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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

We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs 
Mazar-i-Sharif 
for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies – who slaughtered
50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 – move into the city and execute 
up to 300 
Taliban fighters. The report is a footnote on the television satellite 
channels, a
"nib" in journalistic parlance. Perfectly normal, it seems. The Afghans have 
a "tradition" of 
revenge. So, with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime is
committed.

Now we have the Mazar-i-Sharif prison "revolt", in which Taliban inmates 
opened fire on 
their Alliance jailers. US Special Forces – and, it has emerged, British 
troops –
helped the Alliance to overcome the uprising and, sure enough, CNN tells us 
some 
prisoners were "executed" trying to escape. It is an atrocity. British troops 
are now
stained with war crimes. Within days, The Independent's Justin Huggler has 
found more 
executed Taliban members in Kunduz.

The Americans have even less excuse for this massacre. For the US Secretary 
of Defence, 
Donald Rumsfeld, stated quite specifically during the siege of the city that 
US
air raids on the Taliban defenders would stop "if the Northern Alliance 
requested it". 
Leaving aside the revelation that the thugs and murderers of the Northern 
Alliance
were now acting as air controllers to the USAF in its battle with the thugs 
and murderers of 
the Taliban, Mr Rumsfeld's incriminating remark places Washington in the
witness box of any war-crimes trial over Kunduz. The US were acting in full 
military 
co-operation with the Northern Alliance militia.

Most television journalists, to their shame, have shown little or no interest 
in these 
disgraceful crimes. Cosying up to the Northern Alliance, chatting to the 
American
troops, most have done little more than mention the war crimes against 
prisoners in the 
midst of their reports. What on earth has gone wrong with our moral compass
since 11 September?

Perhaps I can suggest an answer. 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.

Yes, I know the Taliban were a cruel bunch of bastards. They committed most 
of their 
massacres outside Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s. They executed women in the
Kabul football stadium. And yes, lets remember that 11 September was a crime 
against 
humanity.

But I have a problem with all this. George Bush says that "you are either for 
us or against 
us" in the war for civilisation against evil. Well, I'm sure not for bin 
Laden.
But I'm not for Bush. I'm actively against the brutal, cynical, lying "war of 
civilisation" 
that he has begun so mendaciously in our name and which has now cost as many
lives as the World Trade Centre mass murder.

At this moment, I can't help remembering my dad. He was old enough to have 
fought in the 
First World War. In the third Battle of Arras. And as great age overwhelmed
him near the end of the century, he raged against the waste and murder of the 
1914-1918 
war. When he died in 1992, I inherited the campaign medal of which he was
once so proud, proof that he had survived a war he had come to hate and 
loathe and 
despise. On the back, it says: "The Great War for Civilisation." Maybe I 
should send
it to George Bush. 

Also in Commentators

Robert Fisk: We are the war criminals now

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