The Muslim News - US slaughter in Haditha

Issue 206, Friday 30 June 2006 - 5 Jumad al-Akhbar 1427

US slaughter in Haditha - so what’s new?

By Dr Nazreen Nawaz

Last month, news emerged of a massacre of innocent civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. A group of US marines stand accused of slaughtering 24 Iraqi civilians in cold blood last November to avenge the death of a comrade killed by an insurgent bomb. The victims included women and five children between the ages of 14 and 2 whose bodies were found still in their night clothes.
This horrific incident was soon followed by allegations of another massacre by US forces on March 15, in the town of Ishaqi. Iraqi police claimed that the US soldiers had shot eleven civilians in a house, execution-style, before blowing up the building. The dead, of which were four women and five children, included a six month old baby and seventy-five year-old grandmother. Earlier this month, news also emerged of two Iraqi women shot dead by US soldiers at a check-point. One was thirty-five year-old Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a heavily pregnant woman who was in labour at the time and being rushed to a maternity hospital.
How ironic that in February, UK’s Defence Secretary, John Reid, commented that coalition forces in Iraq were facing an enemy not hindered “by any legitimacy, any morality, any international convention.”
Do such incidents perpetrated by the coalition forces in Iraq still surprise us? Are we shocked by the idea of US soldiers not abiding by the “ethical” rules of warfare? Do we view these events as isolated tragedies enacted by a few bad apples in the US or British army as described by, Commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq, Lieutenant-General, Peter Chiarelli? He said in a statement that 99.9% of his troops “perform their jobs magnificently every day. Unfortunately, there are a few individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path.”
Thaer Juma, a lawyer and director of a non-governmental organization in Baghdad, commented, “....these crimes are happening every day in Haditha and Ramadi but the international community knows nothing about them because there are media blackouts on the operations and there are no international humanitarian non-governmental organizations to record these transgressions.”
Massacres and debased actions by coalition forces are nothing new to the Iraqi people. Consider if you will, Falluja 2004 where hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed following the US-led offensive on the town. Consider if you will, the raid into a Sh’ia mosque this March by US troops that led to the slaughter of 37 unarmed Iraqis. Consider if you will, Abu Ghraib, where even Muslim women were sexually tortured in the same manner as the men, forced to undress in front of male guards, photographed, and some raped. Consider if you will, the pictures of British troops caught on camera abusing and torturing prisoners in Basra.
As these western governments and their military struggle desperately try to explain that these atrocities are not systemic within their armies, inherent to their values, and do not represent their way of life, comparisons to past wars have resurfaced: The My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968, where 500 villages were slaughtered by the Charlie Company of the 11th Brigade of the American Division of the US army; Vietnam 1967, where it is said that the Tiger force comprising US troops murdered hundreds of Vietnamese men, women and children in the Quang Ngai Province; South Korea where for 50 years, villagers have insisted that American soldiers targeted and killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in a series of massacres during the Korean War.
Following the Haditha revelations, the US military announced that it would be organizing a 30-day training session in “ethics” for all its troops stationed in Iraq. Soldiers would receive lessons in “core warrior values”. Well, the world has witnessed what the leaders of these soldiers understand by “core warrior values”. It is the invasion of a nation that has led to the deaths of over 100,000 civilians - half women and children - on the basis of a lie. It is the use of depleted uranium in warfare that has caused and will continue to cause grotesque deformities in Iraqi children for decades to come. It is the arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantanamo and across the globe. It is the rendition of prisoners to secret torture facilities in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. It is the support of dictators across the Muslim world such as Islam Karimov who boils alive his political opponents. It is securing the support of the murderous warlords of the Northern Alliance whose militias killed over 50,000 civilians in Kabul alone between 1992 and 1996 in order to install a puppet regime in Afghanistan.
So, are we to expect better from US and British soldiers in their treatment of ordinary Iraqis, when their rulers have led by example in showing the world that they carry little concern regarding Iraqi civilian life, having caused the death of over half a million Iraqi children during a decade of sanctions and thousands more as a result of this war? They have neglected to even record the numbers of civilians killed by their forces in Iraq. The idea that the Bush and Blair governments still carry any regard for morality, justice, the worth of human life, the rule of law and women’s rights, is frankly laughable.
But perhaps what is more ludicrous is their unshakable belief that only a secular vision of government, politics, and society can bring justice, civility, progress, rule of law, and protection of individual rights in Iraq and across the Middle East. This is despite having engaged in an illegal war, having made a mockery of human rights, and their continued support of murderous tyrants for economic and strategic gain. This is naturally accompanied by the unswerving conviction that a system founded upon an alternative political philosophy would inevitably oppress and fail - as if progressive civilizations in the world have only existed within the last three centuries following the birth of secularism in Western Europe.
Tony Blair in his July 16, 2005, anti-terror speech, described the concept of those who “...demand the establishment of...Shariah law in the Arab world en route to one Caliphate of all Muslim nations” as an “evil ideology”. Perhaps Blair should be reminded that it is this “evil ideology” which took over Makkah in the 7th century without a drop of blood being spilt, even though its inhabitants had mocked, persecuted, and even killed many Muslims for years. It was this “evil ideology” that drove the General Salahuddin Ayyubi to prohibit the killing of even one civilian when Jerusalem was returned to Muslim control from the Crusaders in the 12th century. This was despite the fact that the Crusaders had previously massacred 40,000 Muslim and Jewish men, women and children in a two-day rampage of the city.
Tony Blair continued his speech by saying, “We don’t have to wonder what type of country those states would be...Girls put out of school. Women denied even rudimentary rights. People living in abject poverty and oppression. All of it is justified by reference to religious faith.” Blair’s views are naturally echoed by the Bush administration. US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, described the Caliphate as a state that “...would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.” Paul Bremer, the head of the now dismantled Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, emphasized at the time that he would veto any constitution in Iraq where Shari’ah was the basis of the law.
Such beliefs stench of the continued colonial fervour of particular Western governments who refuse to accept that there are over a billion Muslims in the world who do not share their vision of the world and believe the Islamic Shari’ah should form the basis of their lives. It is a colonial mindset that refuses to even entertain the idea that perhaps there is an alternative political system to secular capitalism that secures the rule of law, protects the fundamental rights of individuals, delivers justice to a society, and is able to have friendly diplomatic relations with non-hostile Western states.
The writer Ziauddin Sardar has described quite aptly how, “Civilization as we know it has always meant Western Civilization. Civilized behaviour and products have been measured by the yardsticks of the West. Europe and now North America has always contemplated itself as the focus of the world, the axis of civilization, the goal of history, the end product of human destiny...Colonial history and colonial Christianity did their utmost to annihilate non-Western cultures and obliterate their histories...Now secularism in its post-modernistic phase of desperate self-glorification has embarked on the same goal.”
The Haditha and Ishaqi massacres, the chaotic political reality in Iraq, the failing state of Afghanistan and the atrocities of past wars and colonial invasions should surely demonstrate that secular states are far from being immune to oppression and abuse. The actions of secular rulers such as Bush and Blair who have demonstrated that the “rules of the game can be changed” at a whim with regards to the arrest and treatment of political prisoners, engagement in war, human rights laws, invasion of individual privacy, and the right of political dissent within their nations, should highlight that moral values and principles within secular states are far from being fixed and non-negotiable. The current problems plaguing Western nations on their home-front, from escalating crime figures, drug and alcohol epidemics, increasing violence against women, antisocial behaviour amongst the youth, neglect of the elderly, rise in suicide rates and more should surely suggest that perhaps these nations do not have all the answers. On the same day that news broke of the Ishaqi massacre, another story emerged of a similar incident where a family had been executed in cold blood. However, this was not in Iraq but Indianapolis, USA. Such stories are unfortunately becoming all too familiar here in the West.
Is it not time for Western governments to eat some humble pie and realise that theirs is not the only world vision carried by the citizens of this globe. Nor can it continue to be championed as the bastion of justice and civilization. The enlightened thinker would surely understand that the imposition of a secular world-view upon the Muslim world that holds a different political philosophy of life will not create stability in Iraq or the Muslim world. Nor is it the rational path to generating a securer environment within Western states. Is it not time that Western governments venture out from their colonial enclaves and accept that there was a system that brought progress and civilization to two-thirds of the world for 1300 years. This is the Islamic Caliphate State. It is the state that implements the Islamic Shari’ah upon the society. It is a system where principles such as rule of law, an elected and accountable ruler and an independent judiciary are enshrined in law. It is a state where fundamental rights such as access to a fair open trial, protection of life, property, belief, and honour and the prohibition of arbitrary arrest or indefinite detention are fixed and non-negotiable. It is a system that prohibits torture under any circumstance and where the killing of innocent civilians is not permitted. It is a state that nurtures a sense of accountability and responsibility that will produce trustworthy politicians. It is the state that millions of Muslims wish to see return to the Muslim world.
If we do not engage in such discussions and leaders such as Bush and Blair are allowed to continue their secular crusades across the Muslim world under the guise of preventing the return of an “evil ideology” or “bogeyman Caliphate”, then massacres such as Haditha, Ishaqi, and Falluja will only be the tip of the iceberg.
Dr Nazreen Nawaz, Women’s Media Representative of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Britain

Back to the front page

Editorial

Messages for
The Muslim News

AddFreeStats.com Free Web Stats in real-time !