Application of the Third Geneva Convention in Afghanistan

From the Globe and Mail,19 Feb, 2009
article by Paul Koring
Prisoner transfers halted as early as spring 2007
"Voicing their doubts"

"At least some Canadian military police officers in Afghanistan were worried about what would happen to prisoners they handed over to Afghan authorities, according to transcripts of the Military Police complaints Commission's interview with Captain Jason Tarzwell, deputy commander of the Canadian military police deployed to Kandahar in the first months of Canada's move to the Taliban heartland.

"Capt Tarzwell: 'I didn't think with the Kandahar facility, detention facility that it was appropriate for us, Canada, to be directly involved in transferring folks to a prison that held political prisoners, adulterers and homosexuals and that I really didn't think it was Canada's responsibility to pick the spot where we were going to put them, because then we would have ownership of that problem.

'It was certainly laid out in the Geneva Convention 3[*] why we don't put people in prison.

'And then the folks in that particular prison, again, it wasn't something I felt Canada or Canadians should be involved in...

'Now, I made that determination, again, because that facility wasn't appropriate. I'm not sure why anyone else didn't look at it in the intervening time that I was gone, and say, hey that's not appropriate, but as the platoon commander there and the commander on the ground and responsible for that facility it clearly didn't meet the Geneva Convention.

'So I'm thinking either Major Fraser wasn't in tune with the Geneva Convention, or he never looked at it, or he didn't really put much thought into what was happening there...'"

*Link to ICRC website added

Moving towards a hearing

The future of parliamentary democracy...

The Gobe and Mail "Public Policy Wiki"

This seems to me a very creative idea by Mathew Ingram, a public policy forum that allows participation by citizens, within reasonable rules of debate. If it works -- and why wouldn't it work? -- it should also free the "free press" in an era of centralized ownership and attempts by government to "manage information".

See also Mathew Ingram's blog at the Globe...Ingram 2.0

Desurging and Afghanistanization

Vietnam in retrospect

"If we all look back on the history of the past
We can just tell where we are."

Harry Lauder, quoted by Winston Churchill in the Canadian House of Commons, December 30, 1941

The following, slightly modified, is from "The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam
Ballantine Books 25th Anniversary Edition, page 665

"But the Nixon [Obama] Administration, like the Johnson [Bush] Administration before it, did not control events, and did not control the rate of the war; and though it could give Thieu [Karzai] air power, it could not give him what he really needed, which was a genuine, indigenous political legitimacy. While Thieu's [Karzai's] regime was as thin and frail as ever, the North Vietnamese [Taliban] were imbued with a total sense of confidence. Time was on their side, they were the legitimate heirs of a revolution, nothing confirmed their legitimacy more than American [NATO] bombs falling on the country. Eventually, they knew, the Americans would have to leave. What was it a fully confident Pham Van Dong had told Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times in December 1966 in Hanoi: 'And how long do you Americans want to fight, Mr. Salisbury...one year? Two years? Three Years? Five Years? Ten years? Twenty years? We will be glad to accommodate you.'
....

"And so the war went on, tearing at this country; a sense of numbness seemed to replace an earlier anger. There was, Americans were finding, no light at the end of the tunnel, only greater darkness."

Blowing Up Pakistan With UN Security Council Resolution 1386

OK, so the guy's only been in the job a few days and he's already done a lot of good, given the madness of the last eight years; he hit the ground flying.

But now, this.

We didn't expect anything different under the Bush administration – to hell with Nuremberg, fuck the Geneva Conventions, and isn't Habeas Corpus some place in Texas? – but the new guy is promising something different, not that it's going to happen overnight.

However, even regular soldiers are supposed to understand enough of international law to prevent abominations like what happened to Russian prisoners of war during the German offensive of 1942. People were hung at Nuremberg for not knowing, or choosing not to know.

Which brings us to missiles fired by Americans from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

Nuremberg Principle VI (originally published as part of the London Charter in 1945 during the short intermission between Hiroshima and Nagasaki) states in part:

“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”

Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations, signed by the United States states:`

“The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
1.The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2.All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3.All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4.All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5.All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6.The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7.Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll."

So, at a minimum, if we put Principle VI up against Article 2, we have the United States violating the Charter of the United Nations by “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”, by launching missiles at targets in Pakistan over the objections of the government of Pakistan, which is prima facie a war crime.

I'm not a lawyer, but most of the people hung at Nuremberg weren't lawyers, and the only legal basis for NATO involvement in Afghanistan, flimsy though it is, is the “collective right of self defence, as stated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

And the Security Council has exercised its “authority and responsibility” in the Afghanistan mess by “authorizing” the International Security Assistance Force in Resolution 1386 and subsequent extensions, the most recent being Resolution 1833, passed at a 5 minute meeting September 22, 2008.

The question, the stone cold obvious emperor-has-no-clothes question, is how Resolution 1386 would stand up in the International Criminal Court as a justification for American bombing in Pakistan. And if the legal basis is not Resolution 1386, what is it?

I'd ask my own government directly, but know from experience I wouldn't get an answer, as an ordinary citizen would not get an answer from the United Nations Security Council. But I'm asking anyway.

Lack of effective listening

A pointless war has led to a moral defeat for Israel
Editorial
The Observer, Sunday 18 January 2009

In historical terms, it is impossible to separate Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza from the long narrative of conflict and mutual grievance in the region.
In geographic terms, the war over a tiny plot of land cannot be detached from the wider involvement and strategic interests of other countries: Syria, Egypt, the US, Iran.
All of which makes it difficult to judge where - even if a unilateral Israeli ceasefire holds - the war really begins and ends.
That fact alone explains why the operation represents a defeat for Israel, as was always likely to be the outcome. The notion that the country's security problems can be resolved by the unilateral use of extreme force is a persistent delusion among Israeli politicians. In this case, the problem was perceived to be Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel; the solution was judged to be a war against Hamas. That analysis did not allow for the vital, humane recognition that, in densely populated Gaza, an all-out war against Hamas is, by necessity, an attack on the civilian population.
Even on its own terms, the campaign has failed. Israeli authorities will insist that they have limited the ability of Hamas to launch rocket attacks. But the ostensible war aim was destroying that capability completely.
Israel will also claim that its campaign has exposed a lack of support for Hamas in many Arab capitals; that Hamas' position as the ruling authority in Gaza has been undermined; and that Hamas has been revealed as little more than a terrorist proxy acting on behalf of and armed by Syria and Iran.

Hard lesson for Hamas
Globe editorial
From Friday's Globe and Mail
January 16, 2009 at 12:00 AM EST

Israel's military operations in Gaza have failed to stop rocket and mortar attacks, which only intensified yesterday, but they at least serve to remind Hamas and other belligerents that Israel's political will and military prowess have not faltered, contrary to any impression of vulnerability they may have inferred from the mixed results in the last Lebanon campaign.
It is an important message for Hamas fighters, their hardline leadership and the terrorist states that back them, one that was being pounded home again yesterday. Said Siam, the so-called “strongman of Hamas” who served as interior minister in Gaza and controlled paramilitary forces there, was killed by an Israeli air strike. Israeli tanks moved deep into Gaza City, taking the fight with militants into their living rooms. Such warfare is fraught, and Israeli forces did strike the United Nations headquarters and several hospitals. In close fighting, mistakes and even excesses are regrettably likely to occur.
The message, though, is immutable. Islamists in Gaza cannot gain anything from fighting against Israel. The only way ahead for Gazans is through a cessation of rocket attacks on Israel, and through diplomacy. Hamas reportedly offered a ceasefire yesterday, with a spokesman for the militant group admitting it had “no other choice.” The tragedy is that with the understanding of the need for a truce there is still no illumination.
In fact, Hamas did have a choice.
The organization could have reined in its thugs. It could have ended the practice of firing rockets and mortars indiscriminately into Israeli towns. It could have sought to improve the lives of the Gazan people instead of committing atrocities against the Israeli people.
Just as after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Israel's opponents have again displayed their habit of missing opportunities for progress.
It is a tragedy for Gaza's impoverished and downtrodden population that it has taken so much death and destruction for Hamas to come to understand that a ceasefire is preferable to what has been experienced in Gaza in recent days. Hamas is defeated, or is in the process of being defeated. Its own leaders and fighters, and its own people, have died and been injured in numbers greatly disproportionate to the soldiers and people of Israel. It is time that Hamas, and the battered people they represent, understand not just the inevitability of defeat but also the other lessons of this new year. They must absorb the truth that harassment and provocation are not the way forward.

But the reality is that the status of Hamas as the preferred vehicle for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has been enhanced by the indiscriminate brutality of the military assault.
Meanwhile, that status guarantees the resurgence, in some form, of armed response, including rocket fire and terrorist attacks on Israeli soil. It is possible that Hamas' military capability has been drastically reduced. But even when Israel had full command of Gaza's external borders, it could not stop the trade in smuggled weapons. Sadly, Hamas will re-arm with or without a ceasefire agreement.
Meanwhile, any increased consideration of Iranian or Syrian sponsorship of terrorism will pale against global outrage at the extraordinary disregard shown by Israeli forces for the lives of Palestinian civilians. It is quite possible, as the Observer today reports, that an Israeli withdrawal will reveal evidence of actions deserving indictment as war crimes. Those allegations must be independently investigated.
Israel's allies in the west, chiefly the US, have traditionally defended the country on the grounds that it is a democracy besieged by despotic regimes and terrorists. But while Israeli citizens do enjoy immense political and social freedom, those values do not automatically prevent the state from committing atrocities.
The fact of Israeli democracy is not a reason to resist negotiations with Hamas. That was true before this pointless, brutal war and will remain so afterwards.

"Despite the success of the operation, which included the arrest of several Taliban operatives, a Canadian soldier was killed in the raid."

How does that work? The CBC, Globe and Mail, and the Department of National Defence seem blissfully unaware.

And now, January 15, there are still no Canadian casualties...