Geneva Convention Jihadi Style

Geneva Convention - Part 1

Destroying Water Installations: International Law

The Geneva Convention is absolutely clear. In a 1979 protocol relating to the "protection of victims of international armed conflicts," Article 54, it states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive."[b]
But that is precisely what the U.S. government did, with malice aforethought. It "destroyed, removed, or rendered useless" Iraq's "drinking water installations and supplies." The sanctions, imposed for a decade largely at the insistence of the United States, constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention. They amount to a systematic effort to, in the DIA's own words, "fully degrade" Iraq's water sources.
At a House hearing on June 7, Representative Cynthia McKinney, Democrat of Georgia, referred to the document "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities" and said: "Attacking the Iraqi public drinking water supply flagrantly targets civilians and is a violation of the Geneva Convention and of the fundamental laws of civilized nations." Over the last decade, Washington extended the toll by continuing to withhold approval for Iraq to import the few chemicals and items of equipment it needed in order to clean up its water supply.
Last summer, Representative Tony Hall, Democrat of Ohio, wrote to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "about the profound effects of the increasing deterioration of Iraq's water supply and sanitation systems on its children's health." Hall wrote, "The prime killer of children under five years of age--diarrheal diseases--has reached epidemic proportions, and they now strike four times more often than they did in 1990. . . . Holds on contracts for the water and sanitation sector are a prime reason for the increases in sickness and death. Of the eighteen contracts, all but one hold was placed by the U.S. government. The contracts are for purification chemicals, chlorinators, chemical dosing pumps, water tankers, and other equipment. . . . I urge you to weigh your decision against the disease and death that are the unavoidable result of not having safe drinking water and minimum levels of sanitation."
[b]For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The United Nations has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason. No one can say that the United States didn't know what it was do

See for Yourself
All the DIA documents mentioned in this article were found at the Department of Defense's Gulflink site.
To read or print documents:
1. go to www.gulflink.osd.mil
2. click on "Declassified Documents" on the left side of the front page
3. the next page is entitled "Browse Recently Declassified Documents"
4. click on "search" under "Declassified Documents" on the left side of that page
5. the next page is entitled "Search Recently Declassified Documents"
6. enter search terms such as "disease information effects of bombing"
7. click on the search button
8. the next page is entitled "Data Sources"
9. click on DIA
10. click on one of the titles

Thomas J. Nagy teaches at the School of Business and Public Management at George Washington University . http://www.progressive.org/0801issue/nagy0901.html

The Muslim Association of Britain
Thinking Globally
Acting Locally

MAB - Muslim Association of Britain

Hypocrisy and the Geneva Convention - Part II

Hypocrisy and the Geneva Convention

The reference to the Geneva Convention by the “All-Lies” has surpassed hypocrisy, and apt only to be classified as outright stupid. Displaying the grotesque arrogance, as they are demanding of others to abide by laws and conventions, whilst they are clearly violating them. How is it that a nation that is engaged in committing this monumental crime, by waging an unprovoked illegal war in clear violation the UN charter, are now demanding that Iraq should uphold the Geneva convention? Since the US/UK that has been parading the Iraqi POWS, and therefore Iraq is perfectly justified in responding in the same manner. Despite this the following points illustrates that it is the US is and has been violating the Geneva code.

a) As everyone is reminding the US, the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay held indefinitely without any charges is also a clear violation of Human rights values, which she constantly lectures the world.

b) The blatant execution of prisoners in Mazar-e-Sherif (Afghanistan), shot with hands tied behind their backs, and some were bludgeoned to death, by the criminal international organisation (CIA) of the US government.

c) The constant bombing of the drinking water installation plants in Iraq, coupled with the sanctions, causing the deaths of many children. Destroying facilities indispensable to the survival of the civilian population is prohibited by article 54 of the Geneva convention.

d) The US resorted to the orgy of needless mass execution when the Iraq soldiers were retreating to Basra in the first gulf war. It was clear the soldiers were not a threat to the US forces, a despicable barbaric act for the “liberators” of Iraq!

e) The US are threatening to prosecute the Iraqi’s for war crimes in the International Criminal Court, something that the US are refusing to sign up and apply it on themselves!

Yamin Zakaria
UK, London

Geneva Convention - Part III

American and British hypocrisy at its most blatant

uploaded 24 Mar 2003


NOTHING more clearly illustrates the cruel hypocrisy of America's war against Iraq than Washington's reaction to the news that GIs have been captured.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld screamed "Geneva Convention! Geneva Convention!" at the Iraqis for showing footage of US soldiers taken on the battlefield.

He thundered that the film was "video propaganda" which violated their rights as prisoners of war under international law.

How two-faced can you get?


Rumsfeld is the warmonger who ignored international legalities when the UN refused to back the invasion of Iraq.

And he ruled that PoWs captured by the Americans in Afghanistan more than a year ago have NO rights, and can be caged like animals at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Footage of 300 PoWs airlifted out of Kabul - with bags over their heads and chains on every conceivable part of their body - was jubilantly shown on American TV. The pictures were posted on the Pentagon's website.

That was OK. That was broadcast to satisfy the understandable American desire for revenge for the attack on the Twin Towers.

Yet, it is not OK for Saddam Hussein to take a leaf out of the Yankee book. When he does, he is "evil, evil" and his actions are an outrage.

But 18 months on, the Pentagon's PoWs - including nine Britons - are held as hostages in Camp X-Ray with no access to lawyers or diplomatic representation.

Tony Blair connived in their unlawful treatment, as last night he joined the chorus of condemnation of the Al Jazeera film.

At least the relatives of Edgar from Texas and James Reilly from New York know where their loved ones are. At least they can hope for their release as part of any deal to end hostilities.

The families of the lost legion of Camp X-Ray have no such hope. Only the expectation that the Pentagon will keep their loved ones in barbaric conditions, in clear defiance of the Geneva Convention - until they rot.

Of course, what Saddam is doing is inhuman and degrading. The Geneva Convention forbids the deliberate humiliation of PoWs.

It is typical of his merciless nature and he is wrong to do it.

But two wrongs do not make a right, particularly in the moral maze of this war.

The Americans cannot go round screaming "breach of convention" when it happens to their own, while they humiliate prisoners of the Afghan war on a daily basis.

American culture seeks to deny suffering. Islam, a religion of the desert, almost revels in it.

That's why this conflict is more than simply a clash of arms.


Source: Daily Mirror (UK)

Geneva Convention - Part 4

One rule for them

Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 25, 2003
The Guardian

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".

He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they "must at all times be protected... against insults and public curiosity". This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful combatants". The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country. But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be regarded as prisoners of war.

Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified, article 5 insists that they "shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal". But when, earlier this month, lawyers representing 16 of them demanded a court hearing, the US court of appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory, the men have no constitutional rights. Many of these prisoners appear to have been working in Afghanistan as teachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US government either tried or released them, its embarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to light.

You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some of the other men captured by the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Many of them have never been seen again.

As Jamie Doran's film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, of them were loaded into container lorries at Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on November 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the sun for several days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan prison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum's men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead.

The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite pictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Another soldier alleged: "They took the prisoners outside and beat them up, and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned, and they disappeared."

Many of the survivors were loaded back in the containers with the corpses, then driven to a place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the presence of up to 40 US special forces, the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that: "No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue." The US group Physicians for Human Rights visited the places identified by Doran's witnesses and found they "all... contained human remains consistent with their designation as possible grave sites".

It should not be necessary to point out that hospitality of this kind also contravenes the third Geneva convention, which prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture", as well as extra-judicial execution. Donald Rumsfeld's department, assisted by a pliant media, has done all it can to suppress Jamie Doran's film, while General Dostum has begun to assassinate his witnesses.

It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.

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