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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Kabul hospital bombing unravels the laws of war. It puts our civilisation in danger

Learning from the Second World War, the world seemed to move toward making war subject to law and reason. These ends were, however, almost immediately subverted.

The bomb crashed through the sign of the Red Cross, painted over the spotless white roof, cutting through two floors of No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital. The surgeons Ethelbert Meek and Abner Sage died instantly, together with nurses, operating-room staff and their critically-injured patient. The fire, which followed, claimed many more lives. Later, military chaplain GH Andrews recalled: “There were flags with a red cross flying, and lights were turned on them so that they would show prominently. The Germans could not possibly have mistaken the building they bombed for anything else.”

Four hundred people died this week when Pakistan Air Force combat jets hit the Omar Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul—the carnage a reminder that precision-strike technology has done nothing to diminish the murderous character of war since the destruction of No. 3 Hospital on 29 May 1918.

Everywhere, the conventions that protected civilian lives even in war have been disintegrating. The bombing of hospitals in Gaza is just the most egregious example; America has hit a school in Iran; Iran has bombed hospitals in Israel; Saudi Arabia levelled a hospital in northern Yemen; the Taliban, who now rule Afghanistan, themselves conducted suicide attacks on hospitals and terrorised doctors.

Few leaders even bother to apologise for these crimes, as President Barack Obama did in 2015, after American jets bombed a hospital in Kunduz, killing dozens of doctors and patients. Law scholar Peter Margulies noted that a military investigation of the bombing established commanders had shown callous disregard for human life—yet, no one was prosecuted for war crimes.

Also read: India’s long war with Maoists has a huge void — no number of dead bodies can fill it

Ever since 1949, the Geneva Conventions have promised protection of the sick and wounded in war—civilian or military, friend or foe. There are circumstances in which the immunities can be lifted—for example, when a hospital is misused for military or intelligence purposes, or civilians participate in combat. Even then,........

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