Bush war plans likely to violate international law

21 September 2001
The Times of India

Bush's war plans likely to violate international law

by Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network

New Delhi: Though it is too early to predict the shape of Operation Infinite Justice, the US would probably be violating international law if it attacks Afghanistan or any other country.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in two circumstances. The first, where the UN Security Council authorises the use of force under Chapter VII of the Charter. And the second, where a country resorts to self-defence in the face of an armed attack.

The UN Security Council has twice passed resolutions (1267 of 1998 and 1333 of 1999) calling on the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden to either a country where he has been indicted or to one where he will be brought to justice. Though these resolutions were passed under Chapter VII and impose sanctions on the Taliban, they do not authorise the use of force against the regime by any country.

In the absence of! a resolution specifically authorising force, the Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden cannot legally be construed as grounds for Washington to attack Afghanistan. Even if a UN mandate exists, it would be illegal to put civilians and civilian infrastructure in harm's way.
What about self-defence? Though Article 51 of the UN Charter allows a country to defend itself against an armed attack, the US would have to conform to the International Court of Justice's landmark ruling on the scope of Article 51 contained in its Nicaragua judgment of 1986. The ICJ defined an armed attack as either an event in which one State directly sends troops into another or "the sending by or on behalf of a State of armed bands...which carry out acts of armed force against another State...(amounting to) actual armed attack by regular forces".

The attacks in New York and Washington clearly constitute an act of armed force committed by armed bands. However, in order to! justify attacking Afghanistan, the US would at the very least have to prove both that Bin Laden was responsible and that he acted 'on or behalf of" the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

According to Prof Louis Henkin, one of the most distinguished US scholars of international law, the right of self-defence enshrined in Article 51 is "limited to cases of armed attack that are generally beyond doubt; a state's responsibility for acts of terrorism is rarely beyond doubt and difficult to prove...Article 51 gives a right...to defend against an armed attack. This right does not allow retaliation for armed attacks...or (force) to deter future attacks".

That is why the US has held it would be illegal for India to attack terrorist camps in Pakistan or for Milosevic's Yugoslavia to have gone after KLA bases in northern Albania.

Prof Henkin writes that "a state that has been the victim of an act of terrorism will have to pursue other remedies ag! ainst states that it believes responsible and against the states that encourage, promote, condone, or tolerate terrorism or provide a haven to terrorists".

So far, the US has not pursued other remedies. It has not moved the UN, nor has it responded to the Taliban statement that they would extradite bin Laden given proof of his involvement in last week's terrorist attacks. The Taliban may be bluffing, but international law requires the US to seek peaceful resolution of the crisis and not resort to the unilateral use of force

Musharraf drops Taliban to get Kashmir

19 September 2001
The Times of India

News Analysis
Musharraf drops Taliban to get Kashmir

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

NEW DELHI: Painted into a corner by relentless pressure from the US, General Musharraf has justified his unpopular policy of military support for Washington's planned war against Afghanistan by declaring that the very survival of Pakistan as a ''fortress of Islam'' is at stake.

Given that the main opposition to his decision to offer the US logistical support and access to Pakistan's airspace comes from Islamic leaders and organisations, this is hardly surprising.

The other theme Musharraf dwelt on was equally predictable. India, he said, has already thrown open its doors to the US military. The Vajpayee government, he noted correctly, wants to use this occasion to draw closer to the US and eventually get Pakistan declared as a terrorist state. Thus, joining hands with the US, even if for an unpopular and damaging task, is the only way to guarantee Pakistan's interest.

As an exercise in astute political management, Musharraf's speech was a valiant effort to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Support to the Taliban has been an act of faith for Pakistan's rulers ever since the Afghan militia was first armed by the Benazir government.

To justify his departure from this policy, Musharraf wisely chose to allude to one of Islam's most famous moments of departure --tThe flight of Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. If Muhammad could emerge strengthened from the hijrat - the General promised - so too would Pakistan, from its (temporary) forsaking of the Taliban.

Pakistan's ''critical concerns'' were safety, economy, nuclear bombs and missiles and Kashmir. Not the Taliban or Afghanistan. Though he refrained from making claims about US assurances, the implication clearly was that future gains on fronts like Kashmir will more than compensate any losses on the Afghan front.

For all his rhetoric against India, it was ironic that Musharraf had to take a leaf out of the Vajpayee government's book, by turning the ongoing crisis between the US and Afghanistan into yet another bone of contention between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Whether the India-phobia of Pakistan's Islamic extremists will lead them to back off now remains to be seen. To a large extent, it would depend on precisely what the US intends to do in Afghanistan. The Bush administration cannot have failed to notice the curious symmetry in the Indian and Pakistani response to Washington's call for countries to ''join US or be against US'' in the ''war against terrorism''.

In India, the Vajpayee government cites the fear of Pakistan stealing a march over it as the reason for leaping headlong into its offer of naval and air bases. Musharraf, on his part, says if Pakistan does not cooperate with the US, New Delhi and Washington will draw closer together to the detriment of Islamabad. Without much effort, the Bush administration has succeeded in getting both Pakistan and India to agree to involve themselves in what is going to be in essence very much a US war.

Beware the Bushfire: Use of force and the pathology of terror

September 15, 2001
The Times of India

Beware the Bushfire
Use of Force and the Pathology of Terror

By SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

ANY nation that has been the victim of such an unspeakable crime as
the killing of thousands of innocent people in New York and Washington
will find it difficult to resist the urge to retaliate against
suspects and their backers with overwhelming force.

This is especially true for the United States, which is the world's
most powerful country and one whose mainland has been immune to the
depredations of terror and war.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration would do well to resist the
temptation to lash out. Tuesday's terrorist outrages call for
painstaking investigation in order to identify the individuals or
groups responsible so that they may be brought to justice.

Any use of force by the US will probably be illegal in international
law and counter-productive as well. America cannot buy security for
its own people by making life more insecure for people elsewhere.

US airstrikes will invariably lead to the 'collateral' killing of
innocent civilians and provide more fuel to the already incendiary
mindset of those who have historically been victims of US policies.

Far from stopping terrorist outrages, US airstrikes will make future
occurrences even more likely.

When the use of force in international politics has been raised to the
level of a cult by the US in the years since the Cold War ended, it is
inevitable that America's enemies and victims around the world will
adopt equally monstrous methods.

The attack on the World Trade Center is a product of the same diseased
moral compass which allows the slow strangulation of Iraq's civilian
population through economic sanctions, the destruction of Sudan's main
pharmaceutical plant, the killing of journalists in the deliberate
bombing of Belgrade's television station, or the continuing
humiliation of the Palestinians.

Thanks to US insistence on sanctions remaining in place, more than
500,000 Iraqis have been sent to an early grave, most of them
children. The official Iraqi reaction to Tuesday's carnage was
appallingly callous; but no more so than Madeleine Albright's ghastly
declaration that the death of half a million Iraqi children ''is a
price worth paying''.

In the past, Washington has used force against those it considered
responsible for acts of terrorism but none of its actions brought the
US greater security.

In 1986, the Reagan administration sent bombers to blast an area
around the residence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi in retaliation
for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in which two American soldiers
died.

Scores of innocent people, including Gaddhafi's infant daughter, were
killed but Washington has still been unable to prove the complicity of
the Libyan government in the Berlin bombing.

If that bombing was meant to serve as a 'deterrent', it was, by
Washington's own reckoning, a spectacular failure since, according to
the US, Libyan agents later planted a bomb on PanAm 103 which exploded
over Lockerbie in Scotland.

In 1998, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at a
medicine factory in Khartoum, Sudan, and a suspected training camp of
Osama bin Laden at Khost in Afghanistan.

The attack was in retaliation for the bombing of its embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania. The US claimed the Sudanese factory was a chemical
weapons plant but blocked an attempt by the UN to investigate the
veracity of this charge.

The owner of that factory is now suing the US in a Washington court
for millions of dollars. As for the former CIA operative, Osama, the
Khost attack did nothing to blunt his enmity or capacity to hit back.

Earlier this year, militants believed to be linked to the Saudi
millionaire blew a huge hole in USS Cole, a US warship anchored off
Aden. And now, if initial leads by US investigators prove correct,
Osama's men have delivered their most catastrophic and brutal blow
yet.

Even as they mourn the thousands who died in New York and Washington,
the American people must resolve to force their government never to
undertake military operations which violate international law and
place innocent civilians at risk.

Rather than seeking to build an international coalition against
'terrorism' in order to try and eliminate the problem though the use
of force, the US must confront the historical legacy of its flawed
policies towards West Asia and other parts of the world.

US support for repressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia, its
interventions in Lebanon and Afghanistan, and its use of sanctions as
a weapon of mass destruction against the people of Iraq have caused so
much death and suffering that irrationality has become an integral
part of the region's politics. As the grievances pile up in
combustible layers, fanatics have no difficulty in finding and
motivating others to do the unthinkable.

In the territories occupied by Israel, for example, young Palestinians
are prepared to blow themselves up just so that they can kill one
Israeli in the process. No cruise missile or world coalition can ever
provide protection from such a perverse and self-destructive sense of
victimhood.

Only the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions and the
chance for Palestinians to live in dignity can help. Full statehood
for the Palestinians and the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the
West Bank and Gaza will do more to take the wind out of Osama's sails
than the bombing of Kabul, Kandahar or Khost.

Since several hundred Indian nationals are thought to have been killed
in the attack on the World Trade Center, India is very much an
interested party.

But instead of counselling the Bush administration that it is
embarking on a foolish and dangerous path which can only make the
world's peoples more insecure, the Vajpayee government has indicated
that it will offer the US military facilities for the 'war' against
international terrorism.

Of course, the government is being driven primarily by its desire to
use Washington against Islamabad but what this will also do is to make
the US even more of a player in South Asia than it already is.

Those desirous of an alliance between India and the US may ask whether
that is necessarily a bad thing. What they should realise is that
America has its interests and will stick to them.

'Global' coalitions are summoned only when those interests are
endangered. Helping India to develop, feel secure or combat terrorism
do not figure anywhere in Mr Bush's list of priorities.

WTC Attacks: The U.S. will now look for revenge, but against whom?

12 September 2001
The Times of India

NEWS ANALYSIS/World Trade Center attacks

U.S. will now look for revenge, but against whom?

By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network

NEW DELHI: Though the identity of the group which masterminded Tuesday's terrorist outrages is still not known, the Bush administration is most likely to work on two inter-related suppositions: That those involved are linked to the phantom organisation of Afghanistan-based Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden, or the shadowy sub-network to which the convicted terrorist and would-be hijacker, Ramzi Yousef, presumably belonged.

However, given the fact that the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City - for which an American right-wing fanatic was eventually convicted - was wrongly thought to be the handiwork of 'Arab' or 'Islamic' terrorists, US law enforcement agencies will now want to actively pursue all possible theories.

The US has linked Osama to the 1998 bombing of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and considers the Saudi militant its most dangerous and dedicated international opponent. Osama - who was trained and supported by the CIA during the Afghan civil war - is reported to have made threats to bomb a US airliner two years ago and at least one Arabic language newspaper now claims that they had heard his supporters warn of a spectacular action against the US as recently as three weeks back.

Ramzi Yousef was convicted with two others in New York in 1996 of plotting to hijack 12 US airliners and then plunge them into the sea with high-powered explosives. This plan was apparently hatched in Manila but Ramzi fled to Pakistan when an accidental fire led to its premature discovery. The Pakistani authorities arrested him and he was immediately handed over to US agents and flown across to New York.

Though US law enforcement officials see a link between Ramzi and Osama, the fact that he carried a fake Iraqi passport has led some Saddam-baiting US analysts to conclude that he is working for the Saddam Hussein regime, a charge Baghdad has strenuously denied.

Given the scale of death and destruction caused by Tuesday's incidents, President George W. Bush is bound to be under pressure to retaliate in some way. Afghanistan (the Taliban) and Iraq are the two countries most likely to face US action.

In the past, the US has hit out wildly at those countries thought to be involved in anti-American acts of terrorism - often with disastrous effect and in violation of international law.

Following the 1998 embassy bombings, the Clinton administration attacked a medicine factory in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum claiming that it was a "chemical weapons factory" owned by Osama. And in 1986, president Reagan attacked Libya following the terrorist bombing of a Berlin disco. In neither case had any link between the bombed country's government and the terrorist outrage been firmly established.

Though Palestinian groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine are considered least likely to be involved with Tuesday's outrages - the DFLP has in fact issued a public denial - the destruction of the World Trade Centre and part of the Pentagon will have a huge impact on the West Asian peace process. At street level on the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the hijackings-bombings are being seen as a body blow to the US for backing Israel. But far from easing the situation for the Palestinians, the mind-numbing terrorism witnessed in New York and Washington can only skew US policy even further towards the Israeli regime.

Perhaps most of all, it is the Taliban of Afghanistan who will come under the closest scrutiny in the days and weeks to come. The Taliban may not directly be suspects - and they have also formally denied any involvement. But they are already under limited UN sanctions for not helping to extradite Osama Bin Laden and a further toughening of these measures cannot be ruled out.

This in turn will put greater pressure on Pakistan - the Taliban's principal backer -- which has so far ignored the embargo on arms sales and military support to Afghanistan.