ARTICLE Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, promulgated in 1948, states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

The newly-formed United Nations enshrined international human rights in the direct aftermath of the world's greatest armed conflict, World War Two. Since then there have been nine subsequent attempts to protect fundamental human rights in international law, ranging from the Geneva Conventions to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms to an African Charter on human and people's rights.

It has now been two weeks since the release of the horrific pictures showing the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. And despite the denials of widespread abuse by the principal governments which have the most troops stationed in Iraq and apologies made by the leaders of those countries, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the chorus of international condemnation has not yet died down.

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners, say the US and UK, is a grotesque distortion of the norms these two countries have followed since the end of World War Two.

In the aftermath of World War Two and the outbreak of any number of regional armed conflicts, most taking place in former colonial territories, a new term was coined to describe the nature of these conflicts.

The term used was "dirty wars" and it essentially meant that unlike in traditional warfare ? where you have two regular armies facing off against each other ? these conflicts were characterised by military forces finding themselves in armed conflict with guerrilla armies camouflaged among (and often supported by) civilian populations.

did see the emergence of this type of conflict in Nazi-occupied Europe when resistance groups carried out armed attacks against their German oppressors. But the reaction of the Germans in such countries as France, Czechoslovakia and Greece was often brutal and quite disproportionate to the acts of resistance, often involving reprisal massacres of hundreds of civilians.

The populations of whole villages were executed, subjected to what is called collective punishment for attacks carried out by the resistance. Torture was also commonly employed by the Nazis to intimidate and cow populations under their occupation.

It was because of these outrages and the cruel and degrading treatment of civilians during the war that certain military and civilian leaders of the Axis powers ? Germany and Japan ? were put on trial at Nuremberg and Tokyo. Some were executed, others jailed for long periods of time for crimes against humanity.

But some of the same countries that sat in judgment in the aftermath of World War Two later employed the self-same techniques pioneered by the Germans and Japanese used to suppress nationalist revolts that broke out in their colonial territories during the 1950s and '60s.

The French, the Dutch, the Belgians and the British, to name some of the principal colonial powers of the day, all availed themselves of tactics and policies that had much in common with those used by the Germans in Europe and the Japanese in Asia.

The French and their Algerian puppets, for instance, used indiscriminate torture against Algerian nationalists and their civilian supporters. In what is perhaps a classic irony, the classic documentary made about that conflict, , is now, I understand, required viewing for American policy-makers and strategic planners as they seek a way out of the Iraqi quagmire.

Intrigues by Brussels in what was then called the Belgian Congo on the eve of that African country's Independence led to the death of its first leader, Patrice Lumumba. When the Dutch attempted to re-impose their rule over Indonesia, which had been its East Asian colony until the Japanese broke their control, this resulted in a short and particularly bitter war which ended in Independence for that country.

The British, of course, became embroiled in many such conflicts before London accepted the British Empire was going to be replaced by what was then called the British Commonwealth, now simply the Commonwealth. But before that the British fought a low-level guerrilla war against the Mau Mau in Kenya, a Kikuyu-based nationalist movement that wanted Independence for Kenya.

Although Britain suppressed the Mau Mau uprising, an effort that took four years and required thousands of British troops and some 11,000 Mau Mau fighters lost their lives, this revolt is credited with convincing the British that they could not stop the Independence movement spreading in its African colonies.

Nevertheless, in an infamous act the British used so-called "detention and rehabilitation camps" in Kenya, the type they first employed in their conflict with the Afrikaners during the Boer War of 1899-1902.

Thousands of women and children died in those camps, which led to bitterness between the Dutch-speaking settlers and the British for decades to come. Not only did Britain use such camps in Kenya they also employed them against Malaysian civilians during the long-running colonial war there.

America, despite its claim that what recently happened in Iraq was an aberration, apparently has a short historical memory. Among the many atrocities committed by American forces or their South Vietnamese allies during the Indo-China wars, in 1970 published damning photos of what were called "tiger cages" which held suspected Viet Cong men, women and even children in deplorable conditions. These cages were so small that many prisoners were crippled by being held in them.

I have referred to these historical precedents because it is being claimed that what has happened in Iraq is out of the ordinary. In reality it has long been the policy of Western decision-makers to employ ruthless tactics against the enemy and their civilian supporters. The hypocrisy of the West, which claims to adhere to the highest standards of international behaviour, is to be exposed here. The truth is there is not one culture or continent where regimes have not been guilty of conducting state sponsored torture and far worse.

If the hapless victims of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe during World War Two were to come back and see what a state that was formed in their name is now doing to the Palestinian people, would they claim such a state as their own?

Is it clear that when it comes to respecting human rights, mankind as a whole has still not learned anything?