VOICES NEWSLETTER # 56 ( August/September 2008)

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Six Critical Months
Auctioning Iraq's Future
Oil Law Push
Oil Union Under Attack
Deporting Iraqi Refugees
Refugee Crisis Update
Taliban Survey
Detainees
In Brief
War Resisters
Resistance Round-up

Six Critical Months
Despite a recent major victory for opponents of the Iraq occupation – the de-railing of US plans to consolidate its long-term presence in Iraq - the last six months of the Bush administration will be a critical time for the future of Iraq (see p.3). At the same time, though an attack on Iran continues to look unlikely, a major escalation of the US “war on terror” in Pakistan – with equally ominous consequences – now appears to be a serious possibility.

The US had planned to sign a so-called Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with
the Iraqi Government by the end of July, granting US forces ‘authority to establish
more than 50 long-term bases’ and to ‘conduct operations and detain suspects
without the approval of the Iraqi government and … without fear of prosecution in the
Iraqi justice system’ (NYT, 14 June).

Though it expected to make some minor concessions, the US brought enormous
pressure to bear on the Iraqi Government to sign e.g., ‘using the existence of $20bn
in outstanding court judgements against Iraq in the US’ to threaten it with the loss
of 40% of its foreign exchange reserves (Independent, 6 June).

Intense domestic pressure
Nonetheless, it was forced to abandon these plans after Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki
‘came under intense domestic pressure to reject any perceived infringement on Iraqi
sovereignty’ (WP, 13 July).

Indeed, after a majority of Iraqi MPs ‘strongly reject[ed] any military-security,
economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the
[US] not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military
forces to withdraw from Iraq’ (AFP, 4 June), and Iraq’s top Shiite leader, Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani ‘warned against any agreement that violated Iraqi sovereignty
and was not approved by the Iraqi people’ (WP, 13 July), Maliki himself was forced to
‘publicly [insist] on a withdrawal timeline,’ effectively scuppering the process.

The key problem
Of course, the Iraqi public has long backed such a timeline (see Voices 52).
Nonetheless, Bush and Brown remain adamantly opposed. “There will be no
artificial timetable,” Brown recently declared (Independent, 15 July).

The key problem throughout has been finding a way to side-step opposition from
Iraq’s people and Parliament. The idea is “to take the heat off [Maliki] a little bit, and to
rebrand the thing and counter the narrative that he’s negotiating for a permanent
military presence in Iraq,” a ‘US official close to the negotiations’ told the Post.

The two governments will now probably sign a much less far-reaching document, ‘likely to cover only 2009’. According to US officials, Maliki hopes that this will allow him to avoid the Parliamentary vote that he had promised for the SOFA. “He is trying to figure out, just as we did, how you can set up an agreement … but not go through the legislative body,” one US official explained.

Escalation: Pakistan
Though they are committed to a long-term presence there, ‘[b]oth the US and Britain are hoping to reduce their military commitment in Iraq to focus on Afghanistan’ (Times, 14 July), and there is now a serious danger that the US-led war there will spill over into
Pakistan in a big way. Indeed, according to the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall, ‘a key American decision’ as to whether or not ‘to intervene directly and deeply in western Pakistan’ - which provides a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban and a base for a regenerating al-Qaeda - ‘cannot be postponed much longer’ (2 July).

Negotiations with the Taliban – the option backed by 74% of Afghans according to a Sept 07 poll (see Voices 54) - may be ‘the only alternative’, Tisdall notes. However, US commanders favour escalation: ‘calling for another 10,000 US troops for Afghanistan’ (Times, 14 July). Furthermore, this stance is unlikely to die with the Bush regime – Barack Obama has already given his backing (Ind, 16 July).

Auctioning Iraq's Future
On 30 June, in ‘the biggest step so far towards transferring Iraqi oil into the
hands of foreign multinational companies’*, the Iraqi Government announced
a bidding round for medium-term contracts on six of its key oil producing fields
– contracts in which foreign oil companies will be allowed to have stakes of up to 75% (Reuters, 30 Jun).

Prior to the 30 June announcement, official Iraqi Government policy was that fields
already in production would remain in Iraqi hands, and that only new fields would be
offered to multinational companies. The latest move therefore potentially ‘give[s]
away more to foreign companies than has been planned at any point since the [Iraqi]
constitution was written in 2005, and possibly more than any major oil producer
has given since the colonial era’.*

A derisory stake
The Iraqi Government plans to sign these so-called Risk Service Contracts (RSCs)
– likely to be for either 7 or 9 years – in June 2009. They fall between the relatively
uncontroversial technical service contracts (where an oil company is paid a fixed
fee to provide a service) and the highly exploitative Production Sharing Contracts
(PSCs) that Big Oil has been pushing for (see Oil Law Push).

Nonetheless, even for new fields, a 25% Iraqi stake ‘would have been derisory,’
notes Greg Muttitt, an oil expert with the London-based NGO Platform. With much
smaller fields than Iraq’s, Libya requires a public stake of at least 80% for new
exploration contracts, and Nigeria ‘seen as one of the OPEC members most friendly
to western companies, requires that the Nigeria National Petroleum Company take
a 55% stake in onshore projects.’

Not needed
The fields in question – which contain around half of the country’s known oil reserves – currently account for more than 90% of Iraq’s production, and ‘[a]s such, their investment and technology needs are relatively minor, and could easily be provided within the public sector, as they have been for more than 30 years.’ The Ministry of Oil ‘has been consistently unable to spend the funds provided to it’ and is currently ‘sitting on billions of dollars that could be invested in the fields.’

In the 1950s, as the colonial era drew to a close, a minimum 51% national stake
became the norm in the major oil producing countries. Though there is still time to
derail the process, for reasons that are not hard to fathom Iraq now appears to be
taking a major step back towards that age.

* Greg Muttitt, Iraq’s Oil Wealth on the Block, tinyurl.com/5626vw

Oil Law Push
“The Americans are very keen to see this oil law pushed through this year. It came
to a standstill but I think we have now broken the standstill and have agreed to go back to the original text. There will be progress this year” - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, May 2008

“We demand that the US government, oil companies and others immediately cease lobbying for the oil law which would fracture the country and hand control over our oil to multinational companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron. We demand that all oil companies be prevented from entering into any long-term agreement concerning oil while Iraq remains occupied” - Hassan Juma’a Awad, President of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), May 2008

The next six months will be key to the future of Iraq’s oil as the Bush administration prioritizes the passage of an Iraqi oil law before it leaves office (Iraqi Oil in the Balance, Platform, 26 June).

Shaped and driven by the US/UK governments and Big Oil, the law has been persistently misreported in the western media as a ‘revenue sharing’ measure. In
reality, only one of the draft law’s 43 articles (art. 11) even mentions revenue sharing
(and then only to say that a separate law will determine this issue).

The law’s real purpose is to enable the ‘transfer [of] the main role in [Iraq’s] oil development from the public sector to companies like BP, Shell and Exxon under
fixed 30-year contracts.’ Iraq stands to lose scores of billions of dollars in revenues
– as well as control over its own natural resources – if these so-called Production
Sharing Agreements (PSAs) – opposed by most Iraqis - are signed (see Voices 51 &
53 and www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org).

A three-pronged strategy
A popular campaign, led by the oilworkers’ trade union and by Iraqi oil experts, has
so far been successful in stopping the law from passing for nearly 2 years – in spite of
‘relentless pressure’ from the US.

Now the US and its Iraqi allies have a 3-pronged strategy to push it through: 1) broker
a new agreement between the Kurdish and some Shi’a parties; 2) neutralise opposition to the oil law – especially Iraq’s trade unions (see here); and 3) offer political inducements for more Iraqi MPs to vote for the law (necessary, since in Spring 2007 parliamentary opposition had reached a majority).

None of this will be easy however, and international solidarity could make a real difference.

ACTION
- Join the Hands Off Iraqi Oil (HOIO) protests on 11 Oct and 1 Dec (see p6).
- Order a free action pack from HOIO: handsoffiraqioil[at]gmail.com, 0845 458 2564.
- Get hold of Jon Sack’s Iraqi Oil for Beginners (available from Voices for £4 incl. p&p).
- Get the bigger picture: watch Naomi Klein’s talk for HOIO free on-line: tinyurl.com/67rra5

Oil Union Under Attack
Iraq’s oilworkers’ union ‘has faced severe repression since the campaign against the
oil law started to have success in spring 2007’ (Iraqi Oil in the Balance, Platform,
26 June). ‘In June 2007, arrest warrants were issued for the union’s leaders and
troops sent into worksites in response to a protest’ Union leaders have been
threatened in their homes.

This May, Iraq’s Oil Minister, Hussein al-Shahristani – who has reportedly dismissed the 26,000-strong organisation as “a militia” (tinyurl.com/5ang5n) – ‘decreed that 8 leading members of the union would be transferred from their jobs in Basra (where the union is based) to one of the most dangerous areas of Baghdad.’ Four oil company
managers who have opposed the oil law were transferred from their positions at the same time.

Deporting Iraqi Refugees
“Refugee Week is … a time when all those who continue to live in fear of persecution are at the forefront of our minds, and I know that Britain will continue to offer a safe haven to people fleeing desperate situations in the years to come” - Gordon Brown on Refugee Week 2008 (tinyurl.com/6c936u)

“After they handcuffed us they took us to an airport outside London, thought to be Stansted. The guards were very rough; my friend was put in an armlock round his neck as he was forced onto the plane” – Iraqi asylum seeker Soran Ibrahim, forcibly
deported to Iraq during Refugee Week 2008 (tinyurl.com/5u6xpw)

Though Amnesty International continues to maintain that ‘the time is not right for returns of any kind to Iraq’ and that all Iraqis should be granted either refugee status or some alternative form of protection (Rhetoric and reality, June 2008, tinyurl.com/6yvk6k), the British Government has actually stepped-up deportations to Iraq: deporting at least 52 Iraqi asylum seekers to Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq on 16 June, the opening day of Refugee Week (Echoes #13, June 08, tinyurl.com/5u6xpw).

On 12 June, the Guardian reported that over 60 Iraqi asylum seekers had been rounded up ‘under what appears to be an accelerated programme of forced deportations.’ Indeed, Gordon Brown now appears to have forcibly deported more Iraqis in the first half of this year, than were deported during the whole of the previous 4½ years (Refugee Council Online, 27 Nov 07; Amnesty, June 2008, tinyurl.com/6yvk6k).

Those detained in the June sweep included a man awaiting the birth of his first child, a second so desperate to flee northern Iraq that he smuggled himself back into the UK a year after first being deported, and several Iraqis from outside the relatively peaceful Kurdish-controlled north of the country (Guardian, 12 June).

Amnesty also continues to condemn the UK practice of coercing Iraqis to return “voluntarily”, by withdrawing financial support and accommodation from rejected asylum seekers, noting that ‘ [m]any Iraqis [have] become destitute’ as a consequence.

“Like committing suicide”
On 2 June the Independent reported the case of 54-year-old father-of-two Zyad al-Saadon, an Iraqi who had lived in Britain for the past 35 years and spent the last year in an immigration removal centre in Dover, ‘awaiting deportation to Baghdad.’

“It would be like committing suicide. As soon as I step out of the Green Zone I would be walking around Baghdad with the word “target” across my forehead,” he told the paper. “If they send me to Baghdad they might as well give me the bullet now
and I’ll save them the trouble.”

Copies of Voices’ campaign postcard Stop Deporting Iraqis are available free from
the office: 0845 458 2564.

Refugee Crisis Update
The world’s governments are still doing ‘little or nothing’ to address Iraq’s on-going refugee crisis, ‘failing both in their moral duty and in their legal obligation to share responsibility for displaced people wherever they are,’ according to a major new report by Amnesty International (Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis, June 2008, tinyurl.com/6yvk6k).

Despite ‘a slight improvement in security over the past year’, Iraq is ‘neither safe nor
suitable for return’ and ‘remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world.’

Pitiful response
There are currently somewhere ‘between the high hundreds of thousands to around
1.5 million’ Iraqi refugees in Syria, and a further 450–500,000 in Jordan. In Syria alone, officials estimate the cost of hosting these refugees at many billions of dollars and the need for increased infrastructure is stretching the economy ‘to breaking point’.

Yet, despite repeated calls from Amnesty and others for assistance to these frontline
states, ‘the response has been pitiful.’ Indeed, only ‘minimal contributions have been
received – more like token gestures than help that could make a real difference.

Warfare not welfare
On 9 May the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, announced that by August, due to inadequate funding for its Iraq operation, many seriously and chronically ill Iraqis would ‘not be able to receive their monthly medication’ and that food aid - a lifeline for 150,000 refugees - could be reduced, ‘raising the likelihood of higher malnutrition rates
and increased child labor.’

The sums involved are tiny: ‘international agencies are seeking approximately $900
million to help meet the needs of Iraqi refugees’ in 2008. Yet, as of 16 May ‘[o]nly 53% of the funding for the UNCHR Iraq operation for 2008 ha[d] been filled’ (the UK had contributed a mere $6.25 million). In stark contrast, on 30 Jun George W. Bush signed into law a $162bn spending bill ‘funding the Afghanistan and Iraq wars well into 2009’ (AFP, 30 Jun).

No meaningful resettlement
In Sept 07 Amnesty noted that resettlement - the process whereby states accept refugees still in the region at the request of UNHCR or private sponsors – ‘should go far beyond token numbers and should constitute a significant part of the solution to the
current crisis’ (see Voices 53).

However, in their June 08 report they note that, ‘the UK does not participate in resettlement in a meaningful way’, with a total annual global resettlement quota of 750.

Meanwhile, ‘there is a serious danger that the already unacceptably low recognition
rate of 13 per cent at first instance in 2007 [for Iraqi asylum applications] will fall even
farther’ if an appeal against the Home Office test case which denied humanitarian
protection to Iraqis who could not show that they faced a “serious and individual threat” to their “life and person” – as opposed to the dangers of living in a war zone (see Voices 55) - is lost.

Living in fear
Even special provisions allowing some of those employed by British occupation forces
to come to the UK (see Voices 53) have left ‘many Iraqis … at grave risk’, because of the ‘[s]trict limits and requirements’ imposed.

On 13 Jun the Times reported that, eight months after these were announced, Britain
had ‘so far relocated only three workers and their families.

Taliban Survey
‘The typical Taliban foot soldier battling Canadian troops and their allies in Kandahar is not a global jihadist who dreams of some day waging war on Canadian soil,’ but a young man who has had someone he ‘knows, or loves … killed by a bomb dropped from the sky’ and ‘fervently believes that expelling the foreigners will set things right in his troubled country,’ concludes a survey commissioned by the Canadian Globe and Mail ('Talking to the Taliban', 22 March, tinyurl.com/2kwhua).

Using an Afghan researcher, the Mail made 42 video recordings with Taliban fighters in five of Kandahar’s districts between August and November 2007. Though not a “scientific survey”, it appears to be the first attempt to look at Taliban opinion in any systematic way, and its findings could well apply to the neighbouring province of Helmand, where most British forces are placed.

‘[S]trong patterns stood out in the fighters answers’:

* ‘Almost a third of respondents claimed that at least one family member had died in aerial died in aerial bombings in recent years. Many also described themselves as
fighting to defend Afghan villagers from air strikes by foreign troops.’

* Most ‘gave their fight a narrow definition, usually aiming their rage at the foreign
troops and their political opponents within the borders of Afghanistan.’

* ‘Most claimed to be fighting for principles, not a leader.’ Indeed, 24 of the fighters said it didn’t matter whether Taliban leader Mullah Omar returns to power as head of
state. ‘The most common demands were for an “Islamic leader” who would enforce
“Islamic laws”.’

* Most admitted a role in the illegal opium industry (opium poppies rank among the
most common crops in Kandahar), and half ‘said their poppy fields had been targeted by government eradication efforts’.

Furthermore, ‘[n]o foreigners or non-Pashtuns were encountered during the survey, supporting the impression that such fighters are extremely rare.

Detainees
The US is currently building new US detention facilities in Iraq – including one in Taji near Baghdad (WP, 10 June) - and ‘is moving forward with plans to build a new 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan [Bagram airbase]’ at a cost of $60m (NYT, 17 May).

In Iraq ‘[t]he average detainee [detained by US forces] is interned for 333 days, and
as of March, about 1,500, or 5%, had been in detention for more than three years.’
Only 10-15% of the 21,000+ detainees currently being held there by US forces will ever stand trial, US military lawyers say, and only a third are judged to be “genuinely
continuing and imperative security risks.”

Britain has been holding two Iraqis – Faisal Attiyah Nassar al-Saadoon (56) and Khalaf Hussein Mufdhi (58), without trial, for more than five years (Independent on Sunday, 15 June).

The new prison at Bagram ‘will usually accommodate about 600 detainees’, though
it will be able to hold ‘as many as 1,100 in a surge.’ A recent in-depth investigation
by McClatchy Newspapers found that the existing US prison in Bagram ‘was a
center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months starting in late 2001’ (17 June).

In Brief

200 missiles, 3,000 deaths
The US has fired more than 200 Hellfire missiles in Baghdad since late March, compared with just six in the previous three months (Washington Post, 23 May). Meanwhile, a new US Army aviation battalion has used ‘remotely piloted surveillance aircraft to call in Apache helicopter strikes with missiles and heavy machine gun fire that have killed more than 3,000 adversaries in the last year’ (New York Times, 22 June).

Britain’s illegal missiles
British forces are using thermobaric weapons – which ‘create a pressure wave that sucks the air out of victims, shreds their internal organs and crushes their bodies’ – in Afghanistan (Sunday Times, 22 June). MoD legal experts ‘spent 18 months debating whether British troops could use them without breaking the law’, before side-stepping the issue by ‘redefining’ them as “enhanced blast weapon[s].”

The manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, ‘markets them as thermobaric’ weapons. ‘The use of the Hellfire AGM-114N weapons has been deemed so successful they will now be fired from RAF Reaper unmanned drones controlled by “pilots” at Creech air force base in Nevada.’

Impunity
Seven of the eight marines charged in relation to the 19 November 2005 massacre
in Haditha – in which 24 Iraqis were killed, including 10 women and children and an
elderly man in a wheelchair – have either had their charges dismissed or been acquitted (McClatchy Newspapers, 21 June).

Meanwhile, the commander of US Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, has decided not to charge US Marines who opened fire along a 10-mile stretch of road
in Afghanistan on 4 March 2007, killing up to 19 civilians and wounding 50 other people
(AP, 24 May). The marines had “acted appropriately and in accordance with the
rules of engagement,” he concluded.

War Resisters
‘A Canadian court has sided for the first time with a military deserter who fled to Canada seeking refugee status …order[ing] the Immigration and Refugee Board to reconsider the failed refugee claim of Joshua Key, a soldier who entered Canada with his wife, Brandi, and their [four] small children in March 2005’ (Canwest News Service, 4 July).

Key (30), an army private, deserted during a two-week break from serving as a combat
engineer in Iraq, where he spent eight months in 2003.

Too narrow
Federal Court Justice Richard Barnes ruled that the board had ruled too narrowly when
it concluded that only soldiers seeking protection from committing war crimes were entitled to protection.

Barnes ruled that that being ordered to participate in “[o]fficially condoned military
misconduct” might support a claim to refugee protection, even if the misconduct in question fell short of being a war crime. He also said that it could not be “seriously
challenged” that some of the conduct in which Keys had participated had violated
the Geneva Convention.

Canadians back sanctuary
Majorities of Canadian MPs and people would like to see US war resisters offered
sanctuary:

* On 3 June, by a margin of 137–110, Canadian MPs agreed a non-binding resolution calling on the Government to “cease any removal or deportation actions” against US soldiers “who have refused or left military service related to a war not sanctioned by the
United Nations”, and “to allow conscientiuous objectors and their immediate family
members … to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada.”

* In 6-7 June poll 64% of Canadians agreed that US soldiers who had ‘fled to Canada after refusing to take part in the Iraq war’ should be allowed to become permanent residents of Canada (tinyurl.com/699drz).

First deportation
The ruling in Key’s case appeared to have immediate knock-on effects when on 9 July
a second US war resister and Iraq veteran, Corey Glass (25) had his deportation – scheduled for 10 July – halted (Canwest News Service, 9 July). He will now remain in Canada while the court reviews and decides on his applications for leave and judicial review.

Nonetheless, a third war resister - Robin Long (25) - was deported on 15 July, becoming the first war resister that Canada has deported to the US (GlobeandMail.com, 16 July). As we go to press it is unclear what disciplinary action he will face.

ACTION

- Send Voices’ latest campaign postcard Let Them Stay to the Canadian High
Commissioner. Copies of this card (ideal for stalls, mailings etc…) are available free
from Voices: 0845 458 2564 or voices[at]voicesuk.org.

- Join the vigil outside Canada House on Tuesday 26 August – the 60th anniversary
of the founding of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors – calling
on the Canadian Government to give sanctuary to US war refusers (see here).

Resistance Round-up
1 May: In defiance of employers and union officials, 25,000 rank-and-file dock workers in 29 ports across the US go on strike to protest against the war in Iraq (DemocracyNow.org, 2 May). Iraqi port workers strike in solidarity.

16 May: Twenty-four-year-old US reservist, Matthis Chiroux refuses to deploy to Iraq, and vows to stay in the US to fight “whatever charges the army levels at [him]” (AFP, 16 May). “[M]y decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation,” he declares. ”I cannot deploy to Iraq, carry a weapon and not be part of the problem.”

25 May: Protestors at Yale disrupt a talk by Tony Blair. Students used their graduation robes to smuggle dozens of anti-war signs into the talk, and a young woman wearing a headscarf ‘stood throughout the ceremony, holding a “Peace Now” sign above her head just 10ft in front of the former Prime Minister, who appeared to be doing his best to avoid looking at her’ (Daily Mail, 26 May).

28 May: Author and Guardian columnist George Monbiot is dragged away by security as he attempts to make a citizens’ arrest of former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, during the Hay Festival of Literature (BBC, 28 May). Afterwards Monbiot ‘say[s] he planned to pursue former PM Tony Blair’.

11 June: Nine peace activists who broke into Raytheon’s Derry offices and destroyed computers worth £350,000 are acquitted by a Belfast jury (Peace News, July/August). Their action took place in August 2006 during Israel’s attack on Lebanon, shortly after the 30 July bombing of Qana, in which 28 people, were killed. Arms giant Raytheon is Israel’s largest supplier of “bunker-busting” bombs.

15 June: 25 people are arrested during anti-war protests against George W. Bush’s
visit to Downing Street (Times, 16 June). At least three people are subsequently charged. Police threaten activists holding anti-war signs along Bush’s route with Section 132 of SOCPA (the law used to prosecute Maya Evans and Milan Rai for reading the names of Britons and Iraqis killed in the war).