ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: Prof Noam Chomsky on Monday accused the United States and Britain of being above the international law and using “unlawful force” in their so-called fight against terrorism.

Giving a lecture at a function organized jointly by Dawn Group of Newspapers and Eqbal Ahmad Foundation at Convention Centre in the federal capital, the visiting American scholar gave examples of Sudan, Somalia and Nicaragua where the United States had been involved in the killing of thousands of innocent civilians.

“Terrorism is a weapon of the weak, but mostly used by the strong”, the professor told a glittering gathering of around 1,500 politicians, government ministers, intellectuals, scholars, academicians, serving and retired civil and military hierarchy.

The two-hour lecture was followed by a question-answer session during which the American scholar answered questions relating to several current issues.

At the dais, Mr Chomsky was flanked by the Editor of Dawn, Saleem Asmi, and chairperson of Eqbal Ahmad Foundation, Prof Pervez Hoodbhoy. Resident Editor Dawn, Islamabad, M. Ziauddin and Herald’s correspondent Zafar Abbass acted as moderators.

The scholar said the US government’s military action in Nicaragua was more “devastating” than the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

This was a reference to 1982 events in Nicaragua when Contras, who were fully supported by the American government, started promoting anti-Sandinista activities and carrying out attacks in which 30,000 people were killed.

Prof Chomsky said Nicaragua was in no position to attack the United States so it followed a legal course by approaching the International Court of Justice, which held the US responsible for the events. Nicaragua then also took its case to the United Nations.

He said instead of taking its case against Osama or other terrorists to the international court of justice or other similar forums, the United States attacked Afghanistan.

“The US should have pursued the same path,” Mr Chomsky said. “But the US does not want to establish that it is subordinate to anyone (in the world).”

He said President Bush, on the recommendation of his speech writers, was speaking the language of violence by legitimizing the acts of violence in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world.

Agreeing with a questioner that the US superiority had been “partly eroded” by the Sept 11 attacks, the professor said both President Bush and Osama bin Laden were almost speaking the same language.

“While President Bush says they (allied forces) are going to drive out the evil from the land (world), Osama says they (Muslim militants) are going to drive out infidels from the Muslim land,” he remarked.

Mr Chomsky regretted that humans were not only engaged in the large-scale destruction of other biological species, but also of their own specie and referred to Sept 11 and later events to prove his point.

“This specie has surely developed the capacity to do just that and an extra bit with the cold and calculated savagery assaults on each other,” he said.

However, he asserted, that there was a need to find out the reasons for this tragedy.

Mr Chomsky said the scale of human catastrophe that had already taken place since Sept 11 and that might follow could only be guessed. But he warned that the projections on which policy decisions were being taken, and commentaries based, were enough to tell us that the world was being directed by its leaders towards a direction that no decent person would like to see.

“The crimes of Sept 11 are in the historic turning point, but not because of their scale, rather because of the choice of targets,” he said, adding that it was for the first time since British bombed Washington in 1814 that the American territory had been attacked and threatened.

During the past two centuries, he recalled, the US had remained an invader and annihilated the indigenous population, conquered the Mexico and intervened validly in the surrounding regions, overpowered Philippines and killed hundreds and thousands of Filipinos in the chase.

He said during this period America extended its force throughout the world. “The number of victims of US savagery are huge right upto the present moment,” the visiting US scholar said. “For the first time, almost in two centuries, the guns have been pointed in the opposite direction. And it is a historic change.”

He said the same was true about the Europeans’ past, though Europe had also suffered a murderous destruction during the internal civil wars. “However, the Europeans conquered most of the world, leaving a colossal trail of destruction,” he said. ”The list of crimes is long and horrendous — it is a change, a dramatic change. And it is not surprising that Europe must be shocked by these murderous terrorist atrocities of Sept 11.”

He said while the Sept 11 incidents would not change the world affairs, these had raised several questions that must be addressed very carefully, if the attacks were to be analysed.

The question to be asked is whether the specie of mankind was on the verge of destruction and whether their intelligence was being tested by the biological error?

“Some of these questions have to do with the immediate events, some with the most fundamental issues and some are combined,” he said, adding that the most important questions were “what is terrorism and what is the war that has been declared against it. And what are the dangers to the continuation of the human survival in future.”

Another important question, he said, was as to what extent it was easy to proceed against the people who were involved in terror and the war against terrorism. He said there were natural and irrational approaches within the existing institutions and ideological structures. The extent they do danger to all was the main question that must be addressed.

Discussing what the world had learnt from these events about the principles and values that guided the most powerful forces of the world, he said even before Sept 11, most of the Afghan population was relying on the international food aid for their survival. That number, he said, had now risen from 0.5 million to seven million as a direct result of the terrorist attacks in the US.

He said the international media had also reported huge casualties in Afghanistan and the UN itself had appealed to the US to stop bombing so that it could re-start its relief operations inside the war-ravaged country. But, ironically, these appeals were rebuffed by the US without any comment.

Mr Chomsky recalled that only 10 days before the bombing, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization had warned the world that seven million people would face starvation in Afghanistan if the military action was initiated. He said this warning was repeated after the bombing began and the UN agencies demanded that the US must avoid this action as these would aggravate the human catastrophes.

Citing media reports, he said, the bombing had already destroyed the farm plantation of about 80 per cent of the country, which meant more famine and hunger in Afghanistan next year. He said several months had already been wasted with no food delivered to the Afghans.

“These are the estimates on which civilizations are relying as the coalition forces are making plans to further destroy the hunger-stricken country,” he said. “The consequences of their crimes will never be known and they are quite confident about that. And that is the enormous outcome of the crime of the powerful and they don’t like to see in the mirror any more than the others do. And they are free in this obligation as a world power they have to carry.”

He also referred to the new American threats of extending its war against terrorism to other countries like Somalia and Sudan.

“They (Western media) did not mention that in the case of Somalia the US was there not long ago and left hopeless people there by 10,000 US troops,” he said. “In the case of Sudan, the US bombed it in 1998, destroying pharmaceutical supplies that a factory produced. The death toll during this attack was not known and nobody cared to investigate the crime. But there had been some investigations by the German embassy in Sudan and their estimates were that several thousand people were killed in that attack on the factory. But we do not know the official figures of casualties.

“So it is quite natural to pick these countries, target them in the war against terror that arouses no comments. And without looking at the world Press you must be confident that they will never discuss these issues in public.”

Discussing the term “terrorism”, he said it appeared that the term to “wipe out evil from the earth” used by President Bush’s speech writers was borrowed from ancient epics about the incarnation of the gods.

“The goal of the civilized world has been clearly announced at many places that we must eradicate the evil, suppress the terrorism,” he said.

“To place the enterprise in its right perspective it is useful to recognize that the power to eliminate the plague (of terrorism) is not new. It started from President (Ronald) Reagan and Secretary of State, George Shutlz. Their organizations came into office claiming that their struggle against world terrorism would be the core of their foreign policy and they reacted against this plague by reorganizing campaign against the international terrorism on an unprecedented scale.”

Mr Chomsky said that the United States had rejected all moves made by the former Soviet Union to reduce nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he added, the United States had started manufacturing these weapons at a large-scale.

The US scholar said that the United States itself recognized nuclear weapons as the most important means for mass destruction.

Mr Chomsky said that the US claimed that its missile defence system was not offesnive. However, China, Russia and other world powers have strong reservations about it fearing that the US programme might start another race for achieving nuclear warfare stretching to the boundaries of space by using satellite navigational system.

He also recalled that the United States had opposed a UN resolution, that had defined terrorism, because it excluded freedom-fighters from terrorism. He said since Nelson Mandela was then a “terrorist” in the eyes of the United States, it opposed that resolution and vetoed it.

The visiting American scholar was given a standing ovation by the audience when he finished his lecture.

Later, Editor of Dawn, Saleem Asmi, presented “special issues” of Daily Dawn, which had been brought out in the recent past on special subjects and topics.

“At Dawn, we try to do things in our own humble way to project views of different segments of the society,” Mr Asmi said. “We often bring out publications on special topics. I have the honour to present these reports to you. You may not have time even to go through them but just having them received by you would be an honour for our organization.”