WESTERN states have often justified their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as necessary operations to fight terrorism, protect democracy, neutralise weapons of mass destruction, etc. However, the overwhelming body of evidence — as well as world opinion — suggests that these were barefaced occupations which helped further destabilise these states. What is more, while the US, European states and other members of the Western community claim to abide by a superior set of moral values, their troops have often engaged in horrific war crimes in these theatres, with Western governments left to explain the atrocities, or look the other way. A recent BBC investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the elite SAS unit of the British military has uncovered disturbing details of how the UK’s troops shot unarmed individuals in Afghanistan as they claimed to battle the Afghan Taliban, while in many instances weapons were planted at the crime scene to make the extrajudicial killings look like a firefight between troops and militants. It is equally disturbing that British officers, including a senior general, failed to report the killings of detainees and unarmed men when these were brought to their knowledge.
Perhaps reports like these explain why instead of ‘winning hearts and minds’, the occupying powers earned only animosity from most Afghans and Iraqis. The US military is also notorious for its mistreatment and abuse of detainees, as grim tales from Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib in Iraq have testified. In the case of the SAS killings, a deeper probe is in order to uncover the true scope of abuse. However, this may be blocked by powerful quarters, as the UK’s defence ministry has dismissed the BBC investigation as “subjective reporting”. Yet such disclosures only add to the argument that Western states need to stop undertaking neocolonial ‘civilising missions’. While Western states deride militants for their human rights abuses, their own lawless tactics are not much better. Moreover, the families of the murdered individuals should be compensated so that they can get some sort of closure.
Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2022
