The Human Cost of ‘Imperialist’ Interventions in the 21st Century MENA RL Vol XII No 376 MMXVIII

The Human Cost of ‘Imperialist’ 

Interventions in the 21^st Century Middle

East & North Africa (MENA)

Public Lecture - RL Vol XII No 376 MMXVIII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms

https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Abstract

The concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a brand new international norm that removes the thin veneer of sovereignty from states and a novelty in the conduct of international relations. The ability of states to strip people of their rights to livelihoods security, behind the thin veneer non-interference in each other’s internal affairs is increasingly being challenged. Huntington work “The Clash of Civilisations” proposed that people's cultural and religious identities would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. This lecture hones on the West’s colonial and interventionist war in the Middle East and Africa and its support for the Sunni-Shia conflict that is decimating Yemen. If the Libyan war was about saving lives, it was a catastrophic failure (Milne, 2011). NATO claimed it would protect civilians in Libya, but delivered far more killing. About 500 people, civilians and fighters, have been killed by shooting, shelling and NATO bombing. That has followed a two month-long siege and indiscriminate bombardment of a city of 100,000, which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with NATO air and Special Forces support. Moreover, these massacre sites are only the latest of many such discoveries. Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for months. A household survey of Iraq has found that approximately 600,000 people have been killed in the violence of the war that began with the U.S. invasion in March 2003 (Burnham, et al., 2006). As the Syrian conflict enters its seventh year, more than 465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting, more than a million injured and over 12 million Syrians - half the country's pre-war population - have been displaced from their homes. Operation Decisive Storm, the intervention initially consisted of a bombing campaign on Houthi rebels and later saw a naval blockade and the deployment of ground forces into Yemen starving millions to death. Saudi-UAE coalition 'cut deals' with al-Qaeda in Yemen (Al Jazeera, 2018). The West, the Arab World and the Gulf, Russia and the combatants have to come to a negotiated settlement on the human security of the region.

Key words: Arab, Gulf, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Russia, US, EU, Sunni, Shia, Saudi, UAE, Egypt

See paper here or  https://www.academia.edu/37965354/The_Human_Cost_of_Imperialist_Interventions_in_the_21_st_Century_MENA_RL_Vol_XII_No_376_MMXVIII

What the Libyan tragedy has brutally hammered home is that foreign intervention does not only strangle freedom and self-determination – it doesn't protect lives either (The Economist, 2015).