Staged War on Terror?
By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
May 18, 2004
"War on Terror, an open-ended scenario where in the name of war against terrorism, any government can do whatever they fancy to do. Any opposition groups can be labeled as the "enemy combatants", put into jail without trial, left there to rot for years.
Guantanamo Bay is one living example.
To impress the American and the European powerful governments, many other nations are staging their own "war on terror", magnifying “Gitmo-ism” many folds through their own grotesque customized potion.
On March 2, 2002, six innocent Pakistanis and one Indian migrant were summarily executed at the outskirt of Skopje in Macedonia. And the government of Macedonia was directly involved in masterminding this horrific episode. Just after the cold-blooded killings, the previous Macedonian interior minister came forward under the limelight he so coveted and declared that these men were terrorists; they were linked with Al Qaeda. Photographs of semi-automatic weapons and uniforms of the men were "found"(planted) beside the murdered bodies to boost the lie.
In subsequent information gathering by the various human rights organizations it was found that the six Pakistani Muslims were Shiites, “unlikely to have been sympathetic to a radical Sunni organization like Al-Queda.”
And the Indian man in the group was identified as a Sikh, no reason to be involved in
extremists’ violent cause.
Here is one explanation why it was staged:
"In late 2001, after a six-month guerrilla war with ethnic Albanian rebels, relations between Macedonia's nationalist government and the outside world were at a low ebb. Diplomats, government officials and investigators here have suggested that the government hoped to use the post-Sept. 11 campaign against terror to give the government a free hand in its conflict with the mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians." [3]
The world would have never known this horrific event unless the former Macedonian
government was defeated in the subsequent election and the new left leaning government showed courage in taking initiative in conducting a transparent investigation.
Doesn't this disclosed revolting event raise more questions in other so many "war on terror" events occurring around our world? Killings of more than one hundred Muslims in Thailand just last month, using excessive force are still roofed in state sponsored mystery. The government of Thailand claimed that the Islamic groups had attacked on Thai police in several districts of "Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces in southern Thailand on Tuesday, April 28. Thai officials report that 107 suspected assailants, most between 15 and 20 years of age, and five security officers were killed after nine hours of violent clashes. Army and police sources unofficially put the number of dead assailants at more than 120. Approximately 15 persons were arrested."
Human Rights Watch raised the relevant issue: “While army and police officers certainly have the right to defend themselves when attacked, there needs to be an investigation into whether such a high level of lethal force was necessary,” said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “The response of the security forces appears to have been disproportionate and may have harmed civilians or put them at risk, especially when heavily armed security forces stormed into the Kruesie Mosque in Pattani.” [4]
Thai police and military claimed that they had known about the militant assaults in
advance and they were waiting for them. "If the authorities knew that attacks were being planned, why didn’t they arrest them instead of lying in wait and opening fire? Was it necessary to shoot people armed only with machetes, or could many of them have been instead taken into custody?”
Last year when George Bush Jr. went to Thailand for the APEC meeting, the Thai government “also stage-managed the arrest of so-called 'terrorists' allegedly trying to put together and set off a 'dirty radioactive bomb'. Interviews with the suspected 'terrorists' in the Thai media suggested that they were victims of a frame-up by the Thai intelligence to score brownie points with their US counterparts.” [1]
Anyone who raises these issues to be investigated in Thailand, is getting death threats, some of them even had disappeared. Amnesty International has provided a few of these examples in their May 17, 2004 press release. “Vasant Phanich, a prominent human rights lawyer and National Human Rights Commissioner, received a written death threat on 8 May from an anonymous source at his private residence. Several days earlier, he had returned from southern Thailand, where he was conducting an investigation into the recent violence there in his capacity as Human Rights Commissioner. He had also expressed concerns publicly about human rights violations in the context of the violence.
Jaran Dittha-apichai, another National Human Rights Commissioner investigating
and reporting on the situation, has received hundreds of emails, some of which
threatened him with abduction and death. He also received threatening telephone
calls at his home. In a similar pattern, academics in the far south have received threatening letters.” [2]
And disappearance of a prominent Muslim human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit has
not been solved either. Before his mysterious “disappearance”, he too had received anonymous death threats. [2]
It is definitely Thai government’s responsibility to provide security to the people,
and there were previous attacks by the militants against the Thai Army camps and the allegations are abundant that terrorists from neighboring nations had infiltrated the area, but does the militancy give the Thai government absolute authority conducting brutal force against anyone, using extra-judicial killings, and applying cruel tortures as a collective punishment? Would these extreme measures be able to root out feared terrorism or would it contribute more to turn toward extremist groups out of their anger, humiliation and desperation?
If the staged “war on terror” becomes the norm of our world, the hard fought civilization that human beings able to build would take an aberrant shape and form, there would be more terror to follow out of these state sponsored massacres.
It is esoteric to observe that various deviant elements, the extremist groups, and
even many so-called civilized governments are adopting these malicious tactics, as if the Al-Qaeda terrorists are playing a synchronized game, a game where the team players looked like powerful folks in high level of various governments, speeding up the “promised” apocalypse by their tricks and trickery.
Staging war and staging terror, in real world, could cause more un-staged war and
un-staged terror when the real “clash of civilizations” do get materialized that apparently are the goals of many secretive brutes.
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References |
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1. Satya Sagar, “Panic in Bangkok”, Znet, May 6, 2004.
2. “Thailand: Threats against human rights defenders”, Amnesty International, May 17, 2004. 3. Nicholas Wood, “A Fake Macedonia Terror Tale That Led to Deaths”, The New York Times, May 17, 2004. 4. “Thailand:
5. Siddharth Varadarajan, “Indian Killed in Fake Encounter”, Times of India, May 4, 2004. |
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) is a freelance writer. His email address is: sohelkarim@yahoo.com
Good article.
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