Hatred Stirred up Against the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions

US media and US authorities evoke resentments against the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions

ro. Last October, shortly after bomb attacks against Afghanistan began, George W. Bush voiced the serious threat: 'Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader.' In particular the Wall Street Journal has accompanied Bush's war rhetoric by providing its readers with a colonialist world view that fails to even stop short of promoting war, destruction and oppression. On 9 October 2001, historian and journalist, Paul Johnson very frankly wrote 'The answer to terrorism? -Colonialism!'

US call fora neo-colonialist mandate system

Such arrogance enables plans and ideas to take shape which demonstrate that the les-sons taught by the history of the past century have been ignored. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz' statement that we have to 'overcome' certain 'terrorist states' is explained in the Wall Street Journal as follows: 'America and its allies may find them-selves, temporarily at least, not just occupying with troops but administering obdurate terrorist states. These may eventually include not only Afghanistan but Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran, and Syria. (...) I suspect that the best medium-term solution will be to revive the old League of Nations' Mandate System, which served well as a "respectable" form of colonialism between the wars.' The UN, in its role as mandate holder in Afghanistan, is currently putting this into practice.

UN delegate Brahimi is taking a tough line while the US consolidate their military bases and secure their transport corridors for their resources.

'Relief agencies' like the Red Cross

On 29 October 2001, the Washington Post wrote: 'If we want to make Afghanistan stable, we may have to imbue our post-colo-nial institutions-the United Nations, the World Bank, relief agencies such as the Red Cross-with a new imperial vigor.' Looking at the repeated bombardments of Red Cross facilities in this context, the Wall Street Journal carries the attacks on the Red Cross too far. Editor Claudia Rosett, in her article of 23 January, 'The Red Cross Needs to Get Real', is trying to stir up resentments against this humanitarian institution. The subtitle: 'It's time to rethink the Geneva convention,' already indicates the thrust of the argument.

Frontal attack on humanitarian international law

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) rightly pointed to the Geneva Convention in connection with the situation of captured Taliban and al-Qaeda members in Guantanamo. It demanded that the US grant these prisoners POW status. The US government has continuously refused to do so, thus ignoring humanitarian international law. Claudia Rosett has followed suit with her article and as a result has obligingly given the US government backing in the media.

According to Rosett, it is not the American government that is to blame for the disgrace-ful conditions in which Taliban and al-Qaeda members are being held in Guantanamo Bay but the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). According to Rosett, the Geneva Conventions need to be reconsidered since they are no longer applicable to the 'terrorist shift now redefining modern war'. If the Red Cross continues in the same vein, Rosett argues, 'the U.S.-which pro-vides more than 25% of the ICRC's funding -might do well to rethink its ties to the Red Cross'. Rosett writes that 'the relief business has mushroomed into a global industry' and that the ICRC cannot claim special treatment: 'With the spread of terrorism, the respected old ICRC-and the conventions it tries to uphold-are woefully out of date'. Hence, her argument goes, it is time to rethink the Geneva Conventions.

Rosett thus joins in the course of those who want to do away with the Geneva Conven-tions. She wants to throw international law, which has evolved historically, overboard as if it were useless ballast and supports those US government authorities that look upon the conventions as standing in the way of their idea of a 'Pax Americana'. The inter-national community must prevent this from happening! The terror attacks on the US can be combated with the means available to a democratic state based on the rule of law and the existing Geneva Conventions. However, it does not surprise one that the US is calling for change or discontinuance of the Geneva Conventions. In the current Afghanistan war they have already repeatedly violated the Conventions and international law and should be brought before an international court. The 'one global power' should no longer be allowed to violate international law as it likes without repercussion, and support 'relief agencies' only where it happens to see fit. The independent neutral help of the Red Cross-embedded in the historically evolved international law-is at stake!