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Iraq shows up hypocrisy of big powers

When United States President Barack Obama announced a limited military intervention in northern Iraq against the Islamic State (IS), he painted a picture of the extreme plight and suffering of the Yazidi minorities. Invoking cries for help from thousands of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar and surrounded by IS terrorists intent on committing genocide, he put forward a humanitarian justification for ordering the US military to return to Iraq.

The wreckage of a car belonging to Islamic State militants that was targeted by a US air strike at Mosul Dam on Tuesday. The air strikes are motivated by fear that the IS might overrun a bastion of US power. Photo: Reuters

The wreckage of a car belonging to Islamic State militants that was targeted by a US air strike at Mosul Dam on Tuesday. The air strikes are motivated by fear that the IS might overrun a bastion of US power. Photo: Reuters

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When United States President Barack Obama announced a limited military intervention in northern Iraq against the Islamic State (IS), he painted a picture of the extreme plight and suffering of the Yazidi minorities. Invoking cries for help from thousands of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar and surrounded by IS terrorists intent on committing genocide, he put forward a humanitarian justification for ordering the US military to return to Iraq.

Once American aerial strikes began disrupting the IS’ attempts to annihilate the Yazidis, horror stories about the hardships and desperation of this quaint ethnic group proliferated in the global media. From a nondescript community of half a million people living along the borders of Iraq’s Kurdish Autonomous Region, the Yazidis suddenly hit the international limelight.

Yet, despite all the focus on the Yazidis and their imminent destruction at the hands of the IS, America’s military reinsertion into Iraq was driven by strategic calculation rather than altruistic sympathy or solidarity for a persecuted minority community. Mr Obama himself argued it was his duty to avert a direct threat posed by the IS to Iraq’s Kurdish capital of Erbil, where thousands of American citizens work in the US consulate and the oil industry.

Iraq’s Kurdish territory is a relatively well-governed haven for American energy giants such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron. It is also a playground for US intelligence and military personnel who have helped carve out this region as a proto-state itching to break away from the rest of Iraq when conditions permit.

A separate “Kurdistan” comprising Kurdish-populated contiguous land in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey is a nightmare for these four multi-ethnic countries, but Iraqi Kurds are the most advanced on the path to self-determination, thanks to American patronage. The US officially professes to be wedded to preserving Iraq’s territorial integrity, but the American role in maintaining maximum freedom for northern Kurdish areas has in effect weakened the control of the central government there.

Notwithstanding the humanitarian rhetoric about saving the Yazidis, the latest round of US air strikes in northern Iraq are primarily motivated by fear that the IS might overrun a bastion of American power and influence in a crucial location abutting major actors of the Middle East.

Iraqi Kurdish territory is the nearest to a permanent American base, colony or sphere of influence in the middle of a volatile, oil-rich region. The trauma of the Yazidis was added on to the agenda for armed intervention by Washington to give its geopolitical motive a moral cover and a public relations padding.

POLITICS OF SYMPATHY

Achieving political or economic objectives by mobilising public opinion around heartrending images and video footage of civilians at risk of mass murder is not necessarily cynical propaganda. In the case of the Yazidis, neutral observers have found that they are indeed an imperilled lot and the US military’s targeted attacks on the IS could mitigate their tragedy.

However, strategic policies dressed up in humanitarian sympathy are problematic because they are selective and convey a message that the lives of one set of civilians are more valued than those of other civilians. The immense human casualties incurred during the three-year-long war in Iraq’s neighbour, Syria, has not yet propelled any American military operation. Rather, the US has clandestinely armed some Syrian anti-regime rebels and tolerated American allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that have wantonly militarised Syria and worsened the violence there.

The double standard in protecting Yazidis vis-a-vis other civilians in the region stands out like a glaring question mark for the Obama administration. If Yazidis are at risk, so are Russian-speaking residents of eastern Ukraine who are being subjected to indiscriminate shelling and bombing by the Ukrainian military. The United Nations recently announced a doubling of civilian casualties in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to more than 2,000 persons due to the “counter-terrorism” operation of the Ukrainian armed forces against pro-Russian separatists.

No noteworthy condemnation, leave alone any military action, has emerged from Washington or European capitals against the brutality of their ally, the pro-Western central government of Ukraine.

Where was the humanitarian impulse of the US when Israel was meting out collective punishment on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip for the third time in eight years? The UN estimates that 70 per cent of the nearly 2,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza were civilians. Why did the blood of Palestinians, Syrians and eastern Ukrainians appear so cheap compared to that of the Yazidis?

The answer is obvious: Great powers galvanise humanitarian sympathy when it suits their selfish ends and turn a deaf ear to civilian protection when the perpetrators are their own allies. In this perverted schema, killing of all innocents is not bad. Only certain cases of injustice are objectionable and must be halted. Other rivers of blood can keep flowing in accordance with the national interests of major powers.

The result of this discriminatory treatment is a world that perpetuates hierarchies of pain, dehumanises a large number of civilians and applies international justice discriminatorily. Like the US and the Europeans, Russia and China, too, pay lip service to international law and fairness but act contrarily in theatres of strategic importance to them.

If certain international conflicts and problems remain intractable, the reason is the hypocrisy of big players who can make a positive difference but choose to do otherwise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sreeram Chaulia is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonipat, India.

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