| December 5, 2001 | Wednesday | Ramazan 19, 1422 |
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America ‘understands’
IT IS extraordinary that the massacre of hundreds of foreign Taliban prisoners near Mazar-i-Sharif last week should be shrugged off so casually by a spokesman for the Coalition Information Service in his Dec 3 rejoinder to an editorial in this newspaper. His argument is based on the premise that because the prisoners took up arms and turned on their captors, their status changed to that of armed combatants. QED. That, in effect, put them beyond the pale of the Geneva Conventions. Let us for the sake of argument agree with this position. If taking up arms rendered the Geneva Conventions irrelevant, did it mean that the prisoners were no longer to be treated like human beings who had surrendered to opposing forces? Fortunately, human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are, like Dawn, seeking answers to some disturbing questions raised by the carnage.
Let us accept that the prisoners did manage to take up arms against their captors, as reports in The Guardian suggest. How do you deal with the situation? Certainly not by resorting to the spectacular overkill the US displayed over the skies of Mazar-i-Sharif! The spectacle of planes making sortie after sortie and raining missiles on what was essentially a prison riot is surely unprecedented in history. The spokesman for the Coalition, however, maintains a mysterious silence on this aspect of the incident. The spokesman goes on to state that the captured fighters were under no obligation to take up arms but chose to do so. Perhaps their decision was motivated by a fear of their fate at the hands of Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum, in whose fortress they were housed. During the civil war, Dostum’s forces had a reputation for brutality and were also behind the massacre of cornered Taliban fighters after the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in November. Meanwhile, the chilling sight of dozens of bodies strewn across the fortress with their hands tied behind their backs also speaks for itself. The spokesman also chooses to ignore this shocking fact and glibly claims that the incident was “not a massacre of unarmed prisoners by their captors.” How could such bound prisoners possibly be termed armed combatants? It is chilling imagery of this nature that drew us to make a comparison with the Nazi atrocities.
The coalition statement alleges that Dawn “compared the United States and the United Kingdom to the Nazis.” This is not true, for nowhere in our editorial did we refer to these two democracies as Nazis, because we have great respect for these two countries’ democratic traditions. What we did say was that what happened at Qala-i-Jangi and Takhta-Pul “seemed like a replay of atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Second World War.” Nazi-like atrocities can be — and have been — committed by officers and men belonging to democracies and acting on their own without authorization from their superiors. My Lai itself is an example, in addition to whatever is happening in Israeli-occupied territories. Despite the suspicious circumstances surrounding the massacre, the US and Britain have tried to brush aside the issue by rejecting calls for an inquiry. Why? If they are innocent, an inquiry will surely acquit them.
According to a Guardian report, a series of “catastrophic errors were made” during the incident. For example, how did so many Taliban fighters (some of them hiding grenades on their person, according to the spokesman) end up in a fortress reportedly bristling with ammunition? Amnesty International has put together a list of ten questions that need to be answered by all those involved in the carnage. The questions include why the Taliban were not properly disarmed, whether the response of the detaining powers was proportionate, was only minimum force used as required by the Geneva Conventions and why those killed were still bound. These are questions that must be answered with all seriousness and not brushed aside as irrelevant. Fortunately, Dawn is not alone in asking these questions. The credibility of the World Coalition will be strengthened if an inquiry proves the allegations to be false.
“ISRAEL has the right to defend itself, and the president understands that clearly.” Thus reacted a White House spokesman immediately after the Zionist state launched a devastating attack on Yasser Arafat’s offices in Gaza City on Monday. Sharon, in Washington when the Hamas suicide bombings killed 26 Israelis, rushed home to order the attacks. Did George Bush give him the go-ahead for the aerial attacks on Gaza, Jenin and Bethlehem? The White House spokesman denied that the American president had given a “green light.” He said the US did not give anybody “a green light, because nobody asked for a green light.” Actually, Sharon did not have to ask for a green light, because an American approval of Israeli actions is taken for granted. If the situation were otherwise, and America were to take a just and fair view of the Arab-Israeli question, Tel Aviv would not have been in illegal possession of Palestinian occupied territories and Syria’s Golan Heights now for thirty-four years.
On Monday, the UN General Assembly adopted six resolutions, censuring Israel for its policy in the occupied territories. These resolutions are a ritual and are adopted every year.The resolutions are non-binding, but they are significant in the sense that they record the world community’s opposition to Israel’s occupation policies. Israel defies these resolutions and treats them with the contempt it has always shown towards any treaties or resolutions that condemn its genocidal policies in Palestine. That America should be indifferent to these resolutions is shocking, because normally America has always pretended that lofty ideals guide its foreign policy, and that it has an active human rights and democracy agenda before it while dealing with foreign governments. For that reason, there are a number of countries, mostly Muslim, which have been subjected to American sanctions, because they fall below Washington’s purported human rights standards. However, when it comes to Israel and its genocidal policies towardss the Palestinian people, all American governments have maintained a disagreeable silence. Not only that: Washington has encouraged Tel Aviv in its Nazi-like atrocities in the occupied territories by continuing with plentiful doses of economic and military aid.
The issue in Palestine is the revival of the peace process, which lies dormant. Ever since Ariel Sharon, this war criminal, came to power he has refused to negotiate with Yasser Arafat. This way, he has gone beyond his predecessors’ policies, which had all but sabotaged the Oslo and Washington accords. Nevertheless, they had continued to negotiate, often forcing a re-negotiation of the previous treaties. But this man has refused even to negotiate. Violence of the kind witnessed during the last few days will continue and may even increase, unless the peace process is revived. Sharon’s conditions for a revival of the peace process are absurd. Arafat has done all he can to take action against Hamas supporters and other militants. In the absence of talks, one should not be surprised if Palestinian extremists are prepared to give up their lives to bring their people’s plight to the world’s notice. Unfortunately, the one power that is in a position to pressure Sharon is hostage to its domestic politics, where it is the Zionist lobby that decides the fate of presidential elections.