The War Criminals’ Roundup: Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel

Posted on 9 May 2009 by


Following up on some of the links to stories I posted on twitter, this is a selection of notes and extracts from articles that each deal in some way with the issue of war crimes.

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“Round Up the Usual War Criminals!” — Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch, (May 8-10, 2009, pertaining to the CounterPunch reports on “When NATO Killed Journalists.”)

Extract:

Ten years ago NATO and its battle-commander Wesley Clark deliberately murdered 16 journalists and kindred media workers, who had the courage and the misfortune to be working at Radio Television Serbia (RTS). At 2.06 am local a bomb launched from the NATO plane slammed into the building – news desks, studios, and the makeup room – in downtown Belgrade. Most of the victims were young people – a makeup artist, technicians and production personnel.

It was an obvious war crime, even though Amnesty International prudently waited an entire decade – until this last April – to issue a report saying so. Amnesty now issues a call for NATO to be held accountable for the lives of those killed at RTS: “the bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime”.

In the new issue of our CounterPunch newsletter Tiphaine Dickson lays out the outrageous saga of how the Western powers dealt with this atrocity, by sponsoring a kangaroo court in Belgrade which sentencedto a lengthy term one of the targets of the bomb! This was the director of RTS , Dragoljub Milanovic,. He drew nine and a half years in prison for reckless endangerment of his staff! Newspapers like the New York Times raised not a word of protest at NATO’s claim that RTS deserved to be bombed.

Dickson, a defense attorney specialized in international criminal law, recently visited Milanovic in prison, and discovered he is eligible for parole but his persecutors are trying to lock him away for a further term. In her riveting story she gives close attention to the murky role of CNN and of Eason Jordan, then chief news executive of CNN international and later – by a satisfactory irony, fired by CNN for alleging that the US military was deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.

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“Rolling Out the Product Again — A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War,” Chris Floyd, CounterPunch, May 7, 2009.

A great piece from Chris Floyd (whose blog is Empire Burlesque), dissecting The New York Times, McClatchy Newspapers, and a bevy of unnamed Washington “experts” who are labouring at creating Pakistan into a new Temple of Doom so as to inevitably justify further American intervention in a regional conflict already widened, Americanized, and militarized by current American intervention:

This week brings yet another bumper crop of panic buttons and alarm bells from the powers-that-be, with ever-increasing emphasis on the “Taliban kooks with Muslim nukes” theme: one more variation on the old “mushroom clouds rising in American cities” ploy that has worked like a charm for our militarists lo these 60 years or more.

Some of the war-pushing powers-that-be are public figures in the Obama Administration (including Obama himself, who has dutifully taken on the Bushian mantle of Fearmonger-in-Chief), and some of them are shadowy, unnamed eminences in the military-security apparat….

….It seems the Times has discovered an unusually loquacious “Pakistani logistics tactician” who for some reason has spent the last six months spilling the beans on the Taliban’s strategy to the leading newspaper of the American establishment. The anonymous 28-year-old guy from somewhere in Pakistan’s tribal lands told a harrowing tale of the “workings and ambitions of the Taliban” as they prepare to defeat Obama’s Afghan surge from their safe havens in Pakistan, then seize Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.

What’s more, the “logistics tactician” has provided his American enemies with a ready-made, pre-positioned “justification” for the mass civilian slaughter that will inevitably accompany Obama’s surge:

“He acknowledged that the Americans would have far superior forces and power this year, but was confident that the Taliban could turn this advantage on its head. ‘The Americans cannot take control of the villages,’ he said. ‘In order to expel us they will have to resort to aerial bombing, and then they will have more civilian casualties.’”

This is of course the precise “reason” trotted out every time American-led occupation forces kill a group of civilians in Afghanistan: the Taliban made us do it. This happened just yesterday, in the village of Gerani, where village leaders tried to shield children, women and elderly men in housing compounds far away from fighting between Taliban forces and Afghan troops with American “advisors.”…

….But now the great and good can turn from this disturbing story to the convenient divulgings of the unnamed 28-year-old guy from an unnamed place in Pakistan, and see that such slaughters are all just part of the Taliban’s fiendish plan. In fact, he provides grist for the PR mill of the great imperial blood libel of them all: There no “civilians.”

“The tactician says he embeds his men in what he described as friendly Afghan villages, where they will spend the next four to six months with the residents, who provide the weapons and succor for the missions against American and NATO soldiers.”

There, you see? Every villager is a two-faced sneak, working to kill Americans. If they die — then they deserve it. Boy, that makes the prunes and Post Toasties a little easier to digest, doesn’t it!

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As if to make Floyd’s point, an article from the Associated Press, “US-Afghan probe confirms civilian deaths” (May 9, 2009):

…the initial findings released Saturday appeared to blame Taliban militants who used locals as “human shields.”…

Neither the U.S. nor Afghan forces took responsibility for killing civilians in Saturday’s statement, but appeared to lay the blame on militants.

“The joint investigation team strongly condemns the brutality of the Taliban extremists deliberately targeting Afghan civilians and using them as human shields,” the statement said.

Yes, of course, the Taliban made the U.S. bomb a civilian village. Word has it that the Taliban may have also flown the planes that dropped the bombs.

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NATO Troops Kill 12-Year-Old Afghan Girl — Democracy Now! May 4, 2009

In other news from Afghanistan, NATO-led troops opened fire on a civilian car Sunday killing a twelve-year-old Afghan girl. The girl and her family were driving to a wedding. Two other members of her family were injured. Meanwhile, at least twenty-five people died in Afghanistan today in a series of bomb attacks.

Perhaps imperialism’s feminists-of-convenience missed this and countless other stories of women and girls being slaughtered in Afghanistan by NATO and U.S. forces. Maybe women’s rights only matter when it’s a single woman in question: Paula Loyd.

“Concern over burns on Afghans caught in battle,” Associated Press, May 10, 2009:

Note:

“an appeal by Human Rights Watch for NATO forces to release results of an investigation into a March 14 incident in which an 8-year-old Afghan girl was burned by white phosphorus munitions in Kapisa province.”

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…but it’s all good, because ultimately it is all for Christ. Onward go these Christian Soldiers in their imperial crusade against Islam, and against Afghanistan for daring to be so Afghan-like:

“Crusading in Afghanistan: Soldiers “Hunt” Afghans for Jesus,” by Steve Hynd, Rethink Afghanistan, May 4, 2009

Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley:“The Special Forces guys, they hunt men, basically. We do the same things as Christians: we hunt people for Jesus. We do. We hunt them down, get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into kingdom. Right? That’s what we do. That’s our business.”

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“Conflating Afghanistan and Pakistan — Obama’s Axis of Obedience,” Paul Wolf, CounterPunch, May 8-10, 2009.

They bomb their own people! Who? Is this a story about the regime of Saddam Hussein? No? Then it must be about Darfur, right? No, it’s about America’s ally regime in Pakistan:

In the first six month’s of Zardari’s presidency, the relationship between the governments of America and Pakistan has been that of colonial power to colony. Zardari’s support of the American bombing campaign in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, and Pakistani military operations there, both resulting in disproportionate civilian casualties, have infuriated the Pakistani people and put the country on the brink of revolution. As another prominent Pakistani opposition figure, Imran Khan, has noted, “what country bombs its own people?”

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“Desperation in Pakistani hospitals, refugee camps,” Associated Press, May 9, 2009.

MINGORA, Pakistan – Civilians cowered in hospital beds and trapped residents struggled to feed their children Saturday, as Pakistani warplanes pounded a Taliban-held valley in what the prime minister called a “war of the country’s survival.”…

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“Rights group: Sri Lanka shelling hospitals,” Associated Press, May 9, 2009

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Human Rights Watch on Saturday accused Sri Lankan forces of repeatedly striking hospitals in the northern war zone with indiscriminate artillery and aerial attacks that have killed scores of people, a charge the military denied.

The New York-based group claimed military commanders responsible for ordering or conducting such attacks “may be prosecuted for war crimes.”

The accusation came amid growing international concern for an estimated 50,000 civilians caught in the fighting between government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers….

The response from Washington?

“The world must respond to Sri Lanka,” by Suren Surendiran, The Guardian, 28 April 2009

What is important here is that the US, UK and EU are allies of Sri Lanka and have strongly backed the military campaign against the Tamil Tigers, while holding out hope – and it was nothing but misguided hope – that Colombo would put forward a political solution to the decades-long Tamil question.

Now, despite the “never again” rhetoric that appeared in the wake of the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, the UK and like-minded states are, by their lacklustre response, emboldening Sri Lanka’s defiance of international norms and its wholesale killing of Tamil civilians.

This human catastrophe is happening on Brown’s, Sarkozy’s, Ban Ki Moon’s and Obama’s watch.

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A witch hunt gathers to ban another anti-Semitic Jewish critic of Israeli war crimes:

Clearly enraged that a professor should have his own point of view to present to his class, outside of class time, outraged that he should do so without seeking approval of its relevance from the Israel lobby first, loud braying is to be heard from StandWithUs. For our convenience, it provides talking points to be memorized and recycled by those chasing Robinson. Their first refutation of Robinson’s critique reads as follows:

The e-mail did not simply condemn Israel’s war against Hamas. It equated Nazi atrocities with Israel’s military action. It was also an attack on the founding of Israel and, by selective use of facts, on the history of Israel’s foreign policy. He wrote, “It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships until those regimes collapsed under mass protest, and today arms, trains, and advises military and paramilitary forces in Colombia, one of the world’s worst human rights violators.”

Are they trying to make Robinson’s case for him, by simply restating his point without challenge?

“It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships” — it should be no surprise, if anyone has followed news over the past couple of decades, because there is an over abundance of data to support Robinson. Here is the tiniest sample:

ISRAELIS REASSESS SUPPLYING ARMS TO SOUTH AFRICA
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to the New York Times
Published: Thursday, January 29, 1987

The exact nature of Israel’s military relationship with South Africa is a well-kept secret. But military officials say it is extensive enough to involve hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in Israeli military industries and several hundred million dollars in earnings. With unemployment in Israel on the rise, particularly in military and high-tech industries, longterm arm sales are prized by Israel today.

According to press reports, Israel in the last 15 years has sold South Africa a variety of military equipment, including light weapons and communications gear and, more important, technology-data packages containing the designs for several major Israeli weapons systems, which were subsequently assembled by South Africa’s own military industry. These reportedly include the Saar-class missile boats, the Gabriel sea-to-sea missile and avionics electronic countermeasures for South Africa’s new Cheetah fighter-bomber.

In addition, American military sources say Israel recently helped South Africa develop a KC-135-type surveillance aircraft and air-to- air refueling abilities for the South African Air Force. Israel and South Africa are also rumored to have cooperated in developing nuclear weapons technology, although this has been denied by both nations.

And when it was still politically correct to question, this prescient note at the end of the article, based on statements by Israelis themselves:

The Israeli advocates of taking a public stand against South Africa also argue that in ”realpolitik” terms Israel, by maintaining the ties with Pretoria, is going against the tide of history and one day will pay for it.

Let’s just ignore that, and pile on top of Prof. Robinson in the latest gang bang against the truth. The rest might be interested in reading these instead:

“Israeli Arms for Sale,” TIME, 28 March, 1983.

Or,

Helping to raze indigenous villages in Guatemala: (Jane Hunter, “Israeli arms sales to Central America: An Overview,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January 1987, pages 4-5)

In Guatemala, Israel also provided military, counterinsurgency, and intelligence advisers for what has been called a genocidal war against the largely Mayan Indian population of the country’s northwestern highlands. The Israeli firm Tadiran installed two intelligence computers, one of which reportedly was used to select death squad victims and, by monitoring utility usage, pinpoint urban guerrilla safe houses. Israel is now advising the Guatemalan military, many of whom go on scholarships to Israel, on a forced resettlement scheme in the rural highlands. Tadiran has funded an electronics school for the army, and Israel has helped it set up a factory to manufacture ammunition and replacement parts for its Israeli rifles….Israel started selling weapons to Guatemala in 1974, beginning with the Arava aircraft, followed by “RBY armored personnel carriers, patrol boats, light cannons, grenade launchers, machine guns, and 15,000 Galil assault rifles,” Hunter continues. “… The aspect of Israeli cooperation with Guatemala which has the most serious implications is the role played by Israeli personnel in the universally condemned rural pacification program.” In 1982, Israel military advisors had helped develop and conduct the devastating scorched-earth policy that General Rios Montt unleashed on the highland Maya population (source).

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Posted in: COLONIALISM/IMPERIALISM, EUROCENTRISM & UNIVERSALISM, HEGEMONY