Christopher Hitchens and others debate Iraq on Start the Week 30 May 2005

Start the Week was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 - Mon 30 May at 09:00. The programme can still be heard in full here. The following extract covers the first 15 minutes when the guests discussed Iraq (transcript by Karen Whitehead, LFIQ Intern).

Guests

Writer and commentator CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS discusses his collected essays which he titles Love, Poverty and War - themes which he examines from his own experience of literature, religion and conflict. Love, Poverty and War is published by Atlantic Books.

Journalist WILLIAM SHAWCROSS, who covered the war out in Vietnam for The Sunday Times, reflects on the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and its legacy. He explains what made him change his mind about his original opposition to American intervention in South East Asia.

Writer, academic and broadcaster GERMAINE GREER presents a programme which looks at the history of feminism and looks forward to new emerging approaches to women's liberation. Big Ideas that Changed the World: Germaine Greer on Feminism is broadcast on Five on 7 June at 7.15pm.

PATRICK DIAMOND was an adviser in the Number 10 policy unit until the election. He argues that New Labour has done more to reduce inequality than old Labour ever did, and explains why it should be doing more. The New Egalitarianism is edited by Anthony Giddens and Patrick Diamond and published by Polity Press.

Andrew Marr – But first though, another ornament of radical Britain who moved to America, Christopher Hitchens, writer, critic, polemicist, whose latest collection is called ‘Love, Poverty and War’. He was rare on the left, being an enthusiast for the Iraq war, someone who defended George Bush over that. He confronted George Galloway at his Senate hearing recently which resulted in the Respect MP branding him, rather curiously, a ‘wine soaked former Trotskyist popinjay’. Though I think, George Galloway not that long ago also thought he was ‘the greatest polemicist in the world’. Christopher, you’re fairly good in the verbal whacking department yourself - Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and so on - but, just in a technical sense: ‘popinjay’ - that’s not bad is it? It’s an interesting abuse.

Christopher Hitchens – Nor is ‘former Trotskyist’ as bad as all that either. Unless you are, like Mr Galloway, someone who said the worst day of his life was the end of the Soviet Union. What can one say about him that he hasn’t said for himself that would cover him in the contempt that he deserves? Being praised by him was much worse I have to say. When he said I was ‘a great man of letters’ and that ‘the best polemicist of our age’, I thought, how disgusting! I mean, being praised by him is like being force fed chocolate creams or something. It’s more nauseating than abuse.

Andrew Marr – But he did, I mean, he did do remarkably well up against that Senate.

Christopher Hitchens – No, he did not. That is the result of his being given megaphone facilities by what it seems to me now the entire British press. If it’s considered clever to answer a direct question with a storm of gutter-snipe abuse, I suppose he did do very well. The Labour Friends of Iraq - that’s by the way, http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/ - has issued a challenge to me, and to him, to appear in a public debate with a proper Chair and some rules of order and I can’t wait to see how he would do in those circumstances.

Andrew Marr – That’s very similar to what you also feel about Michael Moore and Chomsky. George Galloway, it is said, would quite like to be sort of the British Michael Moore.

Christopher Hitchens – Well, he’s certainly not going to be the British Noam Chomsky. Professor Chomsky would indeed know how to conduct himself in a proper debate but though I think he would have a hard time now because of the extraordinarily weird positions that he has started to take. Michael Moore is another big mouth demagogue who stays one news cycle ahead of the way the questions catch up with him.

Andrew Marr – I want to talk more about Iraq later, but this collection of essays [Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays, Atlantic Books, 2005] starts of with some of your great enthusiasms. In literature, you go back to a clutch of absolutely peerless writers such as Graham Greene and Proust. Do you find as you get older that literature is an essential consolation and a relatively small number of writers to boot?

Christopher Hitchens – Yes, to both, and a gift that keeps on giving itself. I didn’t decide to tackle Proust properly till I was well over forty. Everyone’s tried once when they were too young and many people never go back again. I swear that when I came to the end I wished it was longer.

Andrew Marr – He does make you see things, the world differently, doesn’t he?

Christopher Hitchens – Yes.

Andrew Marr - Really everything looks different afterwards.

Christopher Hitchens – Totally and completely. One must experience a certain number of disappointments as well as pleasant delusions in order to appreciate it. I forget what age he was when he wrote it but you must be roughly his age to appreciate it. I didn’t realise that, yes, it is possible to get back some of the time you wasted. We can in some way recover it and make use of it. That is an extraordinary consolation that I never expected to have.

Andrew Marr – Which is s a relief to many of us. Of the various, you could almost call them love letters in this book, one of the angriest and most poignant is actually a love letter to a city, to New York, which you discovered and feel has changed not only (obviously) since 9/11 but as a place to live, as a culture.

Christopher Hitchens – You mean the petty bourgeois tyranny of Mayor Bloomberg?

Andrew Marr – Exactly.

Christopher Hitchens – Yes. No, I think it’s awful the way in which New York has become bland. I never expected that it was possible that such a thing would happen, but now it’s run by this terrible little control freak who thinks that everyone should basically pull their socks up and put their fag out and get on with it, and has turned Times Square which used to be wonderfully funky and in some ways nasty and a bit risky, into a sort of horrible plastic Disney Land. He would like everyone in the city to live that way and I think would have a curfew if he could…People don’t go to New York in order to live as if they were in Des Moines, Iowa. I’ve nothing against Des Moines, Iowa, but if you see what I mean?

Andrew Marr – I do.

Christopher Hitchens - It’s missing the point of what was a Latin Quarter for the whole world and a bohemia for the whole world. I can’t bear to see it being made into a white bread sandwich.

Andrew Marr – You, I suppose fell out with quite a lot of people on the left over your support for Iraq and that’s the thing that probably dominates this collection more than anything else…

Christopher Hitchens – …I made a lot of friends on the Iraqi and Kurdish left on the other hand which more than made up for it.

Andrew Marr – But did all of this start with 9/11? Is that the moment of, sort of...

Christopher Hitchens – …Oh, by no means, no. It starts for me at the end of the first Gulf War, the one in 1991, which I was very critical of until the closing stages, when I was in Northern Iraq bouncing around in a jeep with some Kurdish guerrillas. They taped a picture of George Bush senior to their windshield, on my side, so that I couldn’t see out. And after a bit I complained. I said “look do we have to have this, I can’t see” (and also it would be awfully embarrassing if I ran into anyone I knew). I remember that the Iran-Contra business was very vivid in my mind. They said “the fact of the matter is we can move it to a side window if you like, but we think that without his intervention, without the umbrella in Northern Iraq, that we, and all our families, would be dead”. And I realised that I didn’t have a clever answer to that. And I began to re-work back to the origins of the war and realised that co-existence with the Saddam Hussein regime was no longer possible. And that was in 1991. Anyway, if you hadn’t concluded it by then you were obviously not going to be persuaded - as since we have found out.

Andrew Marr – And you’re still cast-iron certain, that despite the large numbers of deaths in the post war Iraq, and despite all the problems of putting together that democracy, that we will end up with a much more tolerable, decent and peaceable country?

Christopher Hitchens – Well, it doesn’t take much of a cast-iron certainty, Andrew, to do that because we know that it could not possibly have been worse and that proposition was given a very solid test. I would say that the possibility of defeat of this enterprise exists in Iraq, partly because we left it so long and the country became so beggared and ruined. But it’s not the kind of defeat that it would have been if we’d left it to be deeded to the Uday-Qusay succession and that was the alternative offer that was being made by the peaceniks.

More than that I think Iraq will be remarkable. We’re going to live to see great things. We already have in Lebanon. We’re about to I think in Egypt, with the reopening of the Egyptian democracy. The Ba’ath party in Syria in my judgement will not be there in two years time And there will be extraordinary, are already extraordinary developments in Iran which I have just come back from. And so the essential point of the Blair-Bush policy, which is to change the balance of power in the Middle East, that has already been conclusively vindicated.

Andrew Marr – Germaine, are you in any way persuaded?

Germaine Greer – No, I’m not really. Partly because I think it looks now, from the slot that we’re looking through, as if the Ba'ath Party was in a process of self-destruction anyway. And the problem of the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds isn’t going to go away. The British couldn’t deal with it under the British mandate. They started bombing Iraq, in what, the 1920’s. And Iraq is such a made-up sort of a country. It’s such an odd idea and I just can’t see that there wasn’t another way around this, I mean a way of inventing an alternative power structure something even like the European Union.

William Shawcross (laughing) That is a nice idea!

Germaine Greer – Well, the Arab Union if you like.

William Shawcross (still laughing) The Arab League has been an appalling group of impostors and frauds and dictators for the last thirty years!

Andrew Marr – Though it could be said that if you go right back to the post First World War period, there was a possibility for Pan-Arabism in that area but it was never allowed to..

William Shawcross - What is the point of going back to the post first world war period? We’re now in the 21st century.

Andrew Marr – Merely intellectual curiosity, that was all.

Germaine Greer – The thing is, it seems to me that invoking war it always brings unintended consequences.

William Shawcross - Of course.

Germaine Greer – What you’re actually doing is resorting to chaos because you can’t find a logical answer to a question. The thing about the dead, is that people forget them. They are auxiliaries to the main thrust so that you look at what you think is an improvement, without considering the devastation that it took you to get there. And, I just think that in a 21st century war will eventually be seen to be barbarous [and] an impossible way of dealing with political problems.

Andrew Marr – Patrick Diamond, you were in No. 10 during a lot of this time. Do you see things - the way Christopher has laid it out - is that really how it was seen in No. 10 from the beginning?

Patrick Diamond – Well I can’t talk for others in No.10 but what I would say is that one of the important things that we have to recognise is that, I mean, I myself was profoundly moved by the extent to which the Iraqi people were able to embrace democracy, when the elections took place in the January of this year. Nearly 9 million Iraqi’s went out to vote despite the dangers that were posed from bombs and guns and bullets. I think that was a magnificent thing and should be welcomed. I think that there are important questions for the future. But I think the difficulty that the left has, is in a sense distinguishing between America and distinguishing between democracy, because sometimes the condemnation of America appears to be a condemnation of the entire principle that the country should be ruled democratically. I think that is a question which the left has to engage with now.

Andrew Marr – There is a soppy-mindedness of the left, a wooliness about this?

Patrick Diamond – I think there is something of a wooliness and I think it’s important to distinguish between what we object to. If we object to American power that is fine, but we should surely embrace the principle that countries are best ruled through the democratic principle.

Christopher Hitchens – Absolutely, but until a short time ago, Iraq was the private property of a psychopathic crime family. People were dying everyday as a consequence of that and it was a concentration camp above and a mass grave underneath and four million of it’s people would have been lucky enough to be able to flee…There isn’t a single Iraqi who can’t tell you a horror story. So one doesn’t want to seem like a Utilitarian but I don’t think in point of death and violence that it could have got any worse than it was, except if it had been allowed to go on and implode which would have meant opportunist interventions from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran to try and divvy up. There would have been another First World War kind of chaos. A black hole. It would have become the Rwanda of the Middle East.

Now we’ve stopped that, too late, perhaps only just in time, but now, the President of Iraq is a Kurd, highly educated, literate, life long democrat whose party is a member in good standing of the Socialist International along with the Labour Party. And I don’t know anyone on the left who wouldn’t rather have Saddam back. This is psychopathically crazy, it seems to me. I simply do not get it. People say, why have I turned on the left? I say, why have people that I used to know, who are Democratic Socialists become open sympathisers of fascism?

Germaine Greer – Hang on a second! I mean I don’t know if I’m on the left really. I don’t know where we put anarchists these days, we’ve probably gone right round to the ultra right. But if you ask yourself the historical question of how the psychopathic crime family got there in the first place, this was the product I seem to recall of some international gerrymandering, there was a different system in Iraq. Iraq was a much more sophisticated country.

William Shawcross – Until the Ba’ath party took over at the end of the 1970’s.

Germaine Greer – But the Bath party took over with assistance, as I recall.

William Shawcross – Well, I don’t think so. It was a coup.

Germaine Greer – But the other extraordinary thing, is that it’s always our notion of democracy and you can’t invent a Party system which is recruited from the bottom up in a situation where it’s being imposed the way it is at present in Iraq.

William Shawcross – Oh come on! Nine million people, as Patrick said, have embraced this notion of democracy. It’s absurd to say ‘Oh it’s all relative and we can’t impose our version’.

Germaine Greer – Now hang on a minute, I’m not even saying that. I’m saying that the thing is, we have no notion of whether this is viable in the circumstances or not, and neither do the people who voted. The vote is one thing. What they had to vote for is quite another.

Christopher Hitchens – Germaine, can I just say very quickly, to the extent that you are right that there was international collusion in the rule of the Ba’ath party- and you are right to some extent - doesn’t that double our responsibility to cancel that debt to the Iraqis?

Germaine Greer – Oh! That’s a tricky way of thinking about it.

CH – What’s tricky about it?

Germaine Greer - I thought we agreed that this war wasn’t fought for regime change but now it turns out that it was and you knew all along. Well, the rest of us are a bit surprised.

Christopher Hitchens – Well, the rest of you should have been paying more attention.

Who are the 'Insurgents'?

The Council on Foreign Relationsoffers questions and answers about the ‘insurgency.’ (AJ)

To the end

Mohammed blogs from Baghdad: “Yesterday Operation Lightning began and we noticed an excessive presence of the Iraqi army and police forces on the streets and main squares in Baghdad with an obvious readiness for confronting the terrorists…If we follow the curve of the terrorists power we'll find that the curve is going down in general and I believe that they cannot win the battle on the strategic or the tactical level. The illusion of the "resistance" had anaesthetized many people that they even forgot all logical and scientific calculations and I don't know how those people are going to deal with the facts when the terrorists are completely defeated. We've been challenged in our home and we cannot afford to runaway from the challenges and keep weeping about the past. It's our battle and it's a battle for existence and that's why we must fight it to the end”. (AJ)

Prisoner Abuse Scandal

Read about the Association for Free Prisoners, an Iraqi non-governmental organization that has been documenting the execution of political prisoners under the regime of Saddam Hussein. So far, the organization has confirmed the execution of 147,000 prisoners by Saddam. Here is the story of one prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti.

The President of the Association of Free Prisoners, Ibrahim al-Idrissi, recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad: "They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a 'celebration.' We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen. This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us. Amer's wife didn't lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer's throat."

Perhaps no regime has been more reminiscent of the Nazis than Saddam’s. The bacchanalian excesses of cruelty, the totalitarian ideology and party-state, the unfathomable horror of its victims. It all, as Irving Howe said of the Holocaust, ‘escapes the usual capacities of mind’. (AJ) (hat tip Hak Mao)

LFIQ on BBC Start the Week

Today’s BBC Start the Week programme today includes an interview with Christopher Hitchens in which he mentions the LFIQ invitation to him and George Galloway to a public debate. Go to Listen Again section and listen to the first 10 minutes in particular.

LFIQ urges public debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens

“We have invited Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway to debate Iraq with each other. Their insults towards each other – popinjay versus thug – have been good theatre but we would like to facilitate a proper debate which would generate more light than heat. It’s encouraging that Mr Hitchens has agreed and that Mr Galloway is thinking about it. Such a debate would be highly valued by very many people." Gary Kent, Director of Labour Friends of Iraq.

Progress on Iraqi constitution

The Kurdistan Regional Government says “Shiite legislators have decided not to push for a greater role for Islam in the new Iraqi constitution out of concern that the contentious issue will inflame religious sentiments and deepen sectarian tensions.” (AJ)

The other Ba’ath Party

Harry’s Place publicises the plight of eight dissidents-- members of Syria's only active political forum-- arrested last week. (AJ)

Jane Ashworth examines Respect in the East End and elsewhere

The election of George Galloway is a disaster for politics as a whole, for the East End in particular and last, and certainly least, for the SWP, according to Jane Ashworth, who gives her personal eye-witness view of the famous Bethnal Gren and Bow election fight.

In Cable St on election day, infant school-age pupils were racing around on their bikes and tearing after each other on foot shouting, 'Respect' and brandishing the oblong post cards which visually communicated Respect's driving message: Bush plus Blair equals torture in Iraq

These kids were very happy. A carnival had come to town and it was their carnival. They were supporting their big brothers and sometimes their dads who were engaged in the real business of the day, bringing voters to the polling stations. On other stations, groups of Sylheti-speaking men greeted those who turned up to vote.

They too were good-natured and shared their stash of coca cola with the lone Labour Party number-taker. One guy was very interested in the technicalities of electioneering. It was his first time and wanted to know why the Labour Party took numbers. Respect missed out that phase and knocked-up straight from their canvas returns. Of course, their way duplicates effort as they knock up those who have voted.

But our way human-time was wasted – chained to a polling station for hours. Their people contributed to the street presence which was Respect's primary election strategy – to have the biggest and best presence on the streets on polling day itself and during the whole campaign: to symbolically declare the areas as theirs.

Respect candidate Oliur Rahman was elected to Tower Hamlets council last year. His Respect message resonated within his neighbourhood and maybe in other areas too where other Tower Hamlet Bengali speakers live.

George Galloway promised the next step for Respect is to win more council seats and then in 4 years time for him to be replaced by a local candidate – or in his speak 'a Bengali candidate'.

This concedes ground to communalism – that a seat should be allocated according to ethnic considerations. No wonder the BNP praised the Respect victory: they cheered their more benign mirror image.

And it casts a different light on the Jeremy Paxman interview on election night. Paxman repeatedly asked Galloway if he felt proud of unseating one of just two black women in Parliament. On that occasion Galloway stormed off, claiming that skin colour has nothing to do with an MP’s record.

George Galloway is tapping into the alienation of not just the youth but of many older Muslims too and he is using it well. Although Labour's vote in Respect's target wards did not disappear, it was eclipsed by the increased turn out motivated by Respect. Labour's vote dropped by 5k while Respect harvested 15k.

Some very ugly politics indeed were unleashed during the campaign. There were anti-Semitic insults and Oona's mixed heritage was targeted. There was an egg-throwing incident while Jewish mourners remembered their WW2 dead. Oona's tyres were slashed. Galloway was himself threatened by Muslim extremists who argue that voting is against Islam.

Election day was calm because the campaign had been so rough. To calm things down, Oona proposed peace talks and George Galloway, either willingly or because he was snookered, publicly endorsed Oona's call for calm. A deal was stuck between the parties and the police that limited party presence on polling stations. Galloway also agreed to a further agreement proposed by King, that would have kept party supporters 500 meters away from polling stations, and prohibited inflammatory language or behaviour – an attempt to ensure that no one was intimidated out of voting. But a week before polling day, Galloway unilaterally withdrew from the deal, with a Respect spokesman describing the plan as ‘ludicrous’

In the end, the basic (and compulsory) police agreement was all that Galloway ‘signed up’ to. There was to be a larger than usual police presence and everyone knew that stepping out of line would lead to problems. Respect was able to control its supporters and make sure the Labour Party's fears were not realised.

It was vital for the Labour Party vote and vital for democracy that Respect was not able to repeat the tactics they used in previous elections that made life very unpleasant for their opponents and for Labour voters.

In the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections of last summer Respect wanted control of the streets. In the white working class wards of Leicester South the turnout was down to 12% but up to 3% in Respect's target wards. The local party says this was partly due to the systematic harassment of Labour's campaign team. On polling day itself Labour had 300 volunteers out and about. By late afternoon when Respect had finished with them, (following them around in cars, using the battle bus to broadcast, 'murderers' at any party worker and throwing eggs from the bus) there were only 40.

In that Leicester South by-election Labour lost to a Liberal Democrat. We won it back on May 5th. The Respect bandwagon and battle bus had moved on down to London and the protest voters returned home to Labour. There was no carnival in Leicester South this time around. Respect had gone and left behind no basic organisation to capitalise on their 12% vote last summer.

Respect is a curious amalgam of the SWP, homeless leftists and various Muslim-defined organisations. Key players from the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), whose Palestinian sister organisation is Hamas, sit on the leading Committees as did the PCS union General Secretary Mark Serwotka before his recent resignation.

These organisations make uneasy bedfellows and already the SWP's politics are giving way under the pressure. Besides the rank communalism of Respect's strategy there are policy shifts, which surely must rock old time SWPers. They are now in bed with homophobes, they have declared calls for secular education 'Islamophobic' They are aligned with people who are not in favour of redistribution of wealth and who, simply put, are not socialists: they are reactionary by whatever standards one wishes to measure them.

The SWP and Respect deny their appeal is communal. However, even though they canvassed the white middle class patches of BGB where Guardian readers might be found, their vote was negligible.. To cover accusations of communalism they lean towards denying that the war was the only issue of concern, telling themselves they have already begun to reach out beyond Muslim-identifying voters and in a quick sleight of hand condemn Labour for having a narrow social base!

According to SW on May 14, their plan for the next twelve months is to reproduce the housing campaigns of the 70's where whole streets refused to cooperate with housing management and demand control themselves – a kind of radical-sounding tenant self-management. If this is the plan for BGB then let's hope they fail because they can only deliver in their target wards – if there- and the last thing Tower Hamlets needs is politics that present as communal, which are communal and which might lead to a kick back in the white working class estates.

Of course this is not to say that there should not be campaigning led by members of the Bengali community as there has been in Tower Hamlets Labour Party for years - , nor that there are not issues that disproportionately impact upon them. It is to say that the communal wedge the SWP, in their foolhardy, opportunist chase for votes is stirring up will divide working people.

Many Tower Hamlets voters were motivated by the war and that was Respect's way in. But it was not the only story. As in Leicester nearly 12 months ago there was a protest vote. People were not happy with their lot and one assumes that is a mixed bag of issues from low pay though to political alienation.

LFIQ mission statement

Iraq is emerging from its long nightmare of Saddam's totalitarianism, wars and privation.

Iraq now has an opportunity to use its natural and human wealth to build a democratic civil society. An independent and secular labour movement is a key part of civil society and can do much to promote the unity of working people, regardless of creed or gender.

The United Nations has endorsed an ambitious political process aiming to establish a democratic government by the end of next year. The new Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) is using the process to secure labour rights to regain sovereignty and build democracy. Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ) strongly supports them and opposes private militias which are seeking to deprive the Iraqi people of a democratic future.

LFIQ includes those who opposed and those who supported military action but are united in supporting Iraq's struggle for democracy and labour rights.
History will not forgive us if we fail to give solidarity to Grassroots Iraq as its long-suffering people seek a federal, democratic, pluralist, and unified Iraq, in which there is full respect for the political and human rights of all.

We will encourage support for the IFTU and the labour interest through fact-finding trips, publications, seminars, fund-raising, speaker tours, regular electronic bulletins and on our website. We will encourage mutually beneficial cultural, social, political and economic links with progressive Iraqi organisations.

Words are weapons

David Hirsh, Sociology Lecturer, Goldsmiths College, University of London, outlines how cheap rhetoric by “toy town revolutionaries” here can have lethal consequences elsewhere

In the UK, you can say what you like. If you are ever-so-radical then you can denounce people as stooges of imperialism and collaborators and traitors and scabs. Doesn’t matter how silly or hysterical – say it and then go to the pub and chat about it with your mates. Nobody is going to have you sacked. Nobody is going to kill you. Its just part of the political knock about.

But in Iraq, for example, or in Palestine, for example, such talk is taken much more seriously by some people. And some of the people who take it seriously have guns and bombs.

Hadi Saleh, for example, was tortured and murdered in Iraq after the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), of which he was a leader, was denounced as a ‘yellow’ union in the UK.

Sari Nusseibeh, philosopher and President of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem, was denounced as a ‘collaborator’ by people in the British Palestine Solidarity Movement because he spoke out against their plans for British academics to ‘boycott’ their Israeli colleagues. A Palestinian Teachers union has called for his sacking. Leaflets are circulating in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank calling for his assassination.

The pumped-up self-importance of people taking the ‘correct revolutionary position’ in Britain can cost brave people their lives.

Last October, at Labour Party Conference, Abdullah Muhsin, the Foreign Representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, spoke at a fringe meeting organised by IFTU with the help of Labour Friends of Iraq. He told the story of how, following the overthrow of Saddam, it has been possible to begin again the work of building free trade unions.

He told of the Saddam loyalists, the Sunni supremacists and the Islamic Fundamentalists, groups that the leadership of the anti-war coalition in London think of as the ‘resistance’. He told how these groups are trying to bathe the new democracy movement, the Trade Union movement, the women’s movement, the Lesbian and Gay movement in blood. He told that if the British and American troops should pull out, and if the so-called ‘resistance’ should be allowed to take state power, then all of the possibilities that currently exist for free association, freedom of speech and for building the organisations of Iraqi civil society would be drowned in terror.

The Communist Party of Great Britain said that the leaders of the IFTU were ‘in collusion with imperialism’. The Revolutionary Communist Group called Abdulla Mashdani a ‘collaborator’. George Galloway, one of the best known leaders of the British Stop the War Coalition denounced the IFTU as ‘quislings’ in the Arab press. The Guardian printed Sami Ramadani’s claim that the IFTU were collaborators. Socialist Worker and the Stop the War Coalition cried out that ‘fake unions won’t help Iraqi workers’.

At the European Social Forum in the same month, an IFTU delegation from Iraq, including people who had spent years in Saddam’s jails, were stopped from talking by a group of anarchists and ‘socialists’ who stormed the platform. Officials from the Socialist Workers Party said that the IFTU should never have been invited to speak.

Firstly these toytown revolutionaries are wrong: IFTU is not a ‘yellow’ trade union. IFTU is building in the space that was made possible by the overthrowing of the Saddam regime. Political activity, free association and free speech, under Saddam would have led to the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib. Life under occupation is far from perfect; but in many parts of Iraq there is now an emergent civil society. The oxygen of some basic freedoms is allowing people to think, discuss and organise. There are free trade unions in the oil fields and in the schools, in the civil service and in the factories – for the first time in many decades. There are women and Kurds and Shias in the democratically elected government of Iraq.

Secondly, the fact that these British Rik Mayalls think that IFTU are nothing but traitors, is an illustration of a sickness and disorientation on parts of the British left. Many of us predicted that it would be a terrible mistake for Britain and the US to invade Iraq; we predicted that it would make things worse, not better; we predicted that there would rise up a national liberation movement like the one in Vietnam, which would, in the end, defeat the Americans. We were wrong.

But some on the British left would prefer to close its eyes to the complex and contradictory reality of present-day Iraq, than to admit that events have gone, in some ways, differently from how they expected. So out of its own vanity and political disorientation, the anti war coalition would rather pretend that its predictions were right, than listen to Iraqi trade unionists who tell them that all sorts of exciting things are now possible in Iraq that were not possible before. The British fake left would prefer to call them collaborators than to admit that their own focus on criticising Bush and Blair has forced them to shut their eyes to what is happening in Iraq.

Thirdly, the killings and the threats to life are concretely connected to the denunciations of the British dilettantes. The fake left in the UK is so used to the idea of their own irrelevance that they cannot believe that what they say could have any effect in Iraq. But it does. And it can get people killed.

Hadi Saleh was tortured for many hours in January of this year and then killed by remnants of the old regime; forces that some in Britain cheer on as the resistance. Nozad Ismail is in danger (see LFIQ’s Global Appeal on this page).

The British fake left had a very short-lived success recently in the AUT, the university lecturers union. It passed a motion at AUT conference in April calling on British academics to boycott Israeli universities. The broader membership of AUT were so outraged that they forced their union to call a Special Conference in May to reverse the policy.

See reported on 23 May that a Palestinian teachers union has called for the sacking of President Sari Nusseibeh, of Al-Quds University, for ‘normalising ties with Israel’ and ‘serving Israeli propaganda interests’.

The two Jerusalem Universities, Al-Quds and the Hebrew University agreed to further joint work and co-operation and they made a joint statement against the AUT boycott.

‘This constitutes a strong blow to the Palestinian national consensus’ said the Palestinian Union of University Teachers and Employees (PUUTE). ‘We call on all concerned parties within the Palestinian Authority to take the necessary measures to put an end to this behaviour.’

The call for Nusseibeh sacking is already a disgrace – the idea that academics can be sacked for challenging a ‘national consensus’ is frightening enough.
But Nusseibeh is also in physical danger. Anyone who lives in East Jerusalem and is labelled a ‘collaborator’ lives with a threat to their life.

Those who pose as being serious about solidarity with Palestinians and who glibly denounce Nusseibeh must know this.

The glib denunciations of the pretend left in the UK resonate in Palestine. Leaflets are circulating in the West Bank denouncing Nusseibeh as a collaborator. Why? Because he stood up against the boycott of his colleagues in Israeli academia. Because he took the position that has now been overwhelmingly endorsed as the right position by British academic trade unionists.

Sometimes political fights on the British left seem pointless and irrelevant to the real world. The self-importance of student politics; the pumped-up superiority of the toytown revolutionaries; the absurd non-sequiturs and hypocrisies of some of those who claim to champion the oppressed. But we should realise that what we say in the UK can have deadly consequences.

Internationalism and Iraq

Gary Kent puts forward some personal reflections on the practical meanings of international solidarity.

Internationalism is a key aim of the labour movement everywhere.

It’s sometimes simple to decide who to support. Take the 1973 coup in Chile. We backed those who opposed the dictatorship of Pinochet but, to be frank, it was more complex before the coup when faced with a range of left views, from those using armed methods to the more constitutional left groups and unions.

Take Ireland. In the 1970s, a part of the left foolishly franchised its thinking to either Sinn Fein/IRA. Others cleaved towards the SDLP. Others thought that this was a poor choice and were more open minded towards other forces.

The lesson is that we understand the plurality of views, the balance of forces and side with those we agree with.

Solidarity with labour movement forces in Iraq is made more complicated by the fact that Iraq has been a closed society under tyranny for nearly 40 years, most of us don’t speak Arabic and that the first generation of political leaders have, with great respect, not yet been able to develop political skills and perspectives.

I support the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). From all that I have seen, it represents an intelligent and brave force of people who have roots in Iraqi society. Their membership has soared from about 200 to 200,000 since the fall of Saddam. Their members will make mistakes for sure but they deserve our friendship.

An odd thing happened in relation to Iraq. Thanks to the misleadership of the Stop the War Coalition, a part of the left came to believe that trades unionism was impossible under occupation. They ignored the evidence and the realities on the ground. This was based on pure theory without practice and then led to Iraqi trade unionists being abused as collaborators and Quislings for taking what opportunities there were to fashion a new movement.

The demonisation of the IFTU has been one of the most shameful episodes in left history in this country.

In any event, trade unions know what has happened, thanks to the intellectually rigorous intervention of Mick Rix (reported on our site and available through the search engine) and the Coalition will degenerate ever more into a ridiculous rump and have nothing useful to say.

It need not have been like this. They could have followed the example of US Labour Against the War (USLAW), which decided to both call for the withdrawal of troops and to raise money for the trade unions.

It’s not my bag but it is reasonable.

The trade union movement would be inviting Iraqi trade unionists here all the time not because the UK is the fount of all wisdom but as a practical sign of solidarity from which we would learn too. And as security allows, there should be more trade union visits to Iraq. And I would increase the teaching of Arabic here too. But that’s another matter.

Progressives need a Jed Bartlett Moment

Alan Johnson, Labour Friends of Iraq (personal capacity), had this published in Tribune on 20th May.

At the heart of the Iraq "debate" is a hole in the shape of a social democratic narrative. The Labour Party must fill that hole, and quickly. Labour should be less defensive on Iraq.

The liberal-left often reduces the political complexity of Iraq to poodles, liars and 'insurgents. Most Iraqis are ignored.In January, over eight million Iraqis, most very poor, voted for a democratic future after thirty years of totalitarianism, war and misery. They danced with joy, purple fingers held aloft in pride. It was the most significant and hopeful event in the region in decades and links to a wider mood there of democratic yearning.

Yet much of the left has been mute or worse. If we are to prevent further degeneration into incoherent anti-Americanism, we need what might be called a neo-progressive alternative.

During the election campaign, Iraq was mentioned as A Good Thing but there was little attempt to inspire or educate. One-time abour supporters and activists won't return to the party unless Iraq can be understood and defended in terms of social democratic values and
hopes.

Labour must be bold about Iraq. The removal of Saddam and the end of his murderous Ba'ath, regime should be welcomed. So, too, should the return of the refugees, the joy of the Kurds, religious freedoms now enjoyed by the Shia and the creation of a UN-backed political process, a fantastic display of 'purple power'. There is a new democratic assembly, one in three members of which are women, the rebirth of trade unionism and the labour movement, the rise of new democratic political parties, a relatively free press, the reflooding of the Marshlands, the return of the Marsh Arabs, the opening up of the mass graves, the beginning of a truth and justice process. Freedom and social justice are spreading through the region and are the only antidotes to fundamentalism and terrorism.

The same neo-progressive narrative is the basis for a Left critique of post-war Iraq. It enables an anti-fascist discourse about the so-called 'resistance' as well as banning torture, safeguarding human rights, sacking Rumsfeld, a Marshall Plan for Iraq, social justice in the new Iraqi economy, and solidarity with Iraq's free trade unions, democratic parties and progressive civil society organisations.

Jack Straw tried to speak in a new way about Iraq: "Progressives know better than anyone the power of democracy as an instrument of social justice, and as a tool for the realisation of human potential. And we know the Middle East's importance to our foreign policy and to the international community as a whole. Supporting the emergence of democracy in the Middle East and around the world must be a central part of a progressive foreign policy, and a task for all of us".

And Tony Blair urged voters to 'listen to the Iraqis.' But this sotto voce social democratic narrative was drowned out by 'Blair lied'.

There is a scene in The West Wing, the White House set television series, in which Democratic President Jed Bartlett's aides decide that they have played 'defence' long enough against their own better instincts. One says 'Let Bartlett be Bartlett.' A fightback begins. So it should here over Iraq.

But we will only develop the confidence to take on the cynics once we establish clear neo-progressive water between ourselves and neo-conservatives. That means eschewing hysterical conspiracy theories about the Big Bad Wolf.

It is an awkward fact that the commitment of Paul Wolfowitz to freedom and democracy shames parts of the western left. What Christopher Hitchens says of him - 'I know some very tough Kurdish and Iraqi and Iranian and Lebanese antifascist militants who would welcome him as a blood-brother' – can hardly be said of Harold Pinter or George Galloway.

Just because Wolfowitz said 'The values of freedom and democracy are not just western values or European values' does not invalidate this insight for all but bigoted anti-Americans.

We can talk about the pivotal role of the institutions of civil society, including the labour movement. We can shift the debate onto the fight for labour rights and human rights, equality and opportunity, whether in Britain or Iraq or Africa. And we can keep talking about the importance of a two state solution in Israel-Palestine.

We do share important goals and values with Paul Wolfowitz but his overarching narrative remains 'US primacy' while ours should be the doctrine of the International Community. While the Neocons talk of a US-led military intervention from above in Iran, social democrats talk of political warfare' and solidarity with a popular democratic Iranian revolution.

We've already got a doctrine and it isn't neoconservative. It is the doctrine of the international community pursuing global democratisation and development. Within this framework, humanitarian interventionism is a duty on the international community – and on those who can act if the international community will not - to rescue those facing Genocide and Crimes against Humanity.

Backing Iraqi democrats is internationalist and in the best traditions of the Labour movement. Troops will be out of Iraq when an elected Iraq government asks for them to go. They now protect Iraqis from fascists who falsely claim to be a national liberation movement. George Bush is brazenly for a free market Iraq. The 'resistance' and their Western backers want secular or theocratic tyranny. Social democrats should brazenly promote a social democratic Iraq.

The outline of a neo-progressive vision exists in Tony Blair's Chicago speech of 1999, when he outlined the doctrine of the international community and in Robin Cook's speeches about intervention in Kosovo.

Gordon Brown promotes a global economic architecture and a global ethic that could give the doctrine of the international community economic muscle.

By 'letting Bartlett by Bartlett' the Party can renew itself and win the allegiance of a new generation of radicals. Local parties can make links to the free trade unions of Iraq, and also rebuild their relationships with local trade unions. It really is time to move on, honourably, as neo-progressives.

Eric Lee examines the power of the Internet over the reversal of a union policy on Israel

A decade ago, maybe even five years ago, the story I'm about to tell could never have happened.

A few weeks ago, the Association of University Teachers here in Britain decided to launch an academic boycott of two Israeli universities. An internal debate ensued and the policy was reversed.

Unions often pass resolutions on international affairs, expressing their solidarity with this or that cause. This is nothing new and it goes back to the very earliest days of the British trade union movement. What it utterly new is the fact that such decisions now travel at the speed of light through the Internet -- and the debate around them is instantly globalized.

The AUT decision was, of course, a controversial one. And just before its meeting to reconsider the boycott, the AUT learned of a resolution passed by the largest union of college and university faculty in the United States, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The AFT, which represents some 150,000 college and university faculty, called on its sister union "to reverse their vote" on the boycott. The AFT's Executive Council stated in its resolution that "boycotting universities and their faculty is anathema to academic freedom".

Now, I can't remember the last time that something like this happened.

And regardless of what one thinks of the AUT's original decision, or the AFT's intervention, it is indeed an extraordinary development that a union in one country would call upon a sister union in another country not to boycott a third country. And I think this intervention is a direct result of the new communications technology.

The Internet has been absolutely full of information on this debate. The AUT website has had information of course, and those supporting or opposing the boycott have set up sites of their own, most notably Engage.

The moment the debate was publicized on the Internet, it was globalized. The anti-boycott statement on the Engage website, for example, was signed by teachers and others not only from Britain, but from the USA, Canada, France, Israel, and Australia. Palestinian academics and others have come down on both sides of the debate.

It used to be the case that an internal debate by a national trade union remained that -- internal and national. No longer. The new communications technologies have erased old boundaries, and the intervention of a union in the United States in an internal union debate here in Britain now seems entirely natural and normal.

Iraqi Opinion

Mansoor Moaddel’s survey of Iraqi public opinion demonstrates the complexity of the country's communal relations. (AJ)

Arab League Plans Presence in Iraq

The Arab League has agreed to establish representation in Iraq and will send a legal advisor to advice on the writing of permanent constitution in Iraq. (AJ)

Iraq and foreign troops

Iraq the Model reports “In a memorandum submitted to the Security Council, Iraq has officially asked the Council to extend the duration of the mission of the multinational forces in Iraq "until Iraq fulfills the requirements of the political process which has been agreed on by the Council and until Iraq is capable of securing its borders and protecting its lands and people…" According to the 1546 resolution of the SC on June 8th 2004 the council would "reconsider the presence of the multinational forces in Iraq 12 months after adopting the resolution..."(AJ)

Amnesty blasts Bush record on human rights

Dr. Schulz of Amnesty International USA has accused the Bush administration of a “failure of global leadership" on human rights. (AJ)

Hairdressers targeted

The IFTU reports that the ‘resistance’ are murdering hairdressers because backward terrorists who have no regards to human rights are killing them because they claim hairdressing is an un-Islamic practice which must be stopped.” (AJ)

IWPR launch important new series

The Institute of War and Peace Reporting has launched a important new project - the Women's Reporting and Dialogue Programme. To receive emails, please subscribe here. IWPR Director Anthony Boden explains the new venture.

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting supports local journalists at the frontlines of crisis and change. In launching our Women's Reporting and Dialogue Programme, IWPR looks at a different kind of frontline - the battle women in Islamic countries are waging to define new rights in changing times.

Amid war, revolution and extended political transition, this change may be the most fundamental of all. Longstanding social, political and cultural habits are being challenged. Women are seeking to redefine their roles, in the public sphere as political leaders and active citizens, and in private as equal partners in families with more control over their own lives, livelihoods and bodies. This is a true revolution.

There is an enormous amount to be gained, as societies unleash the creative power of half of their populations. But there are also serious risks - resistance and even violent backlash against change, and new forms of exploitation and degradation. The greatest challenge of all may be to define new rights and responsibilities for women while respecting the cultures and the practices of Islam, with all its diversity.

We are particularly proud that of some 18 high-profile current or recent projects by IWPR worldwide, 14 have been managed by women. Through this expertise, IWPR is uniquely placed to run such a programme.

The project brings a clear set of tools - skills training, extensive reporting and dialogue activities to raise debate within local civil society. IWPR is a practical organisation, and will seek to strengthen the capacity to women to make themselves heard within local media, through regional syndication and internationally via IWPR's website and electronic publications. The flagship will be a fortnightly electronic publication, Women's Perspectives.

The activities will focus on women journalists in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus - with launch support from the US Department of State. Relevant issues arising in other IWPR country programmes will be brought into the mix, and we hope to be able to continue to expand the remit of the programme, in order to extend and enrich this vital debate.

But it is essential to stress that IWPR brings no preconceived solutions. The answers for each society must be worked out within those communities. IWPR's goal in this project is to help ensure that, in those debates, half of the populations have their say.

Anthony Borden is executive director of IWPR. (AJ)

Sunnis come over to politics

The New York Times reports that “One day after a large group of anti-American Sunni leaders pledged to enter the political process, a rebel Shiite cleric [Moktada al-Sadr] who led uprisings against the American military suggested Sunday that he would forgo military efforts and work to ease rising sectarian tensions throughout Iraq”. (AJ)

Middle East Democracy

Go here here to listen to a discussion between Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway editors of Uncharted Journey, a new collection of essays on democracy-building in the Middle East. (AJ)

Iraq Directory is reporting that "Japan will spend $100 million to build a power
plant in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa where some 600 Japanese troops provide humanitarian assistance. (AJ)

Scott Peterson in The Christian Science Monitor writes on the fight by Iraqi women to defeat moves to Islamisise Iraqi society.

Iraq the Model reports on the great work of Friends of Democracy to train Iraqi women to blog and so “offer women activists the opportunity to express their opinions about their current life and their future as well as enabling them to interact with each other, show their points of view and share ideas concerning the most critical process of this phase which is drafting the constitution”. (AJ)

Go here for CNN interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari who talks about the regional autocracies that fear the new democratic Iraq will work. Yet another case of the anti-democrats understanding better than the democrats what is at stake in Iraq.

Read 'The End of Secularism in Iraq' at the Open Democracy site. (AJ)

A major military corporation is now producing cranes and electrical cables instead of missiles and bombs. (AJ)

Today’s New York Times editorial says that "The dream of a new Iraq will ebb away unless leaders of the ruling Shiite and Kurdish coalition reach out boldly and bravely to their Sunni neighbors". (AJ)

The New York Times has obtained a copy of the 2000 page confidential file of the US Army's criminal investigation into prisoner abuse - torture - at Bagram, Afghanistan. To watch Tim Golden's interactive report on his investigation into the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram go to the New York Times site and click on 'The Bagram File'. (AJ)

The New York Times (registration required) is reporting that "The Iraqi government publicly acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that Iraq was the aggressor in 1980 when it touched off a bloody eight-year war with Iran". (AJ)

The IFTU posts an excellent article by John Lloyd reporting from Iraq on the struggle for equality of Kurdish women. (AJ)

Securing Iraq (16) Christopher Hitchens on the word ‘insurgent’

Christopher Hitchens takes on the media who insist on using the word ‘insurgent’. “In my ears, "insurgent" is a bit like "rebel" or even "revolutionary." There's nothing axiomatically pejorative about it, and some passages of history have made it a term of honor. At a minimum, though, it must mean "rising up." These fascists and hirelings are not rising up, they are stamping back down. It's time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist”. (AJ)

Reconstructing Iraq (17) ‘A Rather Tragic Situation’: United Nations Iraq Survey Published

The United Nations Development Programme reports “A comprehensive survey on living conditions in Iraq released here today by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme reveals grave deterioration in living standards in the country over the past 25 years, with Iraq now suffering from some of the region’s highest rates of joblessness and child malnutrition and continuing severe deficiencies in sewage systems, electric power supplies and other essential public services."

The survey, conducted from a representative sampling of 22,000 households in 2004, provides one of the largest and most comprehensive statistical portraits of the country in recent years. The survey — posted on the Internet today at http://www.iq.undp.org/ilcs.htm found that:

• Unemployment among young men with secondary or higher education stands at 37 per cent;
• Even though most Iraqis are now connected to water, electricity or sewage networks, supplies remain unstable and unreliable;
• Almost a quarter of children between the ages of six months and five years suffer from malnutrition;
• More young people today are illiterate than in previous generations;
• Just 83 per cent of boys and 79 per cent of girls of school age are enrolled in primary school.

“This survey shows a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq," Iraqi Minister of Planning Barham Salih said at the news conference where the report was released in Baghdad today."Undeniably, from the perspective of many, the former regime's aggressive policies, its wars, its repression and mismanagement of the economy are an important part of why we are here today. I hope we will be able to bring a model into Iraq that will turn Iraq from the land of mass graves, lack of development, child mortality and illiteracy into a land of peace, stability and prosperity."

Richard Beeston in the Times noted that the survey questioned more than 21,600 households this time last year. “Its findings, released by the Ministry of Planning yesterday, could finally resolve the debate over how many Iraqis were killed in the war that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. The 370-page report said that it was 95 per cent confident that the toll during the war and the first year of occupation was 24,000, but could have been between 18,000 and 29,000. About 12 per cent of those were under 18. The figure is far lower than the 98,000 deaths estimated in The Lancet last October, which said that it had interviewed nearly 1,000 households” (AJ) .

Human Rights in Iraq (3) New Government calls for end to Raids on Mosques

Mixed reactionsin Iraq to the report that defense minister, Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab, has ordered the Iraqi army to stop raiding mosques, arresting clerics and "terrifying worshipers." Some point out raids have led to the capture of large hauls of weapons and ammunition, including bomb-making equipment and antitank rockets. "The holy places must not be violated by the security forces, nor religious leaders arrested, and that will not happen anymore" said al-Dulaimi. In a related move Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told reporters that Ayatollah Sistani "insisted on the need for brotherhood between Shiites and Sunnis, and the need to include our Sunni brothers in the constitution-drafting process." (AJ)

Securing Iraq (15) Nihilism versus Democracy

Normblog links to an article by James Bennet in the New York Times on the nihilism of the insurgents. Bennet comments, “If the insurgency is trying to overthrow this regime, it is contending with a formidable obstacle that successful rebels of the 20th century generally did not face: A democratically elected government. One of the last century's most celebrated theorists and practitioners of revolution, Che Guevara, called that obstacle insurmountable” (AJ).

Abdullah Muhsin addresses the FBU

The IFTU web site carries details of Abdullah Muhsin’s speech at this week’s Fire Brigades Union conference, which went down very well.

Democratising Iraq (18): ‘It is a battle between democrats and terrorists’ says Tony Blair

Iraq is the hinge of our time. But it isn't always that the Labour Party speaks of Iraq in those terms. At his press conference yesterday the Prime Minister did See this exchange

Question: Moving to Iraq, if I may, the situation has deteriorated dramatically and more people are dying needlessly these days than any other time since the removal of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis are actually finding themselves trapped between the insurgents and the multinational force, but how long do you think ordinary Iraqis shall wait before they can resume their ordinary lives?

Prime Minister: My information from what people tell me about the attitude of Iraqis is that they are very angry about the terrorism and the insurgency, but they have got no doubt at all what is going on, and what is going on is that the terrorists and insurgents are trying to derail their democracy, and they want their democracy, and the Iraqi security forces are building up the whole time. And it is true these suicide bombs of course are absolutely terrible because they are killing innocent people in terrorist acts, but politically you have got a Sunni Defence Minister. Iraq is changing, and that is why I say the strange thing about this is that the terrorists and insurgents have a far clearer sense of the importance of this, I think, than a lot of people over in our part of the world. They know that if Iraq becomes a democracy they are finished, not just in Iraq, they are finished everywhere. The whole basis of the extremist case is that American power is used to suppress Muslim people. If what actually happens in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and then increasingly across the Middle East, is that people are liberated from dictatorship - religious or secular - and start to govern themselves, that is an end to that extremism, and that is why I have always said what is at heart here is absolutely fundamental, it is a battle between democrats and terrorists. And I think you will find that the Iraqis themselves, their anger is obvious, but so is also their determination that they are going to carry on electing their government, you know 8 million of them came out and voted, and in December's elections they will come out and vote again, and this time I think you will find that Sunnis participate, and they will want to participate because that is the future. So it is very difficult, but it is a battle that there is only one side to be on, and the consequences of victory or defeat are immense, and not just for Iraq, they are immense for the security of this country here. If we succeed in Iraq in establishing democracy, this country will be a safer place. (AJ)

The Galloway Report

To read in full the United States Senate Investigations Subcommittee ‘Report on Oil Allocations Granted to Charles Pasqua and George Galloway’ go here

Harrysplace is going to keep us abreast of all developments (hat tip HP) (AJ)

Reconstructing Iraq (16) Muslim Peacemaker Team Unites Shia and Sunni

“On May 6 2005 a groups of Shia Muslims called Muslim Peacemaker Team (MPT) travelled to the Sunni-dominated city of Fallujah from as far away as Kerbala and Najaf to help their Sunni counterparts clean up rubble from the previous U.S. assault on the city. In a symbolic act of solidarity, members of MPT sought to counter the growing reports of Sunni-Shi'a sectarian violence and to demonstrate unity in a tense time (…) Muslim Peacemaker Teams has been in existence for three months and it is their plan to continue to retain a connection with the citizens of Fallujah through direct action. Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq has made working with MPT the number one priority for the team at this time. Both groups are committed to continuing to work to foster non-violent alternatives to militarization for a free and independent Iraq”. (AJ)

BBC and Galloway

Eddie Mair presents Radio 4’s ‘PM’. He is an attractive presenter with a nice line in dry wit. But on Thursday he fell victim to a bad script. In his best sneery, what-are-the-Yanks-up-to-now voice, he said, “[The Senate report] prints a picture of Mr Galloway meeting Saddam Hussein and calls the MP “an outspoken supporter of the Iraqi regime” and it cites in its first paragraph the now famous line used by Mr Galloway, ‘I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability’, but does not acknowledge in the body of the report Mr Galloway’s insistence that that remark was directed at the Iraqi people in general’.

Now this is what is known as ‘spinning’. Galloway first denied meeting Saddam Hussein, saying. "I had no opportunity because we were in a group of about fifty people. I didn't actually speak to him face to face." (Daily Record, 21st January). When TV pictures showed the opposite was true Galloway adopted the ‘I-was-speaking-to-the-Iraqi-people explanation. But the full peroration makes clear that this was not the case either. Galloway stood before Saddam Hussein and said ‘Your Excellency, Mr President. I greet you in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq. "I greet you too, in the name of the Palestinian people…..I thought the President would appreciate to know that even today, three years after the war, I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam…Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory until Jerusalem." (The Times, 20th January, 1994). (AJ)

Iraqi Renaissance (2) Iraqi Cinema storms Cannes Film Festival

Agence France Presse is reporting that “Iraq - past and present - loomed over the second day of the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday with two films, one Iraqi and one from Japan. "Kilometer Zero," by Kurdish-Iraqi filmmaker Hiner Saleem, is the first Iraqi film to be selected for the official Cannes competition since the festival's inception in 1946, generating a buzz of its own. At the press screening late Wednesday ahead of its official showing Thursday, journalists appreciated the dark humor in its tale about a Kurdish-Iraqi conscripted into Saddam Hussein's army to fight against Iran in 1988, but were more intent on putting it into the context of the ongoing controversy about the Iraq war and its aftermath. The film itself invited comparison with the U.S.-led war by bracketing the story with contemporary scenes of the main characters reacting to the conflict in Paris, first with surprise then with glee over the fall of Baghdad. "This director doesn't swim with the tide of European thought, and I thought that was refreshing," said Harlan Jacobson of USA Today magazine. But Lebanese journalist Carla Toubia of Abu Dhabi TV said she found the film "humiliating" because of its nationalistic Kurdish slant against the Arab majority in Iraq: "Everybody knows what happened in Iraq and what Saddam Hussein did, but this film seemed to show hatred toward people who were suffering and couldn't do anything about it," she said. (AJ)

IFTU defended in today's Guardian

Support for Iraqi unions

Phil Lenton (Letters, May 10), doubts the credibility of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. I was part of a delegation that recently visited Iraqi Kurdistan. The IFTU and its Kurdish counterparts are militant trade unionists whose affiliates not only participate in strike action but, in the teeth of savage attacks by fundamentalist and Ba'athist groups, are building a strong trade union movement - the bedrock of civil society. The teachers' union alone has more than 300,000 members and is growing.

Rather than belittle such a process, Mr Lenton should, as does the TUC and many of its allied unions, welcome the development of genuine unions. Iraq is a dangerous place to be a trade unionist. IFTU members are particular targets - they risk their lives every day, not just their "jobs and livelihoods". Our duty is to show solidarity, not to sneer from the sidelines. This is why we now have a TUC-Iraq solidarity committee. But perhaps Mr Lenton thinks the British trade union movement is also compromised, since the vast bulk of its training and education programmes are financed by the British state?

Prof Mary Davis, London Metropolitan University

Phil Lenton says Britain is "no model" for Iraq. Well, we don't have mass graves or genocide. Videos of our tortured children aren't left at our front door. And we can laugh at our leaders without fear and are free to write idiotic letters to the Guardian.

Alan Johnson, Labour Friends of Iraq

Iraqi Renaissance (1) New Artistic Freedoms Hailed

LFIQ starts a new series of posts on the rebirth of the arts in Iraq. We urge our Iraqi readers to send us stories. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that “Iraqi film and TV producers are enjoying artistic freedom following decades of censorship and two years of U.S. occupation. Actors, filmmakers and TV producers -- with a dozen new private TV channels to work with -- are turning out soap operas, situation comedies, dramas and reality shows. For the first time, Iraqi TV is taking on issues of social injustice, government corruption and even life under former dictator Saddam Hussein. "Underexposure" -- described as Iraq's first postwar feature-length film -- focuses on a generation of young artists coping with the U.S. occupation. "Departure," a TV serial that premiered last month, is an account of a gangster family that deals in stolen antiquities after the 2003 fall of Baghdad. One character on "Departure" is thrown in jail just before the U.S. invasion for insulting Hussein. The Times said it was the first time that an Iraqi entertainment program has negatively depicted life under Hussein…one of the biggest TV hits is "Caricature," an irreverent sketch comedy show” (AJ).

Reconstructing Iraq (15) We wonder if people outside realise

Why is reconstruction so slow? Omar at Iraq the Modeltells the story of his engineer friend who helped build a new Power Plant in southern Baghdad. When it finally opened Omar asked him how he felt about it and got this reply:

"I feel really proud of being part of this; this time I wasn't working for material benefit only, I felt overwhelming happiness for doing something good in such a hard time. You have no idea my friend what we’ve been through to make this project work out. The work was suspended many times because of attacks; mortars hit the site three times, RPGs two or three times, small guns fire attacks happen every other while. We have lost 11 men in these attacks, 7 Iraqis and 4 foreigners and many others received death threats. It wasn't an easy job at all my friend. We also had to establish a 6 meter tall concrete wall to provide more protection for the workers and the station".

Omar comments, “I was so touched by his story and we wondered together if people outside realize how the new Iraq is getting built. People here are working and at the same avoiding bombs and bullets. People head to their work stations every morning and they don't know what the roads are hiding for them. We went to the election centers not minding the risks of getting killed and Iraqi young men keep going to the recruitment centers although they realize that doing so might get them killed (…) This short story represents one of a thousand unreported struggles where victory sided with our people and in the same way victory will be on our side in the greater war against the forces of darkness and terror.” (AJ)

Brasilia Summit hails Iraq’s emerging democracy

The Arab-Latin Summit Conference opened in Brasilia on 10 May with the participation of 21 Arab countries and 12 Latin American countries. The Final Declaration of the Arab and Latin American countries issued on May 11 stressed the importance of respecting the unity and independence of Iraq, non-intervention in its internal affairs, respecting the will of Iraqi people and their choices in determining their future as expressed in the recent general elections; which is considered as a great achievement on the way to a safe transfer of power to establish a democratic and federal system. The Declaration confirmed the support of the transitional government, and urged the international community to support it .The Declaration also condemned the terrorist acts targeting civilians, infrastructure of the country and the democratic process in Iraq. (AJ)

‘Millions of Barrels of Oil’: Galloway faces new allegations

‘A US Senate committee report published today claims to have uncovered "significant evidence" that the former Labour MP was allocated millions of barrels of oil from the Saddam regime. It bases its conclusions on previously disclosed documents from the Iraqi ministry of oil and interviews with senior officials of the regime, plus unnamed Iraqi sources’, claims the Guardian

Democratising Iraq (17): KRG Representative interviewed

Kurdistan Regional Government site posts a grilling of KRG representative to the United Kingdom, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, by Iraqi analyst Kathleen Ridolfo. The interview was conducted May 4 and posted 11 May. Problems of corruption, the state’s relation to civil society, and media freedoms are all addressed. See this exchange.

Abdul Rahman “Kurdistan is a democracy that's been running since 1992 when we had our first democratic elections...but 1992, that's actually not that long ago when you compare it with democracy in Britain, which has been thriving for quite a few centuries. It will take time for these NGOs, for the media, for these organizations to become emboldened and to really take the bull by the horns”.

Kathleen Ridolfo: If we set 1992 as a [starting point], that's 13 years. Civil-society development is one of the first markers of [democratic] development in any country. And to say after 13 years, "Well, there's still no independent NGOs, for example, operating in Kurdistan," I would say that's a setback [to development] or that is a problem.

Abdul Rahman: I'm not sure that there are no independent NGOs operating in Kurdistan. There are some independent NGOs. But the majority have been helped by the government or by one of the political parties. That's one point. Secondly, the Kurdistan Regional Government is very aware of the fact that the democracy that we have is a fledgling democracy, and we never pretend that it's a perfect democracy. Part of the policy of the Kurdistan Regional Government is capacity building. That means building people's ability to run NGOs, to join trade unions, to have an independent media. Part of the democratization process is to build the capacity of our people, to build their skills, and training. Because of that, or as part of that strategy, the Kurdistan Regional Government is trying to develop relationships with organizations in Europe, in the United States, in other countries around the Middle East that have a democracy in place.

For example, we recently had a group of British trade unions come to Kurdistan. They were helped in their visit to Kurdistan by the Kurdistan Regional Government, [which] organized the entire tour for them, allowed them to meet whoever they wanted to meet.... So, the Kurdistan Regional Government is very aware of the need to progress, to deepen the fledgling democracy that we have, and we're doing our best. (AJ)

Women’s Rights in Iraq (3) ‘Honour’ and Women’s Health in Iraq

IWPR reporters Amanj Khalil and Azeez Mahmood report from Sulaimaniyah on the politics of ‘honour’ and women’s health in Iraq.

Securing Iraq (14): They are not even Iraqis

As homicide bombers continue to devastate Iraq the
Washington Post is reporting that "Officers here said they knew of no documented case
in which a suicide attacker turned out to have been an Iraqi". So it now seems that George Galloway was right when he said "actually, the Iraqi Resistance does not target its own civilians". What price Tariq Ali's 'national liberation movement' now? (hat tip HP) (AJ)

Securing Iraq (11) help for a struggling student

”Pulling foreign troops out would almost certainly improve Iraq's security, since much of the violence is directed against the occupation. Without the occupation, the insurgency would decline dramatically” (Jonathan Steele, Guardian May 9)

Dear Jonathan Steele,

This was a promising essay. It was spirited and you demonstrated a real engagement with the issues. Unfortunately, your argument was shaky on both empirical and logical grounds. These problems need to be ironed out in the first year so please make every effort to take these points on board. We don’t want you retaking Critical Reasoning 101 in the summer, do we!

Your conclusion – ‘pulling foreign troops out would almost certainly improve Iraq's security’ – was supported by two claims. First, that ‘much of the violence is directed against the occupation’. Second, a logical corollary, that ‘without the occupation, the insurgency would decline dramatically’.

But Jonathan, you did not support either claim with evidence. And the fact is it is not true that most of the violence is directed against the occupation. Most of the violence is aimed at other Iraqis, especially the Shia and the Iraqi police (but also workers at oil installations, pipelines, reconstruction projects, as well as electoral workers, free trade unionists, Shia pilgrims, communists, women ignoring Sharia law, members of the transitional assembly, and, well, just about anybody who disagrees with the self-styled ‘resistance’. All of these facts are well known yet you ignored them. We must be guided by the facts in reaching our judgements. This is not a literature course!

Or perhaps by ‘occupation’ you really mean ‘anyone who is not a member of the resistance’. If so that is what we call a circular argument. If you had attended last week’s seminar you would have heard another student, Galloway I think it was make the very same point. It is an argument with alarmingly anti-democratic implications (the occupation wants P, the majority of Iraqis want P, a tiny minority of Iraqis plus foreign terrorists want S, but because the tiny minority have guns, we must give in to them, and to S). With that logic the allies should have got out of post-war Germany because ‘without the occupation, the insurgency [of Himmler’s werewolves] would decline dramatically’. True but, er, rather missing the point!

So, lets assume by ‘occupation’ you mean the US and UK troops. But as I say, it is not true that most violence is directed against the US and UK troops.

Now, the logical errors. Your very next sentence is “Has [Blair] not noticed that in Basra and the other two south-eastern provinces where British forces are based the insurgency barely exists?”

But did you not notice that with these two sentences you claimed (a) “Without the occupation, the insurgency would decline dramatically” but also (b) “in Basra and the other two south-eastern provinces where British forces [ie the occupation – AJ] are based the insurgency barely exists” .

In other words the occupation causes the insurgency and the occupation does not cause the insurgency.

Now, do you recall the early lectures on ‘the independent variable’? When trying to establish a cause-effect relationship we look for the independent variable and we find it by controlling the other variables as far as we can and measuring results over time. Fortunately, in this case, real-life offers us a form of experimental control. As you noted in Basra we have the occupation but not the insurgency. So we must look for the independent variable elsewhere. Now it could be ‘US troops’ (as opposed to UK troops) but I doubt it. The other candidate for independent variable (which we sometimes call the ‘causal variable’ remember) is the Ba’athist and Wahhabi-Sunni Islamist ‘resistance’ to majority democratic rule in Iraq. If we look at who is carrying out the attacks, what they say their goals are, and at whom they target, I think we can be pretty confident that this is indeed the independent or causal variable. Anyway, one would need to make an argument as to why one did not think it was. It really isn’t good enough to just assert that ‘pulling foreign troops out would almost certainly improve Iraq's security’. Mere mention of the words ‘Bush’ and ‘Blair’ do not make that argument for you.

Perhaps next time you could run your draft essay by me before submission? Two other tutors took a look at your essay and their comments can be found here and at harrysplace on May 9. (AJ)

D'Alema: 'Exporting democracy is a great objective'

‘It is unthinkable today, faced with disorder and conflict on a global scale, to exclude in advance the use of force. […]The key to security is the expansion of democracy’. So Massimo D’Alema—a leading Italian center-left opposition representative and former Prime minister—speaking at a seminar of the Fondazione Italianieuropei, held in Rome on April 3.

Though insisting on respect of international law, and repeating his criticism of the “preventive” war in Iraq, he acknowledged that the neocons had addressed a basic issue. He also said that ‘[e]xporting democracy is a great objective and is the fundamental axis of a new global equilibrium. It will also be a subject of conflict with the American right because security and order must be based on international law and not on the use of force, even if exporting democracy successfully means not ruling out in advance the use of force.’

Moreover, according to D’Alema, ‘multilateralism cannot be interpreted as shared impotence or acceptance of the status quo, but an effective system capable of intervening actively [in economic and humanitarian crises] moving beyond a 19th century conception of national sovreignty’. D’Alema also criticized the UN—wishing a drastic retrenchment of the right of veto—, and Jaques Chirac, especially ‘the nostalgic character of his gaullisme’. (AJ, Hat Tip, Harry's Place)

Aaronovitch on Gottism

In his farewell column David Aaronovitch dissectsGottism: “Let me take one example, where I could take thousands. These are the words used by writer Richard Gott to describe Blair during this election campaign. "An arrogant and God-fuelled appeaser", and "a war criminal who should be locked up behind bars without a vote". And this is Gott on Iraqi leaders in mid-2002. "Saddam has had a violent past", but "is not a charismatic leader", partly because he uses "unconvincing rhetoric" and is "incompetent at getting his message across". Problems are caused by his "lack of sophistication and the secretive nature of his regime". Fortunately, however, his deputy, Tariq Aziz - Yuletide host of the new MP for Bethnal Green and Bow - is "an intelligent, articulate and persuasive politician". Gott, on a journey to Baghdad, notices that the many pictures of Saddam are not defaced at all. Is it, he asks, "terror, or apathy, or a cultural reluctance to disturb something associated with the state? It is difficult to say, but of overt signs of opposition to the regime, there are none." Oh, I'd say it was down to cultural reluctance, wouldn't you? If they'd only been a little bit more uninhibited, those Kurds and Shias would happily have taken their magic markers to the odd Saddam statue, Mukhabarat or no Mukhabarat. Gott is, of course, a slightly extreme example. But it seems to me that mild forms of Gottism are to be found all over the place”. (AJ)

Democratising Iraq (14) Cabinet Sworn in for second time to pledge allegiance to federal and democratic Iraq

The Kurdistan Regional Government is reporting that on May 9 “the Iraqi cabinet was sworn in for the second time in a week after Kurdish leaders insisted a reference to federalism that had been removed from the original text be reinserted (…) "I swear before God the Almighty to preserve Iraq's independence, the interest of its people, its sovereignty, its waters and its natural resources as well as its democratic and federal system, and implement the law earnestly and fairly," the cabinet members said. (AJ)

Women’s Rights in Iraq (2): Arab Feminists on Women's Rights

The website Middle East Transparent has published excerpts from articles by Saudi author Wajiha Al-Huweidar and by Tunisian authors and researchers Dr. Iqbal Al-Gharbi, Dr. Munjiyah Al-Sawaihi, and Dr. Raja bin Salama.

Writing in Elaph.com on March 7, 2005 Saudi author Wajiha Al-Huweidar explained: "All of the Arab regimes are U.N. members and have ratified the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, which clearly establishes justice and equality in the rights and obligations of all citizens. Despite this, women in our chauvinist countries are still considered the property of their relatives. All Arab countries, without exception, harbor covert animosity and open discrimination against women. To this day, all official bodies reject any scientific discussion of a solution to women's problems – while on the other hand the men, who benefit from women's oppression, continue to regurgitate [the mant r a] that 'women are respected' [in Arab and Muslim societies]… (AJ)

Democratising Iraq (16) The Hugh Sykes Series

The BBC Radio 4 programme ‘PM’ has been running a marvellous series of reports by Hugh Sykes on the clamour for democracy in the Middle East. Previous programmes included Iraq and Egypt. To listen to his latest report, from Syria, go here. The BBC should be encouraged to put the entire series on its website. (AJ)

Human Rights in Iraq (2): Abu Ghraib: an outrage but not Guernica

Christopher Hitchens on the 'outrages' of Abu Ghraib (AJ)

Securing Iraq (13) Patrick Cockburn describes a Ba’athist-Wahhabi Islamist 'Resistance' in 29 words

"The suicide bombers are mostly pious young men from Saudi Arabia or Yemen, but the infrastructure of safe houses, explosives' specialists and providers of vehicles and intelligence is Iraqi". (The Independent 10 May 2005). Exactly. Neither component is resisting 'the occupation'. Both represent fascistic ideologies opposed to the self-determination of the Iraqi people. (AJ)

Democratising Iraq (15) 96 percent of Sunnis want a Political Process not Suicide Bombs

Mohammed over at Iraq the Model tells of an important shift in Sunni opinion toward embracing politics and the 2006 elections.

I have noticed lately that many announcements are being posted on the walls in Sunni mosques encouraging people to participate in the coming elections-that are planned to be in January 2006-and to not miss the chance like last time.

I think the Sunni trend had made up its mind about this subject after the latest dispute inside the "association of Muslim scholars" after which it became obvious the decreasing influence of Al-Dhari's trend (who's out of the country right now along with his son) and the increasing influence of the moderate trend that favors being part of the political process.

I have pointed this out earlier and I expect the near future to bring up the results of this development in the form of less violence in the usual hot spots.
It's also become clear that the association has taken a firm decision not to take active part in the political process and had joined the "committee of national reconciliation" as a supervisor only and there's a frank invitation for the association to limit its role to religious advisory and preaching (as it should be).

For the fourth week in a line, the "department of Sunni property" which is an official entity that takes care of Sunni mosques and Sunni heritage has been distributing inquiry forms to the people who attend the Friday prayers as such prayers are usually attended by more people than other week days.
The inquiry (or poll) includes four questions:

1-would you like to have a role in drafting the constitution?
2-would you like to participate in the next round of elections?
3-would you prefer to see a unified committee for the Sunni?
4-Are you with the call for joining the Iraqi army and police?
*You can submit any suggestions you have.

The results I could take a look at in Baghdad were as follows:
In "Ghaffar Al-Thunoob" mosque in A'adhamiyah, 273 people filled the forms and 96% of them answered the 4 questions with "yes".

In "Al-Yakeen" mosque in Al-Sha'ab quarter I wasn't able to get the exact number of the people who took the poll but the percentage of those who answered the 4 questions with "yes" was 92%.

In "Haj Ahmed Ra'oof" mosque in Al-Baladiyat quarter south east of Baghdad, 95% of those who took the poll answered all the questions with "yes".

No doubt these results suggest that a high percentage of the Sunni people will most likely vote in the coming elections especially considering that these answers come from committed Sunni Muslims who regularly attend mosques.

The 2006 election will obviously witness a very hot competition and we're going to see a lot of action, i.e. the more players, the better the game will be while those who put their bucks on the failure of the change in Iraq would better forget about their winning.

Mohammed. (AJ)

The Neo-Cons Don’t Get It (1) Reuel Marc Gerecht

“The region’s progressives and liberals, who are so popular in the West, are not the answer to “Bin Ladenism.” They are weak, unpopular, and out of the mainstream in their home countries, and directing U.S. support to them would be a wasted effort”. So said Reuel Marc Gerecht, the Director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century, in debate with Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute and author of the Institute monograph The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East (2004).

In reply Satloff said “Washington cannot have it both ways; the United States cannot support reformers and Islamists at the same time. Instead, it should advocate for individuals and institutions that share the universal values of rule of law, minority rights, tolerance, and so forth. In practical terms, this means a more assertive policy of investing in real-life democrats, not just democracy in the abstract”. (AJ)

Need for democracy and federalism in post-Saddam Iraq

Four missing words “federal and democratic regime” could undermine the prospects of a stable Iraqi democracy. A mysterious decision to drop references to democracy and federalism in the ministerial oath of allegiance has raised fears that the Kurdish-Shia alliance that underpins the new Iraqi government will be damaged.

In a potentially significant move, which was obscured by the results of the British elections, somebody decided to alter the text of the oath sworn by Iraq’s new Cabinet Ministers.

Ministers said the following: "I swear before God the Almighty to do my utmost to carry out my duties and responsibilities and to preserve Iraq's independence and sovereignty," when they were sworn in last week.

But the original text included the following crucial reference to federalism and democracy: “... preserve Iraq's independence, sovereignty and its federal and democratic regime."

Iraqi Kurds had abandoned their quest for independence in exchange for autonomy within a federal Iraq. The omission of federalism in the oath of allegiance has prompted Iraqi Kurdish leaders to question whether this remains possible and whether federalism will be part of the new Iraqi constitution which is due to be finalised in August before being put to a popular referendum in October.

The Kurdish leader, Massud Barzani warned last week that the removal of a reference to Iraqi federalism could threaten the Kurds' alliance with the Shiite bloc.

"The removal of the reference to a federal Iraq is a violation of the law and a serious threat for our alliance," according to Barzani.

"I can only hope it was not intentional and that this will be corrected as soon as possible," said Barzani, who leads the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The other major Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has also expressed its concerns over the altered oath.

Divisions over the missing words could destabilise the new Iraqi Government which is dominated by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s Shi’ite alliance.

Jaafari commands more than half of the seats in the new Iraqi parliament but requires the backing of the 77 Kurdish MP's to secure the two-thirds majority required for key decisions.

Including a broad range of Iraqi opinion is vital to building the national unity as an important part of the struggle to isolate and defeat the Iraqi insurgency.

Abdullah Muhsin and Gary Kent
(Both write in a personal capacity)

The Liberal Democrats exploit the Muslim vote.

Andrew Apostolou examines the LibDems' illiberalism.

The war against terrorism has barely registered as an issue in the British general election campaign. Yet underlying this campaign has been a worrying trend that will have consequences for years to come. In their quest to unseat Tony Blair, one British opposition party, the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, have sought to open up divisions between Muslim and non-Muslims in British society.

The Liberal Democrats, previously the center party of Britain, have been relentless in their opposition to the Iraq war for the last two years. They have called for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq before the end of 2005 whether the democratically elected Iraqi government wants them to remain or not.

So far, so fringe, but the Liberal Democrats have also attempted to manipulate the British Muslim vote. Britain has a small, longstanding Muslim community that is around three percent of the total population. Until now, there has been no coherent Muslim political identity. Most British Muslims have traditionally voted Labour for economic reasons. British Muslims tend to be concentrated in poor inner-city areas or declining, provincial towns. Their religious identity has not been a political issue.

Muslim-related issues have rarely intruded into politics. Before the Iraq war the main controversy had been the reaction of some Muslims to Ayatollah Khomeini's death warrant against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. British politicians encouraged the intolerant fringe in the Muslim community by failing to stand up for Rushdie's rights and instead apologizing for any offence that Rushdie might have caused to the many indignant persons who had not read his novel The Satanic Verses. However, the bid by the Islamic Party of Britain (IPB) to exploit the head of steam that had built up over the Rushdie issue failed dismally. The IPB, which advocated legalizing polygamy, won just 0.6 percent of the vote in the six constituencies it stood in in the 1992 British elections.

That has changed thanks to the Liberal Democrats' reversal of position over Iraq. In September 2002, the Liberal Democrats' deputy leader, Menzies Campbell, said that Iraq possessed WMD. The Liberal Democrats soon realized that there was no gain to be had from backing the political consensus in favor of tackling Saddam Hussein. Tony Blair, with a large parliamentary majority and the support, before the war, of the Conservatives, was obviously going to have enough votes to authorize action against Saddam's regime. Meanwhile, antiwar opinion, which was being stoked by the BBC and the left-wing press, lacked mainstream political representation.

Along with transforming themselves into the antiwar party, the Liberal Democrats have attempted to seduce British Muslims away from the Labour party by allying themselves with fringe Sunni Muslim fundamentalist groups. The Liberal Democrat calculation is that British Muslims have been radicalized, and that the views of sectarian, anti-Semitic fringe groups have a resonance in the Muslim community. The opinions of Shia Arabs and Kurds from Iraq living in Britain have little weight. The Iraqi expatriate vote is not geographically concentrated, many are not citizens and so cannot vote, and the media has deliberately ignored them.

This tactic paid dividends for the Liberal Democrats when their candidate, Sarah Teather, won the previously safe Labour seat of Brent East in London during a September 2003 by-election. One of the groups that endorsed Teather in Brent East was the Muslim Association of Britain, believed to have close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Better-known Muslim Brotherhood affiliates include the terrorist movement Hamas.

Just to show that there is no honor when political opportunism is involved, the MAB has now shifted its backing from Sarah Teather, despite her backing protests against the French government's ban on religious symbols such as the veil in public schools. The MAB now backs Yasmin Qureshi, an antiwar Labour candidate whom it describes as "a conscientious Muslim who understands and is fully capable of articulating the needs and concerns of the Muslim community." In these elections, the MAB has also endorsed George Galloway, the former Labour MP who became famous after allegations surfaced that he supported Saddam Hussein.

Still the Liberal Democrats have not been entirely bereft of Islamic fundamentalist support. Another extremist group, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPACUK), which also equivocates on terrorism and indulges in anti-Semitism, has come forward to help the Liberal Democrats. The MPACUK has published a list of Jews in the media originally put together by "journalist" Jeffrey Blankfort and posted on the al-Jazeera.info website. Muslims who attempt to build bridges with other faiths are vilified by the MPACUK, which gives Muslims who attend Holocaust Day memorials the label "uncle tom."

In April, the MPACUK was revealed to have distributed leaflets in the provincial English town of Rochdale attacking the sitting Labour member of parliament, Lorna Fitzsimmons, as "an ardent Zionist and a member of the most powerful anti-Muslim lobby in the world, the Israeli lobby." According to the MPACUK, "She has done nothing to help the Palestinians. Why? Because she is a Jewish member of the Labour Friends of Israel." The MPACUK therefore called on Muslims to back the Liberal Democrat candidate in Rochdale, Paul Rowen, who has admitted to meeting with MPACUK activists. Once the anti-Semitism was reported, both the Liberal Democrats and the MPACUK partially distanced themselves from the leaflet. The MPACUK website nonetheless described the journalist who broke the story, Jonathan Oliver of The Mail on Sunday, as a "pro-Israeli journalist."

Although the Liberal Democrats have taken the manipulation of minority identity for political gain to new lengths and depths, the dangers of sectarian politics were evident before Iraq. Labour and Conservative members of parliament shamelessly courted the Greek Cypriot community, which has an important presence in key North London seats before the 1997 general election and which provides free "fact finding" trips to the sunny Mediterranean island. That strategy backfired spectacularly during the Kosovo war in 1999 when many Greek Cypriots openly supported Slobodan Milosevic.

The Liberal Democrats' willingness to ally themselves with illiberal groups has damaged the integrity of British democracy and licensed the extreme views of a noisy minority of British Muslims. Britain has generally had an excellent record of integrating immigrants, an achievement made all the more remarkable because of the absence of any official policy of integration. Integration is one of Britain's most powerful weapons against the terrorists. The damage done by the Liberal Democrats will be felt for years to come.

— Andrew Apostolou works at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

Bush Does Not Get It (10) Stop Bolton

"If I were redoing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world." John Bolton, President Bush’s nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations, speaking on National Public Radio with Juan Williams, 2000.

Iraq (and the US and UK for that matter) badly need the United Nations to play a much fuller role in the reconstruction and democratisation of Iraq. And quickly. Yet President Bush’s has nominated John Bolton as the USA’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Read these quotes. Each is testimony to why the neocons don’t get it. Lets hope the campaign to Stop Bolton is successful. (AJ)

Reconstructing Iraq (13): “Wasta”

Wasta is an Arabic word meaning influence or connections. Hisham Muhammed at IWPR reports from Mosul on an example of how “wasta” is damaging the reconstruction of Iraq. ‘Nofal Adil, who has an electronics diploma, found that his lack of connections worked against him when applying for a job under the CPA’s employment programme. He said that he and a friend applied three times but “we were not accepted because we didn’t have any wasta”’. (AJ)

The Story Behind a Photograph

Michael Yon explains how he came to take this iconic photograph in Mosul.

Support Iraqi unions

Friday May 6, 2005, Guardian Letters

Some Iraqis (Letters, May 4) remind voters about the negative consequences of the war, which I and my colleagues also opposed. But positive changes are taking place in Iraq. Unions were repressed brutally by Saddam Hussein. Now a small clandestine network has been turned into a federation with more than 200,000 members. We want the same things as British people do and are trying - through political pressure, as part of the democratic process being supervised by the UN, negotiations with employers and strike action, where necessary - to improve workers' pay and conditions, as part of a new civil society that is determined to build a united, federal, secular and democratic Iraq and end military and economic occupation.

We are the real democratic resistance, not those who seek to foment sectarian civil war and who target trade unionists for murder and intimidation. With solidarity from the British and international labour movement, our free unions can help isolate them and unite Iraqis for social justice in a sovereign Iraq.

Abdullah Muhsin, Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions

Blogging Iraq (6)

Akbar asks which side are you on?

All persons alike

Aristotle said that “If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost’. So take a look at these pictures
and then get out to vote. (AJ)

Securing Iraq (10) Irbil Massacre shows the fascist nature of the Iraqi ‘resistance’

"We launched upon them this heroic lion who broke through all their fortified checkpoints to blow up his car amid this group of infidels. There was a huge explosion which ripped their bodies apart and killed more than 80 infidels," read the statement of Army of Ansar al-Sunna the ‘resistance’ group claiming responsibility for the suicide bombing that has killed 60 in Irbil yesterday. (AJ)

Unionising Iraq (5) US anti-war movement Sends May Day Greetings to Iraqi Labour

The IFTU website carries the following from US Labour against the War. “You have faced extreme violence, and the assassination of your leaders, without succumbing to fear, terror and intimidation. In the face of all these challenges you have remained courageously resolute in your commitment to a peaceful, democratic and just multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Iraq. You deserve the congratulations and support of unions and workers throughout the world for your efforts”. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Stop the War Coalition to send a similar message. (AJ)