Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Choukine this week. Israel vowed to continue its campaign against Hezbollah, dismissing mounting international concern that its strikes on Lebanon threaten a fragile US-Iran truce that could lead to peace negotiations.
Image: Abbas Fakih | AFP
TIME seemed to stand still. The world went eerily anxious, waiting with bated breath. US President Donald Trump’s finger was on the trigger as the clock began to race faster.
Iran, a nation of more than 90 million people, was on the brink of apocalypse. “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” were the chilling words of Trump, leader of the so-called “Free World”.
According to literature on Open Access platforms, Iranian civilisation is one of the “world’s oldest and continuous cultures that has shaped humanity, influenced art, science, governance and strategy globally”. The writings of the Persian scholars are said to have formed “core texts in European universities” over centuries.
Trump, with spine-chilling arrogance and care-free attitude of a bully, was asked by a reporter if his evil threats were not tantamount to genocide and war crimes, to which he typically brushed aside the question as if it did not represent the feelings and views of civilised people the world over.
In the midst of Trump’s threat to unleash mayhem of a kind never seen in contemporary history, leaders of our international governance system were noticeable by their absence, having gone into hiding.
As the world burned, they said nothing. Iranians were almost all alone, with their depleted weapons of self-defence in the wake of an illegal invasion of their sovereignty by the US and, typically, Israel in tow.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was inaudible and visible by his absence in the hour of great need for his services in line with his oath of office. The European Union — the self-righteous and self-declared protectors of the so-called rules-based world order — also retreated to their shell in Brussels.
As a norm, they never speak publicly against Trump, their Big Brother. Unless, of course, occasionally, such as when he threatens to annex Greenland.
But it is one Karim Khan whose cowardice left me reeling in disbelief and seething with anger. Khan is the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). His duties include the responsibility to examine situations where war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity rear their ugly head.
Khan does not need to wait until genocide has been committed and an entire civilisation wiped out — never to be built again — a la Trump. Just at a primary phase of humanity, Khan’s heartbeat ought to skip when chilling threats like Trump’s are spewed like bile before an apparently helpless international community.
South Africa did not wait for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Knesset to complete their systematic and intentional annihilation of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, where Pretoria laid charges of genocide against Netanyahu and the State of Israel, Khan and the ICC were equally made aware of the evil reign of terror the Israel Defence Force (IDF) unleashed indiscriminately on the beleaguered people of Palestine.
The onslaught against the Palestinians took place, nay, continues to happen on their occupied land by a racist Zionist regime that is unhinged and unhindered. To Khan’s little credit, he did issue a warrant of arrest against Netanyahu and a few of his cabinet hotheads.
Trump reacted by issuing threats against Khan and ICC officials who participated in filing the paperwork against Netanyahu and his pals. Additionally, Trump imposed unilateral sanctions on Khan and others in the ICC.
This, in my book, is indisputable evidence of the dearth of the UN and ineffectiveness of its founding charter that is based on multilateralism. How the US has been allowed to overtake the UN and assume the role of the international cop above the UN Security Council beggars belief.
The UN was established after Hitler orchestrated the murder of about 6 million Jews during the period that included WWII from 1939 to 1945. The objective for establishing the UN was plain and simple: Never again! The world vowed that “never again” would another bully be allowed to reign so freely.
The establishment of the Rome Statute that gave birth to institutions such as the ICC was intended to avoid a situation where an individual, no matter how cowboyish they felt and regardless of the military might behind their arrogance, would trigger another World War.
This week, the world came from the brink. It is not over yet; the ceasefire is hardly holding, thanks to Netanyahu and the Jewish State represented by a right-wing Knesset.
For the rest of the ordinary mortals around the world, we are wondering where Khan is and what he is thinking or doing to save humanity from the looming apocalypse.
I am acutely aware that our international systems are all broken, and have been for a long while. But it is the hypocritical Khan that I really want to take umbrage with. Khan is so two-faced it’s not funny.
He excels in the art of double standards that are intrinsically geared towards favouring the West. As a result, he should have long been kicked out of the ICC. In my view, he has brought the ICC into disrepute too many times and continues to get away with murder.
Consider the following: Right at the beginning of Russia’s war with Ukraine in 2022, Khan hurriedly issued a warrant of arrest against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The intent, it is too obvious to see, was to embarrass the Russian leader in a war the West rallied together behind Ukraine to defend, they said, a rules-based world order and democracy.
However, soon it was clear that Ukraine was being used by the West and NATO as a pawn in their proxy war against Russia.
Khan’s swift move against the Russian president might look innocent at face value. But it is not, and never was. It was laced with the crooked mind of a schemer, a sly and cunning operator who pushes a nefarious agenda surreptitiously.
His issuance of a warrant of arrest against Russia’s First Citizen had far-reaching ramifications. For example, it meant that President Putin could not travel to South Africa in August 2023 to attend the BRICS Heads of State meeting held in Johannesburg.
He was consequently represented by Russia’s long-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov. This is the kind of impact Khan’s decision, and by extension that of the ICC, can have.
To demonstrate Khan’s dereliction of duty in the case of Trump and the US military’s excesses in the ubiquitous bombardment of Iran, which is characterised by indiscriminate destruction that targets everybody and everything, a former ICC prosecutor laid bare Khan’s and the court’s inconsistencies.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the founding chief prosecutor of the ICC, was speaking at an Institute of Politics forum at the Harvard Kennedy School in the US this week when he said Trump’s threats to destroy Iranian infrastructure bordered on constituting war crimes. This was so under the same legal framework the ICC used to indict Russian officials over the war in Ukraine, Ocampo argued.
“My suggestion: You read the indictment of the Russians, change the name, and it will be very similar,” he said. Ocampo further argued that if the US military acted under the command of Trump as the commander-in-chief when they destroyed Iranian civil infrastructure, “the basis for indictment” was valid.
This is the piercing truth from which Khan and his colleagues in the ICC are running away, hiding God-knows-where. Note, too, that none of the regular EU defenders of “civilisation” have tackled Trump in similar ways to how they illegally invaded Iraq in 2003 and killed Saddam Hussein and eight years later, in 2011, assassinated Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi amid the West’s material backing of a “popular uprising” across Libya.
The rebellion bore the hallmarks of the 2014 overthrow of a democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, in yet another “popular uprising” also known as “Euromaidan”. The script is simply too similar, if not just the same.
These examples further lay bare the double standards of the ICC. When it comes to Africa’s leaders or political figures, Khan and the ICC behave like a bull in a China shop. Since 2002, virtually all cases the ICC launched were against African leaders. Even the ICC convictions are made up of an overwhelming African majority, therefore showing a clear bias against the continent.
Dozens of Africans caught in the ICC’s crosshairs have included sitting or former heads of state such as Omar al-Bashir of Sudan; Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, both of Kenya; and Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast, and there are several convictions against individuals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali and Uganda.
Meanwhile, despite the ICC’s warrant of arrest against the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu roams freely to selected international destinations under the cover of Trump’s omnipotent protection. Truly, I tell you, ours is a US-led unipolar world order, period.
* Abbey Makoe is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Global South Media Network. Views expressed are personal.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.