International War Criminal In The city
By Anu Muhammad
06 June,2004
Countercurrents.orgAn international war criminal has arrived in Dhaka city. This is the man who has been behind recent atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, who is proved to be sufficiently pervert sadist and inhuman for continuing imperial mission taking from the past, confirming all sorts of torture, killing, post killing perversion, tear down all international conventions. This is the man who had been behind supplying WMD and nurturing terrorist groups all over the world. This is Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary of the United States, one of trio of the US administration, servicemen of big business, instruments of master evils of today’s world, that has been engaged in the mission to make the world a hell for the humanity and heaven for the evils all over. Their mission of ‘new american century’ is a project of occupying lands, polluting water, plundering resources, killing humans, eviction of settlements, destroying ecological balances. This is a project of corporate bodies, Christian Jew fascists, racist and communal White supremacists and war profiteers.
The photographs from Abu Graib prison in Iraq have suddenly shaken semi dizzy world conscience. As usual Bush-Rumsfeld clique tried to put it as a deviation from the US values and morality. But facts tell otherwise. In home and abroad the morality of US ruling bodies has always been used to create injustice to the highest level. The horrific and barbaric treatment of US army personnel and private contractors in the Iraq prison had/has been well calculated and deliberate. The officers who were happily conducting barbaric acts over Iraqi people were those who earlier became notorious in inhuman acts in the US prisons, which were their credentials to get lucrative postings in Iraq. The barbarism in Iraq prison is not a single area of violation of human rights there since US-British presence in Iraq is itself a violation of human right; they are occupiers, fraud and plunderers in every definition.
The royal trip of Rumsfeld to Bangladesh is not surprising and is not supposed to aim at convincing unwilling partners. The partners seem to be willing and convinced. Rumsfeld clique must be happy to find their close allies here, very likely happy to see generic friends in the present cabinet, war criminals of 1971. In 1971 US had been active patron behind all war crimes over Bangladeshi people, their close allies were Islamists embedded with Pak military junta. This role was obviously not a deviation from US ideology of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’; on the contrary this has always been expression of their freedom and democracy. Since 1945 the US made attempts to overthrow nearly 50 governments those became unfriendly to the US business interests and military footing; it deployed all its machineries to crush more than 50 cases of peoples movement against intolerable autocratic regimes, bootlicker of the US; bombed at least 30 countries; it created, nurtured and has been nurturing countless terrorist groups in and outside US to kill people, to destabilize different countries for intervention, to create panic, to make ‘accidents’, to counter peoples struggles for freedom, democracy and authority over own lives and resources; and in the process US administration killed several million people all over the world. No other State or power could do bloodshed, destruction and human loss in this scale in the last few centuries. Therefore as a protector, mentor and creator of terrorists, state and non-state, US hold today the unchallenging top position. Moreover, as a terrorist machine it appears as the deadliest of all. This has become the worst threat against world peace, security, human progress and vision of free world. Donald Rumsfeld is a leading representative of that killing machine.
It is very likely for Rumsfeld to feel at home in Dhaka when the governments have been engaged to make the space for US corporate-military complex through signing secret agreements one after another. At least three agreements have been signed during the last fourteen months, to make Bangladesh an easy smooth instrument and field of global terrorism conducted by the US, not to mention earlier ones and other secret understandings. In August 1993 one agreement was signed in Washington DC which made Bangladesh bound to allow US military and civilian officials to commit any crime they wish in this country. The news of signing this agreement was disclosed in Dhaka after one month, although the detail of the agreement is still secret. According to press report, ‘under this agreement no U.S. soldier or officer charged with criminal offences can be tried in Bangladesh or be extradited to the International Criminal Court for prosecution’. ‘The agreement stipulates that if any American soldier or officer is charged with criminal offence in Bangladesh, or is prosecuted in another country and takes shelter here, he cannot be handed over to the International Criminal Court.’ It clearly tells us that the US is creating safety net for the criminals who would be punishable even in country’s fragile justice system or in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Before signing this, Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of the State and ex-CIA official, visited Bangladesh in March 2003 and signed agreement that gave US blanc check to bring anything necessary for the development of ‘science and technology’, it also allowed to bring anything for ‘security purpose’ . Finally in the last month Rocca visited again and signed another agreement on 19 May 2004. This agreement has also been kept secret. Ministry official said to the press that the agreement would make it ‘binding on the government to take care of every single US interest including protection of US citizens and installations.’ The report further said that to protect American interests in the country and extend full cooperation to the US in identifying individuals or groups suspected of working against US interests (Daily Star, 20 May 2004). It is important to note that the draft agreement, like other ones, was not prepared by Bangladesh Government but US administration in Dhaka. Now another agreement is in the process of making, which is Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).
People were not told, before or after, but Bangladesh government has given free access to anything or anybody coming with US government’s tag; it has given them total authority, committed to give total service to find and take actions against those who are considered as hostile to the US interests; it has also declared immunity to the US nationals specially US military from any trial for their crime be it in the scale of Abu Graib prison or Iraq or Vietnam in general. They can kill people here, they can rape, they can make tortures, they can harass people of any kind but nothing will happen to them. They will be given protection from the Bangladesh state and their muscles. After all these, what differences are there of this ‘elected sovereign’ government with the puppet government in Iraq remain? The governments of Bangladesh have surrendered their economic sovereignty long before to the World Bank-IMF and WTO, now it has surrendered its political sovereignty. It has taken the task to rebuild its repressive machinery to safeguard US corporate and geo-political interests, in return of securing its own survival and sucking people.
William Blum, US author and an expert on US foreign policy and global operations said that, “the engine of American foreign policy has clearly not been fueled by a devotion to any kind of morality, nor even simple decency, but rather by the necessity to serve other masters.” He has broken down that to four: “(1) making the world open and hospitable to American transnational corporations; (2) enhancing the financial statements of defense companies at home who have donated generously to members of Congress and residents of the White House; (3) preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model; (4) extending American hegemony.”
The fake slogan of ‘global fight against terrorism’ is in practice a cover for global mission of occupation and plunder with the means of terrorism. The root of all forms of terrorism and fundamentalism therefore is located in the US administration: White House, Pentagon and Corporate capitalist centre. Who are the people hostile to the US government and who are the people friendly to them? Governments engaged in oppressing its own people, be it Muslim or non-Muslim, appear as closest allies of the US. But people all over the world including the US are not. Anybody who loves freedom, who cares human dignity, independence, who wants to save this planet from killers, plunderers and occupiers, who dreams of a world without discrimination of colour religion class and gender, who oppose war hatred and bloodshed, everybody of them is opposed to US imperial vulgar design and barbaric acts. So there is a sharp divide between governments and people.
The US governments’ fear of ICC is well understood, they know what they are doing and any legal procedure would find them criminal to the highest order. From the side of the oppressed women and men all over the world, dear and near ones of killed children and adults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Vietnam.........., living beings in polluted water and grabbed lands we have no other option but to stand against these killers, rapists, fascists and occupiers.