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VOICES
NEWSLETTER # 41 (June / July 2005)
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Iraq:
why the UK must withdraw
Qaim, Ramadi &
beyond
Saddam's commandos
"Moving on"
from Iraq?
"No exit strategy"
US expands Iraq
prisons
Fallujah update
Poverty and Palaces
£5bn and counting
Resistance round-up
EDO protests
Resources
Iraq:
why the UK must withdraw
A US marine writes an identification number on the forehead
of an
Iraq man accused of having 'too much ammunition' for a licensed
weapon during a search in Haditha, 25 May 2005.
Even
as it continues a series of massive military operations there
- killing and detaining hundreds of Iraqis - and expands Iraq’s
prison system to accommodate 6,000 more inmates, the US has been
engineering the restoration of key elements of Saddam’s
old security forces in a desperate attempt to ‘Iraqify’
its occupation.
Civil war?
Meanwhile the occupation and the resistance to it continue to
push the country closer to civil war, with roughly 700 people
killed in insurgent attacks in May (NYT, 30 May), ‘[a]
series of tit-for-tat killings … rais[ing] sectarian tension
to boiling point’ (AFP, 19 May), and fresh sweeps
by the ‘new [heavily Shiite] American-trained army and paramilitary
police forces’ - commanded by a Government led by two religious
parties with strong ties to Iran - driving previously uncommitted
Sunnis into support for the insurgency (NYT, 30 May).
The UK’s role
Whilst UK soldiers have undoubtedly committed serious crimes in
Iraq, the bulk of killings and atrocities at the hands of the
occupying forces have been the direct responsibility of US troops.
However, as long as it continues to lend crucial diplomatic and
political support to the occupation, whilst freeing up 8,500+
US troops for military operations elsewhere in Iraq, the British
Government remains responsible, not just for the actions of its
own forces, but for these other crimes as well.
“Move on”
Any attempt to “move on” from Iraq which does not
change these fundamentals – such as replacing
Tony Blair with Gordon Brown or swapping
UK forces in Iraq with US forces in Afghanistan – cannot
be tolerated.
A real withdrawal of British forces could play a major role in
undermining the occupation, thereby hastening its end –
a necessary, if not sufficient, precondition for peace and justice
in Iraq. For those of us here in the UK, this must be our goal.
Qaim,
Ramadi & beyond
On 7 May US forces in Iraq launched what they claimed was their
biggest offensive since last November’s assault on Fallujah
(AP, 10 May), killing scores of people and forcing thousands
more to flee their homes (IRINnews.org, 18 May).
A subsequent 25 May assault on the city of Haditha, involving
‘more than 1,000 troops, mostly American marines along with
some Iraqi Special Forces’ (New York Times, 26
May) and a massive series of raids in Baghdad, in which 437 people
were arrested (NYT, 25 May) appear to have gone almost
unreported in the British press.
Legless children
The offensive begun on 7 May (‘Operation Matador’)
– which the US declared over on 14 May - began in Qaim,
a town near the Syrian border, though fighting was also reported
in nearby Obeidi, Rommana and Karabilah (AP, 10 May).
According to IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service,
‘the main hospital in Qaim was attacked during the conflict’
(IRINnews.org, 18 May). The hospital’s director,
Dr Hamid al-Alousi, told IRIN that because of a lack of medical
supplies, more than 11 amputations had taken place without anaesthetics.
‘Two children from the same family had their legs amputated
during the conflict,’ he said.
‘At one Baghdad hospital, an Iraqi woman described how her
leg had been amputated without anaesthetic after a missile fired
from a US Apache helicopter exploded near her in Saadah’
(Sunday Times, 15 May). ‘I was walking back to
my house when the next minute I was on the ground unable to move,’
she explained. ‘When I saw that part of my leg was blown
off I started to scream.’ The helicopter later returned
to strafe the street with machine gun fire.
‘Bombing whole villages’
The US military claimed to have killed more than 125 “insurgents”
during the offensive, though ‘influential leaders and many
residents of the remote border towns said…[US forces] didn’t
distin-guish between the Iraqis who supported the [US] and the
fighters battling it’ (Knight Ridder, 16 May).
Fasal al Goud – ‘a former governor of Anbar province
who said he [had] asked US forces for help on behalf of the tribes’
to uproot foreign fighters crossing the Syrian border –
claimed that the US had ‘bomb[ed] whole villages .. saying
they were only after the foreigners.’
Ramadi and beyond
Meanwhile US forces sealed off Ramadi ‘prohibiting vehicles
from entering and allowing passage only on foot through a single
checkpoint’, following a 28 April raid on the city’s
hospital (Times, 7 May). On 9 May the Iraqi daily al-Zaman
claimed that the city had gone on strike to protest the encirclement
and subsequent arrests (JuanCole.com, 9 May) but there appear
to have been few, if any, reports in the English-language press
about what is actually happening there.
According to Pultizer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh –
who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story – the current US
strategy in Iraq is ‘to go into the various major cities
in the Sunni heartland … [and] make the people … more
afraid of the [Americans and their proxy forces (see p5) than
they are of the resistance’ (DemocracyNow.org,
11 May). According to Hersh, the head of US Central Command, Gen
John Abizaid, ‘thinks he can [take down four or five of
the major strongholds] within a year’ and the plan is probably
‘to go from Ramadi to another major city … and begin
the same kind of operation. No more embedded journalists [or]
only on a rare occasion.’
Saddam's
commandos
A
former leader of a team of US military advisers in El Salvador
and a regiment ‘drawn from veterans of [Saddam] Hussein’s
special forces and the Republican Guard’ are at the forefront
of America’s military strategy for Iraq (New
York Times, 1 May).
El Salvador & Iraq
During the 1980s James Steele led a team of 55 Special Forces
advisers in El Salvador ‘train[ing] front-line battalions…accused
of significant human rights abuses.’ Today, with the US
military ‘increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory
role’, Steele is the main adviser of the Iraqi Government’s
most visible paramilitary unit: the Special Police Commandos (NYT,
1 May).
More than 70,000 people were killed during El Salvador’s
civil war, most of them civilians, and ‘[m]ost of the killing
and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads
affiliated with it.’ Indeed, ‘[a] 1993 UN truth commission,
which examined 22,000 atrocities …attributed 85% of abuses
to the US-backed Salvador military and its death squad allies’
(The Nation, 7 May).
‘A couple of great leaders’
The Special Police Commandos was formed last September and consists
of about 5,000 troops. They are led by Gen Adnan Thabit and his
second-in-command Maj Gen Rashid Flayyih - ‘a couple of
great leaders’, according to Lt Gen David Petraeus, who
heads the massive US effort to help train and equip Iraqi military
units (Wall Street Journal, 16 Feb). Thabit was a general
under Saddam and Flayyih is ‘a veteran of [Saddam’s]
security apparatus … [who] was the head of “general
security forces” in the mainly Shia southern province of
Nasiriya during the Shia uprising that followed [the 1991 Gulf
War]’ during which ‘Iraqi forces brutally put down
the rebellion and slaughtered tens of thousands’ (NYT,
1 May; FT, 12 May).
A reporter for the New York Times who accompanied the commandos
on a series of raids in March witnessed them threatening to execute
the flex-cuffed son of a missing suspect and beating suspects
in an an ad hoc detention centre (1 May).
Coded warnings
Concerned that the US might lose these crucial allies under the
new Iraqi Govern-ment US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew
to Iraq mid-April to issue ‘a coded warning against the
removal of officials from the security ministries’: interior
and defence (Independent, 13 Apr). One month later US
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice also travelled to Iraq where
she ‘specifically cautioned … [that] purging the government
and the new armed forces of all who served at senior levels under
Saddam Hussein - should not be so severe as to impede the creation
of an “inclusive” government’ (NYT,
16 May).
Whether their warnings will be heeded remains to be seen. In the
meantime the US is taking no chances, with the CIA ‘refus[ing]
to hand over control of Iraq’s [most important] intelligence
service to the newly elected Iraqi Government’ (Detroit
Free Press, 9 May). Indeed, the director of the Iraqi National
Intelligence Service (also known as the Mukhabarat or secret police)
– a former general under Saddam, ‘handpicked by the
US government’ – ‘still reports directly to
the CIA’, who apparently bank-roll the agency.
"Moving on" from Iraq?
Following
his re-election Tony Blair delared that he ‘kn[ew] and believ[ed]
that… people want to move on’ from Iraq (Independent,
7 May). But, with British forces still propping up a brutal war
of occupation, there can and should be no such ‘moving on’,
either under Blair or his likely successor Gordon Brown.
The election
Despite the re-election of one of the world’s leading war
criminals*, the anti-war movement can claim much of the credit
for the fact that Blair was given a “bloody nose”
(losing 47 seats) and the fact that the worst-case scenario –
a landslide, returning Labour with a majority of over 100 - was
averted.
Iraq does appear to have been a major factor for voters. A BBC
poll shortly before the election found 23% of people ‘cit[ing]
opposition to the war as a reason for being reluctant to vote
Labour’ (Guardian, 6 May).
Two problems
Nonetheless, as Milan Rai has observed, ‘there seems little
doubt that the Labour majority would have been substantially greater…[and]
probably over 100’ had Blair stood down and let Gordon Brown
take over the Premiership, a result which would have been a disaster
for the anti-movement.
This suggests two major problems: first, that much of the UK population
apparently identifies the issue of Iraq with an individual (Tony
Blair) rather than a policy; and second, that much of the public
thinks of the war primarily in the past tense ie. as an event
that took place in March 2003, and not as an ongoing war of occupation.
Brown
no better
A switch to Brown might help to assuage public opinion, but it
will not fundamentally change British foreign policy or end Britain’s
crucial role in propping up the US occupation. After all, as Rai
points out, ‘Gordon Brown is the man who helped to prop
up Tony Blair in his hour of electoral need over Iraq, and who
provided the funding for the military adventures which have devastated
so many countries in the past eight years, including Iraq.’
Whether the election will be seen as ‘simply a one-off punishment
of an unpopular Prime Minister, or…a marker that from now
on the British people have determined to resist wars of aggression
on a scale never before seen’ is for all of us to determine.
*
The 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal described the crime of aggression
as ‘the supreme international crime, differing only from
other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole’ (as cited in Crimes of War,
Gutman and Rieff (eds), 1999, emphasis added).
ACTION
Milan Rai’s briefing Blair’s Bloody Nose:
Britain’s General Election And The Power Of The Anti-War
Vote is available on-line at www.j-n-v.org.
"No exit strategy"
‘We don’t have
an exit strategy. We have a victory strategy’ (US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to US forces in Baghdad, 12
Apr)
On 9 April – two years after the staged toppling of Saddam
Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square – 300,000 Iraqis
took part in a mass rally in the heart of Baghdad, calling for
an end to the occupation (Independent, 11 Apr). ‘Opinion
polls confirm that two-thirds of Shia Arabs – 60 % of Iraq’s
population – as well as an overwhelming majority of Sunnis
want US troops to leave immediately or in the near future,’
leaving the Kurds as ‘the only community fully to support
the US presence.’
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by NOP on 15-17 April found that 60%
of Britons want to see British troops withdrawn from Iraq by the
end of the year, with only 19% disagreeing (Independent,
26 Apr), though Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has stated only that
British and US forces are ‘likely to be completely out of
the country within five years’ (Telegraph, 14 April)
‘Iraqification’
The current US plan is not to withdraw, but to ‘Iraqify’
the conflict, using proxy indigenous forces such as the Special
Police Commandos (see here)
to fight on its behalf whilst scaling back its own deployment
– a familiar strategy from past colonial conflicts. To this
end ‘a third of US military assets [a]re now devoted to
building up local forces’ (Guardian, 10 May).
However according to a recent report the prestigious Institute
for International and Strategic Studies, whilst Iraq has ‘become
a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaida’, “[b]est
estimates suggest that it will take up to five years to create
anything close to an effective indigenous force able to impose
and guarantee order [sic] across the country” (Guardian,
25 May).
Vanishing “coalition”
Meanwhile the “coalition of the willing” has continued
to dwindle. As at 15 March 2004 there were ‘25 non-U.S.
military forces participating in the coalition and contributing
to the ongoing stability [sic] operations throughout Iraq’
(GlobalSecurity.org,
15 Mar 05). Since then at least 10 countries have withdrawn.
As at 15 March only 5 non-US countries had more than 1000 military
personnel in Iraq: the UK, Italy, South Korea, Poland and Ukraine
and two of these are scheduled to have left by the end of the
year, reducing total force levels by over 3,000.
UK redeployment?
According to the Telegraph, UK Defence Chiefs ‘are
planning to reduce the size of the British military force in Iraq
from 9,000 to 3,500 troops within twelve months as part of a phased
withdrawal from Iraq’, with troops ‘withdrawn from
three of the Army’s five military bases in southern Iraq
by April 2006’ (3 Apr). However this move coincides ‘with
a plan to increase British troop numbers in Afghanistan’,
raising the possibility that the bulk of UK forces in Iraq could
simply be “swapped” with existing US forces in Afghanistan.
Indeed, according to a report in Scotland on Sunday (22
May) UK military planners have ‘drawn up emergency proposals
to send up to 5,500 troops to Afghanistan’ – precisely
the number allegedly scheduled for withdrawal from Iraq, while
the Independent (9 May) reports that ‘5,000 British
soldiers are expected to start taking over many of [the
US military’s operations in Afghanistan] by the end of the
year’ (emphasis added).
Defusing the threat
Here in the UK the anti-war movement’s main demand has been
for the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq - aiming to deprive
the occupation of crucial political support whilst also causing
a major practical problem for the US, which would be hard pressed
to find the necessary replacements.
Swapping most British forces in Iraq with US forces in Afghanistan
would be one way to defuse this twin threat.Despite the recent
sham elections there (see Voices #38) and the fact that US forces
were ‘involved in killings, torture and other abuses of
prisoners [there] even before the Iraq war started’ (HRW,
20 May), Afghanistan has pretty much dropped off the agendas of
the media and the anti-war movement. Swapping forces (while leaving
a token presence in Iraq as a symbol of political support for
the US) would therefore yield a less domestically unpopular deployment
for the UK without seriously impairing the US’ ability to
maintain current force levels in Iraq.
No one concerned for the future of either Iraq or Afghanistan
should accept such a cynical shell-game.
US
expands Iraq prisons
In yet another sign
that it is planning for the long haul, the US has embarked on
a $50m prison expansion programme in Iraq (Washington Post,
10 May).
Operating at “surge capacity”, US prisons there currently
hold over 11,000 detainees, ‘a nearly 20% jump since [the]
Jan. 30 elections.’ According to AFP most of the
17,000 men and women held by US and Iraqi forces have not been
formally charged (10 Apr).
96% of those in US detention are Iraqis, and about 60% are either
from Baghdad or Anbar provinces (WP, 10 May). 88% have
been rated “high risk”, suggesting that they are ‘likely
to remain locked up.’
Existing US prison facilities will be expanded and a former Iraqi
military barracks in Sulaymaniyah converted into a prison, increasing
existing capacity by more than 6,000. (WP, 10 May).
ACTION
The Christian Peacemaker Teams (www.cpt.org)
- one of the few groups of inter-national activists in Iraq –
are still running their Adopt a Detainee Campaign
(begun in February 2004) matching indiv-idual detainees with union,
church, peace and anti-war groups around the world who then organise
their members to write letters on the detainee’s behalf
to the US, British and Iraqi authorities. In a 5 May email Sheila
Provencher of CPT Iraq writes of an ongoing pattern of ‘violent
house raids, mass detentions, arbitrary arrests, lack of information
for families, and lack of legal process’ and the fact that
they continue to receive ‘more and more reports of abuse
not only by US soldiers but by the US-trained Iraqi Police and
Iraqi National Guard.’
To join the campaign contact Rick Polhamus: 001 937 313 4458 or
jrp@cpt.org
Fallujah
update
Only about a third
of Fallujah’s pre-war population has returned since fleeing
last November’s devastating US assault on the city (FT,
14 April), leaving over 150,000 Fallujans refugees in their own
country.
The US State Department estimates that 25% of Fallujah’s
housing was rendered uninhabitable during the attack, a further
25% was severely damaged and 50% suffered light to moderate damage
(FT, 14 April). Hundreds of civilians are believed to have been
killed in the assault (see here).
Intimidation & dirty water
On 13 April Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick visited
Fallujah in a trip ‘intended to demonstrate that normality
was returning’ to the city. However ‘he could not
leave his armoured Humvee because of security concerns’
and he ended up meeting the city council – a body chosen
by the US-fostered Fallujah Working Group (Washington Post,
19 Apr) - inside a ‘heavily guarded marine enclave.’
There, Zoellick heard a ‘torrent of complaints’ from
members of the city council, ‘focusing on such issues as
the slow pace of reconstruction aid, frequent intimidation of
citizens by US soldiers and the inability to buy fresh produce
because of military checkpoints’ (WP, 14 Apr).
‘More than half of Fallujah has no electricity, which is
needed to pump water’, last November’s assault ‘caused
hundreds of leaks in the city water system’ and ‘about
60 percent of households must rely on water stored in tanks’
(WP, 19 Apr). State Dept fact [sic] sheets claim that
95% of residents have water available in their homes, but the
chairman of the city council told Zoellick that “the drinking
water is not really safe for health.”
Iris scans & 4 hr delays
Meanwhile curfews, checkpoints and other stringent security measures
remain in place, with some residents describing checkpoint delays
of four hours or more. U.S. and Iraqi troops are ‘allowing
in only documented residents, contractors, government officials
or allied military forces … pull[ing] aside men of military
age for an iris scan and thumbprint, building a computer database
of potential insurgents.’
‘We have to be very careful how we repopulate the city.
We [sic] paid too high a price to hand it back,’ Marine
Major Phillip Zeman told the Post.
Poverty
and palaces
Acute
malnutrition rates among Iraqi under-5s have more than doubled
(from 4% to 8%) since the invasion, according to a report by the
UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (BBC,
30 Mar).
The reasons are not hard to discern. A new report from the UN
Development Programme* - based on surveys conducted in the spring
and summer of 2004 - found that 85% of households complained of
power cuts, and that only 54% of Iraqi families had access to
a safe and stable supply of drinking water. Furthermore, half
of all Iraqi households had an annual per capita income of less
than $312.
The same report identified ‘lack of health personnel, lack
of medicines, non-functioning medical equipment and destroyed
hospitals and health centers’ as ‘current major problems’
in Iraq’s health care system.
Money for civilians unspent
One major problem has been the slow disbursement of US tax payer’s
money set aside for “reconstruction” in Nov ‘03.
As at 29 Mar, only 66% of this $18.4bn fund (roughly $5bn of which
was actually for “security and law enforcement” ie.
the military and police) had been obligated and a mere 23% spent
(Report on Iraq Relief and Reconstruction, US State Dept,
6 Apr).
In the healthcare sector, a mere $54mn (out of a $786mn allocation)
had been spent - perhaps helping to explain why, in the wake of
a recent suicide bombing near Kirkuk, a doctor from the city’s
main hospital told the Telegraph that he had ‘no
resuscitation devices, no intravenous fluid [and] no ventilators’
(12 May).
Guns yes, water no
Meanwhile, nearly $3.5bn has been moved out of the monies originally
allocated for the water, sanitation and electricity sectors, with
about half of this total shifted to ‘security’ ie.
fighting the war and maintaining the occupation (Washington
Post, 9 May).
For some this shift has been devastating. On 11 Apr a reporter
from the New York Times watched Nuradeen Ghreeb, the
head of water and sewage projects in Halabja, break down as he
learnt that his dream – a project to bring clean drinking
water to his hometown – had been cut, along with all but
13 of the 81 water projects that were to have been financed through
the Public Works Ministry (16 Apr). Now that the city –
infamously gassed by Saddam Hussein in 1988 – has played
its propaganda function, it can be discarded, it seems.
‘No more than 50% of Halabja’s population had regular
running water’ and the project would have cost a mere $10mn
(the cost of maintaining the military occupation for 90 mins).
‘If the Americans think that training the Iraqi army comes
before clean drinking water for the people of Halabja, then we
can’t expect anything from them’, Ghreeb told the
paper.
$200bn and counting
There is, of course, no shortage of money. In May, as Iraqis continued
to suffer on the ground, the US Government passed a further $82bn
war-spending bill, ‘pushing the cost of the Iraq invasion
well past $200 billion’, $76bn of this will go to the Defence
[sic] Department (Washington Post, 11 May). The $82bn
bill includes ‘$1.28 billion to construct and operate a
US embassy in Baghdad that will be among the world’s largest.’
In Saddam’s day they called them palaces.
*
The UNDP’s report Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004 is
available on-line at www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm
£5bn
and counting
To
date, the UK Government has allocated £5.06bn to a Special
Reserve, the bulk of which is believed to be going on military
operations in Iraq (IraqAnalysis.org,
April 2005). ‘Rough estimates suggest that an extra £1
billion will be required for each further year UK forces remain
in Iraq.’ According to UNICEF £5.06bn would fund two
years of full immunization for every child in the developing world.
Resistance
round-up
30 Mar: A CIA recruiting
event at New York University is cancelled as the result of activism
by the Campus Antiwar Network (www.campusantiwar. net).
An email from the event’s organisers explained that the
event was called off ‘due to the possibility of a protest.’
April
Fool’s Day: 80 activists dressed as pirates hold a “pro-plunder”
party outside the offices of Windrush Communications, London
– the organiser of a string of recent Iraq-related business
conferences - to protest the ongoing corporate plunder of Iraq.
A further outing for the pirates – this time with a their
own galleon! – is planned - see page 8.
23
Apr: Around 100 people stage a peace march through Carterton,
host to RAF Brize Norton – the airbase from which most UK
troops depart for Basra – calling for the withdrawal of
British forces from Iraq. A Gulfstream jet ‘used
by the CIA to illegally abduct terrorist suspects’ has flown
from Brize Norton in Oxfordshire at least twice since Oct 2002
(Evening Standard, 1 Mar). Despite draconian policing
– apparently justified on the grounds that the march might
‘result in serious disruption to the life of the community’
– the marchers generate a considerable amount of local interest.
1
May: The Sunday Telegraph reports that ‘Defence
Chiefs have blamed the unpopularity of the war in Iraq for a recruitment
crisis that has left 90% of the Army’s fighting units under-strength’,
raising the possibility that ‘some regiments will be incapable
of taking part in operations in Iraq without significant reinforcements
from other parts of the Army.’ Meanwhile the number of UK
troops who have gone AWOL has more than doubled over the past
year.
5
May: Lawyers acting for several anti-war groups including Military
Families Against the War (MFAW) present the International Criminal
Court with evidence that ‘British forces acted out of all
proportion to the official war [aims], ridding Iraq of [WMD]’
and that they ‘acted unlawfully by detaining and …
mistreating Iraqi civilians, and by targeting cluster munitions
on urban areas’ (Guardian, 6 May). MFAW
are currently running a petition demanding a public inquiry into
the legality of the war (www.mfaw.org.uk)
6
May: In attempt to counter growing sectarian violence, 15 Shi’a
Muslims from the Muslim Peacemaker Team (MPT), and three members
of the Christian Peacemaker Team, join employees from Fallujah’s
Department of Public Works to clear rubble in the city. A
flier distributed by the MPT explained: “We are among our
brothers and sisters in the city of Fallujah to demonstrate our
solidarity with you. Our action today is symbolic but... God willing,
this project will be . . . the beginning of many projects that
will show the world that we are truly one people.” Many
passersby and children were excited by the activity and joined
in enthusiastically.
12
May: US Naval Petty Officer Pablo Paredes is sentenced to three
months hard labour (but no jail time) for refusing to board an
assault ship bound for the Persian Gulf last December. After
hearing testimony from one of Paredes’ expert witnesses,
the judge presiding over his court martial declares that, ‘I
think that the government has successfully proved that any service
member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal.’ For more info. see www.swiftsmartveterans.com.
13
May: Amnesty International announces that it will consider Jeremy
Hinzman – the 1st US soldier to publicly flee to Canada
– to be a prisoner of conscience should he be deported to
the US and imprisoned. Hinzman’s asylum application
– a crucial test case for any other soldier wanting to claim
asylum - was turned down by Canada’s Refugee Protection
Division in March (see voices 40). He is currently appealing the
decision. Copies of voices postcard to the Canadian High Commissioner,
calling on the Canadian government to ‘mak[e] provision
for US war objectors to have sanctuary in Canada’ are available
free from the office.
25-26 May: Iraqi trade unionists and civil society activists
hold a two-day conference in Basra aimed at fighting the privatisation
of Iraq’s oil industry. Members of Iraq Occupation
Focus, Jubilee Iraq and Platform who attended will be reporting
back on their experiences at a meeting on 27 June. See www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
EDO protests
‘An
arms components company that makes bomb parts that were used in
the Iraq war is taking legal action to stop anti-war protests
being held outside its factory’ (Guardian, 11 Apr).
EDO MBM - a Brighton-based part of the New York-based Edo Corporation,
which had revenues of $536mn in 2004 (Times, 11 Apr)
- is the target of a lively local campaign, including a weekly
picket, a blockade of the factory and roof-top occupation. At
a High Court appearance on 14 April lawyers representing the company
applied for an injunction that would have ‘ban[ned] 14 named
individuals and [two named groups: Smash EDO and Bombs Out of
Brighton] from going within half a mile of the factory except
on Thursday afternoons – for two hours when quiet demonstrations
of up to 10 people would [have] be[en] permitted’ (Telegraph,
15 Apr).
Thus far, only a ‘temporary injunction, banning them from
protesting within 50 metres’ has been granted (BBC,
29 Apr) and a national demo has now been called outside the factory
on 11 Jun.
Resources
New books
An Alliance Against Babylon: the US, Israel and Iraq
by John Cooley (Pluto Press, 2005, £17.99). ‘Cooley
has been right so often he has few equals. [Here] he breaks the
silence on the pivotal role Israel has played in the west’s
imperial adventure in Iraq: indeed, how the tail in Tel Aviv has
so often wagged the dog in Washington. This book is typical Cooley:
much needed and brilliant’ - John Pilger.
Hope
in the Dark:The Untold Story of People Power by Rebecca Solnit
(Cannongate Books Ltd, 2005, £7.99). Wise,
inspiring and beautifully written, Hope in the Dark is the perfect
antidote to the activism blues, reminding us that ‘it’s
always too soon to go home … always too soon to calculate
effect.’ Using a series of striking metaphors, long-time
activist and author Solnit draws on recent history to re-conceptualise
our models of social change in a world in which the future really
is dark in a (potentially) positive sense: inscrutable and subject
to extraordinary turns of event. Very highly recommended.
New DVD
A Letter to the Prime Minister: Jo Wilding’s Diary
from Iraq (Year Zero Films, Julia Guest 2005, see below for ordering
details). Recently premiered by voices at a sell-out
screening at the Barbican with John Pilger, A Letter to the Prime
Minister offers a singular take on the invasion and occupation
of Iraq, following international activist Jo Wilding – who
first traveled to Iraq with voices in Aug 2001 - on her remarkable
journeys to Iraq in 2003/2004: as an eyewitness to the invasion
itself; as co-founder of Circus to Iraq; and as an ad hoc medical
volunteer in Fallujah during the first major US assault on the
city in April 2004. Copies of the film can be purchased on-line
at www.alettertothe primeminister.co.uk or via the Voices office
for £18 (incl. p&p) and can be freely used for non-profit
screenings. Contact info@yearzerofilms.co.uk
if you’re interested in trying to organise a commercial
screening in your area.
Web-sites
Iraq Analysis – www.iraqanalysis.org
Set up in 2004 by former members of the Campaign Against Sanctions
on Iraq, the Iraq Analysis group produces high quality information
& briefings relevant to activists working on Iraq. The two
most recent titles are Fire Bombs in Iraq: Napalm By Any Other
Name (Apr 2005) and The Rising Costs of the Iraq War (Apr 2005).
Also contains a useful, thematically categorised, set of links
and a list of polls carried out in Iraq since the invasion.
Watching
the Warmakers - www.watchingthewarmakers.org.uk
Website of the Brighton Hands Off Forum who produce an excellent
weekly news digest on the “war on terror.” Includes
an archive and the current week’s briefing as a PDF. The
digests are also handily formatted for printing on double-sided
A4 - ideal for distributing at street stalls, events etc.
Occupation
Watch – www.occupationwatch.org
Recently relaunched, this site is now being maintained by a small
group of activists, including Rahul Mahajan (see Empire Notes
below). New features include a daily round-up of the most important
Iraq-related stories, and useful commentaries on the latter. Well
worth a look.
Democracy
Now! – www.democracynow.org
Independent weekday US radio show, focusing on international news
and current affairs. Broadcast every week day, all shows (dating
back to 1997) are archived on the site, and can be watched/listened
to using RealPlayer (itself available free on-line). The site
also includes transcripts for recent shows. Recent Iraq-related
highlights include interviews with legendary investigative journalist
Sy Hersh, war resister Pablo Paredes (see Resistance
Round-up above ) and activist and author Naomi Klein. Essential
listening.
Informed
Comment – www.juancole.com
Blog run by Juan Cole, middle east expert and Professor of History
at the University of Michigan. Though neither anti-war nor anti-occupation
this daily commentary is nevertheless an invaluable on-line resource
for those in the anti-war movement.
Empire
Notes – www.empirenotes.org
Another blog, this time by US author and peace activist Rahul
Mahajan. Once again, essential reading.
Postcards
Voices is currently running three postcard campaigns: one to Tony
Blair – featuring pictures of Iraqis injured in US attacks
on Fallujah - calling for an end to the US/UK military occupation
of Iraq; a second, to the Canadian High Commissioner, regarding
US soldiers who have applied for asylum in Canada (see resistance
round-up, p.6); and a third aimed at mobilising support for Brian
Haw’s 24-7 peace vigil (now almost 4 years old) in the wake
of the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. The latter
enables the police to place severe restrictions on protest anywhere
within 1km of Parliament. Among other things, the 3rd postcard
seeks to identify persons willing to join a protest in the Square,
as an act of civil disobedience, should Brian be evicted. All
three cards are available free of charge (though donations are
always welcome!) from the office.
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