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Prisoners of War
The abuse of Power and the Regression of Civilisation
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
I. “Western Values” and the Treatment of Afghan POWs
More than 100 Afghan men out of the thousands captured
by U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces, have been rounded up by the U.S.
Army and taken to the American Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Deciding arbitrarily that the prisoners constitute “battlefield detainees”
and “unlawful combatants”, the Bush administration has denied them their
legal rights as ‘Prisoners of War’ (POWs). Under the Geneva Convention,
POWs must be tried by the same courts and procedures as U.S. soldiers.
They could be tried for war crimes through courts-martial or civilian
courts - but not by the unilateral decisions of unaccountable U.S.
military tribunals. And they must also be treated humanely, free from
torture and any sort of physical or psychological abuse. Indeed, the
Afghan POWs at Guantanamo haven’t seen lawyers. They haven’t even been
charged with any particular crime. Nor has the Bush administration
clarified exactly what it plans to do with them, nor how long it might
hold them. As Guantanamo Bay is classified as being outside the U.S., the
men are also ineligible for legal rights or representation under that
country’s constitution.
The London Daily Mirror has criticised
the policy scathingly:
“This is what is
being done in the name of humanity, civilisation and the British people.
These prisoners are trapped in open cages, manacled hand and foot,
brutalised, tortured and humiliated. We are assured they are cruel, evil
men, though not one has been charged, let alone convicted, of any
offence… The treatment of the prisoners in Cuba is no more than a sick
attempt to appeal to the worst red-neck prejudices.”[1]
The Guardian similarly reports that: “A set of officially
sanctioned photographs show the prisoners, manacled hand and foot,
kneeling before their guards, and wearing blacked-out goggles over their
eyes and masks over their mouths and noses.”[2] This is a
form of extreme psychological torture that works by blocking the
prisoners’ five senses for long periods of time, while forcing them to
remain in a fixed physical position, chained to one place and unable to
move. Having been hooded and shackled for transportation, these men are
still being held, chained, in exposed metal cages, 6ft by 8ft, with cement
floors and a basic form of chamber pot. They have had their facial hair
shaved, contrary to religious beliefs, and are to wear orange jumpsuits at
all times. In addition to this barbaric treatment, the men will also face
interrogation from U.S. officials and military figures without the
presence of lawyers or mediators.[3]
In a statement on the matter, Amnesty International condemned
the U.S. policy: “The U.S. is placing these people in a legal limbo. They
deny that they are Prisoners of War (POWs), while at the same time failing
to provide them with the most basic protections of any person deprived of
their liberty… The U.S. has obligations under international law to ensure
respect for the human rights of all persons in their custody - including
the duty to treat them humanely and ensure that they have recourse to fair
proceedings, regardless of the nature of the crimes they are suspected of
having committed.” Amnesty, one of the world’s leading authorities in
human rights and international law, considers the prisoners in Guantanamo
to be POWs. But in the event of a dispute about their status, Amnesty
points out that “the U.S. must allow a ‘competent tribunal’ to decide, as
required by Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention…
“This is also the position held by the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the most authoratitive
interpreter of the Geneva Conventions. It is not the prerogative of the
Secretary of Defense or any other U.S. administration official to
determine whether those held in Guantanamo are POWs. An independent U.S.
court, following due process, is the appropriate organ to make this
determination.”
According to Amnesty, POWs should be
held in conditions that are “as favourable” as those of U.S. soldiers;
they are not required to divulge information beyond their name, rank,
serial number and date-of-birth; they cannot be tried merely for having
taken up arms against enemy combatants in the context of the conflict.
POWs, unless they are to be tried for war crimes or other criminal
offences, must be repatriated at the end of “active hostilities”. Any
detainee who is suspected of a crime, whether or not they are POWs, must
be charged with a criminal offense and tried fairly or released. Indeed,
Amnesty points out that “denying POWs or other people protected by the
Geneva Conventions a fair trial is a war crime.”[4]
The most authoritative interpreter of
the Geneva Conventions, the Geneva-based International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC), largely agrees. The ICRC has affirmed that: “those being
held by American forces must be counted as prisoners of war under the
Geneva Convention, and were, therefore, entitled to the full protection
offered by it.” Calls by ICRC for the Bush administration “to spell out
the exact status of its Afghan prisoners has resulted in a variety of
often contradictory responses from different departments in the
administration, according to diplomatic sources.” Indeed, some of the
terms conveniently conjured up by the administration to describe the
prisoners, “such as ‘battlefield detainees’, have no legal meaning, the
ICRC says.”[5]
Michael Byers, a U.S. expert in international
law from Duke University, North Carolina, who is currently Visiting Fellow
at Keble College, Oxford, has scrupulously dissected the Bush
administration’s policies. “Anyone detained in the course of an armed
conflict is presumed to be a PoW until a competent court or tribunal
determines otherwise. The record shows that those who negotiated the
convention were intent on making it impossible for the determination to be
made by any single person.” Beyers notes further that: “the Pentagon
might argue that the Taliban were not the government of Afghanistan and
that their armed forces were not the armed forces of a party to the
convention. The problem here is that the convention is widely regarded as
an accurate statement of customary international law, unwritten rules
binding on all. Even if the Taliban were not formally a party to the
convention, both they and the U.S. would still have to comply.” The U.S.
has also argued that Al-Qaeda members were not part of the Taliban’s
regular armed forces. “Traditionally, irregulars could only benefit from
PoW status if they wore identifiable insignia, which al-Qaida members seem
not to have done. But the removal of the Taliban regime was justified on
the basis that al-Qaida and the Taliban were inextricably linked, a
justification that weakens the claim that the former are irregulars.” The
fact also remains that who exactly these detainees are has not been
clarified – whether they are Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or merely Afghan
civilians, is simply not clear. “Moreover, the convention has to be
interpreted in the context of modern international conflicts, which share
many of the aspects of civil wars and tend not to involve professional
soldiers on both sides...
“Since the convention is
designed to protect persons, not states, the guiding principle has to be
the furtherance of that protection. This principle is manifest in the
presumption that every detainee is a PoW until a competent court or
tribunal determines otherwise... The authorities at Guantanamo Bay have
prohibited journalists from filming the arrival of the detainees on the
basis that the convention stipulates PoWs ‘must at all times be protected
against insults and public curiosity’. The hypocrisy undermines the
position on PoW status: you can’t have your cake and eat it.
“Even if the
detainees were not PoWs, they remain human beings with human rights.
Hooding, even temporarily, constitutes a violation of the 1984 convention
against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Apart from
causing unnecessary mental anguish, it prevents a detainee from
identifying anyone causing them harm. Forcefully shaving off their beards
constitutes a violation of the right to human dignity under the 1966
international covenant on civil and political rights. Forcefully sedating
even one detainee for non-medical reasons violates international law.
Although strict security arrangements are important in dealing with
potentially dangerous individuals, none of these measures are necessary to
achieving that goal. If human rights are worth anything, they have to
apply when governments are most tempted to violate them.”[6]
Clearly, the United States – and the Western
governments supporting its policies – have no moral high ground as far as
human rights and international law are concerned. The latter are being
blatantly manipulated to justify the brutalisation of America’s alleged
enemies, and to manufacture public consent to the West’s flagrant
violations of its own professed civilisational norms.
While the media has been focusing on the
controversy surrounding the POWs caged in the U.S. base in Cuba, there has
been little attention to the plight of Afghans who are still imprisoned in
complexes established by America’s current proxy force, the Northern
Alliance, under U.S. control.
“Afghan prisoners
have been handed over to the United States by Northern Alliance warlords
as well as the new interim government of Hamid Karzai. They are being held
by the American military at bases in Kandahar, Bagram and Mazar-i-Sharif.
The Independent has learnt, though, that the ICRC has not been able
to get access to the prisoners in Bagram and Mazar-i-Sharif, and has
discovered that about 360 being held in Kandahar are being kept in
unsheltered stockades in the bitterly cold winter, without any privacy.
These conditions would breach the Geneva Convention.”[7]
And in a further display of racist, xenophobic
hypocrisy, the U.S. saw fit to rescue the only American citizen captured
by Northern Alliance forces from the same fate faced by the other POWs.
John Walker Lindh, a white American revert to Islam who joined the
Taliban, was flown back to the States to be tried in U.S. courts.[8] Meanwhile, British, French and Australian POWs who have been
detained along with everyone else – who may have been working on the
ground in Afghanistan in aid operations to save the lives of Afghan
civilians – are to remain in their current squalid conditions. And of
course, while there may be doubt as to the fate of the Westerners, who may
be repatriated under pressure from their home countries, the dark-skinned
Afghans are doomed to indefinite detention and American-style “justice”.
The double standards are plain for all to see.
II. Our Regional Allies: the Northern Alliance
So who
are these people that have been described almost universally as captured
“Taliban fighters” or “Al-Qaeda” suspects? The answer to this is that: we
simply do not know. They are Afghan men rounded up by Northern Alliance
forces, the rag-tag band of warlords opposed to Taliban rule, who were
enlisted by the United States to help defeat the Taliban on the ground.
But the Northern Alliance have a track record that is as horrifically
abusive as that of the Taliban’s. Indeed, atrocities by the Northern
Alliance factions against the Afghan people were of exactly the same
nature as those committed by the brutal Taliban regime that by the late
1990s ruled the majority of Afghanistan. British Middle East specialist
Robert Fisk refers in The Independent to “the whole bloody,
rapacious track record of the killers in the ‘Alliance’”, a “gang of
terrorists… The Northern Alliance, the confederacy of warlords, patriots,
rapists and torturers who control a northern sliver of Afghanistan,… have
done their [fair share of] massacres on home turf, in Afghanistan. Just
like the Taliban…” [9]
He points out that: “… it remains a fact that from 1992 to 1996, the
Northern Alliance was a symbol of massacre, systematic rape, and pillage…
The Northern Alliance left the city in 1996 with 50,000 dead behind it.”[10]
Human
Rights Watch (HRW) has also documented the anti-humanitarian policies of
the Northern Alliance, which after 1996 also began to be known as the
‘United Front’. Sidney Jones, Executive Director of the Asia division of
HRW, noted that the Alliance “commanders whose record of brutality raises
questions about their legitimacy inside Afghanistan”, were responsible for
gross violations of human rights in late 1999 and early 2000, including
“summary executions, burning of houses, and looting, principally targeting
ethnic Pashtuns and others suspected of supporting the Taliban.” HRW also
describes the parties comprising the ‘United Front’ as having “amassed a
deplorable record of attacks on civilians between the fall of the
Najibullah regime in 1992 and the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996.” [11]
HRW has
provided a detailed but concise overview of the systematic abuses
committed by Northern Alliance/United Front forces in areas under their
control, and in their war against Taliban forces:
“Late 1999 - early 2000: Internally
displaced persons who fled from villages in and around Sangcharak district
recounted summary executions, burning of houses, and widespread looting
during the four months that the area was held by the United Front. Several
of the executions were reportedly carried out in front of members of the
victims' families. Those targeted in the attacks were largely ethnic
Pashtuns and, in some cases, Tajiks.
“September 20-21, 1998: Several volleys of rockets were
fired at the northern part of Kabul, with one hitting a crowded night
market. Estimates of the number of people killed ranged from seventy-six
to 180. The attacks were generally believed to have been carried out by
Massoud's forces, who were then stationed about twenty-five miles north of
Kabul. A spokesperson for United Front commander Ahmad Shah Massoud denied
targeting civilians. In a September 23, 1998, press statement, the
International Committee of the Red Cross described the attacks as
indiscriminate and the deadliest that the city had seen in three years.
“Late May 1997: Some 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers
were summarily executed in and around Mazar-i Sharif by Junbish forces
under the command of Gen. Abdul Malik Pahlawan. The killings followed
Malik's withdrawal from a brief alliance with the Taliban and the capture
of the Taliban forces who were trapped in the city. Some of the Taliban
troops were taken to the desert and shot, while others were thrown down
wells and then blown up with grenades.
“January 5, 1997: Junbish planes dropped cluster
munitions on residential areas of Kabul. Several civilians were killed and
others wounded in the indiscriminate air raid, which also involved the use
of conventional bombs.
“March 1995: Forces of the faction operating under
Commander Massoud, the Jamiat-i Islami, were responsible for rape and
looting after they captured Kabul's predominantly Hazara neighborhood of
Karte Seh from other factions. According to the U.S. State Department’s
1996 report on human rights practices in 1995, ‘Massood’s troops went on a
rampage, systematically looting whole streets and raping women.’
“On the night of February 11, 1993 Jamiat-i Islami
forces and those of another faction, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's Ittihad-i Islami,
conducted a raid in West Kabul, killing and "disappearing" ethnic Hazara
civilians, and committing widespread rape. Estimates of those killed range
from about seventy to more than one hundred.
“In addition, the parties that constitute the United
Front have committed other serious violations of internationally
recognized human rights. In the years before the Taliban took control of
most of Afghanistan, these parties had divided much of the country among
themselves while battling for control of Kabul. In 1994 alone, an
estimated 25,000 were killed in Kabul, most of them civilians killed in
rocket and artillery attacks. One-third of the city was reduced to rubble,
and much of the remainder sustained serious damage. There was virtually no
rule of law in any of the areas under the factions’ control. In Kabul,
Jamiat-i Islami, Ittihad, and Hizb-i Wahdat forces all engaged in rape,
summary executions, arbitrary arrest, torture, and ‘disappearances’. In
Bamiyan, Hizb-i Wahdat commanders routinely tortured detainees for
extortion purposes.” [12]
The
control of Afghanistan by the warlords of the Northern Alliance was,
however, increasingly curbed by the forces of the Taliban backed by
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. When the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996
signaling the faction’s domination of Afghanistan, the respected French
observer Oliver Roy noted that: “When the Taleban took power in
Afghanistan (1996), it was largely orchestrated by the Pakistani secret
service [ISI] and the oil company Unocal, with its Saudi ally Delta.”
Furthermore, it appears that at this time Pakistan’s support for the
Taliban drew the approval of public and private Saudi authorities, the
CIA, and the American oil company UNOCAL .[13]
We should take note
of the extent of this hypocrisy. Given the Northern Alliance’s record, it
is hardly reasonable to take for granted that the thousands of Afghans
rounded up by them are solely “Taliban fighters” or “Al-Qaeda suspects”.
For there is simply no way to know this at the moment. Indeed, there is
evidence that the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance targeted Afghan civilians
in their anti-Taliban offensive. For instance, the mainstream media has
largely ignored reports that the U.S. proxy force has been terrorising
Afghan civilians. One rare report in a U.S. newsmagazine was brave enough
to record:
“A UN spokesperson said officials had received reports
of hundreds of children being massacred by Northern Alliance forces at one
school. She disclosed that alliance soldiers had looted many offices of
the UN and other nongovernmental organizations in Mazar-i-Sharif,
according to the Pakistan News Service. In addition, the UN said it fears
the opposition troops may actually have shot some UN drivers.” [14]
Given the
Northern Alliance’s bloody record, given its routine targeting of Afghan
civilians, and given the reports confirmed by the UN of their massacres of
children, there is certainly no basis to state that those Afghan males
rounded up by the Northern Alliance – including the over 100 held in “open
cages” in Cuba by the U.S Army – are members of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
Many of them are likely to be Afghan civilians who attempted to defend
themselves and their families from the Northern Alliance rampage on
America’s behalf. Yet although these U.S.-held POWs have not been charged,
although there is no evidence as to their involvement in either Al-Qaeda
or even the Taliban, “Western civilization” under U.S. leadership has seen
fit to judge them guilty in advance.
III. Prisoners of Terror
The hypocrisy does not end there. Even if we assume that
these people were members of the Taliban, the U.S. bears responsibility
for supporting the rise to power of this brutal faction. The Daily
Mirror points out: “Anyway, who are these prisoners? It is said that
some may not belong to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda at all, but were members
of the Taliban. That was a horrific regime and the Afghani people are
delighted to be rid of it. But it achieved power with the help of the
United States and the UK.”[15] In this case, it is clear that the American and British
governments bear responsibility for having supported the rise of the
Taliban in the first place – in which case, adopting the West’s new
standards of “justice”, maybe members of these governments should join the
POWs in Afghanistan and Cuba too.
But the people detained in Guantanamo Bay, the people
detained in Northern Alliance prisons, are not the only “prisoners of
war”. In a broader non-legal sense the entire Afghan civilian population
are “prisoners” of the American-led crusade. While the Afghan people may
be “delighted” at the removal of the Taliban regime, it is worth noting
that they are probably not very delighted at what this removal has
entailed. The U.S.-led “war on terror” has utilised mass terrorism to
achieve its alleged objectives. There is clearly nothing humanitarian or
moral about this war, which is clearly not a war on terror, but a war of
terror on America’s enemies, conducted to secure strategic and economic
interests with a completely racist and xenophobic disregard for the lives
of Afghans, and other indigenous peoples. As has thus been noted in
London’s Independent by British Middle East correspondent, Robert
Fisk, “as the Afghan refugees turn up in their thousands at the border, it
is palpably evident that they are fleeing not the Taliban but our bombs
and missiles…
“The Taliban is not ethnically cleansing its own
Pashtun population. The refugees speak vividly of their fear and terror as
our bombs fall on their cities. These people are terrified of our ‘war on
terror’, victims as innocent as those who were slaughtered in the World
Trade Centre on 11 September. So where do we stop?… The figure of 6,000
remains as awesome as it did in the days that followed. But what happens
when the deaths for which we are responsible begin to approach the same
figure?… Once the UN agencies give us details of the starving and the
destitute who are dying in their flight from our bombs, it won’t take long
to reach 6,000. Will that be enough? Will 12,000 dead Afghans appease us,
albeit that they have nothing to do with the Taliban or Osama bin Laden?
Or 24,000? If we think we know what our aims are in this fraudulent ‘war
against terror’, have we any idea of proportion?… This particular war is…
not going to lead to justice. Or freedom. It’s likely to culminate in
deaths that will diminish in magnitude even the crime against humanity on
11 September.”[16]
Fisk was correct. In a comprehensive study of the civilian
victims of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan, Marc W. Herold,
Professor of Economics, International Relations and Women’s Studies at the
University of New Hampshire, found that 3,767 Afghan civilians were killed
in eight and a half weeks. His study, based on a detailed analysis of
press reports, is furthermore based on conservative estimates of the
civilian death toll. A more realistic figure, Professor Herold noted,
would be closer to around 5,000 dead – that is almost double the number of
civilians killed in the 11th September attacks. Professor
Herold observes in his study that: “The explanation [of this massive death
toll] is the apparent willingness of U.S military strategists to fire
missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan…
“A legacy of the ten
years of civil war during the 80s is that many military garrisons and
facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed government
had placed them since they could be better protected there from attacks by
the rural mujahideen. Successor Afghan governments inherited these
emplacements. To suggest that the Taliban used 'human shields' is more
revealing of the historical amnesia and racism of those making such
claims, than of Taliban deeds. Anti-aircraft emplacements will naturally
be placed close by ministries, garrisons, communications facilities,
etc.. A heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial
numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity to 'military
targets', a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting,
human error, equipment malfunction, and the irresponsible use of out-dated
Soviet maps. But, the critical element remains the very low value put
upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S military planners and the political
elite, as clearly revealed by U.S willingness to bomb heavily
populated regions. Current Afghan civilian lives must and will be
sacrificed in order to [possibly] protect future American lives. Actions
speak, and words [can] obscure: the hollowness of pious pronouncements by
Rumsfeld, Rice and the servile corporate media about the great care taken
to minimize collateral damage is clear for all to see. Other U.S bombing
targets hit are impossible to ‘explain’ in terms other than the U.S
seeking to inflict maximum pain upon Afghan society and perceived
‘enemies’: the targeted bombing of the Kajakai dam power station, the
Kabul telephone exchange, the Al Jazeera Kabul office, trucks and buses
filled with fleeing refugees, and the numerous attacks upon civilian
trucks carrying fuel oil. Indeed, the bombing of Afghan civilian
infrastructure parallels that of the Afghan civilian.”[17]
As soon as the bombing campaign began, the
Bush administration began pursuing the principal interests that had
motivated the war plans against Afghanistan in the first place. The
Pakistan’s Frontier Post reported that the U.S. Ambassador Wendy
Chamberlain contacted the Pakistani Minister of Oil just as the bombing
campaign against Afghanistan was beginning. A previously abandoned UNOCAL
pipeline planed to stretch from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, and
along the Pakistani coast, designed to sell oil and gas to China, was once
more ready for construction “in view of recent geopolitical developments.”[18] With the removal of the Taliban from power, the U.S. was
also ready to establish the unified, friendly government required to
ensure the domestic stability and security essential to allow the pipeline
to be constructed. The new federal administration of Northern Alliance
warlords signaled a return to the pre-Taliban era of barbarism and
brutality – although this time with factional war and rivalry limited
under the terms of the U.S.-UN brokered agreements. Ongoing internal
repression and brutalisation of women, children and men, however, does not
appear to have been a principal U.S. concern. What was of concern was
establishing a federal dictatorship of warlords who will remain in control
of their respective Afghan territories, minimise conflict between one
another, while remaining free to govern the civilians under their control
as they please. Fahima Vorgetts, who headed a women’s literacy programme
in Kabul before fleeing the country after the 1979 Soviet invasion,
observes: “For years we have been trying to raise awareness about the
situation of women in Afghanistan and for years we were being ignored. We
had to beg people to arrange an event…
“Now people are listening to what we say
about the Taliban, but they must listen to what we say about the Northern
Alliance to not repeat the same type of tragedy for the country as a whole
and especially for the women of Afghanistan. The Taliban are horrible and
Afghanistan will be much better off without them, but we must not forget
that the Northern Alliance committed so many atrocities, so many crimes
during their rule between 1992 and 1996 that they made it easy for the
Taliban to come to power. Afghanistan has suffered for 23 years - there is
no school, employment, streets, factories or bridges left. The bombing is
making it worse, it's causing more damage.”
[19]
Tahmeena Faryal, spokesperson for the Revolutionary
Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA), the oldest women’s
humanitarian and political organisation in the country, was even more
scathing in her November 2001 comments on both the military and diplomatic
dimensions of the U.S. intervention: “Despite the claim of the U.S. that
only military and terrorist bases of the Taliban and Al Qaeda would be
struck and that its actions would be accurately targeted and
proportionate, what we have witnessed for the past many days leaves no
doubt that this invasion will shed the blood of numerous women, men,
children, young and old of our country....
“The U.S. and its
allies were supporting the policies that helped foster Osama bin Ladin and
the Taliban. Today they are sharpening the dagger of the ‘Northern
Alliance.’ So many of those now involved in what has come to be called the
Northern Alliance have the blood of our beloved people on their hands, as
of course do the Taliban. Their sustained atrocities have been well
documented by independent international human rights organizations such as
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and others. From 1992 to
1996 in particular, these forces waged a brutal war against women, using
rape, torture, abduction and forced marriage as their weapons. Many women
committed suicide during this period as their only escape. Any initiative
to establish a broad-based government must exclude all Taliban and other
criminal Jehadi factions, unless and until a specific faction or person
has been absolved of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Otherwise,
the people will again be plunged into the living hell that engulfed our
country from 1992 to 1996 - under elements now involved in the Northern
Alliance - and continues to the present under the Taliban.”[20]
Former Canadian diplomat Peter Dale Scott,
Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and a
longtime analyst of U.S. foreign policy, thus noted in January 2002 that:
“[O]ne has a clear sense that warlordism is returning to Afghanistan. We
are seeing a return of the worst features of the pre-Taliban 1990:
unrestricted banditry, looting of food supplies meant for civilians,
widespread smuggling of all forms and above all extensive production of
opium and heroin.”[21] But the opinion of the Afghan people was irrelevant. What
was relevant was the institutionalisation of the rule of various factions
implicated in war crimes and human rights abuses. To establish a unified
federation that could provide a suitable degree of stability, regardless
of the ongoing brutalisation of the indigenous population. Commenting on
the disconcerting behind-the-scenes predominance of the oil and gas issue,
the San Francisco Chronicle observed in late September that:
“The hidden stakes in
the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil. The map
of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia
is also, to an extraordinary degree, a map of the world’s principal energy
sources in the 21st century... It is inevitable that the war against
terrorism will be seen by many as a war on behalf of America’s Chevron,
Exxon, and Arco; France’s TotalFinaElf; British Petroleum; Royal Dutch
Shell and other multinational giants, which have hundreds of billions of
dollars of investment in the region.”[22]
IV. The “War on Terror” is a War for Hegemony
The Chronicle’s concerns were confirmed by the end of
November when the White House released a statement from Bush Jnr.
on the opening of the first new pipeline by the Caspian Pipeline
Consortium: “The CPC project also advances my Administration’s
National Energy Policy by developing a network of multiple Caspian
pipelines that also includes the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa,
and Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipelines and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum
gas pipeline.” [23]
The pipeline is a joint venture of Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman,
ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and several other oil companies,
connecting the Tengiz oilfield in northwestern Kazakhstan to the
Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. American companies had put
up $1 billion of the $2.65 billion construction cost. It is worth
noting that the pipeline consortium involved in the Baku-Ceyhan
plan, led by the British oil company BP, is represented by the law
firm of Baker & Botts, whose principal attorney is James Baker III.
Baker III was U.S. Secretary of State under the Bush Snr.
Administration. He was also the chief spokesman for the Bush Jnr.’s
year 2000 campaign, during its successful attempt to block the vote
recount at Florida.
The
New York Times reported further developments in December 2001 that:
“There is no oil in Afghanistan, but there are oil politics, and
Washington is subtly tending to them, using the promise of energy
investments in Central Asia to nurture a budding set of political
alliances in the region with Russia, Kazakhstan and, to some extent,
Uzbekistan…
“Since
the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has lauded the region as a stable
oil supplier, in a tacit comparison with the Persian Gulf states that have
been viewed lately as less cooperative. The State Department is exploring
the potential for post-Taliban energy projects in the region, which has
more than 6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and almost 40
percent of its gas reserves… Better ties between Russia and the United
States, for example, have accelerated a thaw that began more than a year
ago over pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea to the West.”[24]
By New
Years Eve, nine days after the U.S.-backed interim government of Hamid
Karzai took office in Kabul, President Bush appointed a former aide to the
American oil company UNOCAL, Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to
Afghanistan. Khalilzad drew up a risk analysis of a proposed gas pipeline
from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, and also participated in talks between
UNOCAL and Taliban officials in 1997, aimed at implementing a 1995
agreement to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan. The nomination
thus illustrated the fundamental economic and financial interests behind
in the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan. [25]
The intervention also allowed the U.S. to counter its Russian rival and
establish dominance over the Central Asian republics on the country’s
border. Reuters reported near the end of September that:
“The ex-Soviet republics used the crisis to assert
their independence from Moscow, quickly agreeing to open air corridors and
possibly airports to the United States, something that was unthinkable
only two weeks ago. Once the region’s unquestioned master, Moscow found it
had little choice but to agree with the Central Asian states and let U.S.
forces into the region for the first time.” [26]
The new
economic programmes have thus been accompanied by the establishment of a
permanent military presence in the region, even while the war on
Afghanistan was drawing to a close. The Los Angeles Times reported
that: “Behind a veil of secret agreements, the United States is creating a
ring of new and expanded military bases that encircle Afghanistan and
enhance the armed forces’ ability to strike targets throughout much of the
Muslim world…
“Since Sept. 11, according to Pentagon sources,
military tent cities have sprung up at 13 locations in nine countries
neighboring Afghanistan, substantially extending the network of bases in
the region. All together, from Bulgaria and Uzbekistan to Turkey, Kuwait
and beyond, more than 60,000 U.S. military personnel now live and work at
these forward bases. Hundreds of aircraft fly in and out of so-called
‘expeditionary airfields’.” [27]
Radio Free
Europe/Liberty further reported developments in the region indicating that
the U.S. military has been making itself at home in Central Asia: “Even
though the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan appears to be drawing to a
close, Washington is building up its military presence in Central Asia to
protect what it describes as its long-term interests, in an area Russia
and China consider part of their sphere of influence…
“The United
States, which has gained a foothold in Central Asia over the course of its
antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan, is now considering ways to
consolidate its military buildup there in a bid to raise its political
profile in the region. The move is likely to prompt much gnashing of teeth
in Russia and China, as the two nations traditionally regard Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan as their backyard…
“[T]he Pentagon and its allies have been using
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan as a rear base for military operations and as a
corridor for humanitarian aid. Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have no Western
troops on their territories, but they have offered their respective
airspaces and airfields to U.S. planes for operations in Afghanistan.
Allied military experts are currently inspecting Tajik airfields in
anticipation of future missions in the region. Some 2,000 U.S. soldiers
are already deployed in former Soviet Central Asia, mainly on Uzbekistan's
southern Khanabad airfield, near the Afghan border. On 28 December, Uzbek
President Islam Karimov said he has set no deadline for U.S. troops to
pull out of the base.
“Although the U.S.-led anti-Taliban operation appears
near its end, the Pentagon is building military facilities at Manas
international airport - some 30 kilometers outside the Kyrgyz capital
Bishkek - which could house up to 3,000 troops. And the Kyrgyz parliament
last month agreed to let the U.S. military set up a base at Manas for one
year. In another sign the U.S. is settling into the region, ‘The New York
Times’ of 10 January reported that U.S. military planners are also
considering rotating troops in the region every six months, increasing
technical support for and conducting training exercises with Central Asian
countries…
“In comments
last month to the U.S. Congress’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Elizabeth
Jones - the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs
- notably said President George W. Bush's administration hopes a permanent
U.S. presence in Central Asia will boost regional economic development...
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary James Wolfowitz said that, by upgrading its
military presence in Central Asia, the U.S. wishes to send a clear message
to regional countries - especially to Uzbekistan - that it will not forget
about them and that it ‘has a capacity to come back and will come back in’
whenever needed… A report published on 6 January in ‘The Washington Post’
said that, in addition, the Bush administration is planning to abrogate a
Cold War-era bill that places conditions on a number of former Soviet
republics’ trade relations with the U.S. based on their human rights
records... The planned move has already stirred controversy among regional
analysts, who believe it could send the message that the U.S. is ready to
condone human rights abuses in some of these countries in return for their
loyalty.”[28]
The
expansion of U.S. hegemony is thus to be accompanied by the legitimisation
of regional human rights abuses, dictatorship, and general repression. So
now the civilian populace of the entire region have become “prisoners” of
the new Western crusade. Maybe a new legal term should be coined for the
repression of whole populations in the new “war on terror”, which in fact
is exactly the opposite, a “war of terror” against innocent civilians:
“prisoners of terror”?
It is
worth noting that the tragedy that occurred on 11th September
on U.S. soil has been instrumental in providing a justification for the
anti-humanitarian expansion and consolidation of U.S. hegemony in Central
Asia. This was specifically, albeit inadvertently, indicated by U.S.
Senator Joseph Lieberman. Speaking on 7th January at Bagram air
base near Kabul, he observed: “We learned at a very high and painful price
the cost of a lack of involvement in Central Asia on 11 September, and
we’re not going to let it happen again.” [29]
Conclusions
The Bush administration’s refusal to abide by the humanitarian laws
established by the international community does not rest well with
the jingoist pronouncements advanced to justify U.S. military
actions. On 20th September 2001, President George W.
Bush Jnr. claimed in a televised speech that the new war was
necessary to defend the values of “civilization” against “evil”.
“This is not, however, just America’s fight”, he declared. “And
what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s
fight. This is civilization’s fight.” Two months later and the Bush
jingo had only escalated. On 8th November 2001, in his
primetime speech, President Bush announced that the bombing
campaign against Afghanistan was “a war to save civilization
itself.”
These
statements, in tandem with the reality of the “war on terror”, clarify
that under U.S. leadership, Western “civilization” is now openly spurning
the very self-professed laws and norms that supposedly underpin that
civilization. For in the name of defending “civilization itself”, the
United States is leading an international coalition of terrorist states in
a full-fledged onslaught against civilian populations. And now the U.S. is
leading the world in openly flouting the basic humanitarian principles of
“civilization”, making very clear that when it comes to the crunch,
“civilization” is entirely capable of regressing to the levels of
inhumane, vengeful, evil barbarism, all the while holding aloft the banner
of human rights, freedom and democracy.
This is a
turning point in human history, and we should all be wary. Because what is
happening signifies that the U.S. is willing to openly and publicly ignore
the edicts of international law; to openly and publicly fashion its own
“rules” as it goes along to suit its unilateral “interests”; to openly and
publicly dispense with the need for accountability and transparency; to
openly and publicly ignore the need for proper courts, evidence and due
legal process; to openly and publicly justify the torture and
brutalization of people of colour as a normal procedure. What we are
witness now is the normalization of barbarity under the guise of
protecting civilization, all for the purpose of pursuing elite power and
profit. Indeed, we are in the midst of a process of dehumanization,
characterized as the defence of humanity. The public is being constantly
fed justification after justification for a new war without borders or
boundaries, without accountability or transparency, a war which is
increasingly institutionalizing repression and terror into the structure
of Western client-regimes in key strategic regions, and thus into the
structure of world order. This is a new and escalating form of global
facism that veils itself beneath slogans of freedom. One dreads to think
where it is leading.
Notes:
[1] ‘Stop this
Brutality in Our Name Mister Blair’, Daily Mirror, 22
January 2002.
[2] Watt, Nicolas, ‘Camp
X-Ray row threatens first British split with U.S.’, The Guardian,
21 January 2002.
[3] MWAW Report, ‘U.S.
violates Geneva Convention with treatment of detainees’, Media Workers
Against the War, http://www.mwaw.org/article.php?sid=701&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.
[4] AI Press Release,
‘Criticism of POW Treatment’, Amnesty International, London, 15 January
2002.
[5] Sengupta, Kim, The
Independent, 14 January 2002.
[6] Byers, Michael, ‘U.S.
doesn’t have the right to decide who is or isn’t a PoW’, The Guardian,
14 January 2002.
[7] The Independent,
14 January 2002.
[8] Reuters, 22 January 2002.
Christian Science Monitor (17 January 2002) points out that
although most Americans “see him as a traitor”, his mother “says he was brainwashed into
joining a jihad. President Bush calls him ‘this poor fellow’, a young man
who’s ‘obviously... been misled’.”
[9] Fisk, Robert, ‘Just who
are our allies in Afghanistan?’, The Independent, 3 October 2001.
[10] Fisk, Robert, ‘What will
the Northern Alliance do in our name now?’, The Independent, 14
November 2001.
[11] HRW Backgrounder,
‘Afghanistan: Poor rights record of opposition commanders’, Human Rights
Watch, New York, 6 October 2001, http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/afghan1005.htm.
[12] HRW Backgrounder,
‘Military Assistance to the Afghan Opposition’, Human Rights Watch,
October 2001, http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghan-bck1005.htm.
[13] Scott, Peter Dale,
‘Afghanistan, Turkmenistan Oil and Gas, and the Projected Pipeline’,
Online Resource on Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, 21 October 2001, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q.html.
For further discussion of U.S. support of the Taliban see my report
published by the Institute for Afghan Studies, ‘Afghanistan, the Taliban
and the United States’, available at Media Monitors Network, http://mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq6.html.
[14] ‘U.S.-backed rebels
accused of wholesale slaughter’, The Village Voice, 15 November
2001.
[15] Daily Mirror, 22
January 2002. See Ahmed, Nafeez, ‘Afghanistan, the Taliban and the United
States’, op. cit.
[16] Fisk, Robert, ‘As the
refugees crowd the borders, we’ll be blaming someone else,’ The
Independent, 23 October 2001.
[17] Herold, Marc W., ‘A
Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States’ Aerial Bombing of
Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting’, Department of Economics and
Women’s Studies, Whittemore School of Business and Economics, December
2001.
[18] Frontier Post, 10
October 2001.
[19] IPA Press Release,
‘Afghan Women Warn of Northern Alliance’, Institute for Public Accuracy,
Washington DC, 15 November 2001, http://accuracy.org.
[21] Scott, Peter Dale, ‘Many
Signs Warlordism Returning to Afghanistan’, Online Resource on Al-Qaeda
and Osama Bin Laden, 5 January 2002, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/qfla.html.
[22] Viviano, Frank, San
Francisco Chronicle, 26 September 2001.
[23] White House Statement,
28 November 2001.
[24] ‘As the War Shifts
Alliances, Oil Deals Follow’, New York Times, 15 December 2001.
[25] For discussion see
Martin, Patrick, ‘Oil company adviser named U.S. representative to
Afghanistan’, World Socialist Web Site, http://www.wsws.org.
[26] Reuters, ‘Central Asia’s
Great Game Turned on its Head’, 25 September 2001.
[27] Arkin, William, Los
Angeles Times, 6 January 2001.
[28] Peuch, Jean-Christophe,
‘Central Asia: U.S. Military Build-up Shifts Sphere of Influence’, Radio
Free Europe/Liberty, 11 January 2002.
Mr. Nafeez Ahmed is a
political analyst and human rights activist based in London. He is
Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and a
Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights
Commission.
Source:
by courtesy & ©
200 1
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
by the same author:
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