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US Genocide in Iraq

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US Genocide in Iraq For more information, contact: [email protected] +20 12 167 1660 US Genocide in Iraq Dr Ian Douglas with Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana Al Bayaty 1. Summary ............................................................... 1 Does anyone believe there is 2. Introduction ........................................................... 2 another way to steal a country? 3. Definitions............................................................. 2 — Eduardo Galeano a) What is genocide? ............................................... 3 b) What is intent? .................................................... 6 4. Beyond law.......................................................... 12 a) The genocidal logic of neo-colonial war............. 12 b) Genocide by occupation .................................... 15 1. Summary† 5. The destruction of the Iraqi state and national identity .................................................................... 16 — The United States has committed and a) The strategic context for genocide...................... 16 sponsored the crime of genocide in Iraq. i. Asserting US geopolitical, global hegemony ..... 16 ii. US policy aimed to break Arab unity................ 18 — Responsibility for genocide rests on iii. The US national emergency and corporate specific intent and given or probable interests............................................................... 21 consequences of actions. The 2003 US iv. A unified strategy of genocide......................... 23 invasion of Iraq was the culmination and b) Implementing genocide in Iraq .......................... 23 intensification of a consistent US policy, i. Destroying Iraq physically and permanently...... 24 ii. Substituting the Iraqi state and nation............... 28 iii. Resistance to genocide.................................... 33 6. Interpreting genocide in Iraq ............................... 37 † Dr Ian Douglas is visiting professor in politics at An- 7. Conclusion........................................................... 40 Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, and 8. Appendix............................................................. 41 working to bring the charge of genocide against the United States and allies in a court of universal jurisdiction (www.USgenocide.org). Abdul Ilah Albayaty is an Iraqi political analyst and writer based in France. Hana Al Bayaty is coordinator of the Iraqi International Initiative on Iraqi Refugees (www.3iii.org). This text was written April-June 2007. US Genocide in Iraq spanning over 17 years, of destroying Iraq as a invasion of Iraq, but to lay a basis for stopping national and state entity. imperial adventures and to enrich the political — The United States attempted and succeeded thinking of instruments that can save our to destroy the state of Iraq, but has failed and civilisation. cannot succeed in its attempt to destroy the nation of Iraq. 3. Definitions — The Iraqi people have the legal right to The prohibition and prevention of genocide is resist occupation, colonialism and genocide by a peremptory norm of international law. No all available means, including armed struggle. derogation is permitted: states are obliged, — The national popular resistance in Iraq is individually and severally, to prevent genocide combating genocide directly where from occurring and to prosecute perpetrators, international law as a preventative and conspirators, those complicit and those who protective mechanism has failed. incite it. When a crime is ongoing the duty of authorities to enforce law by halting the crime — In defence of civilisation, people the world is of special urgency. Enforcing law means over should rise up in support of the national protecting potential victims and apprehending liberation struggle of the Iraqi people. suspected perpetrators. — In defence of international law, jurists and That the international community not only law associations should work to bring the failed to prevent the illegal US invasion and charge of genocide against the United States, subsequent occupation of Iraq, but also its leaders and its allies. supported what from 1990 has been a — The world must criminalise all forms of gathering US-led genocide in Iraq, is a war. Defensive wars would not be necessary in catastrophic betrayal for the Iraqi people and the absence of wars of aggression. an injury to us all. The reasons are multiple and include: 1) 2. Introduction Structural inequalities of power in world politics, epitomised in the UN Security The illegal US invasion of Iraq was and is a Council, that assure domination for the few humanitarian catastrophe. Some try to explain and subservience for the many; 2) Structural this catastrophe as a by-product. They justify inequalities of power in the world economy, their concept on the absence of intent. characterising capitalism on a world scale, that Reviewing applicable principles of scare dependent states from speaking out on international law and American policy towards imperial crimes; 3) The general subordination Iraq, this paper aims to prove that the of human rights to “peace and security” (i.e., humanitarian catastrophe present in Iraq is an pacification and impunity) illustrated in the essential component of US policy, constituting perpetuation of a toothless, complicit and premeditated genocide against the people of apologetic UN human rights system; and 4) Iraq. The intent that some propose is absent is The success of Zionist ideology in making the flagrantly evident. concept of genocide a synonym for “the Consequently, this paper constitutes a call to holocaust”, thus both its own exclusive jurists, law associations, and individuals from preserve and the model against which all all walks of life to act on ending genocide in alleged genocides must be compared. Iraq. This study was made not only because of The blanket of silence surrounding this the horrid consequences of the illegal US grievous international crime contributes to the 2 US Genocide in Iraq deaths of hundreds of Iraqis every day. If not in numbers annihilated, but in the iniquity genocide cannot be prevented, the UN and its of a rationality that intends massively high ideals serve no function. At present destructive consequences. This qualification is nothing exists to prevent future atrocities on what ensures that the Genocide Convention is this scale or worse from occurring. a preventative mechanism and not simply a reactive instrument. It also means that guilt is a) What is genocide? a moral determination. Of all terms in the lexicon, genocide is the true Indeed, in origin the term itself — coined in word for what is happening in Iraq. The the inter-war period by Raphael Lemkin, a controversy the word elicits reveals its Polish legal scholar — emerged from the potential. Some warn against using the term so effort to make “barbarity” and “vandalism” as not to “debase its currency”. This is a crimes under international law. It is intent to misunderstanding of what genocide means. destroy that is the basis of the crime of Others fear that if used wantonly, antiwar genocide, illustrated in definable acts that protest may appear sensationalist. In reality, constitute — or would — genocide. any other word for US actions in Iraq is dishonest. Article 2 of the Genocide Convention reads: Looking closer, we find that the word In the present Convention, genocide genocide has two lives: its common meaning means any of the following acts and its legal substance. Commonly, genocide committed with intent to destroy, in whole is taken to mean the total annihilation of a or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or people. Nothing less counts, hence scepticism religious group, as such: in using the word. On rapid reading, UN (a) Killing members of the group; General Assembly Resolution 96 of 1946 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental authorising the drafting of a genocide harm to members of the group; convention suggests the same understanding: (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group “Genocide is a denial of the right of existence conditions of life calculated to bring of entire human groups, as homicide is the about its physical destruction in denial of the right to live of individual human whole or in part; beings.”1 But this definition bears reading (d) Imposing measures intended to again, for it is not the fact of annihilation that prevent births within the group; constitutes the crime of genocide, but rather (e) Forcibly transferring children of the denial of the right of existence of an entire group to another group. given group. This nuance is important. Article 3 notes that punishable acts include: Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention — 2 (a) Genocide; now the legal standard — makes this point (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; clear by focusing on the concept of intent, (c) Direct and public incitement to supplementing this with the important phrase, commit genocide; “in whole or in part”, thus grounding genocide (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide. 1 UN General Assembly Resolution 96, 11 December From Article 2 a number of questions emerge: 1946, http://un.org/documents/ga/res/1/ares1.htm 1) what qualifies as “in part”? 2) What 2 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the qualifies under each enumerated group? 3) Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, 280. http://unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm What is the meaning of the destruction of an 3 US Genocide in Iraq enumerated group “as such”? 4) What destruction of the whole group. Viable entity
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