Opinion & Editorials
Weapons of Disruption

On the weekend, a crucial disclosure came from Hans Blix, UN’s chief weapons inspector and head of the team that went into Iraq to find and destroy its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Mr Blix’s discomfort with the Anglo-American line on Iraq has been apparent for a while, and now he has come out in the open to accuse the US and UK of having made up their minds in advance to attack Iraq. He also said neither country was really interested in finding WMD. Mr Blix’s words confirm what has long been suspected: That the WMD served as a pretext for the war. The Bush-Blair team couldn’t wait for the UN inspection team to find the weapons, not because the latter posed a huge and immediate danger to the world, but because the weapons might not have been found. Indeed, the offensive weapons have not shown up anywhere in Iraq. Was the attack on Iraq, then, deliberately mounted on a false premise? The world at large would be justified in reaching that conclusion, whether or not the US now finds WMD in Iraq. For logic dictates that in its dying moments a regime would use whatever weapon it possessed to protect itself.Unfortunately, the story looks set to go into its second act, with Syria playing villain. Barely had Baghdad fallen, when president Bush and others started issuing not-so-veiled threats to Syria against harbouring members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party. There were also dark hints about Saddam having moved his WMD into Syria. There is little Syria can do about this charge, given the way the US went about establishing WMD in Iraq. That Syria’s government is run by a branch of the Ba’ath party further complicates matters for the country. Understandably, the current crackdown on the Ba’ath movement has created fears in Syria’s ruling circles. Yet, in strictly legal terms, Syria has done no wrong. Mere membership of the Ba’ath party, a legitimate political entity with an ideology centred around secular Arab nationalism, cannot be held to be a crime. As for providing sanctuary to Iraqi officials, under the convention on the status of refugees, Syria is bound to accept those fleeing from persecution. If the standards now being applied to Syria were extended further eastward, India could find itself on a sticky wicket. India possesses WMD and it has been included by the CIA among those who helped Libya build its ballistic missile programme.