The massacre at Kunduz and the policy of targeted killings

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The massacre at Kunduz and the policy of targeted killings
28 December 2009

The massacre which took place at the beginning of September in Kunduz,
Afghanistan, taking the lives of up to 142 people, continues to
dominate the German media. But while considerable attention is given
to what happened and the cover-up which followed, barely anything has
been said about the political, historical and international
implications of the bloodiest military strike ordered by a German
commander since 1945.

This despite the fact that leading military commanders and politicians
are clearly intent on using the massacre to circumvent the
restrictions imposed on the German military as a consequence of the
crimes it committed in the Second World War.

It is now regarded as certain that a German colonel, Georg Klein, gave
the order for an air strike on two hijacked tankers in the early hours
of September 4, with the intention of killing the people who had
gathered near the vehicles.

There was no immediate danger to German soldiers or the German field
camp located seven kilometers away. Apparently, the colonel hoped to
strike down the leaders of local militias who were opposing the
international occupation force. In a note to his superiors written one
day after the attack, Klein acknowledged that he intended to
"annihilate insurgents through the use of air strikes."

In its edition of last week, Der Spiegel names some of the targets:
"Mullah Shamsuddin, an experienced commander of the Pashtun," as well
as the "four Taliban leaders Mullah Abdul Rahman, Maulawi Naim, Mullah
Siah and Mullah Nasruddin." The latter were "local leaders, who each
commanded around 15 fighters and controlled small areas around
Kunduz," the magazine reports.

They had been tracked down and pursued over the preceding days by
members of the top-secret KSK unit. Klein consulted with at least one
KSK soldier before he gave the command to attack. This indicates that
he clearly hoped to "annihilate" one or several of the local leaders.

In so doing--even though he may not have spoken directly with his
superiors—Klein "had good reason to believe that his superiors and the
German government would approve of his robust actions," notes Der
Spiegel on the basis of its investigation.

Two state secretaries, August Hanning (Interior Ministry) and Peter
Wichert (Defense Ministry), traveled to Kabul on October 21, 2008 in
order to confront the government of Hamid Karzai, following an
escalation of attacks on German soldiers. On their return to Berlin,
they had confidential discussions with representatives from the
Chancellery and the Interior, Defense and Foreign ministries over how
to proceed. Der Spiegel comments on the discussions: "Hanning is for a
harder course, he wants to hunt down those backing the Taliban. Hunt
down or be hunted, that is the alternative according to Hanning."

Since this initial meeting there have been further discussions by this
group aimed at organizing a behind-the-scenes transformation of the
role of the German army. In May 2009, KSK units began hunting down
alleged Taliban for the first time.

In April, the Defense Ministry had deleted an exception from the NATO
operations plan which prohibited German troops from practicing "the
use of deadly force" except in cases of self-defense. During the
summer, the deployment rules were changed accordingly.

The so-called "pocket cards" carried by every German soldier were
reworded to allow soldiers to respond with deadly force "against
individuals who are planning, preparing or supporting attacks, or who
exhibit other forms of hostile behaviour."

The term "other forms of hostile behavior" is so broad that it allows
German soldiers to retaliate against practically anyone opposed to the
presence of the German military. Colonel Klein therefore could quite
rightly feel he had the backing of his superiors when he gave his
order to attack and "annihilate" insurgents on September 4.

In adopting a policy of deliberate liquidation, the German army is
reverting to methods which are characteristic of modern colonial
warfare and stand in flagrant violation of elementary principles of
law. "Targeted killing" has become an established military term.
Entire books and numerous legal papers have been devoted to the topic.
A search for "targeted killing" on Google generates over one million hits.

A contribution on the web site of the Council on Foreign Relations,
the most important foreign policy think tank in the US, defines the
term as follows: “Targeted killings are used by governments to
eliminate individuals they view as a threat. Generally speaking, a
nation’s intelligence, security or military forces identify the
individual in question and carry out an operation intended to kill him
or her. Though questionable, the practice has been used by defense and
intelligence operations by governments around the world and has been
viewed with increased legitimacy since the start of the so-called war
on terror.”

In other words, "targeted killing" is aimed at the execution of
political opponents without accusation or judgment. Denunciation by a
secret service is sufficient to arrive at and carry out a death
sentence. The weapons used—precision bombs as in Kunduz,
remote-controlled missiles or remote-controlled explosive devices—are
such that the victims (and those around them) have no chance to defend
themselves.

Such methods are not new. But for a long time they were regarded as
the reserve of the secret services of totalitarian regimes. The Soviet
secret service GPU, for example, regularly hunted down and killed
political opponents of Stalin abroad. During the Cold War, the CIA
also carried out assassinations of selected politicians, but was later
required—at least officially—to abandon such practices. In 1981, an
executive order of the president declared: "No person employed by or
acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or
conspire to engage in, assassination."

In the course of the 1980s and 1990s, however, these guidelines were
increasingly abandoned. In 1986, US President Ronald Reagan ordered a
missile attack on the house of the Libyan head of state, Muammar Al
Gaddafi, in Tripoli, and in 1998, president Bill Clinton ordered
missile attacks on an alleged terrorist camp in Afghanistan and a
factory in Sudan. The justification for the attack on Gaddafi was the
bombing of a disco in Berlin frequented by US soldiers, while the
strikes ordered by Clinton were prompted by attacks on US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania.

A pioneer of the policy of "targeted killing" is the Israeli
government. Already in the 1970s, the Israeli secret service Mossad
had hunted down and murdered alleged terrorists. It directed its
operations, in particular, against the political leadership of the
Palestinian nationalist movement. Several leaders of Yasser Arafat's
Fatah were murdered by Israeli commandos. Following Fatah's
arrangement with Israel in the 1993 Oslo Agreement, the leaders of
Hamas, as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Amal, were targeted by
Mossad.

According to a report in the Middle East Quarterly, in the first
twelve months of the Intifada rebellion that began in the occupied
areas in September 2000, Israel carried out "at least forty cases of
assassinations of middle- and high-level Palestinian activists." The
Israeli armed forces proceeded with the utmost brutally, bombing cars
on public roads in densely populated areas or destroying houses,
killing entire families of the targeted victims. Due to their flagrant
illegality, the Israeli murders were a source of international
criticism, but behind the scenes the Israeli government could rely on
official backing, particularly from the US.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were used by the Bush administration
to drop any official reservations standing in the way of targeted
killings. Since then, the cold-blooded liquidation of political
opponents, purported to be "terrorists" or "Taliban," has become
common practice of the American forces occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.
This policy has been extended into Pakistan, where opponents of the US
or the Pakistani government have become the targets of
remote-controlled US drones.

Bush's successor Barack Obama has not only continued this policy, he
has intensified it. "It is a slight exaggeration to say that Barack
Obama is the first president in American history to have run in part
on a political platform of targeted killings—but not much of one,”
writes law professor Kenneth Anderson in a contribution for the
Brookings Institution. He adds in praise: “Obama was right as a
candidate and is correct as president to insist on the propriety of
targeted killings—that is, the targeting of a specific individual to
be killed, increasingly often by means of high technology,
remote-controlled Predator drone aircraft wielding missiles from a
stand-off position. The strategic logic that presses toward targeted
stand-off killing as a necessary, available and technologically
advancing part of counterterrorism is overpowering.”

Although there is no shortage of pundits prepared to justify this
practice, it is patently illegal. Not only does it violate the
abolition of the death penalty in numerous civilized countries, it
also contravenes the basic and internationally recognized legal
principle that nobody may be executed without a valid trial.

There is no limit once targeted killings have been recognized as
legitimate. Where is the dividing line between a terrorist and a
freedom fighter? How is one to differentiate between legitimate and
illegitimate resistance? In which countries are targeted killings
permissible—they have been deemed acceptable by imperialist
governments in relation to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq Sudan and
recently Yemen—and in which countries are they not? It is the
arbitrary decisions and geo-strategic interests of aggressor
governments that determine how the lines are drawn.

Under such conditions, the turn of the German army to a policy of
targeted killings must ring the alarm bell. The German army was
responsible for the most abominable crimes on its Eastern front during
the Second World War. It murdered huge numbers of civilian hostages in
retaliation for fallen German soldiers, carried out the summary
execution of partisans and prisoners of war, and participated in the
annihilation of the Jews. Most of these crimes remained unpunished
because they were allegedly not covered at the time by international
law. After the war, however, numerous provisions were introduced into
international law to prevent a recurrence of such atrocities. These
provisions are now being systematically circumvented and undermined.

Peter Schwarz

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d28.shtml

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