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Two wrongs don't make a right
MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE INDEED is the decision of the United States to disregard the codified international law about prisoners of war (PoWs) as it deals insensitively with those "detained" by it during its ongoing campaign against the Al-Qaeda terrorists and the Taliban combatants in Afghanistan. The U.S. should first revoke this untenable decision and move quickly to put an end to the obnoxious practices that have come to light during the transportation as well as interrogation of most of these prisoners. According to the U.S. President, George W. Bush, these "detainees" can only be treated as "illegal combatants" with no plenary rights as applicable to any category of PoWs under the universally acknowledged Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration's stated reasoning is that the incarcerated fighters in question, numbering less than 200, were captured in a new kind of war against the purveyors of terror. This war is said to be absolutely different from the conventional military campaigns which typically involve the armed forces of two or more antagonistic states. By expounding this novel political thesis, the U.S. is setting dangerous new precedents in the international arena in a cavalier fashion. Not only that. Washington seems to be depriving itself of the opportunity to set a civilised example that might be relevant to future scenarios, as yet unforeseen, involving non-state players. What is therefore amiss about the present U.S. action is not just a quibble regarding the definition of PoWs. Widely chronicled, too, are the narrative reports as also some visual footage about the cruelty that the U.S. interrogators have already inflicted on their captives belonging to the Taliban-Osama axis of terror.
The sooner Washington recognises that two wrongs don't make a right, the better it will be for any sustainable international campaign against the globalised politics of terrorism. Two inter-linked developments, which seem to have set off the current crisis of international conscience over the American action, merit close scrutiny. First, citing the ferocious potential of the terrorist captives belonging to the Taliban-Osama mafia, the Bush administration has transported them to an American military facility at Guantanamo Bay from Afghanistan in almost unspeakable conditions of human indignity. Second, the coercive transportation has been compounded by the traumatic psychological pressure that is being exerted on the terrorist-captives at the Guantanamo complex in a bid to extract information from them about the vestiges of the Taliban-Osama network of savagery. If this is any `creative' way of humiliating and neutralising the barbaric terrorists, the U.S. has certainly not crowned itself with glory. To discern this reality is not to condone any of the despicable deeds of the Taliban-Osama school of terror.
Two other aspects of the American treatment of the terrorist prisoners show how the issues should have been handled with greater sensitivity. The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is in fact reported to have suggested to Mr. Bush that the "detainees" should be accorded the status of PoWs. The civilisational calculus of mankind does not admit of any other course, especially when the U.S. itself has deployed its overall conventional military machine, in one or more forms of the many possible postures, in the war against the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda adherents. Moreover, the Taliban, now deposed from power in Afghanistan, was arguably a `state' player on whom the United Nations had imposed sanctions even before the current American action. The crux of Gen. Powell's reported suggestion is that there is no reason why the U.S. should bend the definition of PoWs. On a different plane, the U.S. has transgressed even its own definition of terrorist-captives by according a differential status to the so-called "American Taliban" among them as distinct from those belonging to several other countries.
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