America's criminal occupation

America's criminal occupation

http://www.thehindu.com/2004/06/26/stories/2004062602701000.htm
The Hindu

By Roger Normand

The pervasive and systematic lawlessness underpinning the occupation of Iraq 
is no accident.

EACH NEW revelation of torture, abuse, lies and cover-up exposes the American 
occupation of Iraq as a criminal enterprise masquerading as liberation.

There has been much speculation as to whether Washington's neoconservative 
rulers actually believe the nonsense about freedom and human rights or whether 
they are driven solely by power and profit. It makes little difference to the 
people of Iraq. After 30 years of Western-sponsored domestic tyranny, they 
must now suffer the brutal depredations of foreign occupation. As the popular 
Iraqi saying goes, "the student is gone; the master has come."

The American script portrays all Iraqi opposition — not just attacks against 
civilians — as terrorism, even though international law recognises the right 
to resist occupation through armed struggle. The same script dismisses U.S. 
abuses as isolated excesses. But the dehumanisation of Iraqis evident in the 
photos from Abu Ghraib prison is not the handiwork of a few "bad apples." It 
is part and parcel of an American policy that seeks to justify imperialism in 
an explicitly post-imperial world order. In this respect, torture is only the 
visible tip of a vast iceberg of lawless behaviour. In the routine grind of 
maintaining occupation, U.S. forces are committing war crimes and human rights 
violations on a daily basis.

The laws of occupation — derived primarily from the Hague and Geneva 
Conventions and the International Bill of Human Rights — impose two 
fundamental obligations on Occupying Powers. First and foremost is to withdraw 
military forces and end the occupation as soon as possible. Second is to 
safeguard the rights of the occupied population during the temporary period 
before the occupation is ended. The occupier gains no sovereign rights and is 
prohibited from manipulating the country's future, plundering its resources, 
and repressing its people.

As documented in a recent report by the Center for Economic and Social Rights, 
U.S. occupation policy stands in contradiction to these basic legal 
principles. The report's major findings can be summarised as follows:

Failure to Allow Self-Determination. The U.S. is appointing Iraqi leaders 
without elections or popular participation (the handpicked Prime Minister is a 
known CIA asset), retaining control over security matters, building an 
extensive network of military bases throughout the country, and transforming 
the economy along free market lines. Under these conditions, the purported 
"transfer of sovereignty" on June 30 is a form of political theatre without 
legal effect, regardless of the fig leaf of legitimacy provided by the United 
Nations Security Council. Genuine self-determination requires the free 
exercise of political choice, actual control over military and security 
affairs, and authority over social and economic policy. Until this happens, 
Iraq will remain an occupied country, and the U.S. will remain accountable as 
an occupying power.

Failure to Ensure Public Safety. The U.S. created a climate of unchecked 
lawlessness by eliminating the entire army and police forces without a back-up 
plan to maintain public safety — predictably resulting in a dramatic increase 
in violent crime throughout the country, especially directed against women. 
The U.S. also violated international law and caused untold damage to the 
people and heritage of Iraq by allowing the wholesale looting of cultural 
institutions, private businesses and governmental offices — with the notable 
exception of the Oil Ministry. This occurred in plain view, and at times with 
the active encouragement, of American troops.

Detention and Torture. The Red Cross estimates that up to 90 per cent of 
Iraqis in detention are innocent civilians swept up in illegal mass arrests 
and held incommunicado from family members without charge or due process. U.S. 
forces also hold family members of wanted suspects as hostages. Once detained, 
prisoners may be subject to a range of abuses, including physical and sexual 
torture, rape, and murder. The Bush Administration continues to cover up 
command responsibility and deny that these abuses meet the legal definition of 
torture, even though a number of secret government reports have surfaced 
explicitly authorising the use of torture against alleged "terrorists".

Collective Punishment. Taking lessons from Israeli war crimes in occupied 
Palestine, the U.S. has imposed collective punishment on Iraqi civilians. 
Tactics include demolishing civilian homes, ordering curfews in populated 
areas, preventing free movement through checkpoints and road closures, sealing 
off entire towns and villages, and using indiscriminate force in crowded urban 
areas, causing widespread and unnecessary civilian casualties. Moreover, 
ambulances, medical staff and facilities, and journalists — given special 
protections under the Geneva Conventions — have been frequently targeted.

Failure to Protect Economic and Social Rights. Already damaged by war and 12 
years of sanctions, essential public services such as electricity, water, and 
sanitation have only deteriorated under the American occupation, leading to 
increased poverty and widespread violations of the rights to life, work, 
health, food, and education. The U.S. exacerbated joblessness by summarily 
dismissing workers with any association to the former Baath regime, including 
civil servants, teachers, engineers, and other professionals; 60 per cent of 
Iraqis are now unemployed. The health infrastructure is a shambles, drugs and 
medical supplies are in short supply, and medical staff report disease 
outbreaks and increased mortality throughout the country. Over 70 per cent of 
the population depends on a monthly food ration and 11 million Iraqis are 
classified as food insecure. The education system has broken down, with 
two-thirds of school-age children in Baghdad skipping school because of 
dilapidated conditions, lack of teachers, and fears of crime.

Fundamentally Changing the Economy. The U.S. is violating the prohibition 
against changing Iraq's economic structure by imposing drastic free market 
"reforms" through executive fiat. These orders permit privatisation of state 
enterprises, 100 per cent foreign ownership of Iraqi firms, tax-free 
repatriation of all investment profits, 40-year leases on contracts, a flat 
tax rate of 15 per cent, and the abolition of all tariffs and protective trade 
measures. In effect, the entire reconstruction process has been run as a form 
of thinly disguised plunder, with politically-connected American (and some 
British) corporations pocketing billions of dollars in bloated contracts while 
Iraq slides into chaos and poverty.

To top it off, the U.S. has granted its occupation forces blanket immunity 
under local law for any and all crimes committed in Iraq, no matter how 
egregious. This is the modern version of legal extraterritoriality formerly 
enjoyed by the British in their colonial holdings.

The pervasive and systematic lawlessness underpinning the occupation of Iraq 
is no accident. The neoconservatives in Washington understand that the rule of 
law stands as an obstacle to unleashing the full force of the U.S. war 
machine. They understand that the "New American Century" requires new rules of 
engagement, that the endless war against evil and terror requires dividing the 
world into "us and them" according to the dictates of American power rather 
than universal standards of legality. So George Bush repackages unilateral 
aggression — defined as "the supreme international crime" by the Nuremberg 
Tribunal — as preventive war, while his top lawyer derides the Geneva 
Conventions as "quaint and outdated."

This appears to mark a radical break from past American policy. But it is more 
accurately understood as an extension and intensification of the longstanding 
tradition of "U.S. exceptionalism" — the doctrine whereby every country in the 
world except the U.S. (and favoured allies like Israel) is bound by 
international law. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is merely the gold 
standard of U.S. exceptionalism, an attempt to elevate double standards to the 
status of law itself rather than a privileged exception to the law. In a 
sense, the Bush Administration has attacked not only Iraq but the entire 
United Nations system of post-colonial sovereignty.

The manipulation of legal language to serve unlawful ends is, of course, not a 
uniquely American position. Throughout history, powerful nations have stood 
above the law and claimed the right to liberate "less civilised" peoples 
through the use of military violence disguised as humanitarian intervention. 
The rhetoric of freedom masks the reality of conquest, subjugation, pillage, 
and torture. Occupied peoples have resisted such unwelcome liberation by all 
means at their disposal, from non-violent mass action to guerilla war, until 
either the invader is thrown out or the population is conquered and subdued.

The occupation of Iraq is proving to be no exception to this time-tested 
paradigm. The American empire, which appeared invincible only a year ago, is 
floundering in the sands of Mesopotamia. The only question remains how many 
people will have to die before Iraqis are allowed to exercise genuine 
self-determination.

(Roger Normand is Director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, a 
human rights organisation based in New York. He has led fact-finding missions 
to Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan in recent years.)

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