Five Minutes To Midnight
Friday, April 25, 2003
I've had this thought in my mind for quite a long time now, and I will put it into writing to show people how I feel the situation in Iraq should be handled henceforth when it comes to the abiding of humanitarian laws. This is not an accusatory blog against the USA by any means. In fact, as I've been reading more literature on the nation building issue, my faith in the American's plans has been increasing. I am sure that the United States of America is perfectly capable of rebuilding Iraq by supplying all required materials and funds. However, whether they are willing to do so will be left for a future blog topic.
What I would like to discuss today is the need to create a humanitarian watchdog group in Iraq, much like The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories that works in Palestine and Israel. The line between following and breaking international humanitarian laws is sometimes quite thin, but must be followed to the "T". Without respect for such laws, peace will never be truly reached in Iraq and will only aid in provoking future terrorist attacks against the United States, which is partly what this war was trying to prevent.
Once again, this is not an accusatory rant that the US is not following internationally accepted and ratified laws. I would just like to point out that without a neutral watchdog group in the area, it will be very hard to prove what is going on in the area. There are two "recent" examples of this:
-- The first of these is two separate shootings that killed a total amount of 17 Iraqi civilians in political protests in the city of Mosul. The perpetrators in both instances were American soldiers who shot into the crowd. However, due to many incoherent reports from the region, it is extremely difficult to find out who is to blame for the incident. One can argue that a soldier shot into the crowd out of hate or anger, causing other soldiers to do the same (much like one pigeon in a flock causes all to fly away when provoked). On the other hand, some reports say gunshots were heard from another part of town in the area, and soldiers were only acting in self-defense.
-- The looting of the Iraqi National Museum is the second example. Allegations that the US knew about the threat but decided not to do anything about it run rampant. At the same time, no concrete evidence has been put forward that, as many US officials have stated, protecting all Iraq's important infrastructure from looting was possible. According to international humanitarian laws, protecting an occupied nation's cultural treasures is of the utmost importance to the liberating or occupying nation.
As you can see with both of the above examples, it is extremely difficult to see who has done wrong. Aside from actually setting records straight and blaming wrong doers for their crimes, a neutral human rights organization could also point out where problems lie and how one might go about fixing them. Doing so could fill a few potholes on the bumpy road to Iraq's democracy and appease many critics of the US-led initiative. It would certainly make me feel better.
Sources
¶ 7:22 PM
What I would like to discuss today is the need to create a humanitarian watchdog group in Iraq, much like The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories that works in Palestine and Israel. The line between following and breaking international humanitarian laws is sometimes quite thin, but must be followed to the "T". Without respect for such laws, peace will never be truly reached in Iraq and will only aid in provoking future terrorist attacks against the United States, which is partly what this war was trying to prevent.
Once again, this is not an accusatory rant that the US is not following internationally accepted and ratified laws. I would just like to point out that without a neutral watchdog group in the area, it will be very hard to prove what is going on in the area. There are two "recent" examples of this:
-- The first of these is two separate shootings that killed a total amount of 17 Iraqi civilians in political protests in the city of Mosul. The perpetrators in both instances were American soldiers who shot into the crowd. However, due to many incoherent reports from the region, it is extremely difficult to find out who is to blame for the incident. One can argue that a soldier shot into the crowd out of hate or anger, causing other soldiers to do the same (much like one pigeon in a flock causes all to fly away when provoked). On the other hand, some reports say gunshots were heard from another part of town in the area, and soldiers were only acting in self-defense.
-- The looting of the Iraqi National Museum is the second example. Allegations that the US knew about the threat but decided not to do anything about it run rampant. At the same time, no concrete evidence has been put forward that, as many US officials have stated, protecting all Iraq's important infrastructure from looting was possible. According to international humanitarian laws, protecting an occupied nation's cultural treasures is of the utmost importance to the liberating or occupying nation.
As you can see with both of the above examples, it is extremely difficult to see who has done wrong. Aside from actually setting records straight and blaming wrong doers for their crimes, a neutral human rights organization could also point out where problems lie and how one might go about fixing them. Doing so could fill a few potholes on the bumpy road to Iraq's democracy and appease many critics of the US-led initiative. It would certainly make me feel better.
Sources
It's all really a conglomeration of newspaper articles from the past few weeks. Searching on Google for any of the above will yield more than enough facts.
¶ 7:22 PM
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
If things stay on the same road they are travelling now, I will probably turn this blog into a human rights one - to promote the fair treatment of human beings around the world. Maybe this will turn into something big! If you think about it, the only way towards world peace is through acceptance of international humanitarian laws. This is very difficult to do in many cases, but if civilians pursuade their governments to do so, we will live in a peaceful world. Yes, even the US can stand to learn a lesson from humanitarian treatment of others. If they were to abide by all international laws, there would be less looting from the onset of a post-Hussein Iraq, there would be no stolen artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq (shame!), and possibly, there would be no war.
Just a note on the National Museum of Iraq: I believe that the world's cultural and scientific endeavours, both those of the past and present, must be preserved. The fact that the National Museum of Iraq, a site that held some of the most important artifacts of the dawn of civilization, was defiled is something that brings tears to my eyes... The innocent are all to be protected in this war - be it civilians or historical sites.
On April 13, I attended a presentation by The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. This NGO basically deals with reporting and investigating human rights issues in and around Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories and contested land in the area.
Although much of the news regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict focuses on the use of suicide bombers, the truth is that there is a vast number of other issues caused by the Israeli military that warrant the same public attention and scrutiny. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories is one human rights advocacy group that keeps track of human rights abuses in, as the name says, occupied territories. This NGO mainly investigates attrocities performed by the Israeli military simply because their abuses far outnumber those of the Palestinians'. There are three main policies that the Israeli military uses which break international humanitarian laws. These include the use of human shields, restrictions on movement, and the building of the Separation Barrier.
Although the use of human shields has died down and is not considered "official" policy, many soldiers still partake in the act. The term is fairly vague however, and the following examples will illustrate its true severity.
-- When some Israeli soldiers enter contested areas where they risk getting shot at, they sometimes take Palestinian citizens and place them in front of themselves. Therefore, when they walk into town, they are standing behind a civilian who has to be shot first before someone can actually get a good shot at the solider.
-- If the Israeli military suspects a household protecting terrorists, they sometimes get a local Palestinian to go to the house and try to coax the terrorists to come out for the military or to simply show themselves and become viable targets for the waiting gunmen. The main problem with this is the fact that the military is using civilians, in some cases women, to do their dirty work. There have been cases where these civilians were killed due to this work.
Restrictions on movement is another issue that drastically decreases quality of life in the occupied territories. What this issue deals with is the building of roadblocks and checkpoints on major roads and highways between cities, towns, villages, and so on. In some cases, these roadblocks are nothing more than huge mounds of dirt that cars, including ambulances, school buses, and water tankers, cannot pass. In some cases, roads are blocked off for no apparent reason. This is a large problem for many reasons, some of which have been implied in the preceding lines. Many Palestinian villages in the area do not have adequate water storage and filtration facilities, so most of the water must be transported using water tankers. However, if movement is restricted between villages and towns, a problem magnified by the presence of mounds of dirt that render roads useless, how do villages get water? The sad fact is that they don't. The same goes for ambulances and school buses - some kids cannot go to school anymore and villages with no hospitals suffer as well.
Lastly, the third major problem is the Separation Barrier. This is an extremely long wall/fence/ditch that is to extend across the entire Israeli-Palestinian border. Crossing this barrier is expected to be hard (if not impossible), with military patrols monitoring for anyone attempting to do so. Upon construction of such a barrier, one would expect it to be built on the border of the territories involved. This is not so in this case: Israeli construction crews are actually building the wall inside Palestinian territories, thereby stealing their land. The wall is also meant to restrict Palestinian access from Israeli settlements which, too, are in Palestinian territory and are illegal based on UN and international laws. Due to the incoherent construction process, many Palestinian towns and villages are being cut off from each other, as well as from crucial sources of food and water - in some cases, the wall actually works to separate a village from its farms, due to the military's not respecting borders. Some areas are even completely encircled by walls, creating a perpetual siege of wire and military patrols around a large gathering of civilians who, if it was even possible, would barely have a chance to access water and food from the areas lying outside the barrier.
The above is just a generalized list of human rights abuses in the conflict. I haven't even mentioned the extended curfews that in some cases, only allow Palestinians to leave their homes for an hour or two a week. Nor did I touch upon the more common abuse of authority by the Israeli military and border police, which has a reputation in the area for its brutality...
Now as I close off, I'd just like to say that I believe that The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories' goals and initiatives are extremely noble. The organization is monitoring the situation in Palestine and is telling the world what problems and abuses are occurring there. If you go to their website, betselem.org, you will be able to read testimony, find statistics, and get links to other such organizations - if this subject interests you, you will not be disappointed.
Sources
¶ 8:40 PM
Just a note on the National Museum of Iraq: I believe that the world's cultural and scientific endeavours, both those of the past and present, must be preserved. The fact that the National Museum of Iraq, a site that held some of the most important artifacts of the dawn of civilization, was defiled is something that brings tears to my eyes... The innocent are all to be protected in this war - be it civilians or historical sites.
On April 13, I attended a presentation by The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. This NGO basically deals with reporting and investigating human rights issues in and around Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories and contested land in the area.
Although much of the news regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict focuses on the use of suicide bombers, the truth is that there is a vast number of other issues caused by the Israeli military that warrant the same public attention and scrutiny. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories is one human rights advocacy group that keeps track of human rights abuses in, as the name says, occupied territories. This NGO mainly investigates attrocities performed by the Israeli military simply because their abuses far outnumber those of the Palestinians'. There are three main policies that the Israeli military uses which break international humanitarian laws. These include the use of human shields, restrictions on movement, and the building of the Separation Barrier.
Although the use of human shields has died down and is not considered "official" policy, many soldiers still partake in the act. The term is fairly vague however, and the following examples will illustrate its true severity.
-- When some Israeli soldiers enter contested areas where they risk getting shot at, they sometimes take Palestinian citizens and place them in front of themselves. Therefore, when they walk into town, they are standing behind a civilian who has to be shot first before someone can actually get a good shot at the solider.
-- If the Israeli military suspects a household protecting terrorists, they sometimes get a local Palestinian to go to the house and try to coax the terrorists to come out for the military or to simply show themselves and become viable targets for the waiting gunmen. The main problem with this is the fact that the military is using civilians, in some cases women, to do their dirty work. There have been cases where these civilians were killed due to this work.
Restrictions on movement is another issue that drastically decreases quality of life in the occupied territories. What this issue deals with is the building of roadblocks and checkpoints on major roads and highways between cities, towns, villages, and so on. In some cases, these roadblocks are nothing more than huge mounds of dirt that cars, including ambulances, school buses, and water tankers, cannot pass. In some cases, roads are blocked off for no apparent reason. This is a large problem for many reasons, some of which have been implied in the preceding lines. Many Palestinian villages in the area do not have adequate water storage and filtration facilities, so most of the water must be transported using water tankers. However, if movement is restricted between villages and towns, a problem magnified by the presence of mounds of dirt that render roads useless, how do villages get water? The sad fact is that they don't. The same goes for ambulances and school buses - some kids cannot go to school anymore and villages with no hospitals suffer as well.
Lastly, the third major problem is the Separation Barrier. This is an extremely long wall/fence/ditch that is to extend across the entire Israeli-Palestinian border. Crossing this barrier is expected to be hard (if not impossible), with military patrols monitoring for anyone attempting to do so. Upon construction of such a barrier, one would expect it to be built on the border of the territories involved. This is not so in this case: Israeli construction crews are actually building the wall inside Palestinian territories, thereby stealing their land. The wall is also meant to restrict Palestinian access from Israeli settlements which, too, are in Palestinian territory and are illegal based on UN and international laws. Due to the incoherent construction process, many Palestinian towns and villages are being cut off from each other, as well as from crucial sources of food and water - in some cases, the wall actually works to separate a village from its farms, due to the military's not respecting borders. Some areas are even completely encircled by walls, creating a perpetual siege of wire and military patrols around a large gathering of civilians who, if it was even possible, would barely have a chance to access water and food from the areas lying outside the barrier.
The above is just a generalized list of human rights abuses in the conflict. I haven't even mentioned the extended curfews that in some cases, only allow Palestinians to leave their homes for an hour or two a week. Nor did I touch upon the more common abuse of authority by the Israeli military and border police, which has a reputation in the area for its brutality...
Now as I close off, I'd just like to say that I believe that The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories' goals and initiatives are extremely noble. The organization is monitoring the situation in Palestine and is telling the world what problems and abuses are occurring there. If you go to their website, betselem.org, you will be able to read testimony, find statistics, and get links to other such organizations - if this subject interests you, you will not be disappointed.
Sources
B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. 16 April 2003.
J., Maya. "The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories." Toronto, Canada, 13 April 2003.
Note: I didn't write Maya's last name just because I don't know who reads this or whatever. If you want to know more about her presentation, e-mail me at gryc@rogers.com.
¶ 8:40 PM
Saturday, April 12, 2003
Hello and welcome to Five Minutes To Midnight. This is a personal blog about current events in the world through the eyes of a sixteen year-old youth in Canada. It is also used for a personal reason: to document what is happening from my own perspective, simply so I can read it in the future and wonder if I was truly as sane as I think I am. If you read this and have comments, questions, suggestions, threats, concerns, or anything else, do not hesitate to e-mail me at gryc@rogers.com. I'll reply, whether you like that or not. I am currently hosted at blogger.com, though I am hoping to move to another server and program some customized blogger software in the future - I learned PERL and I intend to use it.
Some may wonder, "Why am I calling this 'Five Minutes To Midnight'?" This is a good question and there is quite a reasonable explanation that deals with the [Atomic] Doomsday Clock. This is a symbolic Cold War era clock that counts down to midnight, which is the end of the world brought forth by our fellow men and women. The clock is a comfortable few minutes away from midnight and I am not sure of the exact time allowance before the world is obliterated; it is definitely not at five minutes. Nevertheless, "five minutes" makes the title a nice, flowing piece of literature. Now onto my first topic...
The war in Iraq came swiftly and painfully to international politics. I won't get into another discussion about the war and its effects, be they good or bad. I will discuss the newest issue dealing with the topic: what to do with post-war Iraq. Although the start of the war signaled a deviation from the much accepted UN-based system of international justice and reprieve, it does not mean the UN should be ignored in the next stage of war. There are many factions vying for temporary and permanent power, all of which cannot be ignored if peace is to take place. The UN knows this better than anyone else and has learned it through experience in many international hotspots of the world.
The problem I have with all of this mainly deals with the idea of who will take care of what. The United States has mentioned countless times that it will take charge of the situation. Britain has supported this, though recent tensions imply that Prime Minister Tony Blair would prefer a UN-backed solution for Iraq, one which would be supported by the rest of Europe. The two are allies - the Coalition - and no doubt will continue to stick together through a peace process that might have to be enacted in as soon as a couple of days.
However, the problem with administering peace in Iraq has been seen countless times before, with the most prominent example in Beirut two decades ago. The Lebanese city had a microcosmic war between the Christian and Muslim residents, a mirror image of the much larger problem in the rest of Lebanon. American forces came in to help with stabilization of the region, only to create increasingly difficult problems by siding with the government backed Christian factions. The result of such an alliance was increased use of what in Gulf War II has been called "unconventional" warfare and terrorism: suicide bombing. In fact, the problem became so large that the US military decided to leave.
The same is true in today's day and age, with the ensuing peace process when General Tommy Franks decides he has won the war. In a worst case scenario, a civil war may erupt between the factions that were supported by Saddam, the Shiites, Kurds, and so on. The US is currently using Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga) as allies in the Northern front. Turkey's recent decision to move more than 40,000 of its troops into and around Iraq to prevent a possible Kurdish uprising has also caused increased tensions. The southern areas of Iraq are still filled with pro-Hussein fighters and factions. Additionally, there is Iraq's Shiites who number in the millions, who have been oppressed by the powerful Baath party, and who may be looking to settle the score.
The fact that the current British-appointed leader of Basra is a former member of the Baath party and an ex-general in Saddam's army doesn't seem to be helping in the fight for peace, either.
All in all, the Iraqi situation is discomforting, to say the least. The problem is not necessarily the war, which after a bit more than three weeks, seems to be coming to an end. Instead, it is the post-war governing of Iraq, which must be done with incredible care.
Sources
¶ 10:53 PM
Some may wonder, "Why am I calling this 'Five Minutes To Midnight'?" This is a good question and there is quite a reasonable explanation that deals with the [Atomic] Doomsday Clock. This is a symbolic Cold War era clock that counts down to midnight, which is the end of the world brought forth by our fellow men and women. The clock is a comfortable few minutes away from midnight and I am not sure of the exact time allowance before the world is obliterated; it is definitely not at five minutes. Nevertheless, "five minutes" makes the title a nice, flowing piece of literature. Now onto my first topic...
The war in Iraq came swiftly and painfully to international politics. I won't get into another discussion about the war and its effects, be they good or bad. I will discuss the newest issue dealing with the topic: what to do with post-war Iraq. Although the start of the war signaled a deviation from the much accepted UN-based system of international justice and reprieve, it does not mean the UN should be ignored in the next stage of war. There are many factions vying for temporary and permanent power, all of which cannot be ignored if peace is to take place. The UN knows this better than anyone else and has learned it through experience in many international hotspots of the world.
The problem I have with all of this mainly deals with the idea of who will take care of what. The United States has mentioned countless times that it will take charge of the situation. Britain has supported this, though recent tensions imply that Prime Minister Tony Blair would prefer a UN-backed solution for Iraq, one which would be supported by the rest of Europe. The two are allies - the Coalition - and no doubt will continue to stick together through a peace process that might have to be enacted in as soon as a couple of days.
However, the problem with administering peace in Iraq has been seen countless times before, with the most prominent example in Beirut two decades ago. The Lebanese city had a microcosmic war between the Christian and Muslim residents, a mirror image of the much larger problem in the rest of Lebanon. American forces came in to help with stabilization of the region, only to create increasingly difficult problems by siding with the government backed Christian factions. The result of such an alliance was increased use of what in Gulf War II has been called "unconventional" warfare and terrorism: suicide bombing. In fact, the problem became so large that the US military decided to leave.
The same is true in today's day and age, with the ensuing peace process when General Tommy Franks decides he has won the war. In a worst case scenario, a civil war may erupt between the factions that were supported by Saddam, the Shiites, Kurds, and so on. The US is currently using Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga) as allies in the Northern front. Turkey's recent decision to move more than 40,000 of its troops into and around Iraq to prevent a possible Kurdish uprising has also caused increased tensions. The southern areas of Iraq are still filled with pro-Hussein fighters and factions. Additionally, there is Iraq's Shiites who number in the millions, who have been oppressed by the powerful Baath party, and who may be looking to settle the score.
The fact that the current British-appointed leader of Basra is a former member of the Baath party and an ex-general in Saddam's army doesn't seem to be helping in the fight for peace, either.
All in all, the Iraqi situation is discomforting, to say the least. The problem is not necessarily the war, which after a bit more than three weeks, seems to be coming to an end. Instead, it is the post-war governing of Iraq, which must be done with incredible care.
Sources
Adams, Paul. "Will Lessons From Beirut Be Applied To Baghdad?" The Globe and Mail [Toronto], 5 April 2003, p. A9.
Karon, Tony. "Why Turks and Kurds Prize Kirkuk." Time Online Edition 10 April 2003. Time. 10 April 2003.
Morris, Steven, and Richard Norton-Taylor. "Iraqis Angry At British Choice for Basra Leader." The Globe and Mail [Toronto], 21 April 2003, p. A10.
¶ 10:53 PM
Morris, Steven, and Richard Norton-Taylor. "Iraqis Angry At British Choice for Basra Leader." The Globe and Mail [Toronto], 21 April 2003, p. A10.
