RNA - Reports suggest the pilgrims were stopped at a gas station and adjoining restaurant when the truck bomb was detonated. Around 100 civilians, overwhelmingly the Iranian pilgrims, were slain in the attack. They were returning to Iran after Arbaeen, during which they had visited the holy city of Karbala. Arbaeeen is held 40 days after Ashura, both of which attract huge numbers of pilgrims, to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hossein (AS), the Third Shiite Imam.
There is no denying that it is as a result of the 2003 invasion that both Iraq and the rest of the region continue to suffer immensely. This is while the US-British crimes have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, acknowledged, and recognized as crimes at all.
It is what many pundits call “supreme international crime”, because, as they say, “it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” For this, the Iraq Inquiry in the UK has declassified documents showing that former PM Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were warned consistently and repeatedly that invading Iraq would be a crime of aggression, which their legal advisers called “one of the most serious offenses under international law.” But still they went ahead and backed Washington – under the delusions of a power dividend and full spectrum dominance.
Which means they are equally accountable for the disaster and the wave of violence and terror that came afterwards. Thanks to their foolish support, ISIL is now controlling large swathes of land in both Iraq and Syria, terrorising even Europe. The death cult has become an existential threat to the future of mankind. The Thursday attack shows it still is.
This is important, because under the ill-defined parameters of the “ISIL War”, the regime changers still claim the right to stay the course and use military force in ways that have long been outlawed by the UN Charter. But Charter has not been repealed. Aggression is still a crime, whether it is conducted by drone strikes or by a full-scale invasion.
The reality of the accumulated evil and international crime of aggression unleashed on the people of Iraq and the region by the United States and Britain has been painstakingly obscured behind a tapestry of lies. The American and British military leaders are unable to win the ISIL War in both Iraq and Syria (not that they want to). However, they sure know how to wage a propaganda war and/or make sure more innocent pilgrims will die in the coming months and years in Iraq.
This clearly meets the definition of genocide in international treaties. We must therefore add the crime of genocide against pilgrims to the prospective charge sheet of American-British crimes in Iraq.
It is a well-established principle of international law that countries who commit aggression and harbour terrorism bear a collective responsibility for their actions. The American-British leaders’ guilt does not let the rest of the international community, the United Nations in particular, off the hook for the crimes committed in their name either. Through their inaction and silence they are also complicit in this supreme international crime.
The United Nations, therefore, has a legal and moral duty to make sure the American and British aggressors are held to account for their illegal invasion and crimes in Iraq. This way they can help the people of Iraq and its neighbours, particularly Iran, recover from the results of aggression, genocide and war crimes. This is a central demand of the families of the pilgrims who lost their lives Thursday in the city of Hilla, South of Baghdad.
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