Europe questions 'righteous war'

21 Jan, 2002 08:15 AM5 mins to read

The handling of al Qaeda prisoners involves more than human rights, reports RUPERT CORNWALL.

WASHINGTON - The controversy that has erupted over America's treatment of its Taleban and al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is more than just a spat over human rights.

It reflects the increasingly complex post-Cold War relationship between the United States and its European allies.

America believes it is conducting a righteous war to rid the world of a deadly enemy that will stop at nothing to achieve its fiendish ends.

Europe, though, increasingly sees an arrogant superpower on the loose - one that after a brief, tactical flirtation with cooperation is back to its old unilateralist ways, ignoring international conventions and treaties as it chooses, spitting in the face of world opinion, safe in the knowledge that its power is unchallengeable.

There is, undoubtedly, truth in these charges. America, Donald Rumsfeld the Secretary of Defence makes clear, will do this its way, whether the world likes it or not.

But the complaints also reflect a jealousy and resentment of America's sheer power, and the not uncommon European view after September 11 that the US somehow "had it coming".

It cropped up, more justifiably, in the denunciations of the civilian casualties from the bombing campaign.

Now it is surfacing in the criticism of how America deals with its new prisoners, caging them in barbed wire pens half-open to the elements, with only a foam mat on the floor.

Lost amid the discussions is a genuine dilemma: how do you deal with some of the most dangerous people on earth?

Those at Guantanamo Bay are not genteel prisoners of conscience.

They are cut from similar cloth as the perpetrators of the attacks which killed 3000 Americans and are ready to sacrifice their lives if offered half the chance of a repeat.

British critics might remember that even at its most ruthless, the IRA never used suicide bombers.

And where else could they have gone? Afghanistan, where US and British troops are sleeping in tents, was not an option, nor was the US mainland, where their presence could have been a magnet for more terrorist outrages.

Other US bases overseas either did not have the facilities or were not suitable. British critics are vocal enough about distant Guantanamo Bay; what would they have said if al Qaeda's finest had been corralled up at Greenham Common?

To return Saudis, Pakistanis, Egyptians to their native countries could invite a justice far more summary and brutal than that being meted out by the US - or, equally conceivably, virtual exoneration for fear that punishment might set off domestic political unrest.

A critic of America might accept these arguments. But they do not address another complaint: why doesn't the US formally declare its captives prisoners of war?

After all, America is fighting what it proclaims itself to be a "war against terrorism"; indeed, by construing September 11 as an "act of war" President George W. Bush invoked the right of self-defence contained in the United Nation's charter.

Thus the attack on Afghanistan, on whose battlefields the prisoners were taken. Surely, by any interpretation they are prisoners of war.

Not so fast. America talks of war, but war was never officially declared.

The Pentagon says those taken prisoner were not members of the Afghan Army, although that is debatable in the case of Taleban soldiers.

The al Qaeda fighters are different. Most of them were not Afghans, but "mercenaries of faith" mostly drawn from Arab and Islamic countries. They wore no uniform, the Pentagon insists, and had no rank.

Thus the terms of "battlefield detainees" and "unlawful combatants," have been constructed to distinguish them from prisoners of war.

These sophistries have two serious purposes.

First, if they were officially categorised as prisoners of war, Americans would lose their right to interrogate them beyond establishing their name, rank and military number.

These men are being held, first and foremost, to help the hunt for new facts that can be fitted into the far from complete mosaic of al Qaeda, and for clues as to the whereabouts of Mullah Mohammad Omar and Osama bin Laden.

Battlefield interrogators have done some preliminary work. Now the FBI, the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency will have their own, far longer turn at Guantanamo Bay.

But there is a second, more subtle reason the detainees are not declared prisoners of war, which gives ammunition to Washington's critics.

The US is out to avenge September 11, and this is a war of example.

The world has seen how US military power has wrecked al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is now seeing what happens to those taken prisoner.

America calculates that others tempted to take up arms against it may have second thoughts.

The question is where legitimate security requirements end and police state intimidation begins.

Round the clock lighting of cells may be deemed a sensible precaution.

But sleep deprivation and constant light are techniques of police states.

The problem is less America taking the law into its own hands, than what law it chooses to behave by.

- INDEPENDENT

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