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VOICES
NEWSLETTER # 49 (Dec / Jan 2006)
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The withdrawal
myth
655,000 deaths
Public backs withdrawal
Al Qaeda's "cause celebre"
Provoking civil war
Ramadi
Bombing Afghanistan
Resistance round-up
Bilal Hussein
Hung juries
Resources
The withdrawal
myth
“I will not withdraw even if Laura and [my pet dog] Barney
are the only ones supporting me” – George W. Bush (Sunday
Times, 1 Oct).
“We will stay in country on the bases and come out and
flatten insurgents if they are overrunning [Iraqi Government]
positions. Otherwise it’s up to [them]” – anonymous ‘Iraq
veteran recalled to the Pentagon to plan its new strategy’ (Telegraph,
23 Oct).
Though it
has become a commonplace among media commentators that the
US and Britain are desperately trying to find a way
to withdraw from Iraq (‘preparing to scuttle’ in
the words of a 28 Oct Guardian leader) the same strategic
interests that have driven US policy towards the Middle East
for at least
the last 60 years will almost certainly ensure that it stays
until it is forced out. Even the relatively small British deployment – there
almost exclusively for political reasons - is unlikely to be
withdrawn any time soon.
Military dominance
As Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at the University
of Bradford, notes: ‘The fact that nearly two-thirds of
the world’s oil can be sourced to the Gulf area, and with
China destined to be almost as thirsty as the United States for
its oil in the coming period, ma[kes] American military dominance
in the region utterly essential,’ to US planners (OpenDemocracy.net,
26 Oct).
The US has already spent hundreds of billions of dollars occupying Iraq (NYT,
4 Nov) - including more than $280m on building up four permanent military bases
there (see voices 46) - and is currently building the largest US embassy in the
world in Baghdad, scheduled for completion in Jun 07 at the cost of at least
$590m (AP, 14 Apr).
Two choices
Given these realities, Rogers notes, ‘a situation in which Iraq went its
own violent way (either as a new jihadi base or as effectively a client of Tehran)
was, and is, unthinkable. It follows that with all the talk of diverse options,
there are really only two choices for the United States in Iraq – and a
fallback “plan C” possibility if catastrophe should ensue’ (OpenDemocracy.net,
26 Oct).
The two choices are: (A) continuing the present campaign; and (B) ‘abandon[ing]
Iraq’s cities and consolidat[ing] US forces in a handful of heavily
fortified military bases.’
It is known that the Pentagon is ‘planning for the possibility that it
might have to keep current troops levels in Iraq until 2010’ (FT, 12 Oct),
and Bush has reportedly ‘told senior advisers that the US and its allies
must make “a last big push” to win the war in Iraq and that instead
of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to
20,000 soldiers’ (Guardian, 16 Nov).
As for the “rebasing” option – which might allow the US to
reduce the number of troops in Iraq - ‘a similar plan mooted last year
was abandoned in the summer when Iraqi security forces could not cope’ with
rising levels of violence (Telegraph, 23 Oct). There is little reason to believe
much has changed in this regard: ‘[s]ome American officers say that as
many as half of the listed 137,000 Iraqi soldiers are effectively undeployable’ (NYT,
4 Nov).
Plan C
Even if violence on the ground were to force a genuine withdrawal from
Iraq – ‘a
foreign policy and security disaster for the [US] greater in scale than Vietnam’ – ‘there
would most definitely not be a wholesale US military withdrawal from the Persian
Gulf region’ (OpenDemocracy.net, 26 Oct). Instead, ‘[t]he
most likely form a withdrawal would take is the build-up of US forces
in [Kuwait,
Qatar,
Bahrain and Oman] ... Djibouti too would become much more significant,
as would the more distant base at [the UK-controlled island of] Diego
Garcia.’
Furthermore, such a withdrawal would ‘leave Iran as the main regional power … set[ting]
the scene for a long-term confrontation’ and a possible ‘decades-long
conflict … embrac[ing] the wider region.’
The British role
Senior British military officers ‘have been pressing the government to
withdraw British troops from Iraq and concentrate on [Afghanistan]’ (Guardian,
29 Oct), and ‘British forces have detailed plans to scale down forces in
southern Iraq in the next few months’ and ‘[b]uilding work has already
started at the British base at Basra airport, where forces will be consolidated’ (Independent
on Sunday, 15 Oct).
Nonetheless, there will be no rapid withdrawal of UK forces from Iraq:
according to the FT ‘[t]he hope is currently that the UK should be able to draw down
3,000 – 3,500 of its troops … next year, and in the best case, stage
a full withdrawal in 2008’ - though even here the ‘timetable is tentative
and depends in part on the US and events in Iraq’ (14 Oct, emphasis added).
We suspect that, even in this ‘best case’ scenario, a small
number of UK military advisers will stay in Iraq as a political token
for the US.
The real danger
‘Many of the troops on the ground in Iraq, and their commanders back home,
believe that they are remaining there almost exclusively for political reasons’ (IoS,
15 Oct). They are probably right.
Indeed, according to Dr Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary College,
London, the role of British forces is “a minor one”: “Britain has never
had the forces needed to make a sustained difference to law and order, and meaningful
reconstruction is almost non-existent” (IoS, 8 Oct). Even in Basra ‘[t]he
Army was forced to turn a blind eye as the militias took over the city, killing
their opponents and anyone who did not conform to strict Islamic codes’ (Times,
14 Oct).
The real danger of the current talk of withdrawal is that it will undermine
the anti-war movement if people come to believe – wrongly – that
the occupation is ending. Now more than ever, domestic pressure for a
genuine withdrawal
of UK forces is essential.
655,000 deaths
‘We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has
not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative
these last three years’ – Iraqi blogger Riverbend,
18 Oct, tinyurl.com/ybhkxf
A
statistical survey undertaken by a team of respected researchers
assisted by one of the world’s foremost biostatisticians
has concluded that as of July 2006 there had been 655,000 (393,000 – 943,000
[1]) excess Iraqis deaths as consequence of the war (Mortality
after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample
survey, published on-line at theLancet.com on
11 Oct, see tinyurl.com/y98ksu).
Of the 601,000 post-invasion deaths that were due to violence,
31% (26 – 37 [1]) - 186,000 deaths – were directly
attributed to “coalition” forces or airstrikes [2].
Coalition
forces were also responsible for just over 1 in 4 (26%) violent
deaths during the 14-month period Jun 05 – Jul
06 (almost half of them due to airstrikes).
Furthermore, whilst ‘[t]he proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces … diminished
in 2006 … the actual numbers have increased every year’ (emphasis
added).
The best estimate
Unsurprisingly the report has been subjected to a firestorm of criticism, much
of it either ill-informed or deceitful.
Thus President Bush was quick to dismiss the survey (“I don’t consider
it a credible report. Neither does General Casey …”) claiming that
its methodology had been “pretty much discredited” (tinyurl.com/wxmvb).
In reality, as 27 public health experts – including the director of the
Australian National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health and a professor
of medical statistics and population health at the University of Queensland – stated
in a letter to the Australian newspaper The Age (21 Oct), the new survey ‘provides
the best estimate of mortality to date in Iraq that we have, or indeed are ever
likely to have.’
‘The cross-sectional household cluster sample survey method used is a standard,
robust and well-established method for gathering health data,’ they note,
and was ‘used in recent mortality surveys in Darfur and Democratic Republic
of Congo’ without attracting any criticism.
Too many deaths?
Ironically, one of the most aggressive critics of the new survey has been Iraq
Body Count (IBC), a small and highly dedicated NGO that maintains an on-line
record of all ‘civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq.’ As
at 22 Nov IBC put the number of such deaths at between 47,440 and 52,642 (iraqbodycount.org).
The core of IBC’s critique (tinyurl.com/yd5o2j ) is the claim that too
few deaths have been reported – either by the media or by bodies such as
the Iraqi Ministry of Health – for the new figures to be credible [3].
However, as the Lancet report’s authors make clear, with the exception
of Bosnia they ‘c[ould] find no conflict situation where [such] passive
surveillance [measures] recorded more than 20% of the deaths measured by population-based
methods.’ So, for example, ‘[b]etween 1960 and 1990 newspaper reports
of political deaths in Guatemala … [reported] less than 5% [of such deaths]
in years of highest violence.’
Gross underestimates
Moreover, it is hard to believe that IBC’s own tally does not grossly underestimate
the number of civilian deaths. Eg. For the five-month period 1 Oct 05 – 28
Feb 06 the IBC database lists only three aerial attacks, with a combined civilian
death toll of between 21 and 53. However, it is known that during this period “coalition” planes
attacked 22 Iraqi cities ‘dropp[ing] bombs or missiles … on at least
76 days … or one out of every two days’ (Knight Ridder, 14 Mar).
Likewise, the IBC database contains no deaths in Tal Afar for Aug 05, despite
the fact that the massive 2 Sept 05 US offensive against the city was preceded
by ‘repeated air and artillery strikes…over [several] weeks’ (Sunday
Times , 11 Sept 05) and the well-known Iraqi news-site Azzaman.com reported at
the time that people in the city were “too scared to go out and recover
corpses of dead relatives or tend to the wounded” (21 Aug 05).
A spur to action
It would be all too easy to let these new figures paralyse us with guilt and
despair. To be sure, they throw into stark relief two of the anti-war movement’s
greatest failures: the failure to impress upon the general public the full extent
of the horrors we have inflicted on Iraq; and the failure to escalate our protest
and dissent in parallel with the escalating horror on the ground [4].
Nonetheless, for the sake of Iraq and its people, this new survey needs to be
a spur to all of us to greater sacrifice and commitment in our work to terminate
Britain’s support for the occupation.
Notes
[1] The headline figure is the best estimate from the data. The range in brackets
is a so-called 95% Confidence Interval ie. there is only a 1 in 20 chance that
the true figure is outside this range.
[2]
All other deaths were grouped into two categories: ‘other’ (24%)
and ‘unknown’ (45%).
[3] IBC has also pointed to a ‘UNDP-funded
survey which found a significantly lower number of war-related violent deaths’ in
a period overlapping with that of the Lancet report (tinyurl.com/ya8gol).
However, according to Lancet author Les Roberts – who has designed and led at least
55 such surveys in 17 countries since 1990 – the UNDP survey was ‘not
focussed on mortality’ and there are good reasons to believe its mortality
estimate was incomplete. Indeed, when the interviewers were sent back after the
survey was over to ask about deaths of children under the age of five, ‘the
same houses reported 50% more deaths the second time
around’(tinyurl.com/y8teg4).
[4] Indeed, during the period when “coalition” killings peaked as
a proportion of total deaths (May 04 – May 05, when they
formed 39% of all violent deaths) the UK anti-war movement
was at a post-invasion
low.
Public backs withdrawal
IN IRAQ:
Seventy-eight per cent of Iraqis believe that the presence of
US-led forces in Iraq
is “provoking more conflict than
it is preventing,” according to a 1- 4 Sept poll conducted
by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (tinyurl.com/ndz9g).
Fifty-eight percent believe that inter-ethnic violence would
decrease if US-led forces were withdrawn in the next six months,
and 61% that such a withdrawal would increase ‘day to day
security for ordinary Iraqis.’ Sixty-one percent of Iraqis
approve of attacks on US-led forces in Iraq.
Support
for attacks on US-led forces is highly correlated with the (entirely
accurate) belief - held by 77%
of Iraqis - that ‘the
US plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq.’ Indeed,
of the 61% who approved of such attacks, well over half said
they would feel less supportive ‘if the US made a commitment
to withdraw from Iraq according to a timetable.’
“Nobody
is talking about a timetable”
According to the Times Chief Foreign Commentator, Bronwen
Maddox, ‘The
White House has one clear “red line” [regarding the
conclusions of James Baker’s cross-party commission on
Iraq]: it does not want to be told to set dates for withdrawing
[US forces]’ (17 Nov).
On the other hand, according to the PIPA poll, 71% of Iraqis
back full withdrawal within a year [1], and 37% (including
57% of Sunni Arabs and 36% of Shia Arabs
[2]) support withdrawal within six months [3].
The contrast with the Iraqi Government’s position could also hardly be
more striking. On 9 Nov the New York Times quoted Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki – who
could, in theory, demand that the troops leave tomorrow - as saying: “In
the remaining two years of President Bush’s term, I don’t think
there will be any major changes in American policy. Nobody is talking about
a timetable
for the withdrawal of American troops.”
Nobody, that is, except ordinary Iraqis [4].
Notes
[1] There appears to be little support for an international peacekeeping force
to replace the current occupation. Asked what they would most favour over the
next year and given the options of “withdrawing all foreign forces from
Iraq”, “replacing US-led forces with an international peacekeeping
force mostly from Islamic countries” or “maintaining US-led forces
in Iraq”, only 20% supported the idea of a peacekeeping force (65% backed
full withdrawal).
[2] The Iraqi population is estimated to be 60% Shiite Arab, 20% Sunni Arab
and 20% Kurd (NYT, 17 Sept).
[3] A slightly earlier survey conducted on behalf of the US State Department
found that “majorities in all regions except Kurdish areas state that [US-led
forces] should withdraw immediately, adding that [their] departure would make
them feel safer and decrease violence” (Washington Post, 27 Sept). However
there is far less information available about this poll.
[4] And ordinary Americans: ‘A recent Newsweek poll found that 61% of Americans
believe the Bush administration should set a timetable to withdraw forces from
Iraq’ (FT, 31 Oct).
IN BRITAIN: ‘A clear majority of voters want British troops
to be pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, regardless of the consequences
for the country,’ according to a 20-22 Oct ICM poll (Guardian, 24 Oct).
Only 30% favoured staying ‘as long as is considered necessary’ and
45% of all those polled ‘want[ed] British troops pulled out immediately.’
A
second 20-22 Oct poll found similar results: 62% favoured withdrawing
British troops from Iraq ‘as soon as possible’ as
opposed to staying ‘for as long as it takes’ (tinyurl.com/yftl42)[1].
This appears to be a significant shift from previous polls eg. a Sept 05 poll
for the Guardian found only 51% supporting a timetable for withdrawal, with
41% wanting to keep British troops in Iraq (tinyurl.com/9y3a4).
A British withdrawal in the next few months could have a huge political impact
in the US, helping to generate real pressure for an end to the occupation.
If these poll figures are right the UK anti-war movement now has a real chance
to achieve this. It is an opportunity we must not squander.
Notes
[1] A third poll, conducted by YouGov between 24-26 Oct, found only 19% favouring
immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, with a further 37% backing
withdrawal within six months (Telegraph, 30 Oct). However YouGov does not conduct
its polls through random sampling but instead e-mails a supposedly-representative
set of “electors” who it pays to answer its questionnaires (tinyurl.com/t4f8g).
ACTION
Voices has produced a window poster based on the findings of the ICM poll (“61%
say bring all the troops home by Xmas”). Photocopy it and distribute
it in your neighbourhood!
Al Qaeda's "cause celebre"
“The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for
jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the
Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist
movement,” according to a leaked Apr 06 US National Intelligence
Estimate pooling the views of 16 government agencies, including
the CIA (tinyurl.com/o62kr).
Following the leak, George W Bush claimed that the withdrawal
of US troops from
Iraq was “precisely what [Al Qaeda] want[s]” (Christian Science
Monitor,
6 Oct). However in a revealing Dec 05 letter from Atiyah Abd al-Rahman - recovered
from the rubble of the house where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by a US
airstrike this Jun, and translated and released by the US military – the ‘senior
al-Qaeda leader’ states that “prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in
our [ie. Al-Qaeda’s] interest.”
Provoking civil war
“[We should] get ourselves out [of Iraq] sometime soon
because our presence exacerbates the security problems” -
Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army (Daily Mail,
13 Oct).
“Far
from establishing an independent Iraq or preventing a civil
war, the continued presence of American
and British troops
deeply destablises the country, delegitimises its government
and deepens sectarian hatred.”
(Patrick Cockburn, Independent
on Sunday,
15 Oct 2006)
‘The only problem about Sir Richard Dannatt’s comments
on Iraq,’ Independent Iraq correspondent Patrick Cockburn
notes, ‘is that they did not go far enough’ (IoS,
15 Oct). Indeed, whilst ‘foreign military occupation provokes
armed resistance in Iraq as it would be most countries … it
is seldom realised that the US and Britain have [also] largely
provoked the civil war … that is [now] raging across central
Iraq … The present slaughter in Iraq is taking place because
the existing ethnic and sectarian hostilities have combined with
animosities that have been created by the occupation.’
So, for example, ‘a Sunni ex-army officer supporting the
resistance now sees a Shia serving in the Iraqi army or police
force not just as a member of
a different Islamic sect but as a traitor to his country who is actively collaborating
with the hated invader.’
The last excuse
Thousands of Iraqis are now dying every month as a result of sectarian violence
(eg. the Baghdad central morgue received 1,600 violent death victims in Oct alone
- AP, 9 Nov) and, according to the UN High Commisioner for Refugees, 1.6m Iraqis
have fled the country, with a further 1.5m internally displaced within Iraq (Independent,
23 Oct). As Cockburn notes ‘[t]he last excuse for the occupation was that
at least it prevented civil war, but this it very visibly is not doing’ (IoS,
15 Oct).
During one recent (Oct) massacre of Sunnis by Shiites in Balad the US military
apparently confined itself to ‘monitor[ing] events from its base just outside’ the
city (LA Times, 7 Nov). “Honestly it makes our job easier,” Sgt.
Dominie Price said of the Shiites targeting the Sunnis. “There’s
less insurgents attacking us.” Most of the insurgents in Balad are Sunnis.
Ramadi
Though barely reported in the US/UK press, Ramadi
has been the scene of intense fighting recently, as US forces
have
adopted
what a military spokesperson in Baghdad called “an aggressive,
offensive approach to taking back the city” (WP,
27 Oct).
On 13 Nov a US airstrike on Ramadi ‘killed at least 30 people, including
women and children, according to witnesses’ (LA Times, 15 Nov). One local
physician claimed the Americans cordoned off the area, preventing the evacuation
of the injured and increasing the number of dead.
Nor were the civilian deaths on 13 Nov an isolated occurrence: on 28 Oct, six
Iraqis, including two women and three children were killed in Ramadi ‘in
what Iraqi police said was an American airstrike’ (Sunday Times, 29 Oct);
and on 28 Aug US snipers shot 13 civilians for breach of curfew there, killing
6 and injuring 7 (UNAMI Human Rights Report, 1 Jul – 31 Aug 2006).
Bombing Afghanistan
“All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons
killed are going to turn against the British. It’s a pretty
clear equation — if people are losing homes and poppy fields,
they will go and fight. I certainly would” – Capt
Leo Docherty former aide-de-camp to the British operational commander
in Helmand province (Sunday Times, 10 Sep)
On
20 Oct Times correspondent Anthony Lloyd interviewed Abdul
Qarim in a Kandahar hospital. By then the sixty-year-old
farmer,
had ‘had two days to ponder why his wife, two sons and
two daughters were killed in a Nato attack on his village’ (Times,
21 Oct).
Following airstrikes against the small hamlet on
the edge of Ashogha, in Kandahar province – in which Abdul Qarim’s
25-year-old son Ghulam Shah was wounded - between 15-20 soldiers
searched the ruins. “They were foreigners, with special
glasses fixed to their faces and powerful lights on the weapons,” Mr
Qarim said. “One lifted the blanket from the edge of Ghulam,
put his gun against his temple and fired. The bullets came out
of his cheek. I was sitting right in front of them with my two
surviving sons.” Before leaving one soldier ‘stirred
the body of Mr Qarim’s wife with his boot to check for
signs of life.’ In total nine civilians were killed, and
eleven wounded.
Less than a week later at least 31 civilians were killed during
a nighttime NATO air attack in Kandahar on 24 Oct (IHT, 14 Nov)
in which ‘witnesses said
25 houses had been razed’ (FT, 27 Oct).
100,000 refugees
On 4 Oct, the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, stated that ‘close to 100,000
people ha[d] been forced from their homes in Afghanistan [since Jul] by heavy
fighting between Taliban and NATO forces’ (CBC News).
US aircraft have conducted at least 2,095 airstrikes in Afghanistan since Jun
(compared to 88 in Iraq), ‘dropp[ing] 987 bombs and fir[ing] more than
146,000 cannon rounds and bullets ... more than was expended in both categories
from the beginning of the [US]-led invasion in 2001 through 2004’ (NYT,
17 Nov). There were 397 such attacks in Oct, and the figure ‘is expected
to remain at comparable levels’ in Nov. Meanwhile, according to figures
obtained by the Sunday Telegraph, ‘the RAF launched nearly 500 bombs and
rockets on Taliban positions in [Sept] in support of British troops on the ground,’ making
Afghanistan ‘the RAF’s largest bombing operation since the invasion
of Iraq in 2003’ (1 Oct).
One report for the Mail on Sunday described ‘[b]attles tak[ing] place against
a backdrop of burning villages reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment’,
claiming that on one occasion ‘[a]bout 100 British soldiers surrounded
[the village of] Musa Qalah and non-Taliban personnel were given 30 minutes to
leave. Anyone who remained was considered a legitimate target’ (1 Oct).
53%
Despite the near-total-invisibility of these horrors in the mainstream media,
a 27-28 Sept ICM poll found that 53% of Britons ‘oppose the British military
operation in Afghanistan’ (tinyurl.com/y4dxqs). Only 31% support it.
Nonetheless, according to the commander of the British taskforce in southern
Afghanistan, ‘UK troops could be in the country for as long as 10 years’ (Sunday
Times, 17 Sept) and it is known that the British military would like to shift
the bulk of its forces from Iraq to Afghanistan (Guardian, 29 Sept).
Starving afghanistan’s poor
Moreover, though the US/UK-led policy of forced poppy eradication ‘has
resulted in a wave of starvation among destitute farming families across southern
Afghanistan’ (Afghanistan Five Years Later, SenlisCouncil.net, Sept 06),
further eradication is scheduled to take place in Helmand in Dec and Jan, in
a move that British diplomats say is likely to ‘trigger heavy fighting’ (Sunday
Times, 5 Nov).
With the occupation of Afghanistan now in its sixth year the need for the UK
anti-war movement to put the country seriously back on its agenda could not be
greater.
Resistance round-up
21-28 Sept: Over
375 anti-war actions take place in over 150 cities across the
US and more than 275 people
are arrested in
over 20 nonviolent civil resistance and civil disobedience actions.
The events are part of the ‘Declaration of Peace’ initiative
designed to pressure Congress to support the full withdrawal
of US forces from Iraq. Actions included an occupation of the
building housing the office of Senator Rick Santorum and the
commandeering of an elevator (!) in a federal building in Santa
Fe.
23 Sept: Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators (and Tony
Blair - see pic!) march through the streets of Manchester on
the eve of the Labour Party Conference (Manchester Evening
News,
23 Sept).
9
Oct: 38 people are arrested at an anti-war demonstration in
Parliament Square,
timed to coincide with the return of MPs to
Parliament following the summer recess (Guardian, 10 Oct). A
few days before the protest the Evening Standard had claimed
that ‘anarchists’ were ‘threatening to storm
the Palace of Westminster in a potentially violent anti-war demonstration’ and
that ‘[a]bout 800 police w[ould] be on stand-by in and
around Parliament Square to stamp out any trouble’ (6 Oct).
8
Nov: Cindy Sheehan is arrested outside the White House as
she leads a protest of about 50 people trying to deliver an anti-war
petition signed by 80,000 US citizens (DemocracyNow.org, 9 Nov).
Stop arming Israel
Moves to impose a UK ban on sales of arms to and from Israel
are gathering pace. A national lobby of Parliament on 29 Nov
will be calling for an end to arms sales to Israel, and the launch
meeting for the new Stop Arming Israel campaign (see Voices #48)
will be taking place on 5 Dec (see back page for details of both
events).
Meanwhile a Palestinian who lives in Bethlehem is taking the
British Government to court over the sale of military equipment
to Israel including parts for
Apache helicopter gunships, laser range finders, and communications equipment,
arguing that ‘the sales are in breach of the government’s guidelines
covering arms exports and are unlawful’ (Guardian, 15 Nov).
The Israeli Government has recently admitted that it used phosphorus weapons
during its attack on Lebanon in Jul / Aug, in which it killed ‘some 1,000
Lebanese civilians’ (Amnesty International). According to the BBC, ‘Phosphorus
weapons cause chemical burns and the Red Cross and human rights groups say
they should be treated as chemical weapons’ (22 Oct).
For more info – or to order copies of the new campaign postcard to send
to your MP - see www.stoparmingisrael.org or phone 0207 281 0297.
Bilal Hussein
Bilal Hussein (35) – a
native of Fallujah who began working for Associated Press as
a photographer in Sep
04 – was detained by US forces on 12 Apr. Though US military
officials say that he is being held for “imperative reasons
of security” he has never been charged with an offence
and a review of Hussein’s work by AP ‘did not find
anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents’ (AP,
17 Sep). According to his Iraqi lawyer, Hussein ‘believes
he has been unfairly targeted because his photos from Ramadi
and Fallujah were deemed unwelcome by coalition forces.’
There are currently ‘an estimated 14,000 people detained by the US military
worldwide – 13,000 of them in Iraq,’ held in a ‘limbo where
few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court
or tribunal to argue for their freedom’ (AP, 17 Sept).
In Mar, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declared that the extent of arbitrary
detention in Iraq was “not consistent with the provisions of international
law governing internment on imperative reasons of security” and Iraq’s
Deputy Justice Minister has told AP that that it has been a “daily request” that
these detainees be brought under Iraqi authority (AP, 17 Sep). In Aug the US
opened a $60m state-of-the-art detention center at Camp Cropper near Baghdad’s
airport.
Please join the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International
Federation of Journalists in calling for Bilal Hussein to be either released
or charged.Send your letters to: Robert Holmes Tuttle, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St.
James’s, US Embassy, 24 Grosvenor Square, London, W1A 1AE.
Hung juries
Four peace activists who engaged in disarmament actions at RAF
Fairford in Mar 03 remain at liberty following two separate trials,
after the juries failed to reach verdicts on their cases.
Margaret Jones and Paul Milling – who non-violently disabled three tankers
used for refuelling the bombers at USAF Fairford and several trailers and loaders
used to transport the bombs (on)to the planes – now face a new trial next
year (Guardian, 16 Sept). Likewise Toby Olditch and Phil Pritchard, who attempted
to break into Fairford and disarm a B-52 bomber at the outset of the 2003 invasion.
An account of Toby and Phil’s trial can be read on-line at www.b52two.org.
Resources
Books
The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn (Verso, 2006). £15.99.
Close readers of this newsletter will be familiar with the name
of Patrick Cockburn, an outstanding Middle East Correspondent for
the Independent whose earlier book, Out of the Ashes (written with
his brother Andrew), remains one of the most useful accounts of
US policy towards Iraq during the 90s.
Here the title is slightly misleading – roughly ½ the book covers
the period up to and including the invasion – but even the remainder (just
over 100 pages) is worth the cover price. Indeed it would be hard to think of
a better-informed guide to the bloodshed, corruption and incompetence of the
past 3½ + years.
Time and again Cockburn is able to tease key insights from seemingly inconsequential
observations eg. the fact that there were few Arab smokers at a Dec 02 meeting
of the Iraqi “opposition” in London (suggesting that most had not
been to Iraq for a long time) or the inability of the Iraqi Defence Ministry,
housed in the Green Zone, to provide him with a lift (revealing its tiny staff
and, hence, the largely cosmetic nature of US plans to delegate real military
power to Iraqis).
According to one recent book review there have been about 400 books published
on Iraq since the 2003 invasion (Independent, 8 Sept). Unlike many of these,
The Occupation is likely to be of lasting value.
Naming
the Dead: A Serious Crime by Maya Anne Evans with Milan Rai
(JNV Publications, 2006). Available
from voices for £7
incl p&p (see p. 8)
What makes an ‘ordinary person’ become an activist and why would
someone risk their job or their liberty to take part in an act of civil disobedience?
These are just a couple of the questions addressed in Maya Evans’ short
(86 pages) but compelling memoir.
Last December Maya was briefly catapulted into the public eye, when she and
her fellow activist Milan Rai were arrested for holding a remembrance ceremony
opposite Downing Street for Iraqis and British soldiers killed in Iraq. NtD interweaves this story – set against the backdrop of the more general
attack on civil liberties – with the story of her own transformation:
from quiet child growing up amidst the rich diversity of multi-racial Hackney,
to party-going student and Dylan-fan, to peace activist and vegan chef. Often
painfully honest about her own frailties, Maya reminds us that activists are
neither freaks nor saints, and that we can (and should!) all take action to
confront power and change the world for the better.
Postcards
Copies of Voices’ campaign postcards Support the Troops, Grant Them Asylum
(about US forces seeking asylum in Canada); and End the Occupation of Iraq
(featuring artwork by Emily Johns) are available free from voices. Ideal for
stalls, mailings etc…
Web-sites
Electronic Iraq – www.electroniciraq.net
Recently re-vamped, EIraq now not only provides a wide variety of high-quality
news and analysis on Iraq (from mainstream and “alternative” media
sources) but also maintains a blog “War Every Day”, compiled by
long-time activist with Voices US, Jeff Guntzel. Also maintains an e-mail list.
Baghdad Burning - http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com
Must-read blog by an anonymous female Iraqi computer programmer
living in Baghdad. Sane, angry and brilliantly written (she
was recently long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Award for non-fiction)
BB provides an almost unique perspective on events in Iraq.
Empire Notes - http://empirenotes.org
Invaluable and incisive analysis (on Iraq and beyond) from one
of the smartest US peace activists on the block.
Seeds
for Change – www.seedsforchange.org.uk and 0845 458 4776.
Seeds for Change is a wonderful co-operative
providing
training and support to grassroots campaigners (often for free
where penniless activists are concerned) in a wide range of skills,
from how to facilitate a meeting, to direct action and how to
run a successful campaign. Their workshops are excellent. Use
them!
Weekly news and analysis
Watching the Warmakers – www.watchingthewarmakers.org.uk
Excellent, free “war on terror” news digest emailed
out on a weekly basis by the Brighton Hands Off Forum. Formatted
for printing on double-sided A4.
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