Remembering
Srebrenica,
Thinking
Of Fallujah
By Ghali Hassan
22 July, 2005
Countercurrents.org
On
July 11, 2005, American and European leaders gathered at a ceremony
in Srebrenica marking the 10th anniversary of the death of at
least 8000 Bosnians men and boys during the war in Bosnia. As
usual, the news of the anniversary was broadcast live throughout the
Western world, and the alleged atrocity was compared only to that of
Fascism (Europes worst massacre since World War II).
Will Western leaders who commemorated Srebrenica massacre
and promised to bring the indicted leaders to justice apply the same
standards of justice to those who committed the Fallujah massacre?
The small Bosnian
town of Srebrenica was (supposedly) protected by the UN
as a safe area at the time when the alleged 8,000 Muslims
(loved to death by the US and its Western allies) were slaughtered by
Serb forces in 1995 while the 370 Dutch military contingents stood by.
The same was repeated few years later in Kosovo when NATO/UN forces
stood by while Albanian terrorists (the KLA) kidnapped, tortured and
murdered Serbs and Gypsies. The Srebrenica massacre was
just a propaganda coup for the US-NATO war against the Republic of Yugoslavia.
Subsequently, the
US-NATO used the massacre to intervene on behalf of the
Bosnian Muslim leaders in the war against Serb forces and in pursuit
of their own imperialist agenda. The aim was to break up the Republic
of Yugoslavia and colonise Bosnia and Kosovo. Credible evidence provided
by US and Western sources showed that the number of the so-called at
least 8000 Muslims killed by Serbian forces was inflated
to provide the US-NATO with a humanitarian pretext to demonise
the Serbs, and gain public relations support for military intervention
in the region. European humanitarian organisations estimated that between
80,000 and 102,000 Bosnians died during the Bosnian war (1992-1995).
It is also noteworthy
several US reports (e.g. US Senate Staff Report and the Foreign Military
Studies) have accused the Bosnian forces of deliberately attacking their
own Bosnian civilians (e.g. the Breadline Massacre in 1992,
and the Market Massacre in 1994 and 1995) in order to get
US-NATO to come to their aid against Serb forces.
In addition, the
Srebrenica massacre was also used by the Croatian regime
(the darling of Western Fascism) as a smokescreen to conduct an overt
criminal policy of ethnic cleansing Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in Western
Bosnia and the Serbian inhabitants of the Krajina in Croatia. According
to Edward Herman, Americas most astute critical reformist, massive
ethnic cleansing and atrocities against Serbs and Bosnian Muslims was
carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a
month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing
of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica
area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not
civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bussed the Srebrenica women and children
to safety; the Croatians made no such provision and many women, children
and old people were slaughtered in Krajina.
Like the war on
Iraq, the US-NATO war on Yugoslavia was an act of aggression that destroyed
the entire Republic and killed an unknown large number of Serbs, the
war largest victim. Over a million people (now live in Serbia) are displaced
refugees from Krajina, Bosnia and Kosovo as a result of a fascist policy
of ethnic cleansing and an illegal war against Yugoslavia.
The Srebrenica massacre
was universally condemned in Europe and the US as genocide
and crimes against humanity. The Serbs who have been accused of the
killings were described by Western governments and Western media as
Serb evils. They are indicted for war crimes and promises
have been made to bring them to justice, that is, Western
justice. However when something worse than the Srebrenica massacre
happened in Fallujah, it was described by Western leaders and their
media accomplices as a necessary step to hold elections and bring
freedom and democracy to Iraq.
The Iraqi city was
the subject of heavy US bombardments before and after the 2003 Occupation.
In November 2004, US occupying forces embarked on pacifying
the city of Fallujah in order to make an example of Western
brutality. Water, food and electricity were cut off to the city of 300,000
citizens - in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The aim was to empty
the city of its women, children, and the elderly while preventing the
departure of able-bodied males from leaving, then US forces bombed the
city with all the remaining civilians. Many people were able to leave,
but others stayed in their homes.
For several weeks,
US forces bombed the city continuously, with deliberate violence that
has been described as war crimes. US helicopter gunships
and F-16 fighter planes, using legally banned Napalm-type firebombs
(MK77s type bombs used in Vietnam) and bombs as heavy as 500 lb (220
kg), are attacking population centres and shopping malls. From the air
and from the grounds, US forces indiscriminately killed civilians holding
white flags or white clothes over their heads, murdered the wounded
fighters, killed unarmed Iraqis who had been taken prisoner, and destroyed
mosques, hospitals, and health centres protected under international
law.
All males between
the ages of 16 and 60 years old were slaughtered. US forces attacked
and occupied the Fallujah Hospitals to prevent the publication and counting
of civilian casualties. Patients and doctors in the Hospital were taken
hostages and abused by US forces and their Iraqi collaborators. Staff
have been attacked by US marines, doctors have been shot, emergency
medicines blocked. Children have been murdered in front of their families.
Now imagine the same state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals
that received the victims of the bombing, wrote John Pilger.
Agence France-Presse
(AFP) reported on 18 December 2004, that US unit commanders revealed
that their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen
on the streets, armed or unarmed. According to the Red Cross spokesman
and the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, more than 6,000 people have been
killed and many more have been injured in the first three weeks of the
unprovoked US attacks. The entire city was destroyed and rendered uninhabitable
by humans. Currently there are some 250,000 people reported as being
internally displaced by the atrocity. Law experts have described the
atrocity of Fallujah as war crimes and breach of the Geneva Convention
and US Law. It is part of an illegal war of aggression that has needlessly
caused the suffering and death of thousands of innocent people.
Two independent
studies investigating the death toll of Iraqi civilians found that more
than 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US-led invasion and
occupation of the country. In November 2004, the reputed and peer-reviewed
British medical journal, The Lancet, estimated the death toll to be
100,000 Iraqis, mostly women and children. The estimate was conservative
because it did no include the atrocity of Fallujah.
The second independent
study was by the Iraqiyun Humanitarian Organization in Baghdad which
reported that at least 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the US
invasion began in March 2003. Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, head of Iraqiyun,
said that 55 per cent of those killed have been women and children aged
12 and under. The Iraqiyun compiled its data from relatives and families
of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals throughout Iraq. However,
the 128,000 figure includes only those whose relatives have been informed
of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated
or simply disappeared by the US forces and their collaborators. The
number is also includes those who killed by US forces during that attacks
on Fallujah and the town Qa'im in western Iraq. In addition, tens of
thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children are imprisoned without
charges. They are abused, tortured and denied their human rights. Many
Iraqi prisoners and detainees have been murdered in cold-blooded and
cowardice fashions by US-British killers.
As part of US-British
war propaganda, Iraqi dead are not counted, because they are considered
inhumane. And even when Iraqi dead are counted the number of dead is
squeezed to serve a crafted purpose. The July 13, 2005 report by the
England-based Iraqi Body Count (IBC) estimated that Iraqi civilian casualties
to be between 22,838 and 25,869, an extremely deflated number and contradicts
previous credible counts. The report is deliberately misleading and
designed to normalise the atrocity and blame the violence on Iraqis,
ignoring the US Occupation as the main cause of the violence today.
When 55 people died
in the 7/7 London attack, Westerners and their allies were in arms condemning
the crimes and demanding that the perpetrators be brought
to justice for their crimes. However, when 128,000 innocent Iraqi men,
women and children are murdered by the policy and violent actions of
their Western leaders, the silence is deafening. The perpetrators of
these war crimes were rewarded and re-elected to high office, thanks
to powerful media distortions and blindfolded moral values.
There is no two minutes of silence for the mass slaughter of Iraqi children.
More than two years
of brutal Occupation, US plan for Iraq remains unchanged: the Iraqisation
of the Occupation and the violence. This is done by franchising (contracting)
the US violence to US-created local militia groups, and removing the
occupying forces from Iraqi cities and towns to more protected areas.
In other words, the Occupation will be localised by replacing foreign
forces with the US-created Iraqi forces the Kurdish Peshmerga,
the Iranian-trained BADR Brigade, the Wolf Brigade, including the Chalabis
thugs, and Al-Hussein Brigade. The essential criteria to join the echelons
of these forces are previous experience in corruption and pro-Occupation
skills in torture and human rights abuse. They are rightly called the
dogs of the Occupation by Iraqis for their brutality and
subservient to US forces and CIA officials.
The militia groups
work closely with the Occupation, carrying out US orders of random house
raids, mass arrests of innocent people, and major violent operations
against Iraqi civilians, and anti-Occupation Resistance. Together with
the occupying forces these militia groups are embarking on violent crimes
against Iraqi civilians in order to distort the image of the Iraqi Resistance
and weaken its popular supports. The US aim in Iraq is to create an
atmosphere of terror in order to terrorise the population and instil
fear in Iraqis daily life. At the same time, the US is encouraging
sectarian strife and religious fundamentalism as a way of undermining
secular and nationalist resistance movements.
The strategy is
an old imperialist strategy designed to allow the imperialist forces
to role by proxy behind an Iraqi façade. This will provide safe
enclaves for the occupying forces and reduces their casualties. The
occupying forces will be used only in an emergency situation to protect
the puppets. In other words, foreign forces will be used only when the
puppeteers are in danger of loosing control to suppress the Iraqi people.
In addition, public opinion in the US and Europe will be manipulated
through US-crafted rigged elections and fake sovereignty, depicted as
political process towards democracy.
It is this political
process and the US-style democracy which have been
promoted for Iraq by the US-Western governments, Western media and Western
liberal elites (left and right). Iraqis, who reject this colonial dictatorship,
are labelled insurgents. It is an old agenda of Western
imperialism and has nothing to do with the ordinary Iraqi people. Its
aim is to colonise Iraq and siphoned off its wealth into the bellies
of US-Western corporations. It has been admirably rejected by the Iraqi
people. Iraqis are universally united against the Occupation, and blame
the Occupation forces for the continuing violence in their country.
Speaking at the
ceremony to commemorate the Srebrenica massacre, the British
foreign secretary, Jack Straw said; it was a shame on the international
community that this evil took place under our noses. I particularly
regret this, and I am deeply sorry. It was very misleading statement
because Mr Straw is very aware that this evil took place
again ten years later with his government full cooperation to massacre
the people of Fallujah and obliterate their once vibrant city. Like
the massacre of Srebrenica, the massacre Fallujah was premeditated
war crimes in contravention of the Geneva Convention, the US War Crimes
Act and the UN Charter.
It has been suggested
by law experts that the Fallujah massacre was the perfect case to indict
the president of the United States with war crime under US law. The
Fallujah genocide is a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions, Geneva
Conventions. You couldn't have a more grave breach of the Geneva
Conventions than that, said Naom Chomsky citing the US War Crimes
Act which was passed by a Republican Congress in 1996.
It is worth remembering
that in the Nuremberg they did not try soldiers, and they didn't try
unit commanders, they tried the people who sold the war. One of those
on trial , the German foreign minister (193845), Joachim von Ribbentrop,
was convicted as a war criminal and hanged because of participation
in the supreme international crime which encompasses all the evil
that follows. Shouldnt the world community follow the same
justice and try those who instigated the illegal war on Iraq? Or are
the Wests war crimes tribunals and international criminal courts
part of the imperial strategy?
Unlike Srebrenica,
we know that the ultimate responsibility for the massacres of Fallujah,
Baghdad and other Iraqi cities rests with the US Secretary of Defence,
Ronald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and Tony Blair. There is an overwhelming
prima facia evidence to formally indict those who committed this international
war crime against the Iraqi people.
Ghali Hassan
lives
in Perth, Western Australia.