Insensitivity of international community and institutions

 Asif Haroon Raja

The secular lobby in Pakistan tries to highlight theimportance of international community, international institutions andinternational laws, and above all the role of sole super power as well as India.It never tires lecturing that without compromising with the

tyrannical andunjust practices of the powerful nations, Pakistan will not survive. Ourpresent government which is totally subservient to Washington says that Pakistanwill get isolated if it falls from America’s grace. It is pleading thatreopening of NATO supply lines must not be further delayed and argues that thesoldiers who died at the hands of US troops at Salala would not come back tolife if Washington tenders an apology. In the last hundred-year history, Ottoman Empire was shred topieces by deceptively promoting the concept of nationalism. Muslim Ummah wasruthlessly divided into small fragile states each having a lingering disputewith its neighbors. This fragmentation was done by the British with the activecollaboration of international community and international institutions. Eversince the US has become the sole super power, the international community saywhat the US want it to say. Instead of ensuring compliance of internationallaws and rules, the US and its surrogates like Israel and India violates themwith impunity; but the US expects others to become law abiding.  Resolutions on Kashmir passed in 1948 are being flouted byIndia for the last 65 years resulting in untold miseries to the Muslims inKashmir at the hands of Indian security forces. Kashmir has become an open prisonwhere Kashmiris are gunned down like stray dogs. Their wretched plight andworst form of human rights violations committed by Indian forces have goneunnoticed by the international community and the UN simply because thesufferers are Muslims and violators non-Muslims. While the UN has lostinterest, the US says the UN resolutions have become outdated, meaning therebythat Kashmiris’ right of self-determination is no more valid and India’sillegal occupation is valid. Like Kashmir, Palestine issue is pending resolution since1948, but because of uncompromising attitude of Israel and whole-heartedsupport of USA and western world, Israel is holding on to its illegaloccupations and is continuing with its expansionism through new settlements inoccupied territories of West Bank and Gaza. International community had made atoken effort to defy Israeli siege of Gaza put in place with the activecollaboration of Egypt, and tried to ship food and medicines to the Gazans througha peace flotilla, but it was forcibly stopped by Israeli forces, killing elevenunarmed persons. Except for Turkey and Iran, none other drummed up the piracyof Israel. While the US supports Israeli atrocities, the UN and internationalcommunity including the Arab world impotently and apathetically watch theplight of the Palestinians.    International institutions deceived Muslims of Bosnia byshifting and collecting them to safer havens and then letting the blood thirstySerbs to pounce upon the unsuspecting unarmed Bosnians. The UN and NATO intervenedonly after tens of thousands were massacred and thousands raped. Their massgraves are still getting discovered. Bifurcation of Sudan into two is a recent case ofinternational community and international institutions criminal connivance withthe perpetrators of crime. The only fault of Sudan was that it had enforcedSharia laws, as wished by the great majority of Muslim Sudanese. The 1983rebellion in South Sudan led by Col Garang was supported by pro-America Ethiopia,USA and western world. Animists living in resource rich southern Sudan wereforcibly converted to Christianity by the missionaries to increase the numberof minority Christians. Darfur was also heated up by foreign powers to furtherbuild pressure on Khartoum. During the long drawn war in which millions diedand Sudan got impoverished, international media kept spreading lies and onlyhighlighted the atrocities of the state forces fighting foreign aided rebels. PresidentBashir was declared a war criminal by International Court of Justice and hisarrest warrants were issued. Former ruler of Egypt Hosni Mubarak shamelesslysided with the west and played a part in dividing Sudan. The oil rich SouthSudan was finally handed over to Christian minority last year. Internationalcommunity and world institutions remained mum over massive externalinterference in internal affairs of Sudan.   Afghanistan was invaded and destroyed on a trumped up chargethat Mullah Omar regime was harboring Osama bin Laden (OBL) and his al-Qaeda,supposedly involved in 9/11. The charge has thus far not been proven and it isnow widely believed that 9/11 was an in-house engineered plan conceived andexecuted by the neo-cons to undermine Islam and neo-colonize Muslim world as awhole. Iraq was trounced on fake charges that it was developing WMDs and waslinked with al-Qaeda. It has now been proven that both charges were faked andin this treachery, Tony Blair was a party. Prior to the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, it hadbeen put under severe sanctions from 1997 onwards and had been isolated. Duringthe invasion, the US military and its western allies employed deadliest weaponsystems against the ruling regime which didn’t have regular armed forces, andwas devoid of technology. Daisy cutters, cruise missiles, long range rockets,cluster bombs were rained by jets non-stop for over a month to support theattacking Northern Alliance Forces that had been defeated and pushed out by theTaliban in 1996. Not a single foreign soldier took part in ground combat. Onlyaerial platform was used against which the Taliban had no means to fight back.Afghans were pitched against Afghans amid slogans of liberty, freedom anddemocracy. Victorious Northern Alliance forces were instigated to wreak havocon the Afghan and Pakistani Pashtun captives for months so as to draw permanentcleavage between the two communities. This game of death and destruction hadbeen approved by the UNSC and the international community watched the wholeshow with excitement and felt comforted over the easy ouster of Taliban regime. 11 years have gone by and the war goes on in Afghanistan. Theoccupation forces are involved in thousands of cases of murders through nightraids, torture, air assaults on funerals, wedding parties and villages inAfghanistan. Those who resist them or refuse to become collaborators areruthlessly slaughtered. Rampaging US-NATO forces have been raping, desecratingdead bodies and Holy Quran but all cases are hushed up and culprits go scotfree. There is no Afghan family in southern and eastern Afghanistan which hasnot suffered a tragedy at the hands of occupying forces. The US now intends toprolong their agony till 2024 and no objection has been raised. Internationalcommunity and international institutions got fixated with Islamic terrorism as advocatedby USA and looked the other way to the slaughter of Afghan Pashtuns. Iraq had been instigated by the US to attack Iran in 1980since the US wanted to kill two birds with one stone. The two Muslim neighborsbled each other for eight years and no side emerged as a victor. Seeing thatIraq had been sufficiently weakened, the US-NATO forces attacked it in 1991 anddestroyed its armed forces and infrastructure. The country was then put underharsh sanctions for eleven years as a result of which Saddam regime was forcedto trade food for oil. Yet Israel viewed Iraq as a possible threat to its totalhegemony over the Middle East. Corporations in USA had their eyes on Iraqi oilsince long. Neo-cons thought that capture of Iraq would pave the way forredrawing the map of Middle East and harnessing its resources. Governed bytheir materialistic ambitions, Iraq was demolished in 2003. Sectarian war wasfomented which took the maximum human toll. Although the foreign troopswithdrew in December 2011, but the US and British firms have total control overoil production and its marketing and over reconstruction and equipment of Iraqinational army, which is fit for counter terrorism only. After devastating Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan is now beingsystematically destroyed but the methodology applied is more perfidious. It hasbeen made an ally to fight GWOT but in actuality it is a target and is beingbled from within through clandestine operations. It is being bombarded withfake allegations that it is in cahoots with al-Qaeda and Taliban, the twoforces which Pak security forces have been fighting since 2003 with full forceand have achieved laudable results but at a heavy price. The US and itspartners India and Afghanistan have been incessantly leveling series ofaccusations but have not been able to substantiate them by providing proofs. Acase is gradually being built to strike Pakistan. The decision to this effectwould have been taken much earlier, but Pak nukes deter them from undertaking adirect military venture. Hence, all possible means other than open war are inoperation to make Pakistan politically destabilized, economically impoverished,socially divided and militarily fragile. Among the methods employed to browbeat Pakistan intosubmission, drone war is one of them which was accelerated from 2008 onwards.It peaked in 2010 and 2011. Thousands have died for no fault of theirs. Fromamong the dead, mostly women, children and elderly people, 97% were innocent. Pakistan’sprotestations that drones are fuelling terrorism are ignored on the plea thatdrone has been declared as America’s choice weapon of war. It has become sodear to the US military because it entails no combat risk to American soldierand the enemy doesn’t have the capability to hit this aerial monster. Thisweapon will remain in use even after 2014. The question is whether this choice weapon of CIA is permissibleunder international law. If not, why has the international law not been appliedon CIA which operates these machines from Langley? Under the garb of killingterrorists, it is killing innocent civilians and getting away with it and brazenlysays that it will continue using it in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. The US-NATO bullies unconcerned with international laws andnorms are on the loose, trampling one Muslim state after another under a givenagenda. Besides Pakistan, Iran is also a target against which the US, Israeland western world has ganged up. Unfortunately some of the Arab countries alsomyopically fear Iran, but are not concerned about US-Israeli-western threat toIslam. Mecca and Madina are among the targets as was disclosed from a courserun for US Army officers. There is a powerful school of thought in USAinfluenced by Jewish lobby which strongly feels that majority of hijackersinvolved in 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, which in their view is the main sourceof trouble. They think that Saudi Arabia and not Iraq should have been chosenas a target.       The international community and international institutionshave been smugly watching the ruination of three sovereign states for over tenyears and killing of over two million Muslims and displacement of millions. Thenumber of widows, orphans and those maimed for life are unaccountable. In orderto suppress the people of the affected countries and to impose the US brand ofdemocracy, constitution and culture, horrible torture houses like Bagramairbase detention centre, Abu Gharib jail, and Guantanamo Bay Prison wereopened up in total violation of international laws. Inmates were tortured,sexually abused and humiliated, their religious beliefs ridiculed bydesecrating Holy Quran. Dogs were unleashed on chained prisoners. Waterboarding became the choice method of torture of CIA to force innocent prisonersto say they were involved in 9/11. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is one such case who was subjected towater boarding tens of times until he broke down and to save himself from thisunbearable torture, he confessed to have committed all the major crimesincluding masterminding 9/11. None of the detainees put in these torture cellswere given right to hire an advocate, or to get in touch with anyone. They weretreated as most dangerous animals having no right to seek fundamental humanrights. Ironically, after sustaining years of inhuman torture during illegaldetention, most were found innocent and released. Over 200 Afghan prisoners foundinnocent have been repatriated from Gitmo. The ones released have mostly losttheir memory, or are in crippled condition and are as good as living dead. In spite of Obama’s promise to close Gitmo, it is stillfunctioning and the world is quiet. Geneva conventions are not applicable toMuslims, particularly those who do not collaborate with USA and refuse to spyagainst their own countries. Those who collaborate are rewarded with dollarsand American citizenship. Dr Shakeel Afridi convicted and sentenced to 33 yearsjail term on high treason charge of spying for CIA is a recent case in point.The whole American leadership is outraged over his conviction. Having alreadysliced $33 million aid, it has now threatened to stop all aid unless Afridi isreleased and sent to USA. The international community and internationalinstitutions subservient to the US uni-polarism are voiceless. The hollowslogans of freedom, democracy and justice lie buried under the debris of lies,deception, hypocrisy, torture and brutality of USA and its surrogates.

The writer is a retired Brig and a defence analyst. He hasserved as Defence Attaché Egypt and Sudan and Dean of Corps of MilitaryAttaches in Cairo. He is author of several books and writes columns for largenumber of international and national newspapers and websites. Email:asifharoon7751@yahoo.com

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