Forward to– a new Dark Age?

“Progress” comes slowly in the affairs of humankind, and it’s by no means
a unidirectional or linear business. One significant series of steps
forward occurred in the 1860s, when European and a few non-European governments
came together to agree on:

  • firstly, 1863, the creation of the International Committee of the Red
    Cross and the establishment in different nations of national-level Red
    Cross and Red Crescent societies affiliated with each other and with the
    ICRC
  • secondly, 1864, a formal, intergovernmental agreement that for the
    first time formalized codified a portion of the previously merely customary
    “laws of war”; and
  • thirdly, 1869, the first-ever international agreement mandating a total
    ban on using an entire class of weapons (explosive projectiles weighing
    under 400 grams).

It is true that while these states were able to agree these rules
among themselves, they still did not consider most non-European peoples to
be worthy of anything like the same protections as European peoples. Many
of the same states that joined the “humanitarian” conventions
were very happy, in 1885-86, to “carve up”
the whole of sub-Saharan Africa and distribute it amongst themselves. And
most European states as well as Japan continued to run extremely brutal
colonial empires right through to the the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and even–
in the case of Portugal– till 1974-75.

But still, establishing and
formalizing the principles of what came to be known as ‘international humanitarian
law’ (IHL, also known as the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions)
back in the 1860s was a laudable step forward. And gradually, throughout the end of the 19th century and most of the 20th, the protections offered by these conventions came to
be extended to all the rest of the peoples of the world as well. In addition, in 1949, the content of the Geneva Conventions was overhauled and strengthened in the light of the terrible abuses the Nazis (and the Japanese) had perpetrated during their military occupations of numerous other countries…

And now, here we are in yet another new century…. and the most powerful government
in the world is snubbing its nose at many of the provisions of the Geneva
Conventions, while at the same time it seems to be working to undermine
that important body, the ICRC, which is contractually obliged– acting
on behalf of all Geneva Convention signatories, including the United States–
to uphold and further the application of the principles of IHL. We
have heard much news of the Bushies trying to undermine Kofi Annan, and more
recently the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei. But are they now also trying
to discredit the work of the ICRC’s president, Jakob Kellenberger?


JWN reader Christiane has done a bit of useful digging around on this
issue. She’s found some useful on-line sources we can link to. She
also found and translated into English for us another recent article from
Le Temps (Geneva), on the US-ICRC tensions. (Merci beaucoup, Christiane!)

But just before I copy some of her work in here, I want to note that
it seems to me that what has happened in the past few years has stemmed at
least in some part from the intellectual fuzziness of those well-meaning
people in the western human-rights movement who never really seemed to “get”
the fact that wars are episodes in human history that are inherently
anti-humanitarian. These people–whose fuzziness is in many cases
perhaps forgiveable because they’ve never actually lived through a war–
were even arguing throughout much of the 1990s that nations could “fight
wars for humanitarian purposes “. They even succeeded in subverting
the meaning of the phrase “humanitarian intervention”, which for most of
its history meant the providing of essential relief services to people whose
lives were shattered by war, until it became instead a code-word for “a
war fought for allegedly humanitarian reasons”. (As though anyone ever
launched a war with avowedly anti-humanitarian reasons!)

I remember discussing the US-led invasion of Kosovo in late 2000 with
former ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga. The war against Kosovo had,
of course, been sold to the American public as absolutely the quintessential
“humanitarian intervention”. This, despite the fact that the large-scale
ethnic cleansing that US liberals were so worried about did not happen till
after the US started the war, and as a direct reaction to that massive
US escalation… Anyway, Sommaruga was extremely dismissive of the
arguments that had been made for the war.

“How can they call any war ‘humanitarian’?” he said. “Don’t they
understand that war by its nature is anti-humanitarian?”

… Well, I don’t mean to say that all the blame for the Bushies’ current
unbridled militarism and anti-humanitarianism should be laid at the door
of western rights activists. But I do think that the liberals’ work
of category-blurring prepared the way for the Bush administration people
to make the claim that their war in Iraq had some avowed “humanitarian”
purpose. In addition, one concrete effect of the liberals’ fuzziness
was that the strict lines of separation that humanitarian organizations
had always previously insisted on, between their operations in the field
and those of the US military or any other fighting force, also became
blurred in many instances.

I had friends in aid-providing organizations who were involved in discussions
with the US military in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq who said that
the military people present were quite forthright in referring to the aid
organizations’ role in acting as a “force multiplier” for the military…
That is, of course, a direct perversion of the doctrine of strict military
neutrality which has guided the work of relief organizations from the beginning–
and which is, in the end, the only way in which they can guard the integrity
of their work…

But anyway, back to the links that Christiane has provided.

The first is to a
December 8th post
on a blog written by Ari Berman of the New-York-based Nation
magazine. Berman provides a good general introduction to some
of the fiercest anti-ICRC rants out there in the rightwing US media, and
he has links to many of these rants, too. (His only mistake–a small
one– was to write that the ICRC’s description of US detention practices sometimes
being “tantamount to torture” was made public only the week previously. No.
It happened back in May or so.)

Of the sources cited there, Christiane says she finds
this December 2nd editorial
in the Wall Street Journal particularly serious, ” because the
neocons have often used the WSJ when they wanted to promote a policy which
was then adopted by the White House.” I tend to agree.

The editorial started from this lede:

Once upon a time, the International Committee of the Red Cross was
a humanitarian outfit doing the Lord’s work to reduce the horrors of war.
So it is a special tragedy to see that it has increasingly become an ideological
organization unable to distinguish between good guys and bad.

… And it concluded,

the ICRC has become just another politicized pressure group
like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. ICRC President Jakob
Kellenberger is reportedly planning to visit Washington soon to press the
U.S. government on Guantanamo and other issues. We hope he is told that
he is leading his organization toward the loss of its $100 million-plus
annual subsidy from U.S. taxpayers, as well as its special status come future
revisions of the Geneva Conventions.

Another interesting article Christiane found was
this December 15th piece
in the Guardian (London), on the related subject of the travails
the British Red Cross Society has been facing in its working relationship
with the British government and military. Writer Anne Kelly quotes
Nick Young, the BRCS’s chief executive, as saying:

“We are able to work across the front line for only as long
as we are seen as neutral… The moment that sense of impartiality is lost,
our mission is lost. We might as well pack up and go home. We’ll be seen
as part of the war machine and we’ll be unable to operate.”

Finally, here is C’s translation of
this piece
, published in Le Temps on December 18th (yesterday):

The CIA manages a secret prison for high ranking Al-Quaeda
members in Guantanamo

United States. Did the ICRC delegates meet with all
the detainees in the US army camp in Cuba? The president of the organization,
Jakob Kellengerger is still waiting for a meeting in Washington.

Alain Campiotti, in collaboration with Richard Werly.
Saturday 18th December 2004

Jakob Kellenberger wants to go to Washington at the beginning of next year.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) wants
the highest level of the administration to know about his concerns for the
detention conditions in the military camp of Guantanamo, in Cuba. But no
answer comes; the meeting isn’t yet arranged. On the American side, there
is no great enthusiasm. The ICRC is the bugbear of the conservatives since
its delegates, after a June visit in the camp, have spoken of interrogation
methods “tantamount to torture” in a report which was leaked.

Waiting for his invitation letter, Jakob Kellengerger has surely benefited
from reading the Washington Post’s
issue
of Friday. Citing military and intelligence sources, the capital’s
daily states that the CIA manages a secret center of detention, inside of
Guantanamo, separated from the rest of the camp by high palisades and where
high ranking Al-Qaeda members, particularly precious in the eyes of the agency,
are detained. This protected enclosed place has never been mentionned publicly.
It exists by virtue of a presidential decision authorizing the CIA to detain
clandestinely, in unknown conditions, prisoners of “high value” for intelligence.
In the prison of Abu Ghraib, in Baghdad, the agency had ghost detainees under
control, which were kept hiden from the ICRC delegates. Other special prisons
have existed in Bagram, near of Kaboul, in ships on sea and also in Thailand.

Special section

The ICRC delegates, who make frequent visits in Guantanamo, can not ignore
the special section about which the Washington Post is talking. But did they
meet with the detainees of the CIA ? The ICRC is always cautious : it admits
that the access to Guantanamo has been large and hopes that it has met with
everybody. It’s hardly possible.

One of the high value prisoners in the camp is named Mohamedou Oulad Slahi.
The presence of the Mauritanian has been confirmed by the report of the 9/11
Commission. Slahi acted as the direct intermediary between Mohamed Atta,
his comrades of the Hamburg cell (the hard core of the commando of the 2001
plotters) and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He was arrested fifteen days
after 9/11 and handed over to the Americans. Other members of the main staff
of Al Qaeda are perhaps also under the control of the CIA in Guantanamo:
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the brain of the operation; Ramzi Binalshibh, one
of his assistants who left Germany; Abu Zubaida, the recruiter in chief,
first responsible person arrested; Hambali, the leader of the terrorist network
in Southeast Asia. The sources of the Washington Post think that there are
nearly forty detainees in the special center of Cuba.

The Americans state that the arrested Al Qaeda staff members have spoken
and that the Europeans have benefited from these informations. How were they
interrogated? Does the ICRC talk of them when it denounced, in its confidential
July report to the Pentagon, the use of physical and mental coercion tantamount
to torture? It is about that, among other things, that Jakob Kellenberger
wants to talk in Washington. And it is that which has triggered the conservative
fit of anger. Rush Limbaugh, the bluntest polemist of the right says that
the ICRC “hates America”. Fred Barnes, the chief editor of the Weekly Standard
and commentator of Fox News requests the expulsion of the ICRC from Guantanamo.
And the Wall Street Journal
wants
the abolition of the special statute of the ICRC with a revision of the Geneva
Conventions.

In Washington, Jakob Kellenberger doesn’t have only enemies. The New Republic,
the weekly of the “liberal hawks”, is shocked by the outburst against the
ICRC. It remembers that the Pentagon has continually used the presence of
the ICRC as an alibi in Guantanamo: everything is OK, since they are allowed
in there. But the organization knows that Rumsfeld was abusing it. He said
it. In reports which are no longer so confidential. George Bush would be
wise to receive the former Swiss diplomate with his small grey beard. They
have so many things to talk about.

23 thoughts on “Forward to– a new Dark Age?”

  1. “it is a special tragedy to see that it has increasingly become…unable to distinguish between good guys and bad.”
    I thought the ICRC was supposed to be neutral. Doesn’t that necessitate that it not see one guy as good and the other as bad?

  2. Dear Helena,
    This material on the ICRC crisis is of great interest. The mid-19th century international treaties you mention depended upon what I have previously referred to as the

  3. Shirin– I think you’re quite right.
    Dom– great comment. You’re certainly right to raise the relevance in the current context (re the ICRC issue, and more broadly) of the Westphalian model of independent states that are accorded a formal equality. In the early 1990s, many peole in the western human-rights movement argued that that system should be ended because of the “shield” that it gives to authoritarian governments, based on the concept of their national sovereignty.
    I think the attacks such well-meaning folks (including myself, back then) made on the concept of national sovereignty ended up being ill-considered, partly because they brought us– President Bush’s vision of ultra-imperialism! His actions over the past two years make one long for the restoration of the Westphalian system.
    Also, what most western liberals forget is that it was the content of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia– which, basically, said that those German princes who wanted to be Protestants could be protestants (and force all their subjects to be protestants, too, if they wanted to), and those who wanted to be Catholic could be Catholic (ditto)– and the accompanying doctrine of the non-interference of governments in the domestic affairs of other countries, that allowed the incubation and spread of democratic ideas and practice in some countries in the first place… From where, over time they spread– sometimes violently, sometimes through a form of osmosis– to all the other west European countries.
    So the Westphalian system protected the emergence of democracy in Europe. If on the other hand there’s a system in international affairs only of “might makes right”, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens to democracies…

  4. Dear Helena
    You know a lot more about it than I do. I thought you would.
    Isn’t it also true that the Treaty of Westphalia effectively ended religious war in Europe and paved the way towards religious tolerance in all states?
    I hope this debate comes back into the mainstream, big time.

  5. Very interesting discussion.
    In postings on pro-war Iraqi blogs, they continually ask (any antiwar voices) what we should have done about Saddam and his brutality.
    First, I didn’t see Saddam as the “worst of the worst” (and so far, less than 6,000 mass graves have been found… not the 300,000 to 400,000). But regardless of that, I strongly feel that war is not the way to solve any problems, since it only makes more problems. I have never experienced war, but it seems like hell on earth, and it seems only those lacking immagination and experience want to pursue this course.
    I tell these pro-war folks that I think UN inspections should have continued, after none were found, sanctions revoked, and then trade restored on the basis of no (gross) human rights violations. For this to work, the threat of force was probably necessary to get inspectors back in… in that respect, I think Bush made good decisions. Of course, he never intended to stop there, he fully intended war all along.
    One positive note today (that I read) from Iraq: Shia leaders are asking people not to get revenge on yesterday’s bombings, since “violence leads to violence” and will cause a civil war and disrupt elections.
    It is difficult to address the issues of human rights violations in other countries (hey, even our own!) or any problems of violence without resorting to violence, but we have got to find a way to do this…. or perish in a nuclear war, I fear.
    In this current US administration, they present themselves as the solvers of violence in others, and yet are among the most violent forces on earth today. And meanwhile, they steadfastly ignore all non-violent means to get them to change courses…. shut down newspapers, silence the press, ignore or abolish demonstrations, play dirty tricks on elections, refuse to listen to grassroots….. and when non-violence is not “rewarded” then violence is the only thing that works!
    I’m off to call the White House Comment line again 202-456-1112

  6. Susan wrote: “In postings on pro-war Iraqi blogs, they continually ask (any antiwar voices) what we should have done about Saddam and his brutality.
    First, I didn’t see Saddam as the ‘worst of the worst’ (and so far, less than 6,000 mass graves have been found… not the 300,000 to 400,000).”
    Yes, but the sanctions killed that of number of people, 300,000 to 400,000 every year, over 13 years.
    I am also glad that I never experienced war, and, as an atheist, I pray to god, I shall not experience one.
    My father did as a young boy. Alongside other things he saw, he was ounce hounted by a strafer across a field. He is now 73 years old, but always ready to stomp anybody with his feets into the ground, who proposes war (in this respect he is not nonviolent). He is demonstrating for peacefull solutions since the war on Yugoslavia evey month.
    And yes, I’m from germany. But the basic conclusion of my father was that he’s a lifelong, until now, union organizer, because he things that working people are not interested in war.
    We must ask ourself about the forces who have the power to avert apocalypse.

  8. Thanks Helena, for a great post,
    Concerning the ICRC, one could also add two or three other things.
    1) The origines can be sought even earlier than the Westphalian treaties, back to the middle age and the chivalry rules and many other non European societies had more or less codified their fights; one interesting example is Hammurabi, King of Babylon who stated that one shouldn’t attack the weaks. (look there at the end of the text).
    2) The Conventions have evolved with the time. As they are now, they come from the experience of WWII and were adopted in 1948. Especially the fourth convention which deals with the protection of civilians and the prohibition of the use of immoderate violence.
    3) In 1977 two additional protocols have been added. One is due to the appearance of new types of conflict which don’t involve conventional armies on both sides : like in civil wars or in liberation wars. Unconventional troops are protected just like conventional ones. A non conventional fighter can be a uniformed fighter or a person in civil clothes, but wearing a weapon. The US didn’t ratify this additional protocol. The other additional protocol concerns the prohibition of certain type of weapons highly dammageable to civilians (chimical arms, mines, shell bombs etc.). I don’t think the US ratified this one either.
    4) Human rights (The Hague) and Humanitarian laws (the Geneva conventions) are visibly connected, but they have been kept separate. For a long time, the Human rights were parts of the fundamental laws of each countries. With the creation of the UN they were admitted as the rules which should guide the protection of civilians during peace time. The Geneva Conventions, aka humanitarian laws were only applied in times of wars. The UN which was created after the WWII didn’t want to consider the possibility of waging wars. So they didn’t want to include rules to apply during wars in Civil rights. On the other side, the UN formed by a little less than 170 governments (191 now) was a highly politicized body and the ICRC wanted to stay stritly neutral, so the Civil Rights and the Humanitarian laws were developped in parallel. Those interested can find more
    there
    Dominic you have rised difficult issues : do we have the right to launch a war in order to throw down a dictator ? I’d rather say no, although it’s not easy. But a dictator is a political problem which has to be solved by the persons of that country. Democracy can’t be forced by a foreing occupier, it has to come from the people living in the country. I do only believe in multilateral approach; the new UN reforms should abolish the right of veto for big powers. The NSC should be widened, but the idea to allow pre-emptive wars under certain conditions is a very very dangerous move.

  9. Helena:
    Thanks very much for your comments on “A New Dark Age”. I think we may be at 1930 in Germany. Not 1933 yet, but surely close to 1930. I keep iamgining what it must have been like for some there, as they watched events unfolding, and asking when, and how, they should act, before it was too late. Then it became too late.
    Your piece helps me continue to consider at what point and in what way do we initiate serious resistance.
    George Telford

  10. Some comments on the 30 Years’ War that led to the Treaty of Westphalia:
    It shouldn’t be forgotten that it began as a war of religion, of the two sides that were convinced of their universal righteousness and the moral corruptness (and, indeed, apostasy) of their adversaries. It was perpetuated with such brutality for so long because, lo and behold, it was waged for, lo and behold, the reason of moral clarity!
    The later years of the war saw it change from a war of religions to a war of dynasties, especially after Catholic France entered war on the side of Protestant princes of Germany and Scandanavia against Catholic Spain and Austria. If it weren’t clear before, the morals of the war weren’t so clear after all, even if, in practice, the dynastic struggle between the Bourbon and the Habsburg lay at the heart of the struggle from the start.
    the lesson for the contemporaries, one might say, would have been moral clarity is overrated. Even if a war were nominally fought for moral clarity, the true beneficiaries would be those calculating their gains and losses strategically, not necessarily the true “believers”. Better to tolerate apostates existing side by side with your country rather than impose a universal sense of “rightenousness.”
    The lesson was lost during world war 1. Even though the conflict had begun for rather cynical reasons of great power politics, it transformed itself into a great struggle that could only end with a “morally clear” result–for both sides. The seeming obsolescence of warfare in face of advancing civilization that seemed so near in late 19th century combined with the horrific casualties convinced everyone that the war, even if not begun with a “great” reason, had to end with one. But the only practical result was that it would drag out the carnage for several more years, while laying the seeds of the next great war, begun by those on the losing side who sought those “great” reasons again.
    The irony is that the second world war, even though, in a way, fought for those “great” reasons, did not end for a “great” reason. There were those in Washington who believed that the war would not truly end until Americans took Moscow–especially people like MacArthur. Fortunately for the human civilization, President Truman thought the carnage should be confined. In a way, the firing of MacArthur was the mid-20th century version of the Westphalian moment–the realization that too much moral clarity is too expensive a proposition for humanity to pursue.
    One would only hope that we are approaching the Westphalian moment again….

  11. George Telford, it’s not too late!
    No mate, this is not the time for panic. If you panic you won’t be able to work.
    As writers, there is a lot of work to be done here. We have to “write the world” back to its Wesphalian ground, in a time when the liberals and the warmongers have both abandoned that ground. It will be a long, steady patient piec of work to do, with no easy victories.
    Otherwise, as people, we have to organise. It is not the case that there are storm troopers on the streets of your town. Don’t exaggerate.

  13. I see with pleasure that the civil rights organizations are mobilizing against prisonners’ abuse. The “American Civil Liberty Union” (ACLU) has studied official documents in detail and denounces that the decision to use interrogation methods that the ICRC said were “tantamount to torture” was taken by Bush himself.
    Here is the ACLU link
    Extract :
    A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up. ”

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