Editorial, 'GERONIMO EKIA' in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 15 May 2011 issue

GERONIMO EKIA

The American President, watching it live from the White House, along with Hillary Clinton et al, with a ‘stony face’, beamed with joy on hearing this message by the Navy Seals: ‘Geronimo EKIA (Enemy Killed In Action)’ and exclaimed ‘We got him!’ Soon thereafter he broadcast to the entire world that the most dreaded terrorist of the era has been found and killed and ‘justice has been done’. Astonishingly, the most wanted Islamic terrorist was not found in any inhospitable terrains of Afghanistan or Pakistan but in the star cantonment city of Abbottabad. This but confirms the general suspicions current, especially in India, that Pakistan is acting as a rogue state aiding/promoting international terrorism. Public opinion in Pakistan itself seems to be divided with fundamentalists on the rise in many parts and demonstrating against the ‘invasion’ of their territory by the USA and also paying homage to the great ‘jihadi shaheed’. Op Geronimo was kept highly secret without a hint to the Pakistanis lest it be spoilt at the last minute and it does raise some questions of international law, also on whether it was justified to kill an unarmed enemy who could have been captured. Osama’s son has already complained to the UN requesting ‘justice to be done’ on this issue. The naming the target after a highly respected fighter-leader (1829-1909) of the American native Indians, is also widely condemned, with his great grand-son, Harlyn Geronimo, protesting to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that “… to equate Geronimo with bin Laden is an unpardonable slander of Native America and its most famous leader in history. … also a subversion of history that defames a great human spirit…” and certainly not expected from the office of a half-black half-Muslim Yankee President. Then there is the intricate question of whether the world has become a bit safer or rendered more insecure now. All indications are towards a spate of revenge killings the world over by the jihadi terrorists and in our opinion no meaningful and successful anti-terror struggle can be waged unless the state terror and imperialist interventions of the super-power and its allies are also countered and overcome §§§