American-Led NATO Forces in Afghanistan: Crimes against Humanity Call for Accountability
[Photo: Mother Of All Bombs (Wikipedia)]
By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
“The Clinton administration had been working with the Taliban from 1994 forward. Why? Because some companies (particularly UNOCAL and Saudi owned Delta) wanted “to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan.” … “so that the vast untapped oil and gas reserves in the Central Asian and Caspian region could be transported to markets in South Asia, South-East Asia, Far East and the Pacific” 17. This is supported by Jon Flanders article. While official relations were purportedly broken off in 1998, relations with the Taliban were maintained through the State Department (Ahmad) and through the Pakistan Military Intelligence ISI by the CIA (Chossudovsky).
According to Jon Flanders (2001), U.S. interest in the pipeline restarted in 2000, but was still not moving forward when Bush was elected. With Bush came Cheney (CEO of Halliburton) and Halliburton had investments in Turkmentistan for “integrated drilling services with an estimated value of $30 million for the total package.” (Flanders)
It should not be surprising given the oil interests of the President, his kin, and his appointees, that Bush placed Afghanistan on the top of his action list. In July 2001, Colin Powell gave the Taliban $43 million for “humanitarian aid” (Madsen 2002).According to a BBC report by George Arney (9/18/01), the US was planning military action in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. “Naiz Naik, a former Pakistan Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action would go ahead by the middle of October.” “(From: Power Play? Wolf, 2001)
These “military adventures” are also seen as opportunities to field-test new weapons and devices under battlefield conditions. Among the weapons tested in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq has been the MOAB (Mother Of All <conventional> Bombs) depicted in the featured photo for this article, drones – now flooding civilian airways and a variety of sonic and hypersonic weapons now being used for civilian crowd control on the U.S.
And the consequence of the wars and the testing? The U.S. “war on terror” has left over 1 million people dead in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq alone. This is so far beyond the usual justification of expected “collateral damage” to stand as proof that civilians are the actual targets in the “war on terror”. Perhaps we should change the name to the “reign of terror”. It is also clear why the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court (ICC)
Looking at the swath of destruction left in the wake of the U.S. and its allies it is completely justified to demand an international investigation on war crimes and human rights violations.
Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
“We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and it will Help Bankrupt us. One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s modern history — to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947…..” (Chalmers Johnson. Dismantling the Empire – America’s Last Best Hope: 8/2010).
Were George W. Bush and NATO Pathological Liars to Invade Afghanistan?
After 9/11, America led NATO’s invasion of Afghanistan. It was a dereliction of truth and a complete disconnect from the consciousness of the global community. David Corn (“Is the President a Pathological Liar? Bush’s unhealthy relationship with reality”: LAWeekly: 12/11/2003), outlines the compelling facts:
“Bush was more likely engaged in the deceit of triumphalism- ignoring facts and saying whatever sounds good to juice up the public. It was hype, extreme rhetoric, utterly divorced from events on the ground….a demonstration to Bush’s penchant to embrace and (peddle) self-serving fantasy over the obvious truth….We will not rest until we bring these committed killers to justice…We must, and we will continue to take the fight to the enemy.”
When falsehood goes unchallenged, it attracts shallow puppet accomplices into the fold. Pakistani military ruler, General Musharaf, and many puppet Arab dictators were conveniently hired to promote the bogus war on terrorism, and Afghanistan was the first casualty of this wicked cruelty. In allowing CIA-FBI to move freely and detain at will innocent people to fill the Guantanamo Bay torture headquarter, General Musharaf and the Arab stooges did was shameful and a disgrace to the teachings of Islam. From an impregnable truth to a hollow hypothesis carved out by then US President George W. Bush the “War on Terrorism” – was in his words a “crusade” against Islam. Western war history is full of tragic tensions articulated by mentally and/or morally deficient leaders like George W. Bush and Tony Blair (UK) who are able to avoid accountability for their decisions following the events of 9/11/2001. Afghanistan was a well-calculated target to be invaded, bombed, terrorized, demoralized and destroyed for all future time. To the US and NATO invaders, the war against Afghanistan had several strategic aims:
- To show the American masses that George W. Bush was taking revenge for the 9/11 attacks and killings in the U.S.
- To make Afghanistan a scapegoat for the 19 alleged Saudi attackers on the NY Twin Towers
- To expand the American military control and to denuclearize Pakistan as a threat to future American national interests
Confronting the major paradoxes of history, Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) described warriors as dreamers devoid of moral and intellectual imagination. When they come close to stagnation they jump to irrational outbursts and conclusions about the facts of life. Twenty years after invading Afghanistan, America and NATO cannot claim any victory but were defeated by the Taliban insurgency and were forced to hold peace talks in Doha. America under Joe Biden’s presidency is moving fast to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban excelsior is on the rise and nobody could predict the peaceful transition of Afghanistan under American or NATO’s occupation after 20 years of death and destruction. Afghan government or Taliban or the occupying foreign forces cannot imagine the future of Pakistan or a peaceful tomorrow for the much-deprived people of Afghanistan. All public institutions of peoples’ participation and political governance are fractured and masses are fearful for their future. The American aim and will to destroy Afghanistan, its people, its culture and history were all converging factors during the US-led NATO occupation of that country.
The “Coalition” planned and organized the Bagram Airbase Prison – like the Al-Ghraib Prison in Iraq – and systematically tortured and hanged thousands upon thousands of innocent Afghanis, Pakistanis, Arabs, and people of other nations who opposed the US aggression. Dr. Afia Siddiqui (Pakistani female doctor) and Mozamm Begg (British national of Pakistani origin) were no exception as victims of insanity and planned cruelty against the civilians. Guantanamo Bay Prison was set up with hurriedly bought Afghani, Pakistani and other Arab civilians and Bush administration paid between $5000.00 to $15000.00 per head to Afghan and Pakistani warlords to populate Guantanamo Bay – which became an infamous torturing facility. If there is any legal and moral accountability still intact, Pakistani and Afghani law and justice authorities should hold all those responsible including General Musharaf for crimes against humanity.
Ironically, President Obama called the American soldiers an “invincible army” who massacred civilians and cold-bloodedly murdered innocent children, women, and bombed funeral gatherings, wedding parties, and Afghans sleeping in their beds. None of them ever faced any legal accountability for their crimes against the unprotected civilians of Afghanistan. American and NATO soldiers experienced the trauma of fighting on the inhuman battlefield and many end up committing suicide- a chronic problem in NATO’s cavalry. Cyrus Massounmi reporting in MR Conservative: 5/23/2013), explains the saga: “22 Soldiers Commit Suicide Every Day, One Veteran Says Many Die For A Profit”… (See Mahboob A. Khawaja, “Why do Soldiers Commit Suicide and Global Warlords”: Uncommon Thought Journal: 4/14/2014).
American News Media Never Published the Photos of Massacred Afghan Children and Women
Do hypocrisy and cynicism have another name? To invest in perversion, torture, corruption, and the massacre of innocent people happening frequently enough to portray sadistic political governance. Meanwhile, the world can watch the bloody atrocities with deafening silence and inhuman complacency but what kind of glorification would it produce for the generations to come to understand the norms of humanity?
Under Bush’s dictum, dead American troops were transported quietly back to America and buried under questionable conditions. Deliberate massacres of the innocents need no explanation or psychological clarification, massacre is a massacre. Under NATO, the Western-allied nations use media as a weapon to manage an innovative battlefield and defeat the perceived enemies in lands far away that US military minds chose not to understand – its people, their psychology, or cultural identity. To put a pattern to the context, first, it was the photos of US marines pissing on the dead Afghani corpse, then the unwitting burning of the Muslim holy book the Qur’an, and then they added new massacres of innocent sleeping children and women. American history narrates that President Thomas Jefferson, the architect of the American Constitution, had three volumes of the holy Al-Qur’an in his library that he used to devise the legal, moral, and ethical stipulations of the American Constitution. Does the military’s disrespect of the Qur’an mean that the American populace is not aware of its own history?
The informed and conscientious global community wonders, when will rationality replace the drudgery and hypocrisy of wars and killing of innocent people? History will judge the people and leaders by their actions, not by their claims.
America and NATO must be Held Accountable for Crimes against Humanity in Afghanistan
We, the People cannot afford a slanted vision of today and the world of tomorrow – the superficial picture evolved by the warmongers. We, the People have lost time and opportunities for a planned change of the global systems of political governance – indeed a loss of time that can never be recovered for the good of mankind. One major factor encouraging the global superpowers to go freely and unchallenged out of their own hemisphere to far-flung lands and commit massacres and destroy human habitats is the obvious corrupt system of “global peace and security” operated by the UNO. We, the People must try to invest in becoming moral beings – a morality of seamless international human bonds to ensure the protection and security of all human beings on this planet as One Community of Nations.
America and its European allies have executed war plans of willful and premeditated destruction of the Muslim world disguised as the “war on terrorism.” America and NATO should be held accountable and not be allowed to repeat this tyranny again in human history. The International Criminal Court (the ICC at the Hague) had several experienced-based complaints to be investigated against America-NATO for “crimes against humanity” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Obama and Trump threatened retaliatory action against the ICC if it pursued the complaints. The ICC (Rome Statute 1998) was signed by 120 nations but the Statute was denied the logic of universal jurisdiction over all states. A UN Commission should be organized to investigate and hold deliberations to make America and NATO pay for the insanity and war reparations to Afghanistan and some 34,000 civilians charcoaled by US drones in tribal belts of Northern Pakistan.
We live in One World and on One Planet – Earth. The planet Earth is not a dead orbiting object but a living entity providing continuous nourishment to human life and existence and to all other living beings. Its governing laws are defined by its Creator. America, it appears, is not heeding to warnings from God. When people and nations challenge the sanctity and limits of the Laws of God and violate all known norms and principles of human behavior, they could well become an object of unthinkable natural calamities and disasters. The Holy Bible and Al-Qur’an are full of such revelations and warnings as reminders to those people who are wise enough to listen and learn and care for accountability and a sustainable future.
A long time ago, Eric Bogle synthesized the poem- The Green Fields of France and many have sung it to remind mankind of a just cause in waiting at the global table of the contemporary war racketeers and sadistic warmongers:
Did you really believe, when they told you the cause,
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again –
And again, and again, and again, and again.”
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace, and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012. His forthcoming book is entitled: One Humanity and The Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution