Category Archives: Britain

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Society, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s reputation and the need for answers…

Intro: The appalling human rights record in Sri Lanka raises questions about the legitimacy of the Commonwealth

The furore over the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka is problematic. For David Cameron, whose decision to attend a summit – hosted by a country where the government stands accused both of historical war crimes and continuing human rights violations – has, rightly, caused a flood of criticism. Mr Cameron insisted that by attending he would be in a position of applying more pressure than if he had not attended. His concomitant pledge of having frank and forthright discussions with President Rajapaksa was never convincing. The British prime minister’s attendance hardly shines an even dim light on the post-colonial club itself. Attendance in itself confers a credibility that Colombo has not earned.

The indifference of the Sri Lankan government has been quick to warn Mr Cameron off the topic – on the grounds that this was never the basis by which he was invited, and thus denies him the right to bring it up. Such a warning makes the prime minister’s position look even more ridiculous.

In retrospect, it was indefensible that Mahinda Rajapaksa’s authoritarian and tarnished leadership should have been given the honour of hosting the Commonwealth. Incredibly, as a matter of formality, he will also become the organisation’s formal chairman for the next two years. Whilst it is right that Mr Cameron’s attendance be condemned, we should not forget that these decisions were nodded through by the previous government of Gordon Brown at the Tobago and Trinidad summit in 2009. When Douglas Alexander, the now shadow foreign secretary, but who was part of the Brown administration, denounces the Prime Minister for refusing to boycott Sri Lanka, he is portraying the most brazen kind of political opportunism and hypocrisy.

As the British empire disintegrated after the Second World War, the legitimacy of the Commonwealth was conceived as an intergovernmental alliance centred around a shared commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Six decades on, it is far from a noble institution. Sri Lanka is not the only offender. In many of the Commonwealth’s 53 member states there are persistent allegations of everything from extrajudicial killings to torture and political suppression in countries ranging from Nigeria to Pakistan. Human rights abuses are often swept under the carpet by a quorum of member states facing similar charges of human rights violations – so much for the principle ideals and the so-called ‘core values’.

David Cameron says he will make clear that President Rajapaksa’s behaviour has impinged upon and seriously violated the Commonwealth’s most cherished ideals: no one has been held accountable for atrocities allegedly committed by Sri Lanka’s army in the final stages of the civil war in 2009. The whereabouts of nearly 5,700 critics of the regime, dissident politicians and journalists are unknown.

Mr Cameron is right to demand an independent inquiry into these cases, and Mr Rajapaksa should be made aware that his country’s reputation will never recover until the fate of the disappeared is settled. Likewise, evidence of atrocities committed by Tamil rebels during the civil war should also be thoroughly investigated. The UN estimates that some 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the 26-year conflict. If some progress can be made in these areas, then something positive might yet come from the summit. In reality, though, with the Sri Lankans already fulminating against what they see as an old imperial power treating them like a colony, then this summit promises to be far from enchanting.

It has to be said, too, that the Commonwealth is not the only international gathering with such problems. The African Union, for instance, which officially excludes any government that has come to power through ‘unconstitutional means’, still has a number of despots on its register. The UN has similar issues: several of the countries recently elected to its Human Rights Council are violators themselves. The EU also faces continuing questions over its desire to admit new members that appear less than credible.

Despite the issues, this shouldn’t mean a call for the Commonwealth to be scrapped. Notwithstanding its imperial beginnings and arbitrary membership list, the Commonwealth of Nations is still an opportunity to garner and foster global discussion. With this is mind it should be cherished. Historical sensitivities, however, are important and the crisis of legitimacy cannot remain unaddressed. No one nation, even with the support of other rich-world members, can be the final arbiter of the rules.

With India, Canada and Mauritius having boycotted the summit on the grounds of war crimes and atrocities committed by Sri Lanka during its long civil war, it can only be hoped that when Mr Cameron was in India en route to Sri Lanka this week, he took the opportunity to press Manmohan Singh to spearhead reforms.

Standard
Afghanistan, Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Afghanistan is a booming narco-state…

Intro: Afghanistan is an affluent narcotic state despite the country being invaded to liberate it from the drugs trade

Prior to the war in Afghanistan, the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, said that one of the most compelling reasons for going to war was to curtail the trade in narcotic drugs such as heroin and opium. However, if one was to examine the facts it would be shown that the Taliban government had already started to deactivate Afghanistan’s drugs trade. In 2000, the Taleban were the ruling authority in the country and had declared the heroin trade as being ‘un-Islamic’. Following that decree the fundamentalist regime managed to reduce production by 99 per cent in the areas that it controlled. Yet, by contrast, the war with the West has witnessed a lucrative market for Afghan’s poppy farmers. After more than 12 years of fighting – which has cost Britain dear in terms of lost lives and resources expended – opium production in Afghanistan is at a record high. The United Nations drugs agency says that the area under cultivation rose by 36 per cent in 2013 and that Afghanistan now provides 90 per cent of the world’s heroin. The country Britain invaded partly to liberate it from the drugs trade has become a flourishing and affluent narcotic-state.

Was there a way in which this now booming trade could have been stopped? Arguably, if the West had put all its resources and efforts into eradication the likelihood of crushing the drugs trade in Afghanistan  would have been high. Unless that task is approached with the ruthless methods and barbarism of the Taliban, any other approach would likely falter. The planting of an alternative crop may have been another consideration but even that would have been troublesome because Afghanistan’s environment makes it perfect for poppy cultivation but inhospitable to almost anything else.

A genuine alternative, however, might be to turn the situation to the world’s advantage. Four years into the Afghan campaign, the Senlis Council, a think tank, suggested buying the crop and using it to manufacture palliative medicines for Western consumers – turning Afghanistan’s poppy farmers into legitimate businessmen.

If we consider that opium poppies are already grown under strict legal controls in India, and also in Britain, the idea is not as radical as it might sound. The world has a shortage of pharmaceutical painkillers, such as morphine and codeine, and the Afghan farmers could easily meet that demand. Whether the country has the ability to police such an ambitious programme, though, does raise doubts. One thing above all else is certain: the West has lost its war on the poppy.

Standard
Afghanistan, Britain, Government, Military, National Security

The court martial of a Royal Marine sergeant and two others…

VERDICTS

Society’s norms are cast adrift in a world of firefight and ambush, where air strikes leave disfigurement and random death in its wake. Protagonists could argue that society has no real business judging people who live and operate in a world of war-torn combat.

That is why it has been imperative that the Royal Marine Sergeant found guilty of murdering a wounded Afghan insurgent in September 2011 was tried in a court martial. Some may suggest the guilty verdict is an outrage; after all, there was no disagreement that the victim was an armed enemy combatant sworn to kill British soldiers if he could.

Others, too, may consider the not guilty verdicts of two other Royal Marines in the dock also appalling. The cleared two had been present at the killing, did not try to prevent it, and therefore, by the standards applied by most criminal courts, equally guilty – even though they did not pull the trigger. This kind of scenario, however, is one that never gets put before a civilian court.

Afghanistan was a war zone in which the participants – British soldiers and Afghan fundamentalists – were not only trying to kill each other but also, in the case of the Royal Marines, had lawful justification for doing so when in a firefight.

What is more, Helmand is a notorious battlefield where the Royal Marines’ enemies do not obligingly wear uniform. One moment they can be innocent and virtuous civilians, the next a lethal and devastating enemy intent on murdering soldiers, a juxtaposition that makes counter-insurgency operations especially difficult. Amid such severe brutality and death there is an altered morality.  Because the rules of engagement that soldiers operate under may result in a killing and may seem bizarre to some, this could also generate sympathy for the marines caught up in a situation that has become ever-more bitter.

Nevertheless, rules do exist for a very good reason. Morality may be altered, but it still exists. The code of the Geneva Convention, to which British armed forces have long subscribed, says that combat ends when the enemy either surrenders or is incapacitated to such an extent that fighting becomes impossible. Killing the enemy after either of these points has been reached becomes murder.

The court martial heard recordings of the conversation held by the Royal Marines at the time the Afghan insurgent was murdered. They show that the soldiers knew of the rules, especially the one convicted who was a sergeant in command of the others. In an attempt to vindicate himself the sergeant assumed the victim would not have respected the Geneva Convention and would have happily murdered the Royal Marines had he been in a position to do so. He claimed, which was also recorded, that he believed the man was dead before he shot him through the chest.

As the outcome of the court martial has shown this was rightly rejected. There is no justification at all. The Royal Marines were deployed to Afghanistan in a humanitarian cause which was to aid the removal and suppression of a Taleban regime which not only supported and facilitated killing and the terrorising of other nations including ours, but also brutalised their own people. The Afghan insurgent murdered by the Royal Marine sergeant is in complete violation of his rules of engagement. And he knew it.

Standard