Searching For Justice

On 27 June, Arundhati Roy, the celebrated writer and peace activist, announced the conclusions of the jury of conscience of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) that had been meeting for three days to discuss the legality of the US/ UK war on Iraq. Meeting in Istanbul, the jury heard testimonies from 54 members of a panel of advocates who had come from across the world, including Iraq, the US and the UK. Roy, in her capacity as chair of the jury of conscience, defined this war as one of the most unjust in history: "The Bush and Blair administrations blatantly ignored the massive opposition to the war expressed by millions of people around the world," she said. "They embarked upon one of the most unjust, immoral, and cowardly wars in history."

Inspired by Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher who convened a tribunal in 1967 to investigate the American war in Vietnam, the WTI was first convened on 26-27 June, 2003 at a workshop organised at the European Peace and Human Rights Networks Conference of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in Brussels. Since then, the tribunal has held 20 sessions in cities around the world including Rome, New York, London, Hiroshima and Mumbai before holding its final session in Istanbul.

As the eminent international law professor Richard Falk said in his opening speech during the Istanbul session, the UN Charter "confirms in its opening words that it is the peoples of the world and not the governments or even the UN that have been entrusted with the ultimate responsibility for upholding [the principle of] renunciation of war. [The WTI] is dedicated to precisely this undertaking as a matter of law, as an imperative of morality and human rights, and as an engagement with the politics of global justice." Accordingly, the WTI was a remarkable setting that was not only a venue for telling the truth about the war, but also for forging and shaping important principles of international law.

For over three days, the WTI was more than simply an opportunity for people to vent their frustrations against US economic globalisation policy and its quest for world empire, as some cynics who are blindly obsessed with conspiracy theories would be quick to assert. Rather, the WTI was a venue that empowered people by giving them a chance to break their silence and to tell the truth about the war. The significance of the process of truth-telling lies not only in its cathartic effect, but also in allowing people to draw connections and to reach a deeper understanding of the war.

For example, while the horrible abuses in the Abu Ghreib prison were written off by the US as the acts of some delinquent soldiers, we heard numerous testimonies at the WTI that showed how these abuses were not an aberration but a direct result of the manner in which the Bush administration has waged its so-called "war on terror". While not drawing a direct link between Guantanamo and Abu Ghreib, Barbara Olshansky, Assistant Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, showed in her powerful presentation how the climate of Guantanamo created a legal "black hole" (which eerily resembles Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's "bare life") that made possible what happened in Abu Ghreib.

Similarly, Amy Bartholomew, a law professor at Carlton University, Ottawa, Canada, persuasively argued that it would be wrong to simply argue that the US is acting in a lawless manner, in violation of international law. Far more dangerously, Bartholomew insisted, the US is setting out "to define and to state the law -- to constitute it -- unilaterally -- monologically, as we might say. The Bush doctrine means that the 'law' that will now rule the globe is 'Empire's Law' -- a unilaterally constituted and imposed, illegitimate, and unaccountable rule by a global power that attempts to perform the role of a global sovereign declaring itself to be 'the exception'."

In a similar vein, and in an attempt to expose the lies told by Arab regimes about their conduct during the war, I argued that one must look for historical and structural, and not merely accidental and tactical, reasons behind the disgraceful manner in which these regimes colluded with the US to make the war on Iraq possible. In contrast to the millions of people who took to the streets across the world on 15 February 2003, Arab capitals saw only a handful of protesters, who were far outnumbered by security forces.

More significantly, when the Egyptian authorities reluctantly allowed people to demonstrate against the war, and when people finally took to the streets of Cairo in large numbers on 20 March, 2003, it was not surprising to discover that the slogans soon shifted from being against the war to being against the regime. Those who took to the streets on that momentous day intuitively understood that the US war on Iraq and the lack of democracy in the region are intricately linked.

As has been borne out by the first annual report of the National Council for Human Rights, an official Egyptian body, the Egyptian regime, through its infamous practice of "extraordinary rendition" whereby "terror subjects" are claimed to be regularly dispatched by the US for interrogation in Egyptian detention centres under torture, has been an active player in the US "war on terror". Again, the point is that this is not a mere tactical manoeuver on the part of the Egyptian government, but a characteristic feature of Arab regimes colluding with the US over the past fifty years to help (sometimes directly, more often not) in fulfilling the US interests in the region.

This disgraceful state of affairs has been allowed to continue for over sixty hears as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted in her infamous speech at AUC, I argued, primarily because of the lack of democracy in the region. It follows that as long as the US interests continue to be what they are, namely securing a steady and cheap supply of oil and an unconditional support of Israel, then promoting democracy in the region will not be a US priority. Rather, this will have to fall on the shoulders of local actors.

The testimonies delivered by the panel of advocates of the WTI were not only an opportunity to vent frustrations or preach to the converted. Rather, they were a serious attempt to get to the bottom of this illegal, cruel war. This effort in buttressing and upholding international law is something the WTI did not initiate. Rather, it is an effort that one can detect over the past century starting from the ratification in 1928 of the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy (the Kellog-Brand Pact) and reiterated in the Nuremberg Tribunal following WWII.

Coming in the wake of a brutal war used by the US to justify its quest for world dominance based on absolute security for itself, the WTI is a serious attempt to create a new law-making authority that would hold accountable individuals and institutions which violate the people's will.

Ever since the Bush administration took power in Washington in 2000, the US has been intent on imposing its imperious will on the world. Even before 11 September 2001, the neo-con war mongers in Washington started pursuing their own policies. Immediately after coming to power and before 11 September, the US decided not to join the Kyoto Agreement on the protection of the environment; it withdrew from the international conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa; and it obstructed the ratification of the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court. This unilateral, hegemonic attitude was not a product of 9/11; it only accelerated in alarming fashion after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and reached unprecedented heights in the war on Iraq.

The WTI offers one of the many alternative visions to this imperious war policy pursued by Washington. By telling the truth about the war on Iraq, the WTI is an avid reminder of the lofty anti-war principles that have informed the development of many aspects of international law over the past century, most importantly, the principles of criminal accountability that were vividly asserted in Nuremberg. Above all, and similar to the World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, the WTI insisted that "Another world is possible," adding that "if possible, it is necessary."