns in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. References: 1-
Whitaker, B. 2002. Nothing Doing. The Guardian, 24/09/02 |
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