Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:14:55 +0100
America's Middle East War and the "Right to Protect": The all-out Hypocrisy
of the Arab League & the US-NATO Alliance
by Kourosh Ziabari
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures2/27837.jpg
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, November 25, 2011
After the Arab League hypocritically suspended the membership of Syria amid
the mounting pressures of NATO and the United States, the resurgence of
violence in Egypt and the increasing use of excessive force in Bahrain and
Yemen and the unrelenting massacre of innocent civilians by the barbaric
regime of Al Khalifa and Ali Abdullah Saleh once again attracted the
attention of conscientious observers in the international community.
According to official figures released by the "Bahrain Center for Human
Rights" website, so far 44 Bahraini citizens were killed at the hands of the
mercenaries of Al Khalifa regime. The Bahraini martyrs include the
6-year-old Mohammed Farhan, 14-year-old Ali Jawad Alshaikh and 15-year-old
Sayed Ahmad Saeed Shams. The Bahraini organization has reported that many of
these martyrs were killed while in custody. The Center has also published
documents indicating that more than 1,500 Bahrainis including about 100
women were incarcerated since the eruption of turmoil in the Persian Gulf
country on February 14, 2011 and that more that 90 journalists face life
threat.
It's also said that the Bahraini government has blocked the citizens' access
to more than 1000 opposition websites which are mainly used to organize and
plan protests and mass demonstrations.
The Bahraini regime commits all of these aggressive and brutal actions with
the direct involvement of the Saudi Arabia and the implicit support and
backing of NATO and the United States. The author of the "Hidden Harmonies
China" blog in a March 14, 2011 post referred to the abuses of human rights
in Bahrain with the flagrant, duplicitous support of the White House: "the
Entry of Saudi security forces to crack down on the protesters with deadly
force is a complication for U.S. policies, to say the least, since U.S. is
reluctant to criticize its oil ally dictators in the region."
He also called Bahrain the "Las Vegas" of the Middle East, host to the U.S.
5th Fleet and a haunt for the rich Saudis who are forbidden by Islamic laws
at home from indulging in alcohol and other immoral enjoyments, "but who
often vacation in Bahrain for these reasons."
Bahraini citizens have uploaded several video files on the internet, showing
the cruel and ruthless torturing and persecuting of the protesters by the Al
Khalifa lackeys. These videos depict the Bahraini forces using tear gas and
rubber bullets to disperse protesters and killing many of them straight
away. Some of these videos also show the Saudi and Bahraini cars
nonchalantly running over Bahraini children and women, killing them at once.
The U.S.-Saudi project of crackdown on the Bahraini people was also
empowered by many of the European cronies of Washington. In July 2011,
Germany sold a set of 200 62-ton Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia which sparked
a huge controversy among the German parliamentarians and anti-war activists.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Wolfgang Gerhardt, former leader of the
Free Democrats, the junior collation member to Chancellor Angela Merkel's
Christian Democrats, said it was "unacceptable" the deal went through
without the knowledge of his party's MPs. However, the agreement which was
worth around USD 1,252 million was concluded and the Saudi government
dispatched many of these newly-bought tanks to Bahrain to accelerate and
facilitate the bloody clampdown on the protesters.
The situation in Yemen, however, is far more deplorable and appalling.
Allvoices.com has reported that as of September 25, 1,870 Yemenis were
killed in the revolution and the majority of the martyrs were unarmed
civilians taking part in anti-government demonstrations.
The Yemeni dictator who has remained defiant in the face of frequent calls
by the tribal leaders, opposition groups and demonstrators to step down and
give up power has turned his country into a bloodbath and made the Yemeni
uprising the longest, most devastative revolution in the revolutionary wave
of protests in the Middle East. The protests in Yemen started on February 3,
2011 and have continued so far. The only reaction of the international
community to the brutality in Yemen was an indecisive and faltering
resolution by the UNSC which called for "an end to violence" and asked
President Ali Abdullah Saleh to accept a peace deal brokered by the Persian
Gulf Cooperation Council. However, Abdullah Saleh who is tacitly supported
by the U.S., kept up with the brutalities and according to Yemen Times, 94
protesters were killed after the Security Council adopted the resolution
2014.
In a report published on Yemen Times on November 17, it was revealed that
"ninety-four Yemenis were killed and over 800 injured since UN Resolution
2014 was issued on October 21."
"Tentative reports show that over the last three weeks in Yemen, 124 homes,
seven mosques, six public institutions including one hospital, two community
wells, and 17 vehicles were effectively destroyed," Yemen Times reported.
In the days leading to the detainment and death of Moammar Gaddafi, the
Western mainstream media were only talking about the Libyan civil war, and
the reason was clear: NATO had secured a UNSC resolution to enact a no-fly
zone over Libya and it was in the interests of the U.S. and its European
partners to give coverage to the tumultuous situation in the North African
country. However, the reports and news regarding the carnage in Bahrain and
Yemen were predominantly shunned and boycotted, simply because these two
despotic regimes were close allies of the U.S. in the Middle East.
In a report published on "Independent Australia," Zaid Jiani alluded to the
violent crackdown on the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and posed the
question that "is the media downplaying these events because the two
dictatorships are firm allies of the West?"
"A Think Progress analysis of press coverage by the three major U.S. cable
news networks -CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News - from March 14 to March 18 finds
that Bahrain received only slightly more than ten percent as many mentions
as Libya and that Yemen received only six percent as many mentions as
Libya."
Now what concerns the independent thinkers, scholars, university professors,
journalists and peace activists is that Syria has become the target of
international pressure, simply because it has strong ties with Iran and
resistant groups in Lebanon and Palestine, while the reactionary regimes of
Bahrain and Yemen are getting away with the felonies which they commit by
the virtue of their alliance with the United States.
Arab League has vindictively suspended the participation of Syria while it
has taken no practical step to normalize the situation in the turbulent and
chaotic Yemen and Bahrain in which innocent people are being killed on a
daily basis by their tyrannical rulers and their loyalists
All that can be said is that the performance of the Arab League in
neglecting the situation in Yemen and Bahrain and exaggerating the unrest in
Syria which is mainly caused by the foreign intervention and the West's
indifference toward the plight of the suppressed nations in Yemen and
Bahrain is an all-out hypocrisy and a clear, undeniable exercise of double
standards. Who can really devise a clear-cut solution for this unsolvable
dilemma?
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