Articles by Tarak Barkawi

We found 3 results.


Intervention without Responsibility
Tarak Barkawi – Al Jazeera, 28 Nov 2011

The Libyan ‘no-fly’ zone of intervening may have paved new way for treating symptoms without addressing the problem. In 2006, the UN Security Council affirmed its support for the doctrine of “responsibility to protect”. This is the idea that if a member state cannot protect its own citizens from crimes against humanity, it is the responsibility of the international community to do so. “R2P”, as this doctrine is known, would have been a wonderful justification for intervention and liberal imperialism if only the UN were an effective organisation.

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A Vision of the Whole Human Race
Tarak Barkawi – Al Jazeera, 14 Nov 2011

Here and there, in our time, Westerners, Christians and Muslims may find common cause – as in the Palestinian solidarity movement; or whites, blacks and mixed race people, as in the resistance to the apartheid regime in South Africa. But in a jingoistic age, when Westerners, Asians and Muslims are all convinced of their own superiority, a multi-racial, multi-regional, multi-cultural resistance movement on the model the Despards cooked up is almost unthinkable.

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The Lost Bases of the US Empire
Tarak Barkawi – Al Jazeera, 31 Oct 2011

The US maintains more than 700 military facilities on foreign soil that may not be as sustainable in the near future. While the world’s attention was fixated on Gaddafi’s corpse, President Obama announced what seems to be the end of the ill-fated US project in Iraq. It is hampered also by the animosities aroused by US violence and policy, in Iraq and elsewhere. We are perhaps one financial crisis away from the moment when the idea of maintaining even established bases abroad – when the iron web of empire since 1945 will itself be called into question.

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