{"id":210095,"date":"2022-04-25T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=210095"},"modified":"2022-04-24T09:57:41","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T08:57:41","slug":"reparations-in-reverse-afghanistan-pays-vatican-prays-us-preys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/04\/reparations-in-reverse-afghanistan-pays-vatican-prays-us-preys\/","title":{"rendered":"Reparations in Reverse: Afghanistan Pays, Vatican Prays, US Preys"},"content":{"rendered":"

The doctrine of \u2018sovereign immunity\u2019 is being used to insulate state violence from legal liability.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

22 Apr 2022 – <\/em>What better illustration of the perversities of \u201cjustice\u201d under colonial modernity, than the grotesquely disparate treatment of Afghanistan versus the Vatican when it comes to exacting recompense for international crimes.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan is being further immiserated<\/a> by its former US occupier in the name of compensating 9\/11 victims; while the Vatican, enriched by colonial plunder, continues to evade<\/a> paying reparations for centuries of anti-Indigenous genocide<\/a> underwritten by papal edicts like the Doctrine of Discovery (PDF<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Afghanistan has had $3.5bn<\/a> of its foreign reserves \u201cprotected\u201d i.e. commandeered by the US for 9\/11 payments, as Afghans starve by the millions; the Vatican\u2019s atonement has been limited to prayers and an apology<\/a> \u2013 issued earlier this month after years of Indigenous advocacy \u2013 for the involvement of \u201ca number of Catholics\u201d in Canada\u2019s church-run residential \u201cschools\u201d, where tens of thousands of Indigenous children were sent to forced labour, torture, indoctrination, and death. (Similar institutions<\/a> also operated in the US.)<\/p>\n

US courts have ordered billions of dollars in damages against the Taliban for 9\/11 \u2013 the \u201cdebt\u201d for which the Afghan people are being collectively punished and impoverished to pay. The Vatican, in contrast, remains sheltered from lawsuits in foreign states by the doctrine of \u201csovereign immunity\u201d: the aegis under which state violence is insulated from legal liability.<\/p>\n

Although the American and Canadian legal systems have carved out \u201cterrorism\u201d exceptions to sovereign immunity, these have been applied<\/a> exclusively against select Muslim countries and other designated official enemies, not to the terror inflicted by the colonial state itself.<\/p>\n

For example, under the US\u2019s \u201cterrorism\u201d exception, states may be stripped of their sovereign immunity and sued for \u201cextrajudicial killing\u201d and \u201ctorture\u201d \u2013 but only if named on the US government\u2019s blacklist of \u201cstate sponsors of terrorism\u201d. Meanwhile, the US\u2019s own self-granted global prerogative to extrajudicially kill and torture en masse is enshrined behind walls of legalised impunity.<\/p>\n

In earlier colonial eras<\/a>, it was the \u201cBarbarian\/Savage\u201d (one might say BS) label that was used to mark those excluded from sovereign status, and therefore subject to sovereign violence virtually without restraint. Today, it is the \u201cTerrorist\u201d. \u201cTerrorism\u201d is the new BS.<\/p>\n

Under this regime of inverted accountability, Sudan was made to pay $335m<\/a> to the US last year as restitution for \u201cterrorism\u201d, in exchange for being removed from the \u201cterrorist\u201d states list.<\/p>\n

Conversely, efforts to seek legal redress for US aggression against Sudan \u2013 such as the annihilation of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, which produced 50-60 percent of the country\u2019s medicines, and was mistakenly tarred and targeted as an al-Qaeda plant \u2013 have been dismissed by US courts for raising impermissible \u201cpolitical questions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now, Sudan is facing a multibillion-dollar<\/a> lawsuit attempting to hold it responsible for 9\/11, in which the al-Shifa factory is astonishingly cited<\/a> not as a casualty of US incursions against Sudan, but as supposed evidence of Sudan\u2019s alleged \u201cincubation\u201d of al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

In previous US judgements, similar paucities of proof and logic have been no impediment \u2013 for instance, in holding Sudan liable for $5.9bn for al-Qaeda\u2019s 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa. This is despite the judge\u2019s admission<\/a> that \u201cnothing suggests that Sudan specifically knew of or intended to cause the bombings\u201d and that \u201cthe plaintiffs\u2019 allegations are somewhat imprecise as to the causal connection [of Sudan\u2019s actions] with the terrorist act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Libya, likewise, was required to pay $1.5bn<\/a> into a fund for American victims of \u201cterrorist\u201d acts, such as<\/a> the 1988 Lockerbie plane explosion. On the other hand, a lawsuit brought by 55 civilian victims of the US\u2019s bombardment of Libya \u2013 which preceded the Lockerbie attack \u2013 was thrown out<\/a> by a US court as not simply \u201cfrivolous\u201d but \u201caudacious\u201d.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the \u201caudacity of hope\u201d is a privilege reserved for the US presidents who command bombings, not the populations who experience them.<\/p>\n

The US has not only failed<\/a> to pay reparations to Iraq for its illegal 2003 invasion and occupation, but on the contrary, extracted $400m<\/a> from Iraq to \u201censure compensation for any meritorious claims [by US nationals] based on terrorist acts committed by the Saddam Hussein regime\u201d. This is on top of the $633m in \u201creparations\u201d that Iraq was made to pay to US corporations \u2013 including occupation profiteers such as Halliburton and Bechtel \u2013 by the UN Compensation Commission, as part of Iraq\u2019s recently-completed settlement for the First Gulf War.<\/p>\n

As for the Iraqi victims of US military acts of terror \u2013 prolific drone and checkpoint killings, widespread radiation poisoning, home and vital infrastructure bombings \u2013 far from being \u201censured compensation\u201d, they have been actively denied and ruthlessly suppressed.<\/p>\n

Even cases involving the most egregious and acknowledged practices of abuse \u2013 for example, Iraqi and Afghan detainees who were beaten, stabbed, burned, starved, electrocuted, mock executed, locked naked in phone-booth-sized boxes for days, assaulted with lions and military dogs, hooded, hung chained from the ceiling, sexually tortured, and raped at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison camps \u2013 have been rejected by US courts.<\/p>\n

Judges have ruled that the perpetrators are shielded as state officials by immunity, and that the US Constitution\u2019s prohibition against \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d only covers those who have been convicted of a crime \u2013 not those, like the Iraqi and Afghan detainees, incarcerated and tormented<\/a> without any fa\u00e7ade of a legal process at all.<\/p>\n

In contrast, a lawsuit<\/a> claiming millions of dollars against Iraq for \u201cmaterial support\u201d for 9\/11 \u2013 under the \u201cterrorism\u201d exception to sovereign immunity \u2013 was permitted to succeed. The minor detail that the plaintiff\u2019s complaint contained \u201cfew actual facts of any material support that Iraq actually provided\u201d, as the judge in the case conceded, was no bar. No proof? No problem.<\/p>\n

This is the same operating principle under which US courts have also awarded billions of dollars in 9\/11 damages against Iran, on the strength of the testimony of \u201cexpert\u201d witnesses such as Islamophobic conspiracy-theories-peddler Claire Lopez, and Patrick Clawson, the court-described \u201cforemost expert on all matters pertaining to Iran\u201d who has advocated<\/a>\u00a0false-flag operations against Iran to provoke a war.<\/p>\n

In American court decisions, Iran is accused of trying to \u201cbreak the backbone of the American economy\u201d, as the US devastates the Iranian and various other economies by imposing suffocating sanctions \u2013 described by UN Special Rapporteurs as a form of \u201ceconomic warfare<\/a>\u201d \u2013 largely without check.<\/p>\n

Peoples denied sovereignty under occupation, like the Palestinians, are sued in US courts for \u201cterrorism\u201d; while the tortures and massacres of their occupiers are precluded from accountability, swathed in the sovereign immunity cloak. (Although Palestine and the Vatican have the same status as observer states at the UN, the Vatican is granted sovereign immunity in the US, but Palestine is not.)<\/p>\n

Muslims and other \u201cstate sponsors of terrorism\u201d are indicted for targeting<\/a> US soldiers, while the US\u2019s own killings of civilians in Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere are perpetually written off \u2013 pushed under the carpet as \u201ccollateral damage\u201d, paid off with paltry \u201ccondolence\u201d sums, or pinned on Muslim \u201cterrorists\u201d for leaving children and the elderly in the way of US bombs.<\/p>\n

Echoing many centuries of colonial reasoning, \u201ctheir\u201d violence is attributed to their \u201cbarbarism\u201d, while \u201cour\u201d (greater) violence is blamed on their \u201cbarbarism\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is essentially the character of the barbarian (or, for that matter, of the terrorist) and not his deed that is regarded with horror,\u201d as the eminent critical scholar of anthropology Talal Asad observed<\/a>. \u201cThe characterizations [commonly used to describe \u201cterrorists\u201d] apply also to state forces waging war, whether \u2018just\u2019 or \u2018unjust\u2019. The main difference is that states can and do carry out far more destruction than terrorists\u201d: almost one million killed directly, many times more killed indirectly, and 38 million displaced in the last 20 years from the \u201cwar on terror\u201d alone.<\/p>\n

The violence protected under sovereign immunity \u2013 war, torture, genocide \u2013 testifies to the violence embedded in the concept of sovereignty itself: rooted in centuries-old European doctrines developed to sanctify the colonial dispossession and enslavement of those deemed \u201cunsovereign\u201d and \u201cuncivilised\u201d.<\/p>\n

In American law, the foundational jurisprudence on sovereign immunity was decided by the same jurist, revered 19th-century Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, who also declared Indigenous nations naturally subjugated to the \u201csuperior genius of Europe\u201d and upheld the international legality of the transatlantic slave trade.<\/p>\n

Then, as now, the sovereign privileges accorded to some have been predicated on the domination of others: the enslaved, invaded, and colonised who have not only been subjected to \u201ccivilised\u201d brutality without recompense, but forced to pay \u201creparations\u201d themselves for the offence of resisting their oppression \u2013 from the Haitians penalised for their self-emancipation, to the Indigenous nations ordered to compensate oil corporations depredating their waters and lands.<\/p>\n

Instead of pursuing colonial sovereignty\u2019s promise of power-through-domination-and-terrorisation, can we remember, imagine, and inscribe other possibilities for organising our relationships with each other and the world?<\/p>\n

As the great philosopher of decolonisation Frantz Fanon urged, \u201cLet us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her \u2026 If we want humanity to advance a step farther, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what genuine reparation \u2013 to make those who have been wronged whole again \u2013 would entail: not a return to the previous status quo, but its radical transformation towards justice and peace.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"AzeezahAzeezah Kanji<\/a> – Legal academic and writer based in Toronto.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Apr 2022 – What better illustration of the perversities of \u201cjustice\u201d under colonial modernity, than the grotesquely disparate treatment of Afghanistan versus the Vatican when it comes to exacting recompense for international crimes. The doctrine of \u2018sovereign immunity\u2019 is being used to insulate state violence from legal liability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":106571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[93,629,651,2839,2747,70,1390,965],"class_list":["post-210095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-afghanistan","tag-international-law","tag-justice","tag-reparations","tag-state-system","tag-usa","tag-vatican","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}