War Mongers as "Leaders of the World"

Iqbal Jassat

Why are war criminals in their capacity as heads of state who despite being consistently in breach of global conventions governing human rights, treated as royalty?

What sets them apart from common criminals by having red carpets rolled out and celebrated with pomp and ceremony?

Do they belong to a special class of untouchables? A distinct class who enjoy status, privileges and worst of all, immunity?

To list them is not difficult, for not only are they prominent as they parade on global arenas like proud peacocks, they are feted as celebrities too by no less than members of the mainstream media.

Sounds difficult to comprehend and quite inexplicable that supposedly informed media personalities would find it hard to haul such criminals over the coals.

Tough and robust interviews to interrogate, shame and humiliate thugs who masquerade as leaders seem not to matter anymore. Instead embarrassingly, journalists find it cool to jostle with each other to obtain - wait for it, not a scoop but a selfie!

From Delhi to Tel Aviv; from Riyadh to Dubai; from Rangoon to Beijing; from Cairo to Washington, the misfits who claim to be leaders of their respective nation states are no more than usurpers causing untold harm to millions under their brutal reign.

Whether its Narendra Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu, the list of crimes committed by them including gross human rights violations ought to have them face prosecution at the Hague. Instead they are revered as respected leaders without any accountability.

Kashmir and Palestine - despite the weight of international law being on their side, share a bitter experience of having their rights ignored by the United Nations.

Their occupiers, India and Israel, are brutally repressive and utterly unmindful to the point of being dismissive about repercussions from international bodies such as the United Nations.

India is among Israel’s biggest importer of arms and Modi’s security forces have been receiving training for “anti-terror” operations that Netanyahu’s regime conducts against Palestinians.

Widespread suppression of freedoms and fundamental human rights are conducted within a post-9/11 framework, defined as defeating the “scourge of Islamic terrorism”.

It is this manufactured terror frame that is sold to the world to justify the aggressive nationalisms of Zionism and Hindutva.

India and Israel thus inaugurate the colonial occupations of Kashmir and Palestine.

It is important to recall that Modi’s culpability during the 2002 Gujarat massacres that resulted in mass murder of Muslims, earned him the title of the “Butcher of Gujarat”.

Given the atrocities being committed by his occupying forces in Kashmir, we can add the title, the “Butcher of Kashmir” as well.

As the “Butcher of Palestine”, Netanyahu continues plundering land and destroying lives via ethnic cleansing.

His overt apartheid policies are cheered on by over-zealous supporters, who have allied themselves with white supremacists in Europe and America.

It is a shame that the world is adorned with ethno-nationalist presidents and prime ministers whose ideologies are defined by racism and religious extremism.

Some gain power by ostensibly “democratic” means, while others via hereditary privileges which enthrone them as “kings”, “princes” and “emirs”.

The Arabian Peninsula is littered with unelected despots and tyrants who masquerade as leaders. The impunity associated with their iron-fisted rule makes a mockery of religious values they supposedly subscribe to.

While Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and other Gulf fiefdoms claim to be Muslim governments, their representation of Islam is far removed from its pristine teachings.

Neither civil right activists nor political opponents are tolerated in these oligarchies.

The brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the circumstances that led to his death, illustrate the rogue conduct of Mohamed bin Salman.

Yet despite the evidence that implicates him directly, MbS is feted as a “moderate” and embraced on the global stage.

The devastation caused in Yemen by the Saudi-led war is yet another example of literally getting away with murder.

MbS and his Emirati mentor MbZ have since 2015 wreaked havoc leading to the UN declaring Yemen to be the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.

Human rights monitors report that the Saudi coalition has conducted scores of indiscriminate and disproportionate airstrikes killing thousands of civilians.

That this illegal war has failed to achieve any of the coalition’s goals apart from reducing Yemen to ashes seems of no concern to the warmongers, as they continue exacerbating crisis after crisis by blowing up civilian targets.

Saudi Arabia’s status as a client-state of America and having inched closer to publicly embracing the Zionist project which dispossessed Palestine, leads MbS to believe that repercussions if any, will be limited and managed by Trump.

War crimes indeed! Yet despite going on unabated for four years, the criminals responsible for it are sought after as “celebrities” instead of facing prosecution and lifelong jail terms.

Turning our gaze to Myanmar, it is necessary to repeat the question Mehdi Hasan posed: why hasn’t Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi been indicted for war crimes and genocide at the International Criminal Court?

Two years have passed since the Burmese military launched a renewed campaign of terror and violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine region.

Documented evidence point to dastardly crimes committed as Hasan reminded us: “Rohingya men hacked to death; children burned alive; women and girls raped and sexually-assaulted in their hundreds and thousands. Scores of villages were pillaged and razed to the ground as more than 700,000 Rohingya were driven from their homes.”

In listing some of the corrupt “leaders” engaged in genocidal crimes against their own people, others and those occupied by them, does not suggest that the list is complete.

Egypt’s military dictator who may now have donned a three-piece suit cannot escape the fact that his ascension to power was via a violent bloody coup.

General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was America’s chosen candidate to betray Egypt’s revolution by deposing its only democratically elected leader Mohamed Morsi and placing the entire country under siege.

Not surprisingly, the rogue elements who financed and supported the overthrow of Morsi, banned the Muslim Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders along with thousands of civil rights activists, journalists and opponents, are none other than Bin Salman, Bin Zayed and Netanyahu.

Sisi’s authoritarian rule has crushed democracy and taken the country back to a state of emergency which Egyptians revolted against and succeeded by removing the tyranny of Hosni Mubarak.

Paradoxically, instead of facing the ICC prosecutors, Sisi has been rewarded with the chairmanship of the African Union - much to the shame of the continent.

Why, one may ask has the world allowed murderers to hold high office with impunity?

Is it due to the current construct of global politics being skewed in favor of the rich and powerful? Is it as the result of the ease whereby corruption at all levels of society allows manipulation of political power?

Or is it a combination of both and more that says to Modi, Netanyahu and fellow warmongers: go on, your fascist policies are untouchable?

Islamophobia: The Art of Scapegoating Dissidents in Arab Regimes

Iqbal Jassat

It ought not to surprise anyone that autocratic Arabian regimes, rightwing groups in Europe, Israeli propagandists and a host of right-leaning think tanks, all have a common interest in fueling Islamophobia.

And not only does it derive from shared values of prejudice, the active participation within rightwing forums between these actors is indicative of a wider agenda at play.

But why would Arabian regimes that have Muslim majority populations, be venting hatred against fellow Muslims?

One can understand the racism that informs rightwing neo-Nazi groups to behave as thugs, targeting migrants, refugees, minorities and Muslims, but certainly not Arabian regimes, would be the general sentiment.

Yet it is true.

A recent report in Foreign Policy (FP) confirms this .

It claims that some Arabian dictators have a vested interest in being in bed with racist bigots and to fund their operations. Millions of dollars are spent on think tanks, academic institutions and lobbying firms to shape the thinking in Western capitals about domestic political activists opposed to their rule.

A wide open-ended field of "counter extremism" in conjunction with "counter terrorism" which has become mainstream, is the arena used by these regimes to elicit sympathy from the West.

By claiming to be under attack by "radical jihadis" - a term popularised by Israel and the United States following 9/11, countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and other despotic regimes, have fuelled Islamophobia.

Just as Israel has used this faulty rationale to justify its policies of terror, so too have the Arabian tyrants. One can gather from the current processes of "normalization" how and why these regimes have joined hands with each other and the wider white supremacist movements to stem the roots of what is disparagingly described as "Islamist ideology".

In essence the demand by Arab client-states of the West is that Europe and America must not tolerate "Islamic extremism". To do so in the name of human rights, freedom of expression and democracy would be wrong according to their logic.

Again not surprising it is a growing trend according to the report: "...the culpability of Arab and Muslim governments in fueling anti-Muslim hate as part of their campaigns to fight dissent at home and abroad. By trying to justify repression and appease Western audiences, some of these regimes and their supporters have forged an informal alliance with conservative and right-wing groups and figures in the West dedicated to advancing anti-Islamic bigotry".

The authors reveal that based on dozens of conversations conducted over several years, they found that autocratic regimes in the region carefully cultivate conservative and far-right circles in the West that they believe lean toward their own anti-Islamist agendas.

"The two sides’ political goals don’t completely overlap: Western Islamophobia can be far more vehement and sweeping than the variety supported by Arab governments. Nevertheless, both sides find the partnership beneficial. Arab propagandists claim there is an inherent connection between so-called political correctness and a tendency to downplay ideologies that lead to terrorism—claims that are seized on by Western conservatives to legitimize their own arguments."

From the alliances which Europe and America have formed with these regimes, which includes arming, funding, setting up military bases, launching military operations, black sites etc, it is clear that their Islamophobic scare tactics are working.

The atmosphere thus created makes any alternative to these regimes unthinkable from Western policy standpoint. The entire canard of democracy remains a ploy. The subterfuge associated with so-called human rights policies is a damning indictment against the West.

As per the FP report, the scapegoating of political opposition enables these regimes to clamp down on dissent at home with impunity. "Terrorism becomes a catchall term to justify repression."

Following the 2013 military coup in Egypt which deposed the elected leader Mohamed Morsi and jailed him along with thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members, many tortured and killed behind bars, the coup leader General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, used the same Islamophobic ruse to justify his repressive policies.

His illegal swoop didn't stop with the banning and outlawing of the country's most popular socio-political Islamic movement; he nabbed and jailed students, journalists, academics, civic activists and Imams who refused to bow to his unjust dictatorship.

Many, including women and children were simply gunned down in the streets and even in mosques where the victims sought refuge and hoped that the thugs would at least respect the sanctity of the mosque.

Western allies and fellow-regional despots who share al-Sisi's strongman approach to stamp out opposition, do so by justifying their common fears about what they perceive to be "Islamist extremism" - a classic case of Islamophobia.

The FP report cites the example of how when European countries became critical of Saudi Arabia after the growing casualties in Yemen, the imprisonment of women activists and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Riyadh turned to the rightwing for support.

"Among other efforts, a delegation of Saudi women was dispatched to meet with the far-right bloc of the European Parliament."

While it sounds to be an oxymoron for Muslim governments to be in bed with hardcore racists and bigots, the fact is that autocratic regimes will use any ruse to retain power. And Islamophobia suits their policies perfectly.

(Iqbal Jassat is Executive Member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa )