Afghan myopia
Western failure to grasp the reality of Afghanistan is exacting a terrible cost on the civilian population
Conor Foley. Guardian Unlimited, Saturday 17 May 2008 10:00am
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/05/getting_it_right_and_wrong_1.htmlThe frustrating thing about Afghanistan is how easy it is to be proved right about what is going wrong.
In an article I wrote in 2003, when I was still working in the country, I argued that "good governance, respect for human rights and the rule of law are not optional when it comes to rebuilding a country, but an intrinsic part of reconstruction." This week a UN expert made almost exactly the same point when he warned of "staggeringly high" complacency about civilians being killed by international troops and that foreign intelligence units may be carrying out death-squad type killings with impunity.
Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions told a press conference in Kabul on Thursday that international forces have killed about 200 civilians in operations in the past four months, while Taliban and other rebels have killed around 300. Most of the deaths caused by the international troops have been due to their over-reliance on air strikes, but he also said that secret units controlled by foreign intelligence services have also killed civilians in anti-rebel operations; a reference to US special forces.
Alston, from New York University, is an independent expert who reports to the UN human rights council in Geneva rather than the UN mission in Afghanistan. He was invited to the country by the government of Afghanistan to undertake a 12 day mission in relation to his mandate. He met a variety of government ministers and military commanders during his trip, but his request to meet the Taliban was rejected by the government. One of his recommendations is that future missions should include meetings with the Taliban to urge them to respect international human rights and humanitarian law.
His other recommendations will be familiar to those who have followed the steady deterioration of the situation in the country over the years. Police killings should be investigated, key figures in Afghanistan's government accused of human rights abuses and corruption must be put on trial. The culture of impunity amongst the country's warlords must be tackled.
Of course none of this is likely to happen, but the report sets down another marker against which the failure of the international community's efforts can be judged. In an excellent summary of what is going wrong and needs to be put right Daniel Korski, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, argues that "the international community must hold the Afghan government and itself to commitments already agreed - such as the vetting process for governors, police chiefs and other senior officials." Nepotism and corruption must be rooted out and steps need to be taken to ensure that the next set of presidential and parliamentary elections are fair.
Korski also argues that "the UN must help the government re-launch outreach to the Taliban and other combatants" and that a peace deal will require a regional dimension. He says that the international community should be prepared to "hold the Afghan government's feet to the fire" to bring about a change of policy.
More than 12,000 people have died in violence since 2006, despite the presence of more than 55,000 foreign troops led by Nato and the US military and nearly 150,000 Afghan security forces. Overall, violence is still rising and military deaths in the first three months of this year were one-third higher than a year ago. As the Economist has noted, the Taliban's change of tactics away from conventional set-piece battles and towards roadside bombs and suicide attacks shows that they have learnt lessons from the insurgents in Iraq.
Five years ago I argued: "The concentration on the 'war on terror' and the attempt to defeat terrorist violence by military means have been a major cause of the current crisis and, paradoxically, helped create the conditions for the Taliban to rebuild support." This did not require any particular insight; as virtually everyone who has visited the country would say the same. The only thing that has changed is that the situation has got worse, year by year by year.
Unfortunately, a large section of opinion in Europe and North America seem to have completely deluded themselves about what is happening in the country and have spent the last five years smearing those of us who object to the policy of "staying the course" as cowards or appeasers. Look at what John Williams wrote here in September 2006 or Nick Cohen said here in November 2007 or Polly Toynbee said here in February of this year. If this is what passes as serious commentary in the mainstream British liberal media, then it is no wonder our decision-makers are so badly informed. The price of their myopia is being paid in innocent lives.
Sadr threatens 'open war' as Iraqi army attacks base
By Patrick Cockburn. The Independent, Monday 21 April 2008Iraqi government forces, with US and British support, have moved into the Mehdi Army stronghold in Basra and have surrounded its main bastion in Baghdad as the Shia militia's leader Muqtada al-Sadr threatened "open war".
The Iraqi army, supported by US air strikes and British artillery, was able to advance into Basra against little resistance while there is still heavy fighting around Sadr City, a vast impoverished quarter of Baghdad in which some two million people are living.
"I'm giving the last warning and the last word to the Iraqi government," said Mr Sadr. "Either it comes to its senses and takes the path of peace ... or it will be [seen as] the same as the previous government [of Saddam Hussein]."
The Sadrists see the attack on them as orchestrated by the Badr Organisation, the powerful Shia militia which is allied to the government and many of whose men have joined the Iraqi army and security services. "If they don't come to their senses and curb the infiltrated militias, we will declare an open war until liberation," Mr Sadr said.
Mr Sadr has tried for the past four years to avoid an open military confrontation with Iraqi government forces when backed by United States firepower.
In Basra, the Mehdi Army has been able to hold off the Iraqi army in gun battles but has then retreated. But there is no sign so far of the militia being eliminated and it could probably launch devastating counter attacks in the slum districts where its supporters live. Mr Sadr called a six-month ceasefire last August, renewed it in February and called his militiamen off the streets when they seemed to be winning during fighting at the end of March.
Many of his militiamen are impatient to renew their battle with the Iraqi army and the Americans. In Sadr City, one Mehdi Army commander said on Saturday night that he was "thrilled" by Mr Sadr's threat to go back to war. "We will wait until tomorrow to see the response of the government," he said. "Otherwise they will see black days like they have never seen before in their life."
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, sounds confident that he can win a confrontation with the Sadrists since he is backed by the US, the main Sunni party and the Kurds, all of whom have doubted his leadership in the past. Iran has also openly supported his offensive in Basra while criticising the American air assault on Sadr City.
In the past, Mr Maliki has often been over-confident of his ability to act without American military support. He became prime minister thanks to Mr Sadr's support but this was withdrawn when Mr Maliki failed to set a timetable for an American withdrawal.
The US has long encouraged the Iraqi government to crush the Sadrists but seems to have been caught by surprise by current events in which the US finds itself fighting a war on two fronts: one against the Sunni Arabs, which it has waged since 2003, and now a second, which is just beginning, against the Shia.
Financial Collapse will End the Occupation: And it won't be "a time of our choosing"
Mike Whitney, Information Clearing House, 14 April 2008. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19742.htm"Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us...
You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, pointing out at you...
Come and search for them in the rubble of your "surgical" air raids, you may find a little leg or a little head...pleading for your attention."Flying Kites" Layla Anwar The US Military has won every battle it has fought in Iraq, but it has lost the war. Wars are won politically, not militarily. Bush doesn't understand this. He still clings to the belief that a political settlement can be imposed through force. But he is mistaken. The use of overwhelming force has only spread the violence and added to the political instability. Now Iraq is ungovernable. Was that the objective? Miles of concrete blast-walls snake through Baghdad to separate the warring parties; the country is fragmented into a hundred smaller pieces each ruled by local militia commanders. These are the signs of failure not success. That's why the American people no longer support the occupation. They're just being practical; they know Bush's plan won't work. As Nir Rosen says, "Iraq has become Somalia".
The administration still supports Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki, but al-Maliki is a meaningless figurehead who will have no effect on the country's future. He has no popular base of support and controls nothing beyond the walls of the Green Zone. The al-Maliki government is merely an Arab facade designed to convince the American people that political progress is being made, but there is no progress. Its a sham. The future is in the hands of the men with guns; they're the ones who have divided Iraq into locally-controlled fiefdoms and they are the ones who will ultimately decide who will rule the state. At present, the fighting between the factions is being described as "sectarian warfare", but the term is intentionally misleading. The fighting is political in nature; the various militias are competing with each other to see who will fill the vacuum left by the removal of Saddam. It's a power struggle. The media likes to portray the conflict as a clash between half-crazed Arabs--"dead-enders and terrorists"---who relish the idea killing their countrymen, but that's just a way of demonizing the enemy. In truth, the violence is entirely rational; it is the inevitable reaction to the dissolution of the state and the occupation by foreign troops. Many military experts predicted that there would be outbreaks of fighting after the initial invasion, but their warnings were shrugged off by clueless politicians and the cheerleading media. Now the violence has flared up again in Basra and Baghdad, and there is no end in sight. Only one thing seems certain, Iraq's future will not be decided at the ballot box. Bush has made sure of that.
The US military does not rule Iraq nor does it have the power to control events on the ground. It's just one of many militias vieing for power in a state that is ruled by warlords. After the army conducts combat operations, it is forced to retreat to its camps and bases. This point needs to be emphasized in order to understand that there is no real future for the occupation. The US simply does not have the manpower to hold territory or to establish security. In fact, the presence of American troops incites violence because they are seen as forces of occupation, not liberators. Survey's show that the vast majority of the Iraqi people want US troops to leave. The military has destroyed too much of the country and slaughtered too many people to expect that these attitudes will change anytime soon. Iraqi poet and blogger Layla Anwar sums up the feelings of many of the war's victims in a recent post on her web site "An Arab Women's Blues":
"At the gates of Babylon the Great, you are still struggling, fighting away, chasing this or the other, detaining, bombing from above, filling up morgues, hospitals, graveyards and embassies and borders with queues for exit-visas.
Not one Iraqi wishes your presence. Not one Iraqi accepts your occupation.
Got news for you Motherfuckers, you will never control Iraq, not in six years, not in ten years, not in 20 years....You have brought upon yourself the hate and the curse of all Iraqis, Arabs and the rest of the world...now face your agony." (Layla Anwar; "An Arab Women's Blues: Reflections in a sealed bottle"
Is Bush hoping to change the mind of Layla or the millions of other Iraqis who have lost loved ones or been forced into exile or seen their country and culture crushed beneath the boot heel of foreign occupation? The hearts and minds campaign is lost. The US will never be welcome in Iraq.
According to a survey in the British Medical Journal "Lancet" more than a million Iraqis have been killed in the war. Another four million have been either internally-displaced or have fled the country. But the figures tell us nothing about the magnitude of the disaster that Bush has caused by attacking Iraq. The invasion is the greatest human catastrophe in the Middle East since the Nakba in 1948. Living standards have declined precipitously in every area---infant mortality, clean water, food-security, medical supplies, education, electrical power, employment etc. Even oil production is still below pre-war levels. The invasion is the most comprehensive policy failure since Vietnam; everything has gone wrong. The heart of the Arab world has descended into chaos. The suffering is incalculable.
The main problem is the occupation; it is the primary catalyst for violence and an obstacle to political settlement. As long as the occupation persists, so will the fighting. The claims that the so-called surge has changed the political landscape are greatly exaggerated. Retired Lt. General William Odom commented on this point in an interview on the Jim Lerher News Hour:
"The surge has sustained military instability and achieved nothing in political consolidation....Things are much worse now. And I don't see them getting any better. This was foreseeable a year and a half ago. And to continue to put the cosy veneer of comfortable half-truths on this is to deceive the American public and to make them think it is not the charade it is.....When you say that the Lebanization of Iraq is taking place, yes, but not because of Iran, but because the U.S. went in and made this kind of fragmentation possible. And it has occurred over the last five years....The al-Maliki government is worse off now...The notion that there's some kind of progress is absurd. The al-Maliki government uses its Ministry of Interior like a death squad militia. So to call Sadr an extremist and Maliki a good guy just overlooks the reality that there are no good guys." (Jim Lerher News Hour)
The war in Iraq was lost before the first shot was fired. The conflict never had the support of the American people and Iraq never posed a threat to US national security. The whole pretext for the war was based on lies; it was a coup orchestrated by elites and the media to carry out a far-right agenda. Now the mission has failed, but no one wants to admit their mistakes by withdrawing; so the butchery continues without pause.
How Will It End?
The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy that is unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute a war that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily. But fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than it was when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to deteriorate until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that's unlikely to happen until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic conditions in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure on the dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the banking system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are falling, and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession. The US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.
The Iraq War signals the end of US interventionism for at least a generation; maybe longer. The ideological foundation for the war (pre emption/regime change) has been exposed as a baseless justification for unprovoked aggression. Someone will have to be held accountable. There will have to be international tribunals to determine who is responsible in the deaths of over one million Iraqis.
Secret US plan for military future in Iraq
Document outlines powers but sets no time limit on troop presence
Seumus Milne. The Guardian, Tuesday 08 April 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/08/iraq.usaA confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.
The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked "secret" and "sensitive", is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security" without time limit.
The authorisation is described as "temporary" and the agreement says the US "does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq". But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces - including the British - in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.
Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries. The agreement is intended to govern the status of the US military and other members of the multinational force.
Following recent clashes between Iraqi troops and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army in Basra, and threats by the Iraqi government to ban his supporters from regional elections in the autumn, anti-occupation Sadrists and Sunni parties are expected to mount strong opposition in parliament to the agreement, which the US wants to see finalised by the end of July. The UN mandate expires at the end of the year.
One well-placed Iraqi Sunni political source said yesterday: "The feeling in Baghdad is that this agreement is going to be rejected in its current form, particularly after the events of the last couple of weeks. The government is more or less happy with it as it is, but parliament is a different matter."
It is also likely to prove controversial in Washington, where it has been criticised by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has accused the administration of seeking to tie the hands of the next president by committing to Iraq's protection by US forces.
The defence secretary, Robert Gates, argued in February that the planned agreement would be similar to dozens of "status of forces" pacts the US has around the world and would not commit it to defend Iraq. But Democratic Congress members, including Senator Edward Kennedy, a senior member of the armed services committee, have said it goes well beyond other such agreements and amounts to a treaty, which has to be ratified by the Senate under the constitution.
Administration officials have conceded that if the agreement were to include security guarantees to Iraq, it would have to go before Congress. But the leaked draft only states that it is "in the mutual interest of the United States and Iraq that Iraq maintain its sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and that external threats to Iraq be deterred. Accordingly, the US and Iraq are to consult immediately whenever the territorial integrity or political independence of Iraq is threatened."
Significantly - given the tension between the US and Iran, and the latter's close relations with the Iraqi administration's Shia parties - the draft agreement specifies that the "US does not seek to use Iraq territory as a platform for offensive operations against other states".
General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, is to face questioning from all three presidential candidates on Capitol Hill today when he reports to the Senate on his surge strategy, which increased US forces in Iraq by about 30,000 last year.
Both Clinton and Democratic rival Barack Obama are committed to beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq. Republican senator John McCain has pledged to maintain troop levels until the country is secure.
This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie.
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Wednesday 19 March 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-this-is-the-war-that-started-with-lies-and-continues-with-lie-after-lie-after-lie-797788.htmlIt has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.
This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker. The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.
On 7 April, the US Ai r Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad. "I think we did get Saddam Hussein," said the US Vice President, Dick Cheney. "He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn't able to breathe."
Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead. One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed "US resolve and capabilities".
Mr Cheney was back in Baghdad this week, five years later almost to the day, to announce that there has been "phenomenal" improvements in Iraqi security. Within hours, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the Shia holy city of Kerbala, killing at least 40 and wounding 50 people. Often it is difficult to know where the self-deception ends and the deliberate mendacity begins.
The most notorious lie of all was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But critics of the war may have focused too much on WMD and not enough on later distortions.
The event which has done most to shape the present Iraqi political landscape was the savage civil war between Sunni and Shia in Baghdad and central Iraq in 2006-07 when 3,000 civilians a month were being butchered and which was won by the Shia.
The White House and Downing Street blithely denied a civil war was happening - and forced Iraq politicians who said so to recant - to pretend the crisis was less serious than it was.
More often, the lies have been small, designed to make a propaganda point for a day even if they are exposed as untrue a few weeks later. One example of this to shows in detail how propaganda distorts day-to-day reporting in Iraq, but, if the propagandist knows his job, is very difficult to disprove.
On 1 February this year, two suicide bombers, said to be female, blew themselves up in two pet markets in predominantly Shia areas of Baghdad, al Ghazil and al-Jadida, and killed 99 people. Iraqi government officials immediately said the bombers had the chromosonal disorder Down's syndrome, which they could tell this from looking at the severed heads of the bombers. Sadly, horrific bombings in Iraq are so common that they no longer generate much media interest abroad. It was the Down's syndrome angle which made the story front-page news. It showed al-Qa'ida in Iraq was even more inhumanly evil than one had supposed (if that were possible) and it meant, so Iraqi officials said, that al-Qa'ida was running out of volunteers.
The Times splashed on it under the headline, "Down's syndrome bombers kill 91". The story stated firmly that "explosives strapped to two women with Down's syndrome were detonated by remote control in crowded pet markets". Other papers, including The Independent, felt the story had a highly suspicious smell to it. How much could really be told about the mental condition of a woman from a human head shattered by a powerful bomb? Reliable eyewitnesses in suicide bombings are difficult to find because anybody standing close to the bomber is likely to be dead or in hospital.
The US military later supported the Iraqi claim that the bombers had Down's syndrome. On 10 February, they arrested Dr Sahi Aboub, the acting director of the al Rashad mental hospital in east Baghdad, alleging that he had provided mental patients for use by al-Qa'ida. The Iraqi Interior Ministry started rounding up beggars and mentally disturbed people on the grounds that they might be potential bombers.
But on 21 February, an American military spokes-man said there was no evidence the bombers had Down's. Adel Mohsin, a senior official at the Health Ministry in Baghdad, poured scorn on the idea that Dr Aboub could have done business with the Sunni fanatics of al-Qa'ida because he was a Shia and had only been in the job a few weeks.
A second doctor, who did not want to give his name, pointed out that al Rashad hospital is run by the fundamentalist Shia Mehdi Army and asked: "How would it be possible for al-Qa'ida to get in there?"
Few people in Baghdad now care about the exact circumstances of the bird market bombings apart from Dr Aboub, who is still in jail, and the mentally disturbed beggars who were incarcerated. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that al-Qa'ida is not running out of suicide bombers. But it is pieces of propaganda such as this small example, often swallowed whole by the media and a thousand times repeated, which cumulatively mask the terrible reality of Iraq.
Cost of Iraqi and Afghan wars has doubled
Bill for both conflicts adds up to £10bn since 2003. Sharp rise mainly due to equipment prices, say MPshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/mar/11/military.iraq The combined cost of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 12 months has almost doubled to more than £3bn, a cross-party group of MPs revealed yesterday.
The costs of operations by British forces in Afghanistan has risen to more than £1.6bn, a year-on-year increase of 122%. More surprisingly, given the reduction in troops in Iraq, the cost of Britain's military presence there has also increased to £1.6bn, a year-on-year rise of 72%, the Commons defence committee said.
The costs are about 50% more than the government forecast three months ago, the report said. It came as military officials made it clear that the number of British troops in Iraq would not now be cut this spring to the number previously indicated by Gordon Brown.
The total cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 now totals about £10bn, according to estimates based on annual official figures from the Treasury and Ministry of Defence. The sharpest increases were for buying, repairing and replacing new armoured vehicles and other equipment acquired under a special Urgent Operation Requirements system, referred to as UORs. The report said these costs in Iraq and Afghanistan had risen "far beyond the scale of other costs". It added: "The MoD needs to make clearer the reasons for these considerable increases."
James Arbuthnot, the committee's chairman and a former Tory defence minister, said: "Few people will object to the investment being made in better facilities and equipment for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this estimate represents a lot of public money. The MoD needs to provide better information about what it is all being spent on." The figures were seized on by Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, who said: "We have been complaining for a long time that these operations are under-resourced. It appears that this is something the government seems to belatedly recognise."
Nick Harvey, Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said the report "clearly shows how the Iraq war is continuing to bleed our finances dry, leaving soldiers in Afghanistan overstretched and under-equipped".
Kate Hudson, the chair of CND, said: "The human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are clear, with an estimated 655,000 dead in Iraq alone, but the opportunities lost by spending these billions on further destruction rather than on humanitarian reconstruction adds to the long list of tragedies unleashed by Bush's wars."
Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, said: "I am quite clear what we are spending it on and because this money comes from the Treasury reserve, spending it in one theatre does not come at the expense of the other. We are spending it on better equipment ... and paying our forces more, including a tax-free operational bonus - in both Iraq and Afghanistan."
The committee observed that the cost of operations in Iraq was as high as in Afghanistan. This was despite the reduction in British troops in Basra. But the MoD has been forced to invest in equipment for troops as attacks by insurgents increase.
In a statement yesterday, the MoD avoided any reference to Brown's October announcement that he planned to reduce the number of UK troops in Basra to 2,500 from the spring of this year. The MoD said only that it intended "to reduce troop numbers in Iraq over the coming months". A senior British defence official said Iraqi generals in Basra wanted a significant British presence as they built up their forces. "Where are we going to be at the end of 2008? We don't know," the official said.
Iraq minutes 'should be released'
The government has been told to release the minutes of two cabinet meetings in the days before the Iraq war.The demand came from Information Commissioner Richard Thomas after a Freedom of Information request was rejected by the Cabinet Office.
He said disclosure would "allow the public to more fully understand this particular decision of the cabinet".
The Cabinet Office has 35 days to appeal against the decision and is said to be "considering" its response.
In his ruling, Mr Thomas says the minutes had to be released to help "transparency and public understanding of the relevant issues".
'Public impression'
He also says that accountability for the decisions made is "paramount".
The person making the request said that not releasing the information created "a public impression that something not entirely truthful has been uttered".
But the Cabinet Office refused to release minutes on the grounds that the papers were exempt from disclosure as they related to the formulation of government policy and ministerial communications.
However, Mr Thomas ruled that, in this particular case, the public interest in disclosing the minutes outweighed the public interest in withholding the information.
He said he did not believe that disclosure would "necessarily" set a precedent in respect of other cabinet minutes.
Mr Thomas accepted that a number of specific references in the minutes could damage Britain's international relations if they became public and could be "redacted" - blacked out - before the minutes are released.
Second resolution
The ruling is set to reopen controversy over the then attorney general Lord Goldsmith's legal advice on the war.
On the eve of war, 17 March, his opinion unequivocally saying military action was legal was presented to cabinet, MPs and the military and published.
However, after long-running reports that he had changed his mind into the lead up to war, his initial lengthy advice given to Tony Blair on 7 March was leaked and then published in 2005.
This advice raised a number of questions and concerns about the possible legality of military action against Iraq without a second UN resolution and was never shown to the cabinet.
The then prime minister Tony Blair defended his decision not to show the cabinet the full advice, saying that Lord Goldsmith had attended the cabinet in person and was able to answer any legal questions and explain his view.
'Wall of secrecy'
The government has not yet decided whether or not to appeal the decision of the Information Commissioner that orders them to release the minutes of cabinet meetings that discussed the legal advice on going to war in Iraq.
In response to the Information Commission's decision a government spokesman said they were "considering" it.
He said: "The requirements of openness and transparency must be balanced against the proper and effective functioning of government.
"At the very heart of that system is the constitutional convention of collective cabinet responsibility."
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Edward Davey said: "Labour's wall of secrecy over the Iraq war is gradually being dismantled brick by brick.
"The case for an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war is only strengthened by these continuing efforts to delay and obstruct those seeking the truth."
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7264887.stm
Sunni vs Shia: the real bloody battle for Baghdad
Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad, Tuesday, 5 February 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/sunni-vs-shia-the-real-bloody-battle-for-baghdad-778038.htmlReconciliation between Sunni and Shia, seen by the US as essential for political progress in Iraq, is not happening. The difficulty in introducing measures to conciliate members of the old regime is illustrated by the way in which a new law, originally designed to ease the path of former Baath party members into government jobs will, in practice, intensify the purge against them.
The framers of the law wanted Baathists to be able to get their jobs back in the Iraqi military, security services and elsewhere. But the Iraqi parliament has a Shia majority, and the legislation signed into law last Sunday will make it more difficult for the former Baathists to work for the government.
Under the terms of the law, Ahmad Chalabi, the chairman of de-Baathification commission, said 7,000 senior Iraqi security personnel will be fired. "The law flatly mandates that all people who were in security such as the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, general security or military intelligence must go." The new measure will effectively strip the Iraqi army, security and intelligence organisations of their senior officers.
Mr Chalabi believes it has been unfairly pilloried as a wholesale attack on anybody connected to the old regime. "The Baath party had 1,200,000 members of whom only 38,000 were subject to de-Baathification," he says. "Of these, 15,600 applied for exemptions [allowing them to take government jobs] and only 300 were turned down."
The provisions of the new law are not the only difficulties facing Baathists or Sunni who work for the government or want to. It is often physically dangerous for them to work in ministries, such as the oil ministry, in overwhelmingly Shia parts of the capital.
Some ministries, such as the Health Ministry, were controlled for long by the party of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The ministry's guards were all Mehdi Army militia from Sadr City and Sunni believed the cellars of the ministry had been converted to torture chambers.
A reason why there is such intense competition to control the government in Baghdad is that it is a giant patronage machine funded by oil revenues. The state has four million employees or people on pensions, Mr Chalabi says, about twice the number employed by the government under Saddam Hussein. Aside from government jobs, there are very few employment opportunities in Iraq.
Discrimination against Sunni is not just confined to ministries. Since the savage battles between Sunni and Shia in Baghdad in 2006 Sunni have often been unable to go to work. One Sunni maintenance engineer in the non-functioning railway station was told by Shia militiamen to leave or be killed. A friendly Sunni co-worker collected his salary for several months until the militiamen told him to stop or be killed himself.
There was always going to be friction between Sunni and Shia in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. But what turned sectarian tension into a bloodbath were the massive al-Qa'ida suicide bombs, often a ton of explosive in a vehicle, detonated in crowded Shia markets and religious gatherings. Though the Shia were patient for two years, they struck back massively after the destruction of the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006.
It is the outcome of this battle for Baghdad which still determines the political landscape of Iraq and makes reconciliation between the communities so difficult. The struggle for the capital was won by the Shia, who now control at least three-quarters of it.
Pressured by al-Qa'ida and the Shia, many anti-US Sunni guerrillas switched sides, seeking US protection, but they intend to renew the battle for Baghdad whenever they think they can win it.
Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan
Jerome Starkey in Kabul. The independent, Monday, 4 February 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-british-plan-to-build-training-camp-for-taliban-fighters-in-afghanistan-777671.htmlThe Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."
The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.
The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.
It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.
President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.
An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.
The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.
A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."
Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.
The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.
But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.
The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.
The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.
Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.
Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".
The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.
President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."
The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.
Afghan government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.
Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.
A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."
But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple's EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.
Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and "spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail" which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.
Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".
Background to the proposal
* December 11
British and Afghan troops take Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand, after President Hamid Karzai reveals that a senior Taliban commander swapped sides.
* December 23-24
The acting head of the EU mission, Michael Semple, and the third-ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, hold talks with local dignitaries and Taliban sympathisers in Helmand. Afghan secret police arrest their colleague, General Stanikzai, and seize a memory stick containing plans for training camps.
* December 25
Semple and Patterson are given 48 hours in which to leave Kabul.
* December 27
The two diplomats fly out of the Afghan capital, despite international appeals to let them stay.
A failure to think
Jonathan Steele. The Guardian, 21 January 2008
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2008/01/a_failure_to_think.htmlFive years after he launched it, George Bush's invasion of Iraq looks even more disastrous than it did at the end of the first year. Not only did it uncover no weapons of mass destruction. The invasion has led to a collapse in millions of ordinary Iraqis' personal security, producing a human rights nightmare and annual rates of killing that dwarf the atrocities of Saddam Hussein's three decades of power.
The damage to the United States has been enormous. As well as the loss of around 4,000 soldiers' lives, America's image and reputation in the Middle East have been severely harmed. For Bush and the neocons, the invasion has brought political defeat. Their project for Iraq to become a secular, liberal, pro-western bastion of democracy lies in ruins. The country is run by a narrow-minded group of Shia Islamists with close control over a sectarian army and police force. Many of them are linked to Iran.
As a result, Bush is now forced to run around the Arabian states along the Persian Gulf in an effort to build an anti-Iranian alliance and find a pretext for keeping a strategic presence in the region.
Sunni Arab revulsion at the murderous tactics of al-Qaida in Iraq, as well as the current "surge" of extra American troops, have helped to produce a welcome drop in al-Qaida's murders of Iraqi civilians and American forces, but it has to remembered that al-Qaida was never in Iraq before the invasion. A successful reduction in al-Qaida's power cannot outweigh all the harm Bush's war has caused to Iraqis.
Many critics blame the occupation's difficulties on a lack of planning, and a series of mistakes in the first few months, including the disbanding of the Iraqi army and failures to provide Iraqi with electricity and water. The line is summed up in the phrase "Winning the war but losing the peace".
But this assumes that a more intelligent and efficient occupation could have worked. It is an extraordinary notion. Like other Arabs, Iraqis have a long memory of US and British intervention in the Middle East, toppling regimes and controlling puppet governments, both to maintain an imperial presence and for the sake of oil. As soon as the Americans made it clear in mid-2003 that their occupation was going to be openended and without a timetable for troop withdrawal, Iraqi nationalists were bound to become suspicious and start resisting.
Yet L Paul Bremer, Iraq's American overlord, as well as his political masters in Washington, used the template of the occupations of Germany and Japan in 1945. They seemed to forget they were occupying an Arab country with a long history of anti-western resistance. Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi exile whose energetic campaigning against Saddam helped to push Bush into invading, realised the point with considerable regret last year when he said "the first and biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation".
Other Iraqi exiles, as well as foreign experts on the country, had seen the danger well before the invasion. They tried to warn Bush and Blair that there would be resentment and resistance. Saddam could be toppled easily, but this would not be victory. As long as the occupation continued, it would provoke suspicion and hostility which could quickly lead to an armed insurgency. They also pointed out that the people who would fill the post-Saddam vacuum would be Islamists, both Shia and Sunni. Whatever political structures were put in place, these anti-western groups would become the dominant force.
Amazingly, few people in the Bush administration or in the British Foreign Office got the point. Much attention has been given to Washington's failures of military intelligence in believing Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction. The failure of political intelligence was equally disastrous. Put another way, the invaders' real problem was not a lack of planning, but a lack of analysis.
There are many reasons, not least the fact that neither government in Washington or London had good experts. The two countries that were most enthusiastic in wanting an invasion were the two which had no embassies in Baghdad since 1990. The French, Germans, Italians and Russians - who did have embassies - predicted the future much better.
The lessons of the neocons' defeat in Iraq are clear enough - except to the neocons themselves. If they now proceed to attack Iran, it will be another triumph of ideological blindness over the need to get the facts, and think.
US attacks UK plan to arm Afghan militias
Jerome Starkey in Kabul. The Independent, Monday 14 January 2008
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3336112.eceThe US general in charge of training the Afghan police has criticised British-backed plans to arm local militias in an attempt to defeat the Taliban. The remarks by Maj-Gen Robert Cone, the second most senior US soldier in Afghanistan, are likely to deepen the row between London and Washington over how to counter the insurgency.
General Cone, who is in charge of rebuilding the Afghan police force, is the second US commander to condemn the initiative. He said: "Anything that detracts from a professional, well-trained, well-led police force is not the answer."
Last month, Gordon Brown said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai". The arbakai system involves arming untrained Afghani men, who agree to come running at the beating of a drum if their village elders feel threatened.
British diplomats and military strategists in the restive southern province of Helmand hope the idea might bolster Afghanistan's fledgling police force, which is unable to defend itself against attacks by Taliban insurgents. At least 10 officers died yesterday in a Taliban attack on a checkpoint in Kandahar. But US officials fear that arbakai fighters would fall under the command of warlords disloyal to the Afghan government. Their reluctance to endorse the plan follows a disastrous international initiative to build an "auxiliary" police force, which was scrapped last year.
Auxiliary officers were given assault rifles and uniforms after just a few days of rudimentary training, on the understanding that they would be required only to police the area they came from. "The auxiliary police was an attempt to take short-cuts," said General Cone, warning that there were similarities between the doomed auxiliaries and Mr Brown's arbakai plan. "It is very important to understand why the Afghan National Auxiliary Police Force did not work, as we look at any informal programme that doesn't promote professional policing," he added.
Analysts also fear the introduction of arbakai would undo years of effort by the United Nations to disarm illegal militias.
General Cone's remarks follow earlier criticism of the idea by the commander of the 37-nation Nato coalition in Afghanistan. General Dan McNeill said the plan would work only in small parts of the countryside which did not include Helmand, where most of Britain's 7,700 troops are stationed. He said: "My information, from studying Afghan history, is that arbakai works only in Paktia, Khost and the southern portion of Paktika, and it's not likely to work beyond those geographic locations."
General Cone is leading a root-and-branch reform of the Afghan police force, which has been ill-equipped, badly paid, poorly trained and dogged by corruption since 2001. The US government has pledged $7.4bn (£3.7bn) to improve Afghan security forces between now and October. But General Cone admitted there was no "model of what policing should be" in the country. "When Afghan people understand what well-trained, well-paid police do, they will demand it," he added. "But right now they are just not familiar."
He said he backed greater community involvement in the police if it meant "neighbourhood-watch type programmes" rather than arming and paying local people.
Britain has faced increasing criticism from allies in recent months for championing alternative tactics to defeat the Taliban. The Prime Minister promised more "tribal engagement" during a recent visit to Kabul. But last month the Afghan government expelled two UN and EU diplomats for meeting commanders sympathetic to insurgents.
Secrets and lies
National security is being invoked not to protect us but to shield politicians from embarrassment
Richard Norton-Taylor. Friday 11 January 2008 The GuardianYears ago, when the Thatcher government reformed the Official Secrets Act after a jury's speedy acquittal of Clive Ponting - indicted for exposing lies about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser the Belgrano during the Falklands conflict - we were promised that, in future, prosecutions would be brought only when genuine issues of national security were at stake.
New Labour promised less secrecy. More recently, Gordon Brown promised even greater transparency. Wednesday's abrupt collapse of the case against Derek Pasquill, the Foreign Office civil servant charged under the act, shows the pitfalls facing governments when they break their promises. Pasquill's crime was leaking documents about secret CIA rendition flights and contact with Muslim groups. One document included a warning from the FO's top official that the Iraq war and UK foreign policy were fuelling Muslim extremism in Britain.
The prosecution should not have gone ahead in the first place. What is now clear is that FO officials admitted almost two years ago the leaks caused no damage within the meaning of the act. That this admission did not come to light until this week smells like an attempt to pervert the course of justice. It would not be the first time FO officials have been implicated in such practices.
Official secrecy seems more alive now than for decades. There is more than one case in which government lawyers are trying to suppress information - not to protect national security, but to shield the state from embarrassment or shame.
On Monday the Guardian and other papers will challenge an attempt by the prosecution to hold a murder trial in secret. Wang Yam, a financial trader, is accused of murdering Allan Chappelow, an 85-year-old recluse who lived in Hampstead, north London. Yam was arrested in Switzerland.
A British customs investigator faces the prospect of an Official Secrets Act prosecution over suspicions that he exposed how US and British intelligence agencies interfered in his attempts to halt a nuclear smuggling ring. Police have searched the home of Atif Amin for evidence that he passed classified information to the authors of a book recently published in the US, America and the Islamic Bomb: the Deadly Compromise. Its authors, David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, say that in 2000, Amin uncovered evidence of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's involvement in establishing Libya's nuclear programme, but was ordered to drop his inquiries and return home at the request of the CIA and MI6. Amin was in charge of Operation Akin, an investigation into links between UK firms and the illegal network run by Khan, who helped build Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence has obtained a gagging order preventing the media repeating allegations of abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers. A high court order bans papers and broadcasters from publishing details of the case reported in the Guardian two months ago.
The order follows a legal challenge to the MoD's refusal to set up an independent inquiry into the allegations, which lawyers say is required by the Human Rights Act. Gagging orders are supposed to prevent a jury being prejudiced at an imminent trial, yet the MoD has repeatedly said there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the soldiers and so no prospect of a trial. Indeed, it is precisely the MoD's refusal to prosecute soldiers that lies behind this high court case.
There are genuine threats to national security and to our public and personal safety. It is a dangerous abuse if a government hoists the flag of national security and deploys the Official Secrets Act when all it is really trying to do is protect itself from embarrassment.
· Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor
richard.norton-taylor@guardian.co.uk
Majority believe Iraq war 'lost'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6976637.stm
More than two-thirds of the British public think UK troops are losing the war in Iraq, a survey suggests.The poll, conducted for BBC Two's Newsnight programme, indicated that 52% believe victory is impossible.
A further 17% of the 1,001 people questioned thought British troops were losing - but could eventually win.
The survey comes as 550 British troops completed their withdrawal from the palace in the south Iraqi city of Basra to join 5,000 troops at Basra airport.
Asked "On balance, do you think British troops are winning the war in Iraq or not?" only 12% thought British troops were winning.
The poll indicated support for an immediate withdrawal of forces - with 42% saying Gordon Brown should take all of Britain's troops out of Iraq as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, 27% of those surveyed believed British troops should remain for as long as the Iraqi authorities wanted them.
About 22% said some troops should be withdrawn before the end of this year, with the remaining troops the following year.
On the issue of security, 20% thought British forces were making the situation better, 33% said they were making it worse and 37% believed they made no difference.
The poll was carried out between 31 August and 2 September by polling agency ORB.
As the death toll continues to rise, how do experts view the possible exit strategies?
Richard Norton-Taylor. The Guardian Thursday 16 August 2007More British troops have been killed by enemy action in southern Iraq already this year than in any other year since the invasion in 2003. Thirty-six have died, compared with 22 in 2003, when there were nearly 10 times as many British forces in the country. A year ago, General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the army, said we should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems". Yet more than 5,000 British troops remain. "There are no easy options left in Iraq, only painful ones," the independent Iraq commission, chaired by Lord Ashdown, concluded recently. How do experts view the exit strategy options?
Cut and run
Claire Spencer, head of the Middle East programme at Chatham House, said: "There is a head of steam building up [asking] what exactly are we in there for?" Army officers suggest they are part of the problem rather than the solution. In Basra, 90% of the attacks are directed against British troops.Military commanders are making it clear that they are exasperated by the slow progress being made by the Iraqi national army. Brigadier Chris Hughes, the most senior officer in the MoD responsible for military commitments, recently told MPs that neither the Iraqi police nor the Iraqi army could guarantee security in the region. He said an Iraqi general had told him that some police officers were "totally incompetent".
The government and chiefs of staff do not appear to have worked out any strategy to leave quickly. "I think it's been quite a long time since anyone has talked about victory in Iraq," Brig Hughes told the Commons defence committee. But the army does not want to talk about "defeat", or to "cut and run", with echoes of the US flight from Saigon.
Phased withdrawal
This is what the army and ministers have been trying to do, handing over responsibility for security to Iraqi forces in the south-east, province by province. Basra is the last remaining province formally under British control."We are very close to being able to hand over Basra in my judgment," Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of defence staff, said three weeks ago. "Just when we will reach that point is at the moment uncertain but I am fairly confident it'll be in the second half of the year." However, he also lowered expectations, telling the BBC: "Our mission was not to make the place look somewhere green and peaceful."
A key part of a phased withdrawal is 500 British troops leaving Basra palace, leaving a single British base of 5,000 troops at Basra airport.
British commanders hoped the Iraqis would have been in a position to take over responsibility for the security of the palace months ago. There was talk of British troops conducting a modest "surge" to cover their withdrawal from the palace and building up defences around the airport. That plan has fallen by the wayside.
"We don't have the troops to do that," said Colonel Christopher Langton, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Staying on, for now
This is widely considered to be the most likely outcome, with British troops staying for the foreseeable future despite all the problems. The base is being constantly attacked by mortars and rockets. More than 300 rockets have been fired at the base over the past two months.Conventional military wisdom dictates a force of 5,000 is needed simply to protect the base and supply lines. The force would be on "overwatch", coming to the aid of Iraqi forces in a crisis. Other troops would continue training the Iraqi army.
There is a growing view among independent commentators and analysts that Gordon Brown will have to strike a deal with the US. The White House may agree to fill any gap left by British troops, appreciating that Britain has to concentrate its available forces in Afghanistan, they say.
US uneasy as Britain plans for early Iraq withdrawal
Americans would prefer UK troops to remain in position as long as they do
Ewen MacAskill in Washington, Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian Wednesday 08 August 2007The Bush administration is becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of an imminent British withdrawal from southern Iraq and would prefer UK troops to remain for another year or two.
British officials believe that Washington will signal its intention to reduce US troop numbers after a much-anticipated report next month by its top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, clearing the way for Gordon Brown to announce a British withdrawal in parliament the following month. An official said: "We do believe we are nearly there."
It is not known whether George Bush expressed concern about the withdrawal of the remaining 5,000 British troops when he met Mr Brown in Washington last week. But sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the administration was worried about the political consequences of losing British troops.
One source said: "If the difference is between the British leaving at the end of the year or staying through to next year or the year after, it is a safe assumption that President Bush would prefer them to stay as long as the Americans are there."
The Bush administration - focused on the north, west and central Iraq and the "surge" strategy that has seen 30,000 extra US troops deployed - has until recently ignored the south, content to leave it to the British. Now, however, it is beginning to pay attention to the region, amid the realisation that what has been portrayed as a success story is turning sour.
The UK government no longer claims Basra is a success but denies it is a failure, with British troops forced to abandon Basra city for the shelter of the airport.
On Monday the vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned against an early withdrawal. In words thought to be aimed at Congress rather than the British, he said: "No one could plead ignorance of the potential consequences of walking away from Iraq now, withdrawing coalition forces before Iraqis can defend themselves." The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, signalled at the weekend he had hoped for a modest US troop reduction by the end of the year but this has been complicated by the political instability gripping the Iraqi government.
Ken Pollack, a foreign affairs expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, who returned last month from an eight-day visit to Iraq in which he spoke to US officers and officials, predicted that US and Iraqi forces would have to go to the south to fill the vacuum with the same level of commitment they were showing with the surge.
He said Mr Bush would prefer the British to stay: "What Bush needs is for there to be a Union Jack flying somewhere in Iraq so he can trumpet that as full British participation, but that participation has been meaningless for some time."
Mr Pollack, who wrote on his return that there were signs that the surge was working, was dismissive of the British contribution over the past 12 to 18 months. He said: "I am assuming the British will no longer be there. They are not there now. We have a British battle group holed up in Basra airport. I do not see what good that does except for people flying in and out.
"It is the wild, wild west. Basra is out of control."
The British say that their forces have handed over to the Iraqi military and the violence is at a much lower level than in Baghdad, with most of it directed towards British forces as Shia militia seek to claim credit for driving them out.
Mr Brown has insisted that he will make his decision exclusively on the basis of British military advice, and there is no connection between the British and US military withdrawal decisions. He has hinted that British forces will switch from combat to surveillance roles in Basra, allowing them to be reduced and withdrawn to Basra airport, a highly protected base from which British troops could ultimately withdraw.
Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will present an assessment on the impact of the surge to Congress on September 15. Their report is expected to show a mixed picture, with a sufficient number of positive points to justify an end to the surge. In such an environment the scaling down of the British presence in the south would not appear disloyal, the Brown government hopes.
"The British are doing everything to avoid embarrassing the Americans, while at the same time continuing the withdrawal," said Rosemary Hollis, the director of research at the Chatham House think-tank.
However, it is not clear how the prime minister would react if Mr Bush defied expectations once more and decided to press on with the surge next month.
Colonel Sam Gardiner, who is retired but still carries out war games for the Pentagon, said the violence in the south was problematic for the US military who need secure north-south communications for when they begin to move out of Iraq. He said US forces could be out of the country and into camps in Kuwait within two months, but it would take a further 10 months or so to remove all the heavy equipment - though he believed some of it could be left for the Iraqi security forces. Referring to Basra, he said: "We have trouble in the rear right now. The rear has got problems."
Some military analysts argue that private contractors are already protecting the convoy supply lines but Col Gardiner said that a British pull-out would mean "we would have to establish security for the route from Baghdad to Kuwait. Troops would have to be taken from other missions to protect the road."
Bringing back the caliphate
Inayat Bunglawala. Guardian Unlimited, 16 July 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2007/07/bringing_back_the_caliphate.htmlOsama Bin Laden wants it back, as does Hizb ut-Tahrir and also, according to a recent poll organised by an American university, a majority of Muslims across the world do so too. But what is the caliphate (Arabic: Khilafah) and what would it look like today?
Before he died in 632 CE, the Prophet Muhammad succeeded in establishing a single state in Arabia, in which he was both the spiritual head and also the temporal ruler. Within a period of just over 20 years, Muhammad had unified the Arabs, smashed the centuries-old practice of idolatry and inculcated in them a deep love for Islam: voluntary submission to God's Will.
It was an astonishing achievement and the Islamic state would, after Muhammad's death, continue to expand and draw in new converts to Islam from other peoples. Islam, with its pristine monotheism, stood in stark contrast to the many competing versions of Christianity with their endless bickering over the true nature of Christ and also the rather narrow tribalism of Judaism.
The Prophet's successors (Caliphs) tried to maintain this system but it was inevitably beset with divisions and rivalries, and in time, multiple regional caliphates came into existence. The last caliphate to be widely recognised - Ottoman Turkey, which in its latter days came to be known as the "sick man of Europe" - was abolished by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924.
On Wednesday, writing on Cif, Brian Whitaker, questioned the relevancy of the caliphate in the modern world, saying:
Whatever the historical merits (or not) of this now-defunct system of government, it is difficult to see how anyone could seriously regard its return as a step forward in the 21st century.Brian looked at some of the articles of the draft Hizb ut-Tahrir constitution for their particular conception of the caliphate and, I must admit, it did not really look like a place where I would want to live in or bring up my kids in. But need it be that way? The same US poll that cited majority support for the caliphate amongst the public in Muslim countries also found even larger majorities who thought that a democratic political system was a good way of governance. So clearly, many Muslims believe that democracy need not conflict with their Islamic ideals.
Hizb ut-Tahrir have posted an article on their website titled "Poll confirms massive support for the caliphate in the Muslim world" but have strangely omitted any mention of the finding that an even greater number of people favoured the establishment of democracy as their preferred method of achieving a well-governed state. Hmmm ...
In my view, the findings of the US poll serve to confirm the argument made by a Sudanese Islamic philosopher, Abdelwahab el-Affendi, in his 1991 book, Who Needs an Islamic State? Affendi urged Muslims to look at their history and be willing to learn from their experiences and also from that of others:
Wisdom dictates that we should be pessimistic about the qualities of our rulers, something which should not be too difficult, given our experiences. The institutions of a Muslim polity, and the rules devised to govern it, should therefore be based on expecting the worst.Human experience shows that democracy, broadly defined, offers the best possible method of avoiding such disappointment in rulers and affords a way of remedying the causes for such disappointments once they occur.
The caliphate clearly has an enormous emotional pull on Muslims and for understandable reasons as it aspires to break down national/tribal borders and unify Muslim countries under a just government as opposed to their current crop of mainly unelected and dishonest rulers. Is the caliphate really unattainable? It depends on how you conceive it. El-Affendi has a model in mind which may surprise you:
The model we are proposing here could suggest a way in which a polity is not strictly territorial. Political associations should make it possible for members to move in space without losing their rights of membership. This entails a concept of an international order based more on coexisting communities than on territorially-based mutually-exclusive nation-states. The European Community and the United States of America reflect some of the characteristics of the model we have in mind.A confederation of democratic states based on the model of the European Union. Now that would be a caliphate that I can imagine myself living in!
US turns up heat on Iran by publicly accusing it of involvement in Iraq
Ewen MacAskill in Washington. Tuesday 3 July 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2117120,00.htmlThe US yesterday publicly accused Iran of intervening in the Iraq conflict, claiming that its Revolutionary Guard played a role in an attack that killed five Americans and was using Lebanese militants to train Iraqi insurgents.
The allegations marked a significant escalation as previous similar claims have been made mostly off the record. Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, an army spokesman, said an Iranian covert unit called the Quds force had helped orchestrate an assault in Kerbala in January, in which the attackers, disguised as US soldiers, tricked their way into a government compound, killing one American on the spot, and abducting four others whom they killed later. "The Quds force had developed detailed information regarding our soldiers' activities, shift changes and defences, and this information was shared with the attackers," Gen Bergner said.
He also claimed the Quds force and members of the Lebanese Shia movement, Hizbullah, were training Iraqi insurgents at three camps near Tehran.
He said backing for the claims came from a Hizbullah veteran, Ali Mussa Daqduq, captured in southern Iraq in March. He claimed he was a go-between who "was directed by the Iranian Quds force to move Iraqis in and out of Iraq and report on the training and operations of Iraqi special groups".
Gen Bergner said Mr Daqduq had told his US interrogators that the Kerbala attackers "could not have conducted this complex operation without the support and direction of the Quds force".
Gen Bergner went further than earlier US briefings in seeking to tie the allegations to the top tiers of the Iranian government. "Our intelligence reveals that senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity," he said. Asked if it was possible that the Quds force could be conducting its activities inside Iraq without the knowledge of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, Gen Bergner replied: "That would be hard to imagine."
The claims coincide with increasingly heated rhetoric in Washington. Last month, Joseph Lieberman, a former presidential candidate now an independent senator, called for air strikes on Iran in retaliation for its alleged role in Iraq.
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," the Connecticut senator said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."
The first accusation of Iranian involvement was made two years ago by a British official but the Foreign Office has been reluctant to go as far, at least publicly. But British officials say there is evidence of links between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and secret cells under the umbrella of the Mahdi army, operating independently of its leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Iran has denied supporting the insurgency, and has accused the Bush administration of trying to justify a new war.
Aid failings 'hit Afghan progress'
David Lyon. BBC developing world correspondent, AfghanistanMore than five years after the defeat of the Taleban in Afghanistan, the failure of international aid to make a difference to Afghanistan is now having serious security consequences.
A recent Red Cross report showed that the worsening conflict in the south is now spreading to the north and west, alongside an upsurge of suicide bombing in Kabul.
The amount of money promised per head for Afghanistan was far lower than in other recent post-conflict countries, and too little of it has gone into increasing the capacity of the Afghan government to run things for itself.
In a report more than a year ago, the World Bank warned of the dangers of an 'aid juggernaut', a parallel world operating outside the government economy, with Afghans not even able to bid for major infrastructure contracts, such as roads.
The quality of much of what has been delivered remains very low. In schools where lots of money has been spent and the project signed off as functioning and open, girls are still being taught in tents in the mud.
There have been some successes. President Hamid Karzai often reminds audiences that 40,000 Afghan babies would not be alive today but for improvements in Afghan health care.
And some aid is successfully going through the state for basic services.
One in 10 Afghan teachers have their salaries paid by British taxpayers, but to the teachers their pay packets are not earmarked as 'foreign aid' - they come from the Afghan Education department.
Similarly, some small rural schemes - drainage, clinics, small power projects and schools are now being built through the National Solidarity Programme. That is a fund managed and distributed through the Afghan government, with almost all of the money coming from international donors.
Slow process
There have recently been some indications that the Americans, the biggest spenders in Afghanistan, are beginning to see the sense in these kinds of programmes, and planning to put more of their aid money through the government.
Changing policy in this direction is a slow process, although the theory at least is now US doctrine.
Building up the institutions of the state is after all a central part of fighting insurgencies, according to the new counter-insurgency manual being used by US forces - the first written since the end of the Vietnam War.
The manual even emphasises that the new state does not have to do things especially well: "The host nation doing something tolerably is normally better than us (the United States) doing it well."
But the doctrine has not yet worked through to changing the culture of how to spend aid money, either through USAid, or the Pentagon which runs its own aid programme.
Most international officials, aid workers and consultants in Afghanistan live a hermetically sealed life - advised not to step outside by armed security guards, and often working at very high salaries on very short-term contracts.
So too much of the money earmarked for aid to Afghanistan actually goes straight back to donor countries.
The Chief of Staff at the Afghan Counter-Narcotics Ministry, Abbie Aryan, condemned the culture of "champagne and caviar consultants" who come to Afghanistan and "deliver nothing".
There is still no internationally agreed strategy on how to tackle the drugs problem.
Britain plays a lead role in trying to stop the cultivation of opium poppies, and Mr Aryan says that large amounts of British money have been wasted on things that the Afghans do not need.
'Unwanted luxuries'
He agreed to talk to the BBC on the record because of a growing concern in the Afghan government that the international community is only paying lip service to the idea that Afghanistan should determine aid priorities for itself.
Rather than responding to Afghan concerns, and helping to fund an eradication coordination unit, when the Counter Narcotics Ministry wanted to set one up, the British government is instead funding a project for aerial photography that will cost more than $10m.
The Director of Survey and Monitoring at the ministry, Engineer Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar, told the BBC that when the project was first proposed, the Minister Habibullah Qaderi asked the British why they could not use a local plane, or at least provide equipment that would still be there when the project finished.
Instead the contract is with a British firm, with two British engineers running it in Kabul.
Mr Aryan said: "Our minister is concerned about this. We are constantly telling the British that you are supposed to be providing us with tools to fight narcotics, rather than all this luxury stuff, which we didn't ask for and didn't need."
Concern
The minister is reported to have asked the British why they could not have made the money available for Afghanistan to employ people to survey the poppy-growing areas on the ground.
The Deputy Minister of Counter Narcotics, General Khodaidad, is very supportive of the British position, but several other sources in the ministry have expressed concern about British priorities.
Mr Aryan says that the aerial photographs replicate material already available from the US, UN and British systems: "We can just look at the photo and say 'Wow, a five million dollar photo'."
Other concerns have been raised over a fund designed to provide alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers.
Of $70m earmarked for this project, little more than $1m has actually been spent.
Afghan officials blame bureaucratic obstacles put in the way of spending the money. The UK Foreign Office admitted that there have been "teething problems", for a fund that is operating "in a challenging environment".
Behind the criticism over spending lies a more serious concern that the counter-narcotics policy is not working.
Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is on the increase again, and rising fastest in areas under British control. A number of officials believe that the problem is now out of control, and that the international community has lost the war on drugs.
British policy towards Afghanistan is now undergoing its most radical review since the fall of the Taleban in 2001. There is a big increase of staff in Kabul, including a doubling of diplomats on the political side, directly engaged in relations with the Afghan government.
The review will include security, drug control policies, and development spending under a new ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. He told the BBC that Afghanistan is now "one of Britain's top foreign policy
Iraq furore clouds Harman's first day
· Deputy leader insists she never called for apology
· Chairman's role important, says Prescott's successor
Will Woodward, chief political correspondent. The Guardian Tuesday 26 June 2007Harriet Harman was forced on to the defensive on her first full day as Labour's deputy leader as she denied having called for the party to apologise over the Iraq war.
The outgoing justice minister was congratulated by David Cameron as she took her place beside Gordon Brown on the front bench yesterday afternoon. But she spent much of the morning rebutting charges that she had lurched to the left on a series of issues - especially Iraq - during the deputy leadership campaign.
She also denied that her appointment as party chair, announced on Sunday by Gordon Brown, meant that she was being sidelined. "It's a very important job," she said. Ms Harman will not be appointed deputy prime minister, unlike her predecessor, John Prescott. During a BBC2 Newsnight debate last month with other deputy leadership candidates, Ms Harman appeared to endorse calls from backbench rival Jon Cruddas for an apology for the war.
When interviewer Jeremy Paxman asked Mr Cruddas if he thought the party should apologise, Mr Cruddas said he did - "as part of the general reconciliation with the British people over what has been a disaster in Iraq". Ms Harman twice agreed with him.
The next day, on her blog, Ms Harman wrote that she was glad to use the Newsnight debate "to spell out ... that we have to acknowledge that we got it wrong on Iraq because there were no weapons of mass destruction".
Opposing campaigns identify her performance on Newsnight as one of the defining moments of the campaign, when Ms Harman made a decisive move to the left in pursuit of Mr Cruddas's second preferences. At the end of the programme Mr Cruddas was the only candidate prepared to say who he would back if he was not standing, and he chose Ms Harman.
But yesterday an exasperated Ms Harman said her agreement with Mr Cruddas was over the need for "reconciliation" on Iraq, not the apology. "I've never said the government should apologise. What I've said is I actually voted for the war on the basis that there were weapons of mass destruction and I was wrong on that. How many times can I say it? I haven't asked anybody else to do anything - I've just explained what my position is," she told Radio 4's Today programme.
Later, on BBC2's Daily Politics, Ms Harman said: "I think we need to acknowledge the bitterness and division that was caused over Iraq. I have not said there should be an apology." She also rejected the charge that she had been elected because of her left-wing views.
"I think that I got elected because the party members got the idea of a Gordon and me leadership team, of a man and a woman working together, for Labour as a party of the north right through to the south. We have worked together in the past and we are experienced, committed to being a dynamic team for the future."
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats' deputy leader, said: "Harriet Harman faces a serious problem of credibility. She made a whole series of statements when she was running for the deputy leadership that are wholly contrary to the policies set out by Gordon Brown.
"Her comments on the Iraq war are clearly in line with the vast majority of Labour members and the general public. What is now required is for Gordon Brown to come into line with her opinion, rather than the other way around."
George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said: "So the first confirmed member of Brown's cabinet wants more union power, is against Trident, wants higher taxes on the rich and wants a limit on how much women spend on handbags. And she wouldn't have won if the Brown camp hadn't backed her in the MPs' ballot. It's a perfect result for us."
What she said:
Today, Radio 4, 25 June 2007
I've never said the government should apologise. What I've said is I actually voted for the war on the basis that there were weapons of mass destruction and I was wrong on that. How many times can I say it? I haven't asked anybody else to do anything - I've just explained what my position is.Newsnight, BBC2, 29 May 2007
Jeremy Paxman Is there any one of you who would say knowing what you know now ... you would have voted against the war?
Harriet Harman Yes, I would. I voted for the war because I believed there were weapons of mass destruction. If I had known that there weren't weapons of mass destruction I wouldn't have voted for the war. Clearly it was a mistake, it was made in good faith, but I think with a new leadership we have to acknowledge the bitterness and anger there has been over Iraq ... I don't think Jon [Cruddas] and I are trying to wriggle out of our responsibility. I just think if you are looking forward and trying to rebuild public confidence you've got to admit when you have got it wrong.
Jeremy Paxman Do you believe the party should say sorry for what happened?
Jon Cruddas I do actually, as part of the general reconciliation with the British people over what has been a disaster in Iraq.
Harriet Harman (interjecting) Yup, I agree with that.
Jon Cruddas And I don't think we can actually rebuild a sense of trust and a dialogue with the British people unless we fundamentally reconcile ourselves to what the situation is on the ground and our own culpability in creating it.
Harriet Harman I agree with that.
Demonstrations of victory
Mark Thomas
26 June 2007, 11:00am
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_thomas/2007/06/demonstrations_of_victory.htmlIn August 2005 it became illegal to demonstrate in parliament and the surrounding environs without first gaining permission from the police, six days in advance. On June 24 2007 Maya Evans, the first person to be convicted of the criminal offence of "participating in an unauthorised demonstration" (for the heinous act of reading out the names of the Iraqi and British war dead at the Cenotaph), sent a text to friends and supporters: "Brown promises to allow peaceful protest around parliament". Less than two years after its arrival onto the statute books and the law looked like it is to be scrapped.
The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (Socpa) was introduced by David Blunkett to get rid of Brian Haw, the peace campaigner from Parliament Square. As you might expect of a piece of legislation that was bought in specifically to target one man, the end results were spiteful and farcical in equal measure. The police decided that one person with a banner counted as a demonstration; in fact, one person with a badge was deemed to be a demonstration. A friend of mine was threatened with arrest while having a picnic on Parliament Square as she had the word "peace" iced onto her cakes, this was deemed to be an "unauthorised demonstration". I had to get permission from the police specifically to wear a red nose, on Red Nose Day in Parliament Square, just in case it was mistaken for an illegal protest that could have led to my arrest. The implementation of the law became so absurd that a group of breast-feeding mums had to apply for permission to gather in Parliament Square to feed their children, as this was seen as a political protest that had to be controlled by the law.
To many this law, which would have us get permission to wear a badge or a T-shirt within a 1km radius of parliament, became the epitome of New Labour's control-freak tendencies. Socpa typified the Kafkaesque reach of a government determined to make the citizen more accountable to the state than the state was accountable to the citizen.
Some opposed the law by refusing to cooperate with it, like Maya, and held demonstrations without permission, like the Sack Parliament demo, calling for MPs to resign. Other less brave souls, like myself, decided to take on the law by organising mass lone demonstrations, where individuals applied for lone protests but en mass, swamping the police with paperwork. Each month people would arrive demanding everything from "an end to aggression in Palestine" to "free chocolate for the unemployed". In the process I became the Guinness World Record holder for "most political demonstrations in 24 hours" - I have a framed certificate - and in April this year we applied for 2,500 individual demonstrations around the Socpa zone in the space of a week, giving the police about three years' worth of work in seven days.
That Brown wants to scrap this law is good news. Though, frankly, it was an obvious and easy choice for him. The law is unpopular and there are few who will defend it. The GLA voted to recommend its abolition. Lady Sue Miller was pushing a private members' bill in the Lords to repeal it. Police officers sent me private emails saying: "we don't need this [law] and it makes us look stupid." I have even been in discussion with some folk within parliament about how they might organise their own illegal protest and force the police to arrest the very people the law was introduced to protect.
By repealing an unpopular law Brown not only appears to be listening to the British people, but emphasises the differences between himself and Blair, a vital task if he is to win back Middle England's trust, fractured by Iraq, loans for peerages and Blair's liberty grabbing tendencies. It also gives him a bit more room to promote ID cards, while rebutting the charges of being illiberal.
However, the devil is in the detail and while his comments are welcome I suspect that Brown is likely to keep parts of Socpa that make protest on various military bases (like the US spy base at Menwith Hill or RAF Fairford) illegal. Under trespass laws Quakers and peaceniks protesting on these bases would break the law if they refused to leave the property, under Socpa they can be arrested just for being on the property. It also remains unclear if he will repeal the law directly or tinker with it.
But while we might have to wait to find out exactly what kind of victory we have won, it is none the less a victory. And it has been a victory for protesters, for people who read names out at the Cenotaph, for people who pitched tents in Parliament Square and for people who waved banners at the mass lone demonstrations. This is a victory for the people who stood with hand-scrawled signs demanding "End the war in Iraq!", for those who made banners demanding the government ban Robbie Williams and for demonstrators who stood with papier mache boots demanding "Bigger shoe sizes for women!", it is a peculiarly British victory.
Memo leak was to 'reveal truth'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/northamptonshire/6620835.stmA civil servant accused under the Official Secrets Act of leaking a confidential memo wanted to reveal the truth about Iraq, a court has heard.
David Keogh, 50, and MP's researcher Leo O'Connor, 44, are on trial accused of trying to leak a record of a meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush.
The men, both from Northampton, deny making damaging disclosures.
Counsel for Mr Keogh asked jurors if they would "do the courageous thing" if they were placed in his position.
Few details of the "highly sensitive" memo, which is known to have included discussions about military tactics, have been made public.
Its contents are considered so secret that much of the trial is being held behind closed doors, and have not been directly referred to in court by counsel or witnesses.
'Blackadder script'
The court heard earlier that Mr Keogh gave the memo to political researcher Mr O'Connor at a dining club in Northampton.It was passed to Northampton South MP Anthony Clarke, who called the police.
Speaking outside the Old Bailey on Thursday, BBC correspondent Ben Geoghegan said Mr Keogh's barrister Rex Tedd QC had reminded the jury of the context in which he says the actions of the two men should be seen.
The British and Americans had gone to Iraq and taken a "tiger by the tail" but did not know how to safely let go, he said.
He said it was ironic, something that "even the scriptwriters of Blackadder couldn't come up with" when President Bush described the campaign as "mission accomplished".
Mr Tedd said Mr Keogh had wanted to seek to reveal the truth of what was happening in Iraq while others were trying to conceal that truth.
He asked the jury whether if they were put in that position where they had some across such a document - whether they would have done the "courageous thing and release it" or "do what you are supposed to do?" which was to hand it in.
'Fear'
Earlier this week Mr O'Connor had never been "so worried and so fearful" when he was passed the document.Mr O'Connor, who worked for anti-war Labour MP Mr Clarke, said he was approached by Mr Keogh and told about "some quite embarrassing, outlandish statements" in the four-page document.
But he told the jury that he took the claims with a "pinch of salt".
"It was the fear of knowing that I'd got something that I shouldn't have been in possession of, that I needed to get back to where it came from."
Asked if he intended to send copies of the document to newspapers or members of Parliament he said: "The thought never crossed my mind."
Democracy's last stand
If oil-rich Kurdistan goes the way of Baghdad and Mosul, all hopes of Iraqi unity will go with it
Mark Lattimer in Irbil. The Guardian Tuesday 01 May 2007As 20,000 extra US troops arrived in Baghdad in February as part of George Bush's "Baghdad security plan", I asked a university professor there if she thought the Americans staying would improve security. "No," she said, "it will get worse." And if they leave? "It will still get worse. There is no win-win option any more. Whatever happens now, the people of Iraq will be the losers."
With a succession of massive explosions hitting Baghdad over the past two weeks, people in Iraq talk less about the American troop surge than a Sunni bombing surge. But what will probably be seen as a military failure in fact derives from the US's most deadly political mistake: expending its credibility in support of a "democratic" Iraqi government now close to collapse and from the beginning rotten to the core.
When I was in Baghdad last June just after the formation of the government, I noticed the optimism inside the green zone contrasted starkly with the fatalism expressed by Iraqis outside it. One reason soon became clear. Statistics for violent civilian deaths released by the UN, based on body counts in hospitals and morgues, showed that the inauguration of the government had coincided with a huge increase in killings, which over the summer reached 3,000 a month, or 100 a day.
While insurgent bombings dominated the headlines, it was clear that most of the bodies, often found with skulls punctured by drills, were the work of Shia death squads. US statements about the Iraqi government's capacity to provide security obscured the fact that the militias mainly responsible, the Badr brigade and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, were linked to the two most powerful parties in the governing coalition. The government, supposedly representing Iraq's democratic hopes, was the biggest part of the problem.
This meant that the so-called hearts-and-minds campaign was always doomed. I had an opportunity to see the campaign in action when I came across a US armoured convoy outside Mosul. The commanding officer later explained to me that he was visiting local chiefs to discuss security and build trust. But the security of his troops prevented any appointments being made in advance. In practice, then, as I learned when my tea with a senior Mosul official was dramatically interrupted, the push for hearts and minds meant descending on important people's homes in full battle order to ask them if they felt safe.
Now, while Iraqi and US soldiers' lives are being risked at checkpoints around Baghdad's Sadr City, the greatest threat to Iraq's unity and to its remaining hopes of democracy lies 150 miles north in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Under Saddam Hussein's policy of Arabisation, tens of thousands of Kurds and Turkmen were expelled from Kirkuk or forced to register as Arabs, and Arabs, mainly poor Shia from the south, were settled there. All the Kurdish politicians I met last week expressed their determination to implement the provisions of the new Iraqi constitution that call for a "normalisation" process enabling Kurds to reclaim their lands, and a referendum on the future of the Kirkuk area by December. With the government in Baghdad falling apart and America's days in Iraq numbered, the Kurds realise that unless they act soon, their chances of bringing Kirkuk into Iraqi Kurdistan will soon slip away.
In April the Iraqi cabinet agreed a voluntary package giving Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk 20m dinars (£7,500) and a plot of land in their area of origin if they agreed to leave. Non-Kurdish political parties reacted angrily to the plan, and inter-communal violence has increased. In fact, Kirkuk has become so dangerous that persuading Kurds to return may prove a lot harder than persuading others to go. Without a political solution soon, it seems inevitable that the situation will become as bad as in Baghdad or Mosul, and could threaten the security of Kurdistan itself.
That would be a grave loss. Kurdistan is unique in Iraq in enjoying relative security. The Kurdish units of the Iraqi army you see at checkpoints are disciplined, and there has been little of the sectarian bloodletting that has stained the rest of the country.
A sentiment heard repeatedly outside Kurdistan is that it is worse now than under Saddam. The failure to bring even minimal security to Iraq has rendered the attempts to install democracy next to worthless. Only in Kurdistan has the rule of law enabled democratic institutions to develop. "What we have here is the only success story in Iraq," I was told last week by Dr Mohammed Ihsan, the Kurdish minister responsible for negotiating on Kirkuk. "If the Americans don't sort out the Kirkuk issue, they will lose what they built here."
• Mark Lattimer is the director of Minority Rights Group International mark.lattimer@mrgmail.org
Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad
Revealed: a new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up the city into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq?
Robert Fisk. The Independent, Wednesday 11 April 2007Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.
The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.
The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.
But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.
The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.
The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tal Afar by General Petraeus's men - and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment - in early 2005, when an eight-foot "berm" was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign as a success although Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control.
So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off. From these bases - in fortified buildings - US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these "gated communities" and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, "visitor" registration and restrictions on movement outside the "gated communities". Civilians may find themselves inside a "controlled population" prison.
In theory, US forces can then concentrate on providing physical reconstruction in what the military like to call a "secure environment". But insurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.
A former US officer in Vietnam who has a deep knowledge of General Petraeus's plans is sceptical of the possible results. "The first loyalty of any Sunni who is in the Iraqi army is to the insurgency," he said. "Any Shia's first loyalty is to the head of his political party and its militia. Any Kurd in the Iraqi army, his first loyalty is to either Barzani or Talabani. There is no independent Iraqi army. These people really have no choice. They are trying to save their families from starvation and reprisal. At one time they may have believed in a unified Iraq. At one time they may have been secular. But the violence and brutality that started with the American invasion has burnt those liberal ideas out of people ... Every American who is embedded in an Iraqi unit is in constant mortal danger."
The senior generals who constructed the new "security" plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal - but officially "restricted" - field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24. While not specifically advocating the "gated communities" campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing "civil operations and revolutionary development support teams" in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the "provincial reconstruction teams" in Afghanistan - a project widely condemned for linking military co-operation and humanitarian aid.
FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. "With good intelligence," it says, "counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact." But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the "gated" neighbourhood project.
"Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able," he told The Independent. "They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the 'gated communities' to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.
"The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being 'protected'."
The ex-officer's fears for American helicopter crews were re-emphasised yesterday when a military Apache was shot down over central Baghdad.
The American's son is an officer currently serving in Baghdad. "The only chance the American military has to withdraw with any kind of tactical authority in the future is to take substantial casualties as a token of their respect for the situation created by the invasion," he said.
"The effort to create some order out of the chaos and the willingness to take casualties to do so will leave some residual respect for the Americans as they leave."
FM 3-24: America's new masterplan for Iraq
FM 3-24 comprises 220 pages of counter-insurgency planning, combat training techniques and historical analysis. The document was drawn up by Lt-Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad, and Lt-Gen James Amos of the US Marine Corps, and was the nucleus for the new US campaign against the Iraqi insurgency. These are some of its recommendations and conclusions:
- In the eyes of some, a government that cannot protect its people forfeits the right to rule. In [parts] of Iraq and Afghanistan... militias established themselves as extragovernmental arbiters of the populace's physical security - in some cases, after first undermining that security...
- In the al-Qa'ida narrative... Osama bin Laden depicts himself as a man purified in the mountains of Afghanistan who is inspiring followers and punishing infidels. In the collective imagination of Bin Laden and his followers, they are agents of Islamic history who will reverse the decline of the umma (Muslim community) and bring about its triumph over Western imperialism.
- As the Host Nation government increases its legitimacy, the populace begins to assist it more actively. Eventually, the people marginalise insurgents to the point that [their] claim to legitimacy is destroyed. However, victory is gained not when this is achieved, but when the victory is permanently maintained by and with the people's active support...
- Any human rights abuses committed by US forces quickly become known throughout the local populace. Illegitimate actions undermine counterinsurgency efforts... Abuse of detained persons is immoral, illegal and unprofessional.
- If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations must be conducted, risk shared with the populace and contact maintained.
- FM 3-24 quotes Lawrence of Arabia as saying: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."
- FM 3-24 points to Napoleon's failure to control occupied Spain as the result of not providing a "stable environment" for the population. His struggle, the document says, lasted nearly six years and required four times the force of 80,000 Napoleon originally designated.
- Do not try to crack the hardest nut first. Do not go straight for the main insurgent stronghold. Instead, start from secure areas and work gradually outwards... Go with, not against, the grain of the local populace.
- Be cautious about allowing soldiers and marines to fraternise with local children. Homesick troops want to drop their guard with kids. But insurgents are watching. They notice any friendships between troops and children. They may either harm the children as punishment or use them as agents
The legacy of Fallujah
The western rhetoric of apathy must not blind us to our obligation to challenge atrocities
Jonathan Holmes. The Guardian, Wednesday 04 April 2007Rana Al-Aiouby was risking her life delivering essential medicine to the wounded in the Iraqi city of Fallujah when she witnessed first-hand the effect of chemical weapons deployment by US troops. Despite their prohibition under several international treaties and by the Geneva conventions, white phosphorus and a napalm derivative were used without discrimination on the civilian population of a city the size of Edinburgh throughout 2004.
"I noticed something in the garden and it was a body but I couldn't really recognise it, and it looked really bad - it was a body with the colour green, and I have never seen this in all my life, and my work is dealing with dead bodies."
Few people know about the crimes committed during the two sieges of Fallujah - Operation Vigilant Resolve, launched three years ago tomorrow, and Operation Phantom Fury, in the following November - as a result of which 200,000 people became refugees. There are no official figures for civilian deaths.
In the face of repeated independent verification, US forces have now acknowledged the use of chemical weapons, and yet there remains no sustained international outcry and no official response (let alone condemnation) from any government or the United Nations. The US has overthrown a regime while supposedly searching for phantom weapons of mass destruction, only to use such weapons on the newly "liberated" civilian population. The cold hypocrisy of such actions is outweighed only by its extravagant viciousness.
Seventy articles of the Geneva conventions were breached in the two separate months of siege warfare. Despite calls to abolish the conventions by the past and present Conservative leaders Michael Howard and David Cameron among others, they remain an essential bulwark against the bullying tactics of the powerful, and a poignant index of the increasing impunity of the neo-colonial project. Their ethos is that the innocent, the weak, the defeated and the injured be afforded all the protection possible in times of conflict. The ethos of the US government is that the weak and innocent are a hindrance to the acquisition of power and, occasionally, an opportunity for the expansion of profit.
In writing my play Fallujah, which weaves together eye-witness accounts from Rana and many others present during these attacks, what astonished me was the symmetry between the testimony of American soldiers and that of their victims: "Yeah, we napalmed those bridges," said Colonel Randolph Alles, of Marine Air Group 11, in an interview with James Crawley of the San Diego Union-Tribune. "The generals love napalm." The guys on the ground no longer bother dissembling, so confident are their masters that protest, should it happen, will be muted and ineffectual.
The rhetoric of impotence so prevalent in the west has been too effective and we are too weary to be surprised, let alone act. As with the proposed abolition of the Geneva conventions, what is in evidence is a kind of fatigue, a sense that ethical action is just too troublesome in our complicated and distracted world. Yet the irony is that as members of a privileged European society, with unparalleled material wealth, leisure time, communications technology and intellectual opportunity, we are in an unprecedented position of influence, no longer dependent on the ballot and the wallet to exercise protest. We have never been better placed or equipped as individuals to make an impact on the world; this is obvious from the huge changes we are making to the environment. All the people I interviewed for Fallujah and whose testimony is reproduced verbatim, from generals to clerics to Iraqi civilians, acknowledged this. We are all participants now.
Many of the Iraqis I have met repeated the same slogan: "Fallujah now is Iraq, and Iraq is Fallujah." Three years on, people have returned to what remains of their homes, but life is no less dangerous. Spot searches, evictions and sudden attacks are common, the city has no real infrastructure, little clean water and almost no healthcare, and factional warfare is a daily occurrence. It is still very difficult for aid to reach the city or for observers to see just how hard life is for residents.
What is certain is that the damage done has not been repaired and no reparation has been forthcoming, despite promises from the Iraqi interim authorities. The city is in a chaotic state, and many people feel that once again they have been forgotten. The atrocities of three years ago have become emblematic of a nation's suffering; unless we respond with compassion the emblem will harden into a symbol of resistance and reaction, and we will reap the whirlwind sooner than we care to think.
· Jonathan Holmes is a writer, director and academic; his play Fallujah opens at the Old Truman Brewery, London, on Tuesday 01 May 2007. Fallujah.co.uk
The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece
Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis
Patrick Cockburn. The Independent, 03 Tuesday April 2007.A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.
"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.
Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second, high-ranking Iranian official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary Guard]," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office) of President Talabani in Baghdad. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil, where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party.
The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. There is no doubt that Iran believes that Mr Jafari and Mr Frouzanda were targeted by the Americans. Mr Jafari confirmed to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he was in Arbil at the time of the raid.
In a little-noticed remark, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, told IRNA: "The objective of the Americans was to arrest Iranian security officials who had gone to Iraq to develop co-operation in the area of bilateral security."
US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.
The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President George Bush making an address to the nation on 10 January in which he claimed: "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops." He identified Iran and Syria as America's main enemies in Iraq though the four-year-old guerrilla war against US-led forces is being conducted by the strongly anti-Iranian Sunni-Arab community. Mr Jafari himself later complained about US allegations. "So far has there been a single Iranian among suicide bombers in the war-battered country?" he asked. "Almost all who involved in the suicide attacks are from Arab countries."
It seemed strange at the time that the US would so openly flout the authority of the Iraqi President and the head of the KRG simply to raid an Iranian liaison office that was being upgraded to a consulate, though this had not yet happened on 11 January. US officials, who must have been privy to the White House's new anti-Iranian stance, may have thought that bruised Kurdish pride was a small price to pay if the US could grab such senior Iranian officials.
For more than a year the US and its allies have been trying to put pressure on Iran. Security sources in Iraqi Kurdistan have long said that the US is backing Iranian Kurdish guerrillas in Iran. The US is also reportedly backing Sunni Arab dissidents in Khuzestan in southern Iran who are opposed to the government in Tehran. On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, seized Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian diplomat.
The raid in Arbil was a far more serious and aggressive act. It was not carried out by proxies but by US forces directly. The abortive Arbil raid provoked a dangerous escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran which ultimately led to the capture of the 15 British sailors and Marines - apparently considered a more vulnerable coalition target than their American comrades.
The targeted generals:
MOHAMMED JAFARI
Powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, responsible for internal security. He has accused the United States of seeking to "hold Iran responsible for insecurity in Iraq... and [US] failure in the country."GENERAL MINOJAHAR FROUZANDA
Chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military unit which maintains its own intelligence service separate from the state, as well as a parallel army, navy and air force
Call that humiliation?
No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch
Terry Jones. "The Guardian" Saturday 31 March 2007I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.
It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.
And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.
The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invade