Collective humanitarian intervention is a treble misnomer: it is hegemonic, politically motivated and an intervention that leads to an imposition. 170 MILLION LIVES LOST TO CIVIL WARS, GENOCIDE, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DISRUPTIONS FROM 1945 TO 2000
Saima Raza

Between 1945-2000 almost 40 million lives have been lost to conflict and the inclusion of civil wars brings the figure up to a harrowing 216 million (excluding structural violence such as disease, poverty and famine). A more conservative figure puts the figure at 170 million (including civil wars, genocide, social and economic disruptions). In addition, the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme at the Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research has revealed the number of conflicts in the world are increasing, the most ‘conspicuous’ area being the Middle East – a region of central importance in terms of the world’s oil supply and the world’s religions.
. At the 2005 UN World Summit, member states agreed that there is a universal ‘Responsibility to Protect’ populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility principally lies with the state suffering the humanitarian crisis, but if this state is unable or unwilling to act, the international community may do so instead (UN 2005).

The Legal principles

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter declares, states cannot use force or threats against other nations and Article 2 (7) affirms the UN cannot interfere in matters of domestic jurisdiction, whilst Article 39 states the Security Council may use force in response to ‘any threat to peace or act of aggression’. Article 51 asserts the right to self defence – the USA employed this in the case of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban (backed by the UN).
Academics have argued for the ‘right of unauthorised humanitarian intervention in customary international law (CIL). They believe it is this ‘right’ that is limited practically and not its existence that is debatable. Yet there is little evidence that the international community has ever considered such a right as legally binding or a sine qua non of CIL. This ‘right’ lacks the two binding characteristics of international law that of: observance and wide acceptance. Therefore humanitarian intervention is a permissive not mandatory norm allowing for a wide degree of selectivity.

The Cold War

Humanitarian intervention during the Cold War saw : the Indian intervention in East Pakistan in 1971 leading to the creation of Bangladesh; the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia in 1978 which led the overthrow of Pol Pot and the Tanzanian intervention in Uganda in 1979 which led to the overthrow of Idi Amin. Neither of these were primarily based on humanitarian grounds. However, India had also invoked strong humanitarian claims. The Bangladesh case is an instance, by far the most important in our times, of the unilateral use of military force justified inter alia, on human rights grounds where India succeeded.
Many of the inter-state problems and civil wars that had been frozen during the Cold War, surfaced increasingly with its end. .As a response to such humanitarian crises, the perception of ‘something had to be done’ and a ‘duty to protect’ has evolved. In this whole context, humanitarian intervention emerged as one of the most appropriate mechanisms in finding solutions to the crises of the new era and many practices of humanitarian intervention have been conducted since the end of the Cold War.
In contrast with the state practices during the Cold War, the post- Cold War interventions in Iraq (1991); especially the creation of safe havens for the Kurdish population, Somalia (1991-1992), Bosnia (1992-1995), Rwanda (1994), Kosovo (1999) and East Timor (1999) were all legitimated in humanitarian terms by the intervening states. However, none of these interventions had been legitimated by the UN Security Council solely on humanitarian grounds because the UN Charter does not incorporate the right to humanitarian intervention.

Issue of Humanitarian Intervention
The international arena faces a dilemma of a double-edged sword – firstly is there a ‘right to intervene’ for humanitarian purposes due to an imminent threat of mass atrocity? Recent history has shown us there ought to have been but at numerous crucial times an intervention to prevent catastrophe has not taken place. This ties into the second of the predicaments mainly that of the geo-political game that super powers have become so apt at playing even at the risk of millions of lives lost in the post-Cold War era. Therefore there is a fragile right to intervene but the powerful members of the Security Council will only do so if there are tangible benefits to be gained.  If a state is geographically insignificant for instance as Rwanda is then it can be assumed they should be resigned to their vicious and bloody end. However if one is strategically placed such as Kosovo is then a reluctant albeit ‘un-collective’ intervention may take place.  But this can work in the opposite direction as in the case of Sudan whereby due to geopolitical war mongering over oil resources the Security Council (especially China) did not wish to intervene lest it proves detrimental to their own interests in the region, which is that it is (currently) economically advantageous to them for the conflict to continue.
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Country Case Studies
Many calls for intervention have been made over the last decade - some of them answered and some ignored
The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 signalled the beginning of more intervention rather than less. The ‘war on terror’ varies from other wars in that it has no ‘clear temporal or spatial limit’. The US has shown it is prepared to act pre-emptively rather than respond to actual attacks. This should not allow the US to overthrow regimes with dire human rights records, nor does it legitimise the use of force against states deemed unfriendly in order to deny them those effects already in possession of other states. It is unlikely that conditions likely to foster intervention for purposes of counter-terrorism would coincide with calls for interventions in cases of actual gross violations of human rights. This may signify the beginning of an era of intervention based on a non-humanitarian angle and one confined to national interests and hegemonic fantasies.
There is undeniable unrest in the world today - nations such as Chad, Congo, Ethiopia, Kashmir, Palestine/Israel, Liberia, Somalia, Northern Uganda and Thailand continue to suffer unbearably, their pleas falling on deaf ears. No collective efforts are being made to tackle these humanitarian crises. All the nations are third world, non-Western and of little political significance (with the exception of Israel) to warrant intervention. These people deserve more than words of sympathy from the international community – but that is all they are getting. Intervention can ‘greatly help people when they are desperate, but the conflicts going on the world today are a testament to the inaction that has become a habit for the international community. Perhaps we are ‘asking for miracles’.
The case studies paint a picture of superpower hegemony and political interest with the USA gaining from almost every intervention.

Rwanda: ‘The Triumph of Evil’
The fateful evening of April 6 1994 triggered a period of slaughter that was unparalleled in recent human history. A period which left Rwanda bereft, handicapped and violated, with arguably to this day its recovery not complete. The shooting down of Habyrimana’s plane gave Hutu hardliners the pretext to wage full scale slaughter on the Tutsi and moderate Hutu’s. The genocide that followed has been described as the ‘fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century’ when within the course of one hundred days 800,000 Tutsi’s and moderate Hutu’s lost their lives. The world did nothing to stop it, and the US ignored extensive early warnings about imminent mass violence’.
Rather than discuss the slaughter or viable options for Rwanda the USA decided to take an approach with deadly consequences - one that included the withdrawal of UNAMIR as well as blocking the deployment of UN reinforcements effectively leaving Rwandans to their fate. It appears the Hutu’s had counted on this, so well was their operation planned and the international community’s actions (or inactions in this case) were as predictable as ever. The Clinton administration remembered the Somalian affair and the death of US soldiers and the costs of avoiding Rwanda were none – the final decision was made and fate of the Tutsi’s sealed. Other powerful nations such as Russia and France refused to intervene on the basis that it was an ‘internal affair’.

There are many theories as to when President Clinton knew of the genocide and whether the violence could have been stopped. It seems unlikely that USA intelligence could have overlooked something on this scale.
Western intervention came too late as they lacked the will for preventive deployment quick enough to stop the mass killings – not because they could not but because they would not. When France did obtain a UN Security Council resolution in the last days of the genocide authorizing its Operation Turquoise – a supposed humanitarian intervention in western Rwanda which was transparently a political act aimed at securing a territorial foothold for the defeated genocidal regime. This showed how intervention can easily be manipulated for strategic purposes thereby discrediting the very idea of humanitarian intervention in central Africa.

Bosnia & the Butcher of the Balkans
Prior to 1991 Yugoslavia was composed of six republics, with Bosnia the most ethnically heterogeneous of the six republics. Within days of Bosnia’s secession (1992), Bosnian Serb soldiers begun rounding up non Serbs beating and executing them.. Muslims and Croats were subject to draconian and racist social rules. The Serbs knew that ‘violent deportation and a killing campaign would not be enough to achieve lasting ethnic purity and implemented a policy of degradation and destruction, by forcing fathers to castrate their sons or molest their daughters as well as raping and often impregnating young women. The world stood by as 200,000 Bosnians were killed and more than 2 million displaced. Although economic sanctions were imposed and humanitarian aid delivered, no State intervened to prevent the genocide. These heinous atrocities occurred in a country whose welfare was simply not in the US national interest.

Kosovo: Massacre in Europe
Chomsky argues the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in support of ethnic Albanian Kosovars (1999) was a strict violation of the ‘do no harm’ principle – the intervention taken in the name of humanitarianism was a ruse whilst the real interest of the US was to ‘complete its substantial takeover of Europe’. Chomsky infers the US and NATO were uninterested in working towards a viable solution and measures proposed by them were suggested deliberately to antagonise Milosevic thus guaranteeing his rejection of the peace accords.
He goes on to state: ‘the bombing caused the Serbs to be even more aggressive in their ethnic cleansing attacks on the Kosovars; it was thus counter-productive and an act of further hypocrisy since it brought about the ethnic cleansing that the NATO intervention was purportedly about preventing’
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East Timor: A ‘Genocide in Paradise’
At the same time as Kosovo a crisis was brewing in East Timor. In August 1999 the nation was preparing for a referendum to choose between independence or autonomy from Indonesia. The UN confirmed almost 80% of the population had voted for independence, provoking the militiamen to launch an assault that saw 59,000 being driven from their homes and up to 5000 killed. This had the potential to become the new genocide. Australia called for a UN peacekeeping force but Indonesia disagreed. In September following months of violence the Security Council authorised 8,000 Australian troops to use ‘all means necessary’ to restore law and order in the territory (employing International law principles) – nonetheless by this time over 5000 had lost their lives. The Security Council had insisted on Indonesia ’s consent to intervention (especially Russia and China ) whilst the US , EU and Australia had a larger interest in a stable Indonesia. Fresh violence broke out in 2006 prompting New Zealand, Australia and Portugal to sent troops in.

Kosovo and East Timor both challenged the international community’s perception of its duties of humanitarian intervention as both featured ethnic cleansing and the denial of peoples’ rights in a territory at the hands of a larger power of which it was a part. In both cases the international community failed to intervene in a disaster partly of its own making.

Sierra Leone and Silent War Crimes
The Sierra Leone Civil War began in 1991, initiated by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under Foday Sankoh. Tens of thousands died and more than 2 million people (over one-third of the population) were displaced because of the 11-year conflict. Whereas Kosovo concluded with a costly victory, in Sierra Leone the new president Kabbah was compelled to form a coalition with the rebels (the self-same rebels that had been responsible for abducting 4000 children and killing 2000 people). The international community and the UN had effectively advised Sierra Leone that if the rebels could not be beaten they must become a part of the government. Such an outcome had the effect of rendering speeches on humanity ‘inadequate and futile’. The international community was simply not interested in seeking a more just solution. No developed country was willing to send peacekeeping troops which could have dealt with the rebels more effectively. If Africa had ‘got the international support that Kosovo was getting, then ’it would have had a real chance to turn the corner’. But once again geopolitical designs sought to exclude African predicaments out of their agendas – this conflict was after all not their concern, being a strictly ‘internal affair’(albeit one that was bent on mass slaughter), implying their interests were elsewhere, where there insatiable appetites for resources and political upper handedness would be satisfied.

Afghanistan: ‘Silent Genocide’
When the USA went to war with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in October 2001, the human rights of the Afghan population were not uppermost in their minds. It was an exercise in ‘self-defence’ against the atrocities of September the 11th. The US armed forces thus initiated actions to deter further attacks on the US – also citing their wishes to minimise civilian casualties and alleviating suffering through food/medicine. The US relied on the notion of self-defence thereby bypassing the need for Security Council resolutions.
The Bush administration not only used the rationale of bringing the perpetrators of September 11 to justice but also painted its move into Afghanistan as a necessary act of humanitarian intervention to depose the repressive Taliban government - one that was justified by the precedents of Haiti and Kosovo. Invoking the humanitarian rationale, NATO states such as Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands also eventually sent armed contingents. The campaign ended up doing what it was supposed to eliminate namely that of terrorizing the civilian population especially as US bombing did not often distinguish between military and civilian targets.  The result was a high level of civilian casualties; one estimate, by Marc Herrold, placed the figure of civilian deaths at between 3,125 and 3,620, from Oct. 7, 2001 to July 31, 2002 creating a humanitarian situation that was, in many respects, worse than that under the Taliban. Could Afghans honestly claim that this life was an improvement over Taliban rule? Many Afghans would say that at least the Taliban were able to provide one thing: basic physical security.

Iraq: The Resource War
How can one justify going to Iraq when 3 million had died in the Congo? How can one trust US motives to go to war in Iraq when they had been complicit in its atrocities? During Iran/Iraq war when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers, the US provided the intelligence information to do so. During the 1988 genocide against the Kurds when Hussein murdered 10,000 Kurds the US responded with million dollars of commercial loans. The US did nothing when Saddam later murdered 30,000 Kurds.
If indeed the intervention had been humanitarian it is unlikely that the United States would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on it, nor would American forces have fought with such a rough disregard for the lives, property, and dignity of individual Iraqis.
U.S lawmakers have been and continue to be faced with a choice between Iraqi stability and American Empire, and continue to choose the latter.
The US led coalition is an occupying army and the idea of returning Iraq to the Iraqis would mean no permanent bases, no oil law that gives foreign firms super-sweet deals and no radical restructuring of the Iraqi economy. The US has established an ‘empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free economy, democracy…enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever seen’.
. The bombing campaign, the use of indiscriminate firepower in populated areas, the failure to provide security in the wake of the invasion, and the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib all suggest a war driven by something other than humanitarian motives.

Sudan: A Rhetorical Genocide?

According to the UN 200,000 people have died since 2003, almost 4 million depend on aid and 2 million are displaced. The US has sought to undermine Sudan for reasons which are glaringly obvious, primarily that of denying oil to its competitors as well as utilising the situation to deflect attention from the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles. This also acts as a means to redirect blame from Israel and its actions in the Occupied Palestinian territories, suggesting the situation in Darfur is worse.
A US intervention would lead to a real genocide a la Rwanda and not the current “rhetorical” genocide. By pouring arms into first south-eastern Sudan and since discovery of oil in Darfur into that region as well, Washington fuelled the conflict that led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their homes. Eritrea hosts and supports the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the umbrella NDA opposition group, and the Eastern Front and Darfur rebels. The Darfur crisis is dictated by the political economy of oil and a strategic opportunity to draw Africa into the global ‘war on terror’ by sharply drawing lines that demarcate ‘Arab’ against ‘African’ .
China has invested $300 million to expand Sudan’s largest refinery and now buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil. Well-known academics such as Noam Chomsky and Michel Chossudovsky have investigated a key feature of US policy in the Middle-East: to deny oil to competitors, especially China. Former US President Jimmy Carter has said that instead of working for peace in Sudan, the US government has basically promoted a continuation of the war.

. Africa the bleeding continent
Much of the warfare in Africa has stemmed from the failure of the world to stop the Rwandan genocide (800,000 deaths). The DRC war from 1998-2003 was the widest interstate war in modern African history – responsible for 3.8 million lives and a million displaced. Again the world stood by and watched for almost 5 years whilst millions died. Whilst Somalia remains a weak and fragile state and has been since the late 1980s’ with little optimism for improvement. There has been renewed violence there recently involving Islamic militants and Ethiopia. Violence, drought and flooding appear to leave Somalia in perpetual humanitarian crisis. In Sierra Leone again much of the world looked the other way whilst thousands of lives were claimed. Africa boasts many failed states – yet neither the UN due to resource constraints or political bureaucracy nor the international community due to lack of geopolitical interest in the region seem to be concerned with the death of thousands each month.

The Iraq tragedy is a result only of the American Right’s drive to place US power far beyond the reach of any potential rival or coalition of rivals.
The Kosovo intervention ‘contributed to the erosion of UN credibility by using NATO as the legal cover. (US troops 95%)’.The operation was about Washington’s’ geopolitical designs mainly that of expanding NATO. As one NATO official recalled: ‘We’re enmeshing them in the NATO culture, both politically and militarily, so they begin to think like us—and over time—act like us’.
The lessons of East Timor and Kosovo is that ‘in the age of human rights enforcement people should not have to fight and die for their international human rights, the world must develop a mechanism to do this for them’. Instead “Humanitarian intervention,” is in this world, intervention authorized or directed by the United States (Chomsky). The prospective leader of “humanitarian intervention” is also notorious for its ability to maintain a self-image of benevolence whatever it does a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world’ (Chomsky)
Despite the call for a ‘right to humanitarian intervention’ – states have been reluctant to cede to this if only to cover their own actions. During the Rwandan genocide the US resisted using the word ‘genocide’ – as this would have made their inaction untenable. This inaction was repeated in East Timor – mere months after Kosovo.  The US actions against Afghanistan emboldened the Israeli government to enhance its military response against terrorist activities, which it argued were sponsored by the Palestinian government. Similarly, criticism of Russian policies in Chechnya diminished after Russia showed support for the USA.

Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas
Local States
Peter Beahr states intervention must be in proportion to the gravity of the situation and the impact limited to what is necessary. His thesis proposes a preference for countries in the region that should be made and the intervention must end as soon as their objective is attained.

Reform
Alan Buchanan suggests an international legal rule allowing humanitarian intervention without a Security Council Resolution – a new treaty specifying rules for intervention would be combined with changes to the UN Charter.

Cosmoplitan Force
Pattison proposes a cosmopolitan UN force of up to 150,000 troops as a legitimate force to tackle egregious human rights violations and mass atrocity. He admits this to be a long term goal for cosmopolitan democratic institutions stating ‘whilst this is not on the cards today, nor will it be tomorrow, or at any time in the near future, it is in the realm of the possible’. The premise of humanitarian intervention is to shock the ‘moral conscience of mankind’.

21st Century Outlook
The new wars are dominated exclusively by identity-based politics (exclusion of certain people e.g. ‘the other’ as the Tutsi’s in Rwanda), which are linked to disintegration of states not expansion of territory. Wars have become cultural and religious in nature and conflicts increasingly take place between ethnic groups. In Samuel P. Huntington’s influential thesis ‘Clash of Civilisations’ it was proposed that conflict between the seven civilisations (as he has divided them) will be predominantly based on culture as opposed to ideological differences. He suggests each century’s wars can be attributed to an overlying factor/belief: in the ‘18th century the primary reasons for war were due to the monarchical system and its machinations, the 19th century saw nationality take centre stage, the 20th century ideology played the leading role in conflict and the 21st century ‘culture will be the locus of war’ (Huntingdon p.310). He suggests cultural similarities lead to co-operation such the European Union and the USA. And certainly the current conflict in Palestine is cultural and religious in its nature but it is difficult to propose there are two homogenous sides (i.e. Islam v. the West). One must consider the internal dynamics and plurality of civilisations (Edward Said, 1995). Countries risk being put in one of two camps dominated by the ‘us versus them’ mentality – often phrases such as ‘Clash of Civilisations’ ‘reinforce defensive self-pride rather than understanding the interdependence of our time’ (Said, 1995). It is important that an ‘alliance of civilisations’ takes place as opposed to nations making bellicose statements and refusing to deal with the reality which is the interconnectedness of innumerable lives which includes ‘us’ and ‘them’ .
The current debate regarding humanitarian intervention takes place in the context of “geopolitical shifts which have fundamentally altered the global security environment since the United Nations Charter was drafted” Humanitarian intervention remains an ideal governed by very little discernable rules – the international community does not have any criteria to judge the legitimacy of intervention. This disparity between modern security challenges and rules for managing intervention need to be resolved – as this will enable transparency and less reliance on legal loopholes when the need to intervene arises.

Humanitarian intervention is being used to sideline International law. The US has been undermining the UN by promoting ‘humanitarian wars’ and even ‘humanitarian bombing’ The real reasons for intervention are to guarantee raw materials and markets. In today’s world some cases deserve the intervention imperative, yet others are neglected – so whilst some demand interventions in Darfur, they remain silent about the Congo and Palestine which is one of the most neglected.

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For many years, however, dissident writers such as Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger and others have warned the public against the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention.” In 1999, Pilger referred to it as “the latest brand name of imperialism,” while Chomsky and Herman have discussed at length this “old wine in new bottles” as merely the latest means by which the great powers of the world - or in most cases, the world’s only superpower - paint a thin coat of legitimacy on what might otherwise be understood as naked acts of aggression against sovereign states. Blair can spout his breathtaking drivel about internationalism and morality while zealously enforcing genocidal sanctions that kill 4,000 Iraqi infants every month, and the connection is seldom made (Pilger). Pilger claims under Blair’s “internationalism” any country can be declared a “rogue state” and attacked by the US and Britain, with or without NATO.
‘The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of the world the result is rage’ but as ever international politics are mired with hypocrisy where opposition to war is easier to express than a commitment to peace. The power of the elite few is becoming the destiny of millions (Upendra Baxi) and so it appears as we ‘drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.
Perhaps there remains but a glimmer of hope that the same species that has invented war is capable of inventing peace!?
Saima Raza (LLB (Hons), LLM, LLM (Dist.), Grad. Cert) is a Doctoral Researcher