In the closing days of the Second World War five countries -- the United States, Soviet Union, France, Britain and China – met in Washington between August and October 1944, to establish the United Nations in place of the League of Nations.
In drafting the charter these five powers structured the organisation to ensure they retained their power to continue to shape the destiny of the world to suit their political and economic agendas. Finally, when the UN officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, the hope was that member-states would settle their disputes by peaceful means and make the world a better place.
However, within two years, the UN lost its credibility, died a premature death and international justice collapsed when US President Harry S. Truman blackmailed the UN to pass a resolution on November 29, 1947 to establish the State of Israel on Palestinian lands. In violation of all legal and moral principles, the Palestinians -- the sons and daughters of the soil -- were massacred, terrorised and kicked out at gun point to refugee camps in neighbouring countries while those who remained were made second class citizens in their own land.
Thus began the big power manipulation of the UN. In the subsequent years big powers used the UN as their tool to wage wars, to destroy countries and kill millions of people, throwing many million Muslims into refugee camps.
Later following its June 1967 war of aggression, Israel occupied Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Golan Heights from Syria. The United States and its European allies helped Israel to consolidate its hold on these occupied lands.
In the eight-year long Iraq-Iran war more than a million people were killed besides the destruction of the two countries. Only the weapons industry of war mongers benefited. Where was the UN then?
The situation became worse since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989. In 1990 US engineered the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and precipitated the Gulf crisis. Here the US hijacked the UN and UN resolutions became sacred.
Between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and the beginning of the US attack on Iraq on January 17, 1991, the UN Security Council passed twelve resolutions in quick succession. These resolutions only authorised the use of force to eject Iraqi troops from Kuwait. However by passing this, the US bombed and destroyed Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Another UN resolution divided Iraq into three no-fly zones.
In the case of the genocide of the Tutsi minorities in Rwanda by Hutu majority in 1994, there were reports that the UN had advance knowledge, but failed to save around 800,000 Tutsis who were slaughtered.
In the following years, the US, backed by Britain, France, Russia and other countries, induced the UN to pass resolutions to impose crippling sanctions, especially on Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Afghanistan (all Muslim countries), for not implementing UN resolutions. These sanctions caused death and immense sufferings to people.
The US-led UN embargo on Iraq specially had a devastating effect on Iraq including the death of more than half a million children. When asked whether death of half a million children justified the embargo, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: ‘It was worth it’.
There are more than sixty UN resolutions on Israel which committed more than 60 massacres of Palestinians since the 1930s. But none was implemented. Since the establishment of the United Nations, hundreds of resolutions have been passed disapproving the annexation of territories. These resolutions are still gathering dust in the UN archives.
In their drive to cleanse the Balkan of Muslims, Serbs massacred more than 300,000 Bosnian Muslim men, women, and children and displaced at least two million who were driven out from their homes to take refuge in the nearby jungles. The screams and tears for help of innocent Muslim men who were slaughtered like animals in the presence of their family members did not appear to have melted the hearts of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, the US and European leaders -- the so called champions of human rights.
Serbs committed genocide on 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and dumped their bodies in mass graves from July 12 through July 18 in and near the UN declared “safe area”.
Dutch peacekeepers, assigned by the UN to protect them, handed Muslim men over to Serbian troops knowing very well that they were to be slaughtered. The silence of the West and the UN gave Serbs open licence to continue their slaughter of Muslims who were as blue-eyed white men as the rest of the westerners.
The UN also committed war crimes by imposing arms embargo and depriving Bosnian Muslims of the right to defend themselves, but gave a free hand to the well-armed Serbian aggressors to commit mass murder, torture, rape, destruction and eviction of Bosnian Muslims from their homes.
The then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that, “The massacre of Srebrenica Muslims would haunt the UN forever”. Admitting that the UN had failed and calling for genuine reforms to break the hegemony of the victors of World War II in the Security Council, Kofi Annan, in February 2006 called for sweeping changes to the UN to suit the needs of the time.
“The victims had put their trust on international protection. But we, the international community, let them down”, said a message from the then European Union foreign policy Chief Javier Solana. “This was a colossal, collective and shameful failure.”
Exploiting the September 11 tragedy in New York and Washington, US President George Bush Junior turned to UN resolutions to legitimize his aggression, first on Afghanistan, and then the invasion of Iraq. Even here the US got the relevant UN resolutions passed by blackmailing smaller nations, while most Arab dictators -- known scoundrels -- struck under-the-table deals with the US and left the Afghans and the Iraqis to face missiles and bombs.
The UN resolutions also facilitated British-France-led US-Israeli backed invasion and destruction of Libya -- an oil rich country where the peaceful people enjoyed a very high standard of living. In the same way almost all wars waged during the past three decades under various pretexts by US and Israel together with their European partners were legalised by UN resolutions.
Citing Micah Zenko ,a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, columnist Shenali Waduge pointed out in a recent article that, “The United States has dropped an estimated 23,144 bombs in the Muslim-majority countries of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015 alone.
According to UN reports there are around 60 million refugees caused by these wars legalized by the UN. What crimes have these innocent victims committed to deserve this punishment?
Today the UN has become a tool for US-British-France and Russian destruction of Syria causing death, untold misery and sufferings on the Syrians. Once again UN miserably failed to protect the Syrians.
No world leader ever summoned up courage to criticise these US-led war crimes except the outspoken former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed and Africa’s legendary freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. Mahathir Mohamed challenged the credibility of the UN, condemned the selective use of the veto power in the Security Council, and warned the world body against the resurgence of imperialism and “puppet regimes”.
Striking at the very heart of the UN problem, Mahathir said, “The UN’s organs had been “cut out, dissected and reshaped so they may perform the way the puppet masters want. The uni-polar world dominated by a democratic nation is leading the world to economic chaos, political anarchy, uncertainty and fear”.
Now in the disputed region of Kashmir, UN passed numerous resolutions since 1947 on a plebiscite and the right to self-determination of Kashmiri Muslims. However, they remain discarded. Once again since July 8, 2016 India unleashed its latest atrocities on Kashmiris fighting for their freedom. The UN remains a silent spectator. In his farewell speech to UN, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon simply ignored the conflict by urging India and Pakistan to turn to dialogue.
The question is why no accountability for the US, British, French, Russian, Israeli, Saudi and Egyptian war crimes? This is the new world disorder created by war mongers.
Thus the UN, established with the slogan of peace to make the world a better place, has ended up as war mongers’ tools and are collaborating with war mongers to turn many countries into wastelands and killing fields
In this chaotic international scene what is in store for humanity is unpredictable.
