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David Cameron

Reason Wafawarova On Thursday
EVENTS leading to the US-led aerial bombing of parts of Iraq and Syria through a new campaign by the coalition of the willing, or if we correctly name it, the coalition of the killing; have shown a disturbing rise in the anti-Arab/anti Muslim rhetoric, and in this context fabrications, outright lies, hate speech and inciting language have all been elevated to the level of credible news, sadly so even by the respected mainstream Western media.

From the time NATO decided to go to war against Kosovo without the explicit authorisation of any UN Security Council resolution, the United States has been blatantly elbowing out the UN on all matters related to resolution of conflicts and maintenance of peace.

The Afghanistan invasion was a vengeance mission carried out on the backdrop of a contrived approval by the UN, just like the invasion of Libya was in 2011. The 2003 Iraq invasion was carried out without any UN approval, with the US government warning the world through Collin Powell that the UN risked “being overtaken by events” if the world body maintained that the invasion of Iraq was illegal.

Washington Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton was honest enough to declare that when it comes to US foreign policy “there is no such thing as the United Nations.” The US’ present hegemonic position does not accept any obstacles that might be raised by the legalistic procedures of the United Nations, and this is why the 2004 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act was passed without any consideration to involve the United Nations in imposing sanctions on Syria. It is the same way the 2001 Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was by passed by the US Senate with no regard whatsoever to international law or the United Nations.

The sanctions law has not only devastated a poor small developing country, but has revealed the fangs of imperialism as US citizens have been jailed, and some are under trial for sympathising with the suffering Zimbabweans. With the now too familiar disregard for the United Nations, the US-led coalition have decided to carry out a devastating aerial bombing in parts of Iraq and Syria in the name of curtailing ISIS terrorism, just like Afghanistan was invaded for a similar cause in 2001.

After ISIS posted three videos where an executioner is captured callously beheading two American journalists and a British aid worker, there has been a major media hype against Arab terrorism, and there hasn’t been any sincere attempt on the part of mainstream Western media to distinguish the atrocities from Muslims in general.

There has been considerable stigmatisation of the Arab community in the West, and this has fuelled the already existing anti-Arab racism — perhaps the only surviving ‘legitimate’ form of racism today, legitimate in the sense that one does not have to deny it. Terrorism on the part of ISIS is not a fabrication in itself. It exists, and there is no need to beat it up with fabrications and lies, or to fan the flames with rogue propaganda.

ISIS originated from George W. Bush’s liberal interventionism in Iraq, after his administration magisterially elevated Iraq’s Shiite majority to power, ignoring the sectarian power balances that have existed in the country for years. Then named “al-Qaeda in Iraq” by Western media, the group barbarously slaughtered Shiites and bombed their mosques.

Renaming itself ISIS, the group shifted to Syria where it joined the Western backed rebels in an effort to oust the Shiite dominated Assad government. With unequivocal Western backing the group wantonly slaughtered suspected Assad supporters; unabatedly continuing with its ruthless terror campaign.

This year the group returned to Iraq, routing Iraq government forces in a series of one-sided battles, carrying out countless public beheadings. When it came to the turn of three Western citizens, the beheadings suddenly assumed a new sense of definition. They were elevated from mere barbaric Arab-to-Arab meaningless murders to a global threat of “international terrorism.”

President Obama, his deputy Joseph Biden, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and a whole array of Western leaders delivered fury packed speeches declaring war on international terrorism. Obama ordered air strikes across Syria’s border without any coordination or consultation with the Syrian government, an act correctly denounced by Damascus as a violation of its sovereignty.

For denouncing Washington’s bombing objectives in Syria, the Assad government might just have armed the American political elites with the argument that the Assad regime must be removed as a military pre-requisite to enable the attacks on ISIS to proceed. The argument is likely to be that the Syrian forces will be a threat to US aircraft, and as such must be swept away. So we have on one side the United States going after ISIS alongside their Syrian enemy government in order to annihilate the murderous gang off the face of Syria, and on the other hand we have the US going after the Syrian government alongside the terrorist ISIS gang, fulfilling the driving objective of ISIS.

Now Obama and his coalition of the willing have secured a UN resolution calling on countries to ban the support for ISIS by any of their citizens, and this move has created an undesirable but wanted scenario where Arabs in Western countries have been exposed to stigmatisation and vilification.

In Australia an Afghan born teenager, Numan Haider was shot dead by police in circumstances that are so far unclear, save for the allegation that the teen attacked two police officers with a knife, and that he was under police surveillance for suspected terrorism-linked activities.

Three major newspapers went on to splash the wrong picture of the teen, displaying his Facebook friend as the “terrorist teen” before The Age admitted to the reckless error and apologised. Needless to say, the boy displayed by the newspapers remains a “terrorist” to the millions of readers and viewers who saw his pictures alongside sensationalised stories of terrorist activities. The Age’s Editor in Chief knows very well how the incited recklessness of his staffers have destroyed this young man’s life. He had this to say:
“There’s absolutely nowhere to hide in a case like this. It’s a terrible mistake. It shouldn’t have happened. We gotta cop it on the chin.”

The whole mainstream media cranked it up ruthlessly with headers like “TERROR SUSPECT KILLED,” “COPS KILL FANATIC,” “POLICE KILL ABBOT JIHAD,” and so on and so forth.
The Daily Telegraph sensationally wrote “the Islamist terrorist,” had made “repeated threats against the Prime Minister” Tony Abbot, and this was vociferously recycled by other media outlets.

The Australian Federal Police acting commissioner dismissed the claim as a complete fabrication.
The Age then came up with another sensation, this time claiming that Haider had planned to “behead police officers, drape bodies in IS flags” and post the videos.
Victoria’s police chief Ken Lay dismissed the story as “absolute speculation,” and an “outrageous suggestion” that was “not based on any fact.”

The Victoria State Premier Denis Napthine decried how “the alleged behaviour an individual” had been elevated to a faith and ethnicity issue, calling for tolerance and calm, and also urging communities to co-exist peacefully without targeting or singling certain ethnicities as prone to crime or terrorist activities.

Well, the media does not go with this kind of advice. Even before the Haider shooting, The Sunday Telegraph had sensationally reported that inmates in Australia’s maximum-security prison were “plotting terror from inside our toughest jail,” and that there was “a sophisticated code to continue jihad activities from inside Goulburn Supermax, Australia’s most secure prison.”

The Daily Telegraph chipped in with a story that Islamic radicals had rioted in prison, and the header exclaimed: “Allah is the cry, as radicals go berserk in worst riot for 10 years.” Again these headlines turned out to be outright lies, and a politically motivated ploy to beat up the anti-terrorism sentiment, or is it the anti-Muslim sentiment — itself a race social war against Arabs.

The Goulburn Police Chief Zoran Dzevlan dismissed the stories saying, “Whatever The Telegraph wrote is totally, totally incorrect.”
The prison issued a statement saying the only people who had carried out a protest were a group of aboriginal inmates who had been denied an opportunity to carry out a barbeque, or braai, as it is known in some quarters. The statement added that there is a very small number of Muslim inmates in the prison.

It remains unknown why the Telegraph did not report on “Aboriginal terrorists,” but one knows that such a thing does not exist in the media’s idea of a terrorist.
The illustrations above serve to illustrate how the media can fan xenophobia and racism against innocent people in the name of fighting terrorism.

The threat of terror itself is not illusory. It is real. However the threat must be dealt with within its rightful context. The beheading of numerous Shiites by ISIS was no lesser an act of terror than that of James Folly and his two other Western colleagues.

The important role of the media is to tell the truth, and to report objectively; otherwise we risk having a repeat of the Rwanda atrocities if we allow our media to run on sensationalism.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.