[Media-watch] and treatment of war dead

[Henry McCubbin]

In response to Mike Berry's e-mail on war crimes below please find a letter
published in LRB by my colleague Ken Coates.

On War and Intervention
1. From Ken Coates
Michael Byers's article on the laws of war (LRB, 20 February) brought to
mind my experience during the first Gulf War. In March 1991, I was Chairman
of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights. With two of my
colleagues, I wrote to the press about the issue of enforcement of the
Geneva Conventions in respect of the burial of the war dead. The actual
number of Iraqi military casualties of that war has long been disputed. In
particular, there was no figure for those killed in the famous 'turkey
shoot' during the retreat from Kuwait, and those buried alive with them in
the aftermath. In May 1991, the US Defense Agency estimated that 100,000
Iraqi troops had been killed. Other estimates have been much higher. In our
letter we quoted Article 16 of the first 1949 Convention:
"Parties to the conflict shall record as soon as possible, in respect of
each wounded, sick or dead person of the adverse Party falling into their
hands, any particulars which may assist in his identification . . .
'Parties to the conflict,' the same Article continues,
shall prepare and forward to each other through the same bureau certificates
of death or duly authenticated lists of the dead. They shall likewise
collect and forward through the same bureau one half of a double identity
disk, last wills or other documents of importance to the next of kin, money,
and in general all articles of an intrinsic or sentimental value, which are
found on the dead. These articles, together with unidentified articles,
shall be sent in sealed packets, accompanied by statements giving all
particulars necessary for the identification of the deceased owners, as well
as by a complete list of the contents of the parcel.
Article 17 insists that the dead be 'honourably interred' - if possible
'according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged'. If these
provisions are acceptable at the end of wars between Europeans, we asked, by
what right are they modified when the victims live in West Asia? Were we to
assume that the Geneva Conventions had been suspended by General
Schwarzkopf? General Schwarzkopf has now moved on, but his successors are
still repeating the old mantras. Spokesmen from both the British and
American forces in Iraq have recently told us that they are 'not in the
business of body counts'.
Back in 1991 we were promptly informed by the office of the International
Red Cross in Geneva that they had already sought to act on those provisions
of the Geneva Conventions which we mentioned in our letter. Ten to fifteen
days earlier they had asked the allied forces to supply all necessary
information about casualties in Iraq and Kuwait. But by mid-March the ICRC
had received no information from the allies about the numbers of dead
soldiers who had been buried, and had not been told whether any efforts had
been made to identify the corpses, or whether such efforts had been
sufficient, within the terms of the Convention. The Iraqi Government, on the
other hand, had already responded to the Commission's enquiries concerning
the numbers of allied deaths. For the US and Britain the upholding of the
Geneva Conventions appears to be a one-way street.
Ken Coates
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Matlock, Derbyshire

I was one of the MEPs party to these communications.  Our overall impression
was that the Red Cross was not willing to take on board the overwhelming
evidence that the US had bulldozed live humans in to trenches and shot
retreating soldiers between the shoulder blades as they fled.

Perhaps Stephen Sackur should spend some time at the side of the road to
Basra.  Or were those deaths good deaths?

Henry McCubbin