Hakki
--------------------------------- Robert Fisk: 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' 29 November 2001
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?dir=140&story=10729 2&host=6&printable=1
(...) 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 defence; 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 "civilised" 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 Whitehouse. What is so shocking is that the Blairs, Schröders, 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. (...)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4309733,00.html
Allies justify mass killing of Taliban prisoners in fort
Nicholas Watt, Richard Norton-Taylor, and Luke Harding in Mazar-i-Sharif Thursday November 29, 2001 The Guardian
Britain and the US were facing growing international pressure last night to explain their role in the deaths of up to 400 Taliban prisoners who were killed by US warplanes and Northern Alliance fighters at a fortress outside the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif.
As America was forced to apologise for the high death toll, the UN said its high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, would question the allied action during a visit to London tomorrow.
The former Irish president will call for alliance forces who have abused human rights to be barred from Afghanistan's future government.
The Pentagon was also investigating a Reuters report which said a senior Pashtun commander admitted executing 160 captured Taliban after a battle last week in the town of Takteh Pol, in southern Afghanistan, in the presence of US military personnel.
The commander of forces loyal to Gul Agha, a former mojahedin governor of Kandahar, is quoted as saying: "We tried our best to persuade [the Taliban] to surrender before we attacked. But they replied with abuse so we had no choice. We executed around 160 Taliban that were captured. They were made to stand in a long line and five or six of our fighters used light machine guns on them."
The commander said seven or eight US military personnel, who had been filming the fighting, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the killings.
In an unrelated incident, earlier today the Pentagon announced that during the drop of humanitarian aid on Afghanistan, a woman and a child had been killed when a load landed on their house. (...) Kenton Keith, the chief US spokesman in Islamabad, said: "We are sorry that so many people did die in Mazar-i-Sharif." He insisted that the bombing was "not a massacre, not a reprisal", adding: "What happened in Mazar-i-Sharif was a pitched battle."
His response failed to satisfy human rights groups and opposition MPs who believe the US may have breached international law by bombing the Taliban forces, many of whom were tied up and unable to move. Human rights lawyers said that any re sponse to an armed revolt by prisoners of war should be proportionate.
As Amnesty International called for a full investigation, the UN said its high commissioner for human rights will voice her disquiet over the bombings at a press conference in London tomorrow.
The UNHCR spokesman, José Diaz, said: "Mary Robinson has said one of the things that should be kept very much in mind is the necessity and proportionality [of military action]. This incident might provide an argument for developing this stance." (...) Sadiq Khan, a London-based human rights lawyer, said there appeared to have been a breach of the Geneva convention, which says prisoners "must at all times be humanely treated". Mr Khan said: "There is no doubt that the prisoners' human rights were violated."
He added that international law, which says that any military response should be proportionate, may also have been broken. "There should be an urgent inquiry as to whether the International Criminal Court should be set up to assess whether war crimes have been committed.
"If this is a war, and the US says it is, then rules of engagement should apply. It does not sound like the [US bombing] was a proportionate response. Many of the Taliban were tied up."
The criticism of the bombing comes amid growing British disquiet at the tough language adopted by the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who said America was "not inclined to negotiate surrenders" and that he hoped al-Qaida forces would "either be killed or taken prisoner".
"Belligerence is not helpful," a British defence source said.
A 1977 protocol to the Geneva convention makes it illegal "to order that there shall be no survivors".