Published on Thursday, November 29, 2001 in the Independent/UK
<http://www.independent.co.uk/>
We Are the War Criminals Now
'Everything we have believed in since the Second World War goes by the
board as we pursue our own exclusive war'
by Robert Fisk
We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs
Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies �
who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 � move into
the city and execute up to 300 Taliban fighters. The report is a
footnote on the television satellite channels, a "nib" in journalistic
parlance. Perfectly normal, it seems. The Afghans have a "tradition" of
revenge. So, with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime is
committed.
Now we have the Mazar-i-Sharif prison "revolt", in which Taliban inmates
opened fire on their Alliance jailers. US Special Forces � and, it has
emerged, British troops � helped the Alliance to overcome the uprising
and, sure enough, CNN tells us some prisoners were "executed" trying to
escape. It is an atrocity. British troops are now stained with war
crimes. Within days, The Independent's Justin Huggler has found more
executed Taliban members in Kunduz.
The Americans have even less excuse for this massacre. For the US
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, stated quite specifically during
the siege of the city that US air raids on the Taliban defenders would
stop "if the Northern Alliance requested it". Leaving aside the
revelation that the thugs and murderers of the Northern Alliance were
now acting as air controllers to the USAF in its battle with the thugs
and murderers of the Taliban, Mr Rumsfeld's incriminating remark places
Washington in the witness box of any war-crimes trial over Kunduz. The
US were acting in full military co-operation with the Northern Alliance
militia.
Most television journalists, to their shame, have shown little or no
interest in these disgraceful crimes. Cosying up to the Northern
Alliance, chatting to the American troops, most have done little more
than mention the war crimes against prisoners in the midst of their
reports. What on earth has gone wrong with our moral compass since 11
September?
Perhaps I can suggest an answer. After both the First and Second World
Wars, we � the "West" � grew a forest of legislation to prevent further
war crimes. The very first Anglo-French-Russian attempt to formulate
such laws was provoked by the Armenian Holocaust at the hands of the
Turks in 1915; The Entente said it would hold personally responsible
"all members of the (Turkish) Ottoman government and those of their
agents who are implicated in such massacres". After the Jewish Holocaust
and the collapse of Germany in 1945, article 6 (C) of the Nuremberg
Charter and the Preamble of the UN Convention on genocide referred to
"crimes against humanity". Each new post-1945 war produced a raft of
legislation and the creation of evermore human rights groups to lobby
the world on liberal, humanistic Western values.
Over the past 50 years, we sat on our moral pedestal and lectured the
Chinese and the Soviets, the Arabs and the Africans, about human rights.
We pronounced on the human-rights crimes of Bosnians and Croatians and
Serbs. We put many of them in the dock, just as we did the Nazis at
Nuremberg. Thousands of dossiers were produced, describing � in nauseous
detail � the secret courts and death squads and torture and extra
judicial executions carried out by rogue states and pathological
dictators. Quite right too.
Yet suddenly, after 11 September, we went mad. We bombed Afghan villages
into rubble, along with their inhabitants � blaming the insane Taliban
and Osama bin Laden for our slaughter � and now we have allowed our
gruesome militia allies to execute their prisoners. President George
Bush has signed into law a set of secret military courts to try and then
liquidate anyone believed to be a "terrorist murderer" in the eyes of
America's awesomely inefficient intelligence services. And make no
mistake about it, we are talking here about legally sanctioned American
government death squads. They have been created, of course, so that
Osama bin Laden and his men should they be caught rather than killed,
will have no public defense; just a pseudo trial and a firing squad.
It's quite clear what has happened. When people with yellow or black or
brownish skin, with Communist or Islamic or Nationalist credentials,
murder their prisoners or carpet bomb villages to kill their enemies or
set up death squad courts, they must be condemned by the United States,
the European Union, the United Nations and the "civilized" world. We are
the masters of human rights, the Liberals, the great and good who can
preach to the impoverished masses. But when our people are murdered �
when our glittering buildings are destroyed � then we tear up every
piece of human rights legislation, send off the B-52s in the direction
of the impoverished masses and set out to murder our enemies.
Winston Churchill took the Bush view of his enemies. In 1945, he
preferred the straightforward execution of the Nazi leadership. Yet
despite the fact that Hitler's monsters were responsible for at least 50
million deaths � 10,000 times greater than the victims of 11 September �
the Nazi murderers were given a trial at Nuremberg because US President
Truman made a remarkable decision. "Undiscriminating executions or
punishments," he said, "without definite findings of guilt fairly
arrived at, would not fit easily on the American conscience or be
remembered by our children with pride."
No one should be surprised that Mr Bush � a small-time Texas
Governor-Executioner � should fail to understand the morality of a
statesman in the White House What is so shocking is that the Blairs,
Schr�ders, Chiracs and all the television boys should have remained so
gutlessly silent in the face of the Afghan executions and East
European-style legislation sanctified since 11 September.
There are ghostly shadows around to remind us of the consequences of
state murder. In France, a general goes on trial after admitting to
torture and murder in the 1954-62 Algerian war, because he referred to
his deeds as "justifiable acts of duty performed without pleasure or
remorse". And in Brussels, a judge will decide if the Israeli Prime
Minister, Arial Sharon, can be prosecuted for his "personal
responsibility" for the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Chatila.
Yes, I know the Taliban were a cruel bunch of bastards. They committed
most of their massacres outside Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s. They
executed women in the Kabul football stadium. And yes, lets remember
that 11 September was a crime against humanity.
But I have a problem with all this. George Bush says that "you are
either for us or against us" in the war for civilization against evil.
Well, I'm sure not for bin Laden. But I'm not for Bush. I'm actively
against the brutal, cynical, lying "war of civilization" that he has
begun so mendaciously in our name and which has now cost as many lives
as the World Trade Center mass murder.
At this moment, I can't help remembering my dad. He was old enough to
have fought in the First World War. In the third Battle of Arras. And as
great age overwhelmed him near the end of the century, he raged against
the waste and murder of the 1914-1918 war. When he died in 1992, I
inherited the campaign medal of which he was once so proud, proof that
he had survived a war he had come to hate and loathe and despise. On the
back, it says: "The Great War for Civilization" Maybe I should send it
to George Bush.
� 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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THE END
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