The Perfect Storm: the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul

By Walden Bello*

It was on the second day that I got the sense that
things were coming together in a way akin to that
whereby several climatic disturbances fuse to create
what meteorologists have called the “perfect storm.”

It was probably the combination of eyewitness accounts
that made clear beyond a shadow of doubt that the
siege of Fallujah in November 2004 was a case of
collective punishment; a damning expose of how the
so-called reconstruction of Iraq was actually meant to
make it a free-market paradise for corporations; and a
chilling analysis of how White House presidential
directives have made it possible for US agents to
snatch anyone anywhere in the world and transport him
or her to the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba on mere
suspicion of being an “enemy combatant.”

The Implacable Truth

The truth came out swinging like a
sledgehammer for three memorable days in Istanbul,
surprising even the toughest critics of Washington in
the audience about how viciously and systematically
the Bush administration has ripped apart the fabric of
international law, unilaterally rewritten the laws of
war, and made the systematic violation of basic human
rights the normal mode of governance in Iraq. There
were hardly any strident voices among those who
testified from June 24-27 at the World Tribunal on
Iraq in Istanbul. It was, for the most part, fact
laid upon fact, oftentimes in the form of
unforgettable images projected onscreen, not only of
frightened civilians fleeing the massive firepower
that American marines direct at their homes but also
of hundreds of hectares of valuable greenery on the
outskirts of Baghdad buried under tons of concrete to
deprive insurgents of hiding places.

The truth coming out in Istanbul was made even more
harsh by the ongoing final collapse of the lies that
the US and British governments constructed to justify
the invasion and occupation. The release of the now
infamous Downing Street memos revealed how early
during the Bush administration the decision for
invading Iraq was made and how the US and British
authorities manufactured the myth of Saddam’s
development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to
justify the planned invasion.

Contradiction seems to have become the order of the
day, with Vice President Dick Cheney saying one day
that the Iraqi is on its last legs, followed the next
by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserting that
the insurgency will go on for years. Meanwhile, the
servile US media decry the mess in Iraq, call upon the
Bush administration to recognize the bleak realities
on the ground, yet assert, like New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, that withdrawal is not an
option and that the only solution is to pour in more
US troops into the meat-grinder that Iraq has become.

A Collective Portrait of Deceit and Mayhem

Istanbul was a collective portrait of a war
drawn in compelling detail. This conflict, we
learned, is a war against civilians, since there is no
way for the American troops to distinguish between
civilians and insurgents, nor do they seem to want to.

It is a war against women and children, as shown by
the fact that 250 of the people killed in the second
siege of Falluja were women and children. Rape in
post-invasion Iraq, Iraqi witnesses testified, is
rampant, but a culture of shame and the lack of any
trust in the criminal investigating and prosecuting
abilities of the occupation regime has prevented
documentation of its scale.

It is a war against culture, with witness after
witness decrying the absolute failure of the occupiers
to protect 4,000 year old artifacts from looters, many
of whom could have been organized by commercial
interests outside Iraq.

It is a war with likely appalling consequences far
into the future in the form of rising incidence of
leukemia and other cancers owing to the massive
quantities of depleted uranium spewed all over the
country by American and British shelling.

The Damned

While US government actors, decisions, and
actions were the main focus of testimonies, other
actors were not spared.

The 50-nation “Coalition of the Willing” was portrayed
as a bunch of coerced, bribed, or opportunistic
governments that dutifully read the script of
“invasion-to-rid-Iraq-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction”
written by Washington in its futile attempt to provide
legitimacy for the invasion.

Ex-United Nations officials Hans von Sponeck and
Dennis Robinson showed convincingly why the UN became
one of the most hated organizations in Iraq owing to
the sanctions regime it implemented before the war and
its collaboration with American authorities after the
invasion.

Corporate complicity, the Jury of Conscience learned,
was extensive, involving not only infrastructure
builders like Halliburton and Bechtel and mercenary
recruiters like Blackwater and Dynacorp but also Big
Oil and large contract awardees like Nescafe and
Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The western media’s participation in the manipulation
of public opinion was one of the highlights of the
tribunal, as witnesses like writer Saul Landau pointed
to the complicity not only of right-wing press
entities like Fox News but also the icons of the
liberal press like the New York Times, whose reporter
Judith Miller actively disseminated government
disinformation on Saddam’s WMD capabilities and whose
editorial line continues to be to stabilize the
situation in Iraq by sending in many more US troops.
Not surprisingly, at the press conference after the
tribunal, jury chairperson Arundathi Roy said, “If
there is one thing that has come out clearly in the
last few days, it is not that the corporate media
supports the global corporate project; it is the
global corporate project.”

And there was, of course, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair. Blair’s image as George W. Bush’s key
collaborator is more than well-deserved, the jury
learned. For not only did he push his intelligence
services to manufacture evidence to support the myth
that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, but
he was an enthusiastic champion of externally imposed
regime change, though his own government lawyers told
him bluntly that there could be no justification found
for such a course of action in international law.
This made him, like Bush, “a very dangerous man,
indeed,” as one witness put it.

Civil Society Moves to Center Stage

The World Tribunal of Iraq was a striking display of
how global civil society is supplanting governments
and the corporate media as the source of truth,
justice, and direction as the latter institutions get
universally discredited, and how well it is performing
that role. The Istanbul session was the final act of
a two-year process of about 20 hearings held in
different parts of the world, including London,
Mumbai, Copenhagen, Brussels, New York, Japan,
Stockholm, South Korea, Rome, Frankfurt, Spain, Tunis,
and Genova. It was a nearly flawless performance of a
symphony of sorrow, outrage, and condemnation
organized by Turkish peace activists and performed by
over a hundred people drawn from all over the world
and from all walks of life, with a Jury of Conscience
made up of citizens of 10 countries and a Panel of
Advocates with 54 members.

It united senior leaders of the transborder people’s
movement like international lawyer and university
professor Richard Falk, head of the panel of
advocates, and human rights activist Chandra Muzzafar,
with nineties activists like celebrated novelist
Arundathi Roy, and members of an even younger
generation like Herbert Docena, who presented a
universally applauded portrait of the economic
colonization of Iraq, Dahr Jamail, who has become one
of the most trusted sources of information on the war,
and Iraqi activist Rana Mustafa, who risked life and
limb along with photojournalist Mark Miller to make
sure the world would have a film record of the
destruction of Falluja.

Enemy Combatants All

The Jury of Conscience’s conclusions and
recommendations are likely to have a powerful moral
influence on the course of events, especially its call
on US and Coalition soldiers to exercise their right
to conscientious objection and on communities
throughout the world to provide haven for those who
heed this call. On the last day of the tribunal, jury
leader Arundathi Roy observed that her thoughts and
actions would categorize her as an “enemy combatant”
in the US government’s view. As I joined the
thunderous applause for the jury’s decisions, I
thought, yes, why not, we are all enemy combatants
now, and proud of it.

*Walden Bello is executive director of Focus on the
Global South and professor of sociology at the
University of the Philippines.