News:
On 7 August 2014, the US President Barack Obama authorized military strikes in Iraq. He said, “When we face a situation like we do on that mountain, with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale and we have a mandate to help – in this case a request from the Iraqi government – and when we have unique capabilities to act to avoid a massacre, I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye.” He added, “Earlier this week, one Iraqi said no-one is coming to help. Well, today America is coming to help.”
Comment:
Once again America is eager to intervene in the Muslim world to carry out military operations. This time it is Iraq and the justification is again humanitarian assistance. The delivery of humanitarian relief, in the form of air drops by US jets represents the first aerial mission over Iraq since 2011. This marks the start of the deepest American engagement in Iraq since US troops withdrew in late 2011 after nearly a decade of war.
However, what is interesting to note is that there is no coherent strategy or moral compass guiding American foreign policy interventions where domestic population are being pulverized to smithereens and gross human rights violations occur on a daily basis. The actions of the Jewish State in Gaza clearly constitutes genocide, but there is no American intervention. Likewise, the barbaric acts of Assad against his people does not justify American intervention. In both cases, war crimes are being perpetrated by the likes of Netanyahu and Assad, yet America chooses to turn a blind eye. Beyond the Middle East, Muslim minorities are being merciless wiped out in Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but there is no talk of humanitarian intervention. The persecution of Muslim minorities in the latter two countries far exceeds both in scale and magnitude to what is happening to minorities in Iraq, but America chooses to intervene in Iraq and ignore the plight of Muslims elsewhere—so where is the moral equivalence?
Over the past twenty years or so, America and its western allies have slowly eroded the concept of the nation state as enshrined by the Westphalia Treaty. The treaty explicitly forbids the interference in the internal affairs of nations by other nations. But through the pretext of humanitarian intervention, the West has grossly undermined the nation state concept. Moreover, the selective application of humanitarian intervention has further eroded the credibility of the nation state model, and weakened the West’s claim of any moral superiority in their foreign interventions.
This is not limited to the Muslim world, and can easily applied to the suppression of minorities in Russia and China. However, America and the West choose not to intervene here, as they do not have the stomach for an all-out war with countries that have the ability to significantly damage Western interests.
What may look like a bleak period in the history of the Muslim world—demonstrated through repeated Western interventions and wars—should not be interpreted as American or Western superiority. Yes, America and the West are militarily superior, but this has not helped them shape political outcomes as demonstrated by both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, it can be argued, the biggest weapon against America and the West are their ideological inconsistencies in foreign policy matters. The damage wrought by such glaring contradictions far overshadow what any adversary of the West could hope to achieve.
In this lies the silver lining for the Muslim world. For when the real Khilafah returns, it would be relatively easily for the Khilafah in the current international climate to not only unify the Muslims world, but also to expand its frontiers to other continents based upon humanitarian intervention fused with its invitation to Islam. The persecution of Muslim minorities in Europe, and the oppression of the Muslim population together with the suppression of Latinos and Black populations in America would be more than enough reason for the Khilafah to intervene to liberate such people from the tyranny of the West to the justice of Islam. Allah سبحانه وتعالى says:
وَمَكَرُوا وَمَكَرَ اللَّـهُ ۖ وَاللَّـهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ
“And they planned, and Allah also planned; and Allah is the Best of planners.”
(Ali-Imran: 54)
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Abu Hashim