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=> All the makings of a war crime

All the makings of a war crime
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Thursday, November 11 2004, 23:22:30 (CET)
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ALL THE MAKINGS OF A WAR CRIME - with Australia silently onside

Sydney Morning Herald, November 9, 2004

A US-led attack on the Iraqi Sunni-stronghold will breach the Geneva
conventions, writes Tony Kevin.

We need to be clear on what is about to happen in the Iraqi city of
Falluja, about 64 kilometres west of Baghdad and a key centre of Sunni
population in Iraq. This city has for many months held out as a centre
of Sunni-based political-military resistance, refusing to accept the
authority either of the former US-led occupying authority nor, since
July, of the interim Iraqi administration led by the Prime Minister,
Iyad Allawi.

Falluja is now to be brought to heel by overwhelming military power. As
I write this, the US attack on the city has begun. The message to
Falluja from the US armed forces in Iraq and from Allawi was brutally
simple: submit now to Baghdad's authority or face attack.

It is still possible that resistance in Falluja will melt away in the
face of US attack. While this would be a more optimistic scenario, I
think it more likely at this point that the insurgents will fight,
because too much is at stake politically for them to accept a
bloodless Allawi victory. I look here at the - in my judgement, now
more likely - scenario that Falluja insurgents will dig in and defy
the invasion force.

What I believe is then likely to be done to Falluja will be a war
crime and crime against humanity, morally indefensible by any
civilised standard or for that matter, by the Statute of the
International Criminal Court (to which, conveniently, neither the US
nor
Iraqi Government adheres).

This will be no neat, surgical strike. To get the measure of this,
think of the Warsaw rising in 1944, or the Russian Army's destruction
of
the Chechen capital, Grozny. In 1999 this already battered city (of
originally 400,000 people) was finally destroyed by massive Russian
bombardment. Today, insurgents still fight it out with Russian troops
among the ruins.

Eighteen months ago, before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Falluja was a
living city of 300,000 people. Now - depopulated of most of its
civilians by intimidation and fear - what is left looks like it is
about to be blasted out of existence, simply as a demonstration of
overwhelming US power in Iraq.

Of course, the US Army has been for weeks "humanely" encouraging women
and children to leave the encircled city through checkpoints while
there
is still time to save their lives.

The Russians did the same before and during the destruction of Grozny.
In a few days, as the battle and the flight of civilians expands, there
may be tens of thousands of new refugees in tent cities, and tens of
thousands of women left without husbands, and children left without
fathers.

If this attack goes ahead as appears inevitable, it will obviously
breach the laws of war and the Geneva conventions. First, it will
grossly exceed proportionality in terms of ends and means. What
intended
political or military objective could justify so much death, the
creation of so many new refugees, and wholesale destruction of homes?

What threat does the city of Falluja pose to the Iraqi state at this
point? Allawi has claimed that free elections cannot take place unless
Falluja is subdued. What a spurious argument.

The truth is that this city, which has become a symbol of Sunni-Iraqi
political resistance to the occupiers, is to be made an example of, to
deter others. The message the siege of Falluja sends is brutally
simple:
resist us and we will destroy you. It is the same message that the
Wehrmacht sent in Warsaw in 1944, and the Russian Army in Grozny in
1999.

This attack will also violate the rules of war and the Geneva
conventions in having grossly indiscriminate effects on civilians and
civilian homes and infrastructure. America's largely untrained in
battle
but over-armed forces will start their attack "humanely", but as they
inevitably take numbers of lethal casualties, their tactics will
quickly
escalate to indiscriminate bombing and shelling of the city using their
WMD armouries.

Eventually, the attackers will flatten the city and kill everyone that
still resists in it. Falluja will be the Iraqi people's Masada, and it
will sow seeds of deep anti-Western hatred in the Middle East for
decades to come.

The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, understands all this, in
pleading for a negotiated solution. And as usual, Washington is
summarily ignoring his pleas.

As a military ally with our troops in Iraq, Australia is morally
implicated in this. While Australian former SAS commanders, the
Governor-General, Major-General Michael Jeffery, and the Australian
Christian Lobby's executive chairman, Brigadier Jim Wallace, moralise
about abortions and gay marriages, Australia's military ally is about
to
destroy a living city and its families.

An unnamed US military commander in the tightening military ring around
Falluja proudly boasted (as heard on ABC Radio yesterday) that this
battle will go down in US military history as another Hue. Indeed it
will - who can forget the wholesale artillery destruction of that
sacred, historic Vietnamese city? "We had to destroy it in order to
save
it" was the line at the time. Now it looks like our military ally in
Iraq is about to do it all over again in Falluja.

What are Australian political leaders - Government or Opposition -
saying to Washington at this point? Are they saying anything at all? We
reap what we sow.

[Tony Kevin, a former Australian diplomat, is a visiting fellow at the
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National
University, Canberra.]

...

Victorian Peace Network
Suite 2, Victorian Trades Hall Council, 54 Victoria Street, Carlton
South Vic 3053.
Phone 613 9659 3582 • info@vicpeace.org
www.vicpeace.org



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