UN A TOOTHLESS TIGER… OR AN APPENDAGE OF THE US?
Yesterday (September 27) brought the curtain down on the final day of world leaders addressing the august body.
Addressing the sessions, Secretary General Antonio Guterres promoted the lofty ideals of the world body, spoke on issues of justice, warned the world of impending dangers climate change posed to future generations, as well as of death, destruction and the possibility of famine in Ethiopia and Yemen caused by war in those regions.
Meanwhile in Switzerland, another ‘game’ was playing out. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an arm of the United Nations announced that he was ‘depriortising’ investigations into alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan!
The prosecutor’s reason for this about was even more startling. Prosecutor Karim Khan said he had filed an application to resume his office’s investigation into alleged atrocities committed in Afghanistan since July 1, 2002. But, with a big difference… he said he would be focusing on the actions of the Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan - an ISIS-K- militia.
His thinking was that since the Taliban had driven the US and NATO troops out of their country, it was impossible. Since the Us-supported government was no longer in power, there was little chance for ‘a genuine and effective domestic investigation’.
In other words, only an investigation carried out by a regime backed by the perpetrator of war crimes, and atrocities committed by on the Afghan people could be considered reliable and genuine.
Who is trying to deceive whom?
All over the world the US has been committing war crimes with complete impunity.
Sadly, it looks like a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The poor Secretary General is obviously completely unaware of what one of the most important arms of his organization is planning to unleash on an unsuspecting world.
When the ICC announced last year that it was going to investigate alleged US war crimes and atrocities in Afghanistan, the people of the world believed that at last the US would be held to account for its numerous crimes against the civilian populations in different parts of the world.
Alas! That it not to be, among some of the worse ‘incidents’ committed and reported by rt.com was a US airstrike in 2002 which struck a wedding banquet in Uruzgan province, killing dozens and injuring many more.
In 2015, a NATO attack killed 15 policemen on an anti-narcotics mission, and in 2019, a US drone attack killed at least 30 Afghan farmers in Nangarhar Province.
According Brown University’s ‘Costs of War project,’ up to 47,245 Afghan civilians have been killed in the war launched by Washington two decades ago.
These killings took place and were documented by several reputed organisations, backed up by proof and witness reports.
As the character ‘Alice’ in Lewis Carol’s novel ‘Alice Wonderland’ want to say, things get curiouser and curiouser and so it was with the UN prosecutor who emphasised ‘It is this finding that has necessitated the present application…’ that is ‘deprioritising’ investigations into alleged US war crimes and atrocities.
We wonder whether the ICC prosecutors will apply the same criteria to allegations of war crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s ‘War on Terror’, which ended in 2009. But of course this paper has always stood for justice to the victims of war.
Or for that matter will the UN even at this late stage charge the US for crimes against humanity for dropping two nuclear bombs on civilian targets in Japan at a time when Japan was on the brink of surrendering?
Even the head of the then US forces, then General Eisenhover asked President Harry Truman not to use nuclear arms, (according to his diary kept by an aide to the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union).
If this was not a war crime, what is? But the US has never been charged for these crimes.
All evidence points to the US crimes in Afghanistan being swept under the table. However, this time around, the UN will be unable like Pontius Pilot of old be able to white wash itself off the crimes committed against the Afghan. People.