VOICES NEWSLETTER # 58 (December 08 / January 2009)

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Obama's escalation
Peace talks
War talks
The withdrawal majority
Out by 2012?
"Acceptable" dictators
Pakistan: heavy pressure & scorched earth
40 billion barrels
In brief
War resisters
Afghanistan die-in & speaking tour
The war on your high street


Obama's escalation
“I looked downwards and my foot was in little pieces. They came from the sky and from the ground. It started in the afternoon and went into the night” – child amputee Khorea Horay, injured in a US attack on a wedding party in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar on 3 November (Independent, 20 Nov). Between 40 and 90 civilians were killed in the attack (NYT, 7 Nov).

“Obama will be very tough on Afghanistan. The major PR headache next year is how we sell the withdrawal of troops from Iraq to the Americans … Obama will publicly say it’s fine, but in return he will want them sent to Afghanistan” – anonymous senior British diplomat (Sunday Telegraph, 2 Nov)

Though the British public overwhelmingly backs a one-year timeline for the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, the US looks bent on further escalation, with Obama reportedly set to ask Britain to send a further 3,000 troops.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, ’American commanders have looked at all the options in a thorough review … [and] decided that now is the time to fight’, and ‘will soon be presenting the new president in Washington … with plans to fight an intense
five-year war against the guerrillas, a war that commanders think looks winnable unlike the morass troops are in now’ (2 Nov)

Winning the war
’Britain will remain a key partner. But battles in Helmand will increasingly be fought by
American combat troops and American commanders will call the shots’ – making
a further escalation in civilian casualties a near-certainty.

“What will eventually win this war is American military power,” a senior Nato source in Kabul told the paper. “There is no question of America withdrawing from Afghanistan.”

Part of the problem
In stark constrast, Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan is reported to have (privately)
told French diplomats that the strategy of further escalation is “bound to fail” and
that “the presence, notably military, of the coalition is a part of the problem, not the
solution” (Telegraph, 2 Oct – see here)

Nonetheless, according to a US military intelligence official aware of discussions
among Mr Obama’s foreign policy team, ‘Britain will be asked to provide an extra
3,000 troops’ (Sunday Telegraph, 2 Nov) – and Brown is unlikely to refuse.

As one senior British official explained to the FT: “When President Obama phones
Gordon Brown and says, ‘Gordon … you need to send more forces to Afghanistan’,
that’s something that the Prime Minister won’t be able to resist” (7 Nov).

Peace talks
Since our last newsletter further evidence has emerged that behind the scenes – and contrary to its official policy - Britain has been supporting some form of negotiations with the leadership of the Taliban.

On 28 Sept, the Observer reported that ‘[t]he Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging ‘peace process’ sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain … The unprecedented negotiations involve a senior former member of the hardline Islamist movement travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals. Britain has provided logistic and diplomatic support for the talks - despite official statements that negotiations can be held only with Taliban who are ready to renounce, or have renounced, violence’ (emphasis added) [1].

According to the Observer: ‘The Taliban are understood to have submitted a list of
11 conditions for ending hostilities, which include demands to be allowed to run key
ministries and a programmed withdrawal of western troops.’ (emphasis added). Similar
demands were put forward in 2007 (see voices 53).

A possible peace
In his 2007 book Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, Antonio Giustozzi, a research fellow
at the LSE’s Crisis States Research Centre and one of the leading academic experts on the neo-Taliban insurgency, notes that: ‘For all their image as an extremist movement, there are some indications that the Taliban might have always been aiming for a negotiated settlement … The option of ending the war through negotiations still existed in 2007.’

Moreover, most ordinary Afghans appear to back real negotiations with the Taliban: in
a Sept 07 poll, 74% supported negotiations with the Taliban, and 54% supported the
idea of a coalition government with the Taliban (tinyurl.com/ytt2yj).

Karzai calls for timeline
On 25 Nov, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called ‘for the international community to
set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan’, stating: “If there is no deadline, we have
the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations” (AP,
26 Nov).

Earlier that month he had ‘offered to provide security for the Taleban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Omar, if he agrees to peace talks’ – despite the multi-million dollar US bounty on the latter’s head - stating: “If I say I want protection for Mullah Omar, then the
international community has two choices: remove me, or leave if they disagree.” (BBC,
16 Nov).

Given Karzai’s woeful inability to halt the aerial bombing of civilians, the offer
was hardly credible [2]. Nonetheless, it may be no coincidence that ‘some senior [US]
military strategists have begun to question the US commitment to Afghan President
Hamid Karzai’ (WP, 11 Nov).

Notes
[1] On 7 Oct FCO Minister Bill Rammell reiterated the official line that Britain “would not support dialogue with those committed to violence”, but only with those “genuinely prepared to leave the path of violence and engage in the legitimate political process” (Hansard, 7 Oct 08, Col 129).

[2] According to Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid - both world-renowned experts on
Afghanistan - ‘Senior officials of the Afghan government say that at least through 2004
they repeatedly received overtures from senior Taliban leaders but that they could
never guarantee that these leaders would not be captured by US forces and detained
at Guantanamo Bay or the US air base at Bagram’ (Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec).

War talks
Contrary to the desires of most Afghans, the US sees negotiations as a way to fight the war, not a way to end it.

The phrase ‘negotiating with the Taliban’ is currently being used in at least three different senses:

(1) Negotiations-as-surrender: the official US and UK position – we’re prepared to talk to anyone who’s willing to capitulate (see here).

(2) Negotiations as way to end the war: the option apparently favoured by the majority
of ordinary Afghans (see here).

(3) Negotiations as war-fighting strategy: trying to ‘drive wedges’ between different
parts of the Taliban, ‘peeling off’ the less committed as a way of winning the war etc…

Despite the recent assertion by US defence secretary Robert Gates that a political
settlement with the Taliban is “conceivable” (FT, 10 Oct), other reports strongly suggest that the US is only interested in negotiations in sense (3) above.

Thus, according to the Sunday Telegraph, in addition to its plans for military escalation, ‘The other radical new element of America’s strategy will be talking to the Taliban. But this will be less an attempt to come up with a grand deal, and more an effort to split and demoralise the enemy …’ (2 Nov, emphasis added).

Indeed, ‘A classified White House review of strategy says that American negotiators
should participate in talks between the Afghan central government and junior and mid-level Taliban commanders … while excluding their leaders’ with the aim of ‘strengthen[ing] the central government in southern provinces where it has become nearly powerless’ (Telegraph, 29 Oct, emphasis added).

“We’ll never be at the table with Mullah Omar,” one official told the Wall Street Journal.

The withdrawal majority
Sixty-eight per cent of Britons want all British troops out of Afghanistan within the next 12 months, according to a 31 Oct – 2 Nov ICM poll conducted for the BBC (tinyurl.com/6cq4bx).

Only 24% believed British troops should not be withdrawn within the next twelve months, and 75% of women - and 75% of 18-24-year-olds - back withdrawal within a
year.

Out by 2012?
“How does it matter whether it is Obama or McCain? The American troops killed my mother in the middle of the night as we were fleeing the assault in 2004. American
policy is fixed. Obama can’t change it. America has its own agenda” – Fallujah resident Diyauddin Abdullah (AFP, 2 Nov).

“ There’s going to be a significant presence [after 2011], but they are not going to be ‘combat’ forces” - Bush administration official ‘knowledgeable about the security
pact [between Iraq and the US]’ (NYT, 7 Nov).

On paper the US has now committed itself to a complete withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011. In reality, such a withdrawal remains extremely unlikely.

On 17 Nov, the US Ambassador to Iraq and Iraq’s Foreign Minister signed an agreement ‘On the Withdrawal of [US] Forces from Iraq and the Organisation of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq’ (www.iraqoilreport.com/SOFA.doc).
The document – adopted by the Iraqi Parliament on 27 Nov [1] – commits the US to withdrawing its combat forces ‘from Iraqi cities, villages and localities … no later than June 30, 2009’, and to withdrawing all US forces ‘from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011’ (Art. 24).

A dramatic climb down
The three-year agreement also: strips US contractors of immunity from Iraqi law (Art. 12); states that all US military operations ‘shall be conducted with the agreement of the Government of Iraq’ (Art. 4); requires US forces to obtain Iraqi warrants for detentions, and to hand over detainees to the Iraqi Government within 24 hours (Art. 22); and prohibits the use of ‘Iraqi land, sea and air … as a launching or transit point for attacks on other countries’ (Art. 27). Iraq can terminate the agreement with one year’s notice (Art 30).

This represents a dramatic climb down from the original US plan for an agreement 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) – a reversal largely the product of intense domestic pressure inside Iraq (see Voices 56).

Maintaining influence
However, despite much media commentary to the contrary, the chances of a complete
US withdrawal by 2012 remain slight. The US has already ‘established a number of very large military bases in strategically important parts of Iraq … [with] an air of permanence that even extends to the construction of substantial power plants to ensure a high degree of independence’ and ‘is completing a very large and heavily defended embassy complex in the heart of Baghdad’ - both ‘evidence of a long-term intention to maintain substantial influence in Iraq ’ (Paul Rogers, The Tipping Point?, ORG International Security Report 2008, Nov 08) [2].

Obama always intended to retain a “residual” force – including Special Forces and US Air Force Squadrons – following the withdrawal of “combat” forces (see Voices 57), and ‘[o]fficials on his team say it could number as many as 50,000 troops’ (Jonathan Steele, Guardian, 6 Nov).

Moreover, ‘With both the [US] and China increasingly dependent on imported oil, it is highly unlikely that there will be a full withdrawal from Iraq at any time in the next decade … A complete US withdrawal would so throw Iraq open to Iranian influence that this would be perceived as a security disaster even greater than the defeat in Vietnam. Simply put, it will not happen’ (Rogers).

Notes
[1] The Parliament also ‘voted in favour of holding a national referendum’ on the agreement, scheduled for July (WP, 28 Nov). ‘If Iraq’s voters were to reject the agreement, the Iraqi Government would be required to give notice for US troops to pull out in July 2010.’ However, the Post notes, in the past ‘[s]everal mandated referendums … have been deferred beyond legal deadlines.’

[2] In a similar vein, the Iraqi National Intelligence Service – whose director ‘was
handpicked by the CIA … soon after the 2003 invasion’, and which uses Saddamera
intelligence officers to spy on Iran – ‘is reported to work primarily for American
intelligence’, who are believed to fund it (Patrick Cockburn, Independent, 11 Oct).

"Acceptable" dictators
"When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to … shade the truth about why they’re going” – Barack Obama’s keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention (tinyurl.com/5pt65l)

As Obama’s advisers prepare to ditch the “unrealistic commitment to … building a modern democracy” in Afghanistan (Washington Post, 11 Nov), Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan has allegedly mooted (in private) the desirability of installing “an acceptable dictator” there within the next 5-10 years.

The claim that we are “support[ing] a democratically-elected Afghan government”
(David Miliband, July 2007) has long been a key propaganda point for the US and Britain, though the reality has always been much more murky, to say the least [1].

Nonetheless, according to the Washington Post, ‘conversations with several Obama
advisers and a number of senior military strategists both before and since [the 4 Nov
US Presidental election] reveal a shared sense that the Afghan effort under the
Bush administration has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and
an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy.”

What is needed, the Obama team and the US military leadership seem to agree, is
merely “a stable nation that rejects al-Qaeda and Islamist extremism and does not threaten US interests.”

Priming public opinion
Meanwhile, Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has
allegedly said that ’the only realistic outlook for Afghanistan would be the installation
of “an acceptable dictator” within five or ten years and that public opinion should be
primed for this’ (Times, 2 Oct).

The latter claim appears in a leaked diplomatic dispatch written by a French diplomat, reporting a meeting with the Ambassador - the accuracy of which has been strongly denied by the British Government, but is all too plausible given the historical record [2].

Notes
[1] In the 2004 Presidential elections, voters in many rural areas were told how to vote by warlords (Human Rights Watch, Sept 04) and there were significantly more “registered voters” than eligible voters (BBC, 27 Aug 04). In the 2005 Parliamentary elections, Human Rights Watch documented ‘pervasive intimidation of voters and candidates, in particular women’ (Country Summary, Jan 06). Over half of the members of the Afghan parliament are linked to armed groups or have records of past human rights abuses.

[2] Cowper-Coles is also alleged to have said that: “Foreign forces are assuring the
survival of a regime, which, without them, would quickly crumble. In doing so, they are
slowing down and complicating an eventual end to the crisis (incidentally, probably a
dramatic one)” (Telegraph, 2 Oct).

Pakistan: heavy pressure & scorched earth
‘Under heavy pressure from the United States’ the Pakistani military has continued to wage a brutal scorched earth campaign in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan,
‘destroy[ing]’ the village of Loe Sam (NYT, 11 Nov) and leaving ‘hundreds of thousands of once prosperous Pakistani villagers … stranded in freezing tented refugee camps’ (Sunday Times, 16 Nov).

Meanwhile, in line with public opinion (see Voices 57), Pakistan’s national parliament has adopted a unanimous resolution calling for an end to US attacks and ‘demand[ing] the abandonment of the use of force against extremists, in favour of negotiation, in what it called “an urgent review of national security strategy”’ (Guardian, 24 Oct).

Other plans
The US and Britain have other plans though. ‘At [Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael] Mullen’s direction, the map of the Afghanistan battle space is being redrawn to include the tribal regions of western Pakistan’, and ‘U.S. military and intelligence leaders have delivered forceful messages to Pakistani officials on
the need to step up attacks against Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in their territory’
(WP, 11 Nov).

100 deaths
To date, more than 100 people have been killed in at least 18 US airstrikes since
August (WP, 8 Nov) - including at least one attack outside the tribal areas (NYT, 19 Nov) - and Mullen will ‘likely stay in place for at least the first year or two of Obama’s presidency … and, by tradition, can expect to be appointed for a second term as the president’s top military adviser’ (WP, 10 Nov).

US and British soldiers are currently in Pakistan, training Pakistani officers as part of an effort to build an indigenous anti-Taliban force in the tribal areas (NYT, 17 Oct), where ‘some tribal leaders say they have little choice but to fight their brothers, cousins and neighbors’ as the Pakistani military ‘has threatened to bomb their villages if they do not battle the Taliban’ (WP, 11 Nov).

40 billion barrels
At a 13 Oct meeting in London Iraq’s oil minister presented foreign oil companies with details of contracts under which they can invest in eight big oil and gas fields, representing about 40% of Iraq’s known oil reserves (Guardian, 13 Oct). According to the Hands Off Iraqi Oil campaign: “at no point in history has so great a quantity of known oil been offered in a single bid round to international oil companies, in any country.”

The contracts could run ‘for up to 20 years’ (Guardian, 13 Oct), and foreign companies will be able to own up to 49% stakes in the companies established to operate the fields (Reuters, 13 Oct).

The Ministry of Oil has reportedly said that rates of return of 18% would be “acceptable” - very high by industry standards, for known fields, where there is no
uncertainty of finding oil. Such rates reflect the current political and security risks in Iraq, but their terms would last the full contract period, even as those risks diminish.

All bids are due by mid-April and the Iraqi Government is expected to choose the
winners by next June (NYT, 14 Oct).

Shell’s gas monopoly
Meanwhile UPI International has obtained a secret document revealing more about
Shell’s multi-billion dollar contract to process natural gas in southern Iraq (a joint venture with the oil ministry in which Shell will have a 49% stake – see Voices 57).

Though the document itself is nonbinding, it reveals plans to grant the company a 25-year monopoly on the gas industry of southern Iraq (tinyurl.com/636gu6). In particular the planned venture would extend well beyond Basra, and would include all gas (not just that found during oil production).

See www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org and www.iraqoilreport.com

In brief
Asylum shame
‘Almost 80,000 asylum-seekers from countries described by the Foreign Office as dangerous and unstable [including Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Sudan] have been refused refuge in Britain in the past five years’ (Independent, 4 Nov). 13,131 Iraqi nationals have had applications for asylum in the UK turned down - including 1,090 last year and 520 in the first six months of this year – and 10,060 Afghans.

Fifty Iraqi Kurds were reportedly forcibly deported to Iraq from the UK in late October
(tinyurl.com/5u55nf), and a further two on 18 Nov (tinyurl.com/5qrbsq).

Civilian toll
The number of Afghan civilians reported killed by US/NATO forces since 2005 now
exceeds the total recorded during the three months of intensive US bombing at the end
of 2001.

A new study by Professor Marc Herold puts the reported civilian death toll for the
period from 2005 to Oct 2008 at between 2,699 - 3,273, compared with 2,256 - 2,949
for the period 7 Oct to 10 Dec 2001 (The Matrix of Death, 7 Oct).

Ramping up the airwar
The US plans to spend $100 million next year expanding Kandahar airport to house
26 aircraft for a US army ODIN task force of the kind already operating in Iraq (WP,
10 Nov). In Iraq, ODIN (which stands for “observe, detect, identify and neutralize”)
has been used to ‘call in Apache helicopter strikes with missiles and heavy machine gun fire that have killed more than 3,000’ people (NYT, 22 Jun).

War resisters
On 16 October five Swedish peace activists broke into factories owned by arms
manufacturers BAE Systems and Saab and used household hammers to disarm howitzers and bazookas, some of them bound for India for use in Kashmir (www.ofog.org). Catherine Laska and Pelle Strindlund have already been sentenced to three months imprisonment. You can write to them at Häktet Örebro, Box 3, 70140 Örebro, Sweden.

On 27 Nov, Andre Shepherd filed an asylum application in Germany, becoming the second American veteran of the war in Iraq to file for refugee status in Europe.

On 17 Nov, US Army private Tony Anderson (19) was given a dishonourable
discharge and jailed for 14 months after refusing to deploy to Iraq in July 08 on grounds of conscience. “I know in my heart that it is wrong to willfully hurt or kill another human being. I simply cannot do it,” he explained. Send letters and postcards to: Tony
Anderson, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, CA 94610, USA.

Meanwhile Robin Long – the first US war resister to be forcibly deported from Canada (see Voices 56) – remains in jail, serving a 15-month sentence for desertion. Send messages and postcards of support to: Robin Long; PO Box 452136; San Diego,
CA 92145-2136, USA.

Iraq war resisters Matt Lowell and Patrick Hart – both of whom had been scheduled for deportation from Canada in October - have been granted temporary stays of deportation. Hart, his wife Jill and their son Rian, have had their deportation deferred to 15 Jan.

James Burmeister (see Voices 57) has now been freed.

ACTION
Send a copy of Voices’ postcard Let Them Stay: Sanctuary for US War Resisters in
Canada (available free from the office) to the Canadian High Commissioner in London
(James R. Wright), or write to him at Canada House, Trafalgar Square, SW1Y 5BJ.

Afghanistan die-in & speaking tour
“We all ran into our houses and later the jets arrived. They dropped one bomb and it hit a wall and demolished it. Dust and dirt went everywhere. Then they dropped another and it destroyed our house … It was meant to be a wedding and at these events you expect happiness, dancing and to see your relatives. You don’t expect your daughters to be killed for no reason” - Haji Abdul Satar, whose daughters Najeba (9) and Fatima (10) were killed in the US attack on Haji Nabu on 27 May 2007.

On 27 May 2007, forty-seven civilians were killed when a US war plane bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan – one of several such “wedding massacres” since the
2001 invasion. Thousands more have been killed by US/NATO forces since
2005 alone.

Join us on Wednesday 27 May 2009 for an act of nonviolent civil disobedience at Britain’s military nerve centre in Northwood, demanding an end to the bombing and the withdrawal of all British troops from Afghanistan.

Action called by JNV, the London and Oxford Catholic Workers and voices uk.
Speakers available to talk to local groups: 15 March – 15 April. Contact: 0845 458
2564, voices@voicesuk.org.

More information (accommodation available): 0845 458 2564 or www.stopbombingafghanistan.org

The war on your high street
Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and the Royal Bank of Scotland have all given loans to companies that produce cluster munitions and depleted uranium (DU) munitions, according to a major new report ‘draw[ing] on databases that until now have only been seen by the financial sector and a select number of academics’ (Banking on Bloodshed, War on Want, Oct 08, tinyurl.com/5rtrcp).

The report also found that ‘all of the UK’s high street banks [apart from the Co-operative bank] fund the arms industry through direct investment in shares, participation in loan syndicates and the provision of banking services.’

Barclays has the largest amount of shares in the global arms sector, with £7.3bn invested, and has invested in companies producing cluster munitions and DU munitions.

Meanwhile, Lloyds ‘serves as principal banker to BAE Systems’ which ‘supplies many weapons to the US and UK’ for use in Iraq and Afghanistan (see Voices 45 &
58).

ACTION
* The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium have produced an updated version of their
flier ‘Does your bank fund uranium weapons manufacturers?’, ideal for use at your local
branch (www.cadu.org or 0161 273 8293).

* Contact Campaign Against Arms Trade to invite a speaker to talk to your group about
your local banks’ links to the arms trade: 0207 281 0297.