Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2008

Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq (Dec 24)

Amritsar, India (Dec 24)

Zimbabwe Embassy, London (Dec 20)

Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2007

Um Salomona, West Bank

Baghdad, Iraq

Kabul, Afghanistan

Fuck the War!

The delightfully named "Fuck the War Coalition!" have claimed responsibility for spraying anti-war slogans and breaking windows at the US Consulate in Edinburgh. The incident follows similar actions at an armed forces recruitment centre in the city and the offices of the pro-war MPs Alistair Darling and Nigel Griffiths.

Where did it all go wrong?

"To understand the significance of this, it’s worth reminding oneself of who Sadr and his supporters are. While generally portrayed as violent anti-Sunni and anti-American extremists (the first charge is certainly true of many of them and the second is silly – being anti-American in Iraq is not extreme), Sadr and his supporters were also among the biggest victims of Saddam Hussein. Sadr’s great-uncle, great-aunt, father, and two elder brothers were murdered by Saddam’s regime. His followers, largely the poor, uneducated and downtrodden among Iraq’s Shi’a majority, were, along with the Kurds, Saddam’s biggest victims – especially in 1991, when Saddam put down their uprising with the aid of our current president’s sainted - or perhaps merely beatified - father.

"Nobody, except possibly the Kurds, should have felt happier about the removal of Saddam. Nobody should have been easier to win over to the Americans’ side if the slightest attention had ever been paid to ordinary Iraqis and their desires. Instead, nobody but the constantly brutalized residents of al-Anbar province in Western Iraq is a more implacable enemy of the United States."

-Rahul Mahajan

Who said (about the captured British marines), "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated"?

Tell me about it

This (via) was taken at the United for Peace and Justice demo in NYC on Saturday.

Who you calling yellow?

The General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW, formerly the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions) is the largest trade union federation in Iraq. Established in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq by a number of parties, notably the Iraqi Communist Party, it is ostensibly opposed to the occupation, but has on many occasions worked with the occupiers. Most notoriously, in 2004, IFTU representative Abdullah Muhsin intervened in a debate at the Labour Party conference in order to forestall calls for a withdrawal of troops.

Unfortunately for the GFIW, the occupiers seem less than impressed with their complaisance. Although they have been given exclusive rights to unionise public sector workers in the country, they have been unable to overturn the various anti-union legislation imposed by the new regime. At the end of last month, US troops further demonstrated their commitment to democratic principles by raiding GFIW's headquarters. According to the union's official statement:

On 23 February, American and Iraqi forces raided the head office of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) and arrested one of the Union security staff.

This unprovoked attack resulted in the destruction of furniture, the confiscation of a computer and fax machine and the arrest of employee who was released unharmed later same day.

The same force repeated this unprovoked attack on 25 February and caused further damage.

The unfortunate reality for GFIW is that, whatever their position vis-à-vis the occupation, they remain a barrier to US/UK efforts to neoliberalise Iraq by force, privatising its resources and handing over control of key industries to western companies. Almost by definition workers' organisation poses a threat to profit margins and hence cannot be allowed to take place outside very tight constraints. (Recall that totalitarian regimes, including Ba'athist Iraq, often use state-run unions as a further tool of control.)

Whatever your position on the occupation - or for that matter formal unionism - I think the emergence of a nascent civil society in Iraq, whatever its flaws, is a positive development. It offers hope that Iraq may not be doomed to perpetual suffering, as I sometimes fear in my more pessimistic moments.

You can send an appropriately strongly worded letter of protest here.

March into March

Saturday's demonstration against the occupation of Iraq and the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile system was a nice day out. Particularly because I'd decided to go down by train rather than coach which meant I didn't have to get up at some godforsaken hour. Estimating numbers at these things is notoriously difficult. Jim puts the figure (albeit tentatively) at or near 100,000, although I suspect that's a bit high, but there were certainly a lot of people, as you can see:The march followed the traditional route, running from Speakers' Corner, down Park Lane, up Piccadily to Piccadily Circus, down Haymarket and then into Trafalgar Square where people congregated for speakers and assorted stalls. I've been to lots of these things and long ago stopped paying much attention to the speakers, most of whom simply recounted the reasons why I was there. Which I already knew. Mark Thomas, however, was very good as you can see for yourselves courtesy of MyTube:

I took various photos, most of them not very good, some which you can find over on my Flickr acount. There also seem to have been a surprising number of bloggers present, not that I ran into any of them, including Davide Simonette, Jim, Lenny and Rachel, all of whom have written up their experiences in case you're interested.

Labouring under delusions

The other night I was invited to a Labour Against the War meeting in Nottingham. As the event was limited to Labour Party members and their friends, I had to pretend to be Tom's friend, although I suppose that's better than having to pretend to be a party member. Entry requirements aside, the event provided an interesting insight into the plight of deluded progressive elements within the party.

Maya Evans and Milan Rai from Justice Not Vengeance (neither of whom are party members as far as I'm aware) discussed the burdgeoning conflict with Iran and the ongoing assault on our civil liberties. As ever Mil was incisive and informative. Maya ran through territory with which I am more familiar, but her personal experiences (she was the first person arrested under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 after she read out the names of the dead in Iraq outside Downing Street) were something I hadn't heard before.

Mohammed Azam from the National Assembly Against Racism arrived late after getting lost in the Meadows. Once he got underway he laid into the BNP and urged party members to make anti-racism central to their campaigning. While none of this was particularly disagreeable, it equally didn't strike me as particularly original.

Christine Shawcroft from the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) meanwhile hit all the right notes on Iran and Trident, but decided to couple that with the hoary old cliche about "reclaiming the party," even encouraging people to rejoin "for peace." It would presumably be churlish to point out here that the combined forces of the nine people in the audience (of whom I was one) is likely to be insufficient to reclaim anything more impressive than the local bus shelter. Not that this seemed to lessen Christine's apparently boundless enthusiasm.

The key-note speaker was to have been Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Notingham South. He's always an interesting speaker and I'd figured he'd be even more so following his announcement over the weekend that he was standing down as an MP. Unfortunately, Alan was defeated by the complexities of the British public transport system, i.e. he got of at the wrong station and missed the meeting entirely.

My conclusion at the end of the evening was that the reclamation of the Labour Party is dead in the water. It's time to put the old girl out of her misery. This isn't a great surprise to me, but I hope it gave some of the people there pause for thought.

Drive like bad wind

(via)

The Big Comeback

Bush's troop "surge," which will see a further 22,000 US troops dispatched to Iraq, has attracted a great deal of attention. I've been particularly surprised with the finality which commentators have described the plan. The gambit is, the corporate media tell us, "one final effort to pacify Baghdad and the western Sunni badlands"; a "last-ditch" plan; Bush's "final gamble." Somehow I'm not convinced.

Does anybody honestly believe that when surging fails to stem the insurgency (as it almost inevitably will) Bush is simply going to turn around and say, "OK, I was wrong, let's go home now"? This has the same degree of finality as a Kiss Farewell Tour. You know full well they'll be back in a year or two, looking slightly worse for wear - perhaps with one less member of the original band (or coalition), but still wheeling out the big hits.

I suppose hoping it's almost over is rather less depressing.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

So we can add Saddam to the list of bloodthirsty dictators who've finally shuffled off this mortal coil over the past year. While I'm not going to shed any tears for the mass-murdering fuck, I happen to think his execution was a mistake.

While many Iraqis seem happy to see the back of Saddam, this isn't the universal response. There were protests in Samarra, Ramadi and Adwar and gunmen on the streets of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. The excution did nothing to halt the ongoing insurgency, with explosions occuring in Baghdad and Kufa within hours of the former dictator's death. Anyone who thinks the execution will reduce violence is living in cloud-cuckoo land. If anything, it's only going to make matters worse (bear in mind how bad things already are in Iraq).

I am steadfastly opposed to the death penalty, which I consider a brutal, inhumane form of punishment. Nevertheless, if there's anybody who deserves to hang it's surely Saddam. In fact the focus on his sentence has obscured the Iraqi government's increasing use of the death penalty following its reinstatement in 2004. Amnesty estimated on December 20 that 53 people had been executed since the start of the year (that's presumably now 54, if not more). Many of these trials have large question marks hanging over them. None have received even a fraction of the attention focused on Saddam's case.

My substantive argument against Saddam's execution, however, is a pragmatic one. While he was actually hung for his responsibility for a massacre in Dujail in 1982 which took place after a botched assasination attempt, Saddam went to the gallows in the middle of a further trial for his part in the Al-Anfal campaign. This brutal and infamous campaign saw the deaths thousands of Kurds (estimates vary from 50,000-182,000) and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more. Given the severity of these charges and their emotional potency, the haste with which Saddam was dispatched strikes me as strange. Why not continue the trial?

Facing up to past crimes is an important step in countries which have witnessed regime change following periods of extreme violence, whether as a result of civil war or dictatorship. Brushing these issues under the carpet will only leave wounds to fester which may explode at some point in the future. One can debate whether Saddam's trial - with its limited legitimacy and apparent preference for retribution over justice - is the best way to achieve this, but by killing Saddam the process will become that much more difficult. The romanticisation of the dead is hardly an unfamiliar process. (For an academic survey of different approaches to addressing past wrongs, check out this pdf.)

Executing Saddam has also got all those people who helped him off the hook. We've managed to avoid any embarrassing incidents with Donald Rumsfeld being called to testify on his visit to Saddam in 1983; or Douglas Hurd being quizzed on his trip to Iraq to sell missile systems in 1981. Our own culpability in his reign of terror, to say nothing of our subsequent campaign of state terrorism and siege warfare against the country from 1991 onwards can be quietly pushed to one side. The Bad Man is dead. What are you loooking at us for?

What happens next?

It's almost the end of the year, so what better time to stick my neck out and make largely baseless/self-evident assertions about what's going to happen in the coming year?

Firstly, the situation in Iraq is going to continue to deteriorate, but the US and UK will not withdraw. It's possible that the occupying forces may increasingly be able to retreat to their barracks, as control is handed to Iraqi prixies, but this is far from guaranteed. Even if this does take place, the widespread criminal violence (kidnappings etc.) and burdgeoning civil war will go on, possibly extending to Iraqi Kurdistan which has hitherto remained relatively peaceful.

Afghanistan will in all likelihood suffer a similar threat. Having re-emerged as a major threat over the past year, the "neo-Taliban" are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Again it's hard to imagine a US/UK withdrawal, although a steadily rising death toll amongst British and American forces may weaken support for the war.

In Palestine there's little sign that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, caused by extended Israeli closures and international sanctions, is going to be resolved anytime soon. While the "international community" have suggested that sanctions will be lifted once the Hamas government are removed from power, Mahmoud Abbas' calls for new elections may backfire. If Hamas decide to boycott them, then they'll have little legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian population and if Hamas do decide to run, it's entirely possible they'll win again, perhaps even more convincingly. Either way, I fear we're a long way from stability in the Occupied Territories, let alone a serious Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

The conflict in Darfur will continue, inspite of the peace deal between some rebel groups and the government in Khartoum. While we may see a UN presence in the region, I don't think the kind of large scale western intervention which some liberals support is anymore likely next year than it has been over the last few. Perhaps the most worrying trend visible in the Darfur situation, is its transformation into a regional conflagration incorporating local conflicts in neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic. If this continues, as seems likely, it will serve to make any peace deal all the more complicated to acheive.

On a slightly more positive note, I continue to believe a major assault on Iran is unlikely. The US and UK might well like to attack the country, but bit off more than they could chew in Iraq and will find themselves under increasing pressure in Afghanistan. Similarly, the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of last August will surely have discouraged the more hawkish Israelis. No doubt western powers will try to use the recently established UN sanctions regime to put pressure on Ahmadinejad. They may even supplement this approach with covert action, perhaps through the Islamist-Marxist People's Mujahedin, who have previously received US support, despite being designated a "Foreign Terrorist Organisation," by the US State Department. If we keep looking for the big attack or even an invasion, we may miss these smaller and less obvious interventions.

Back in Blighty I think it's safe to say we're going to see the attack on our civil liberties continue. The introduction of ID cards will begin in earnest with 69 interrogation centres being opened sometime in 2007. After calls from senior police officers for bans on flag burning, and the power to proscribe chants as well slogans on placards, banners and headbands, I'd be less than surprised if at least some of these suggestions found their way into legislation over the coming year. Even children won't escape this, with the expansion of fingerprinting in schools and the establishment of the Children's Index.

As pessimistic as the foregoing sounds, it isn't all going to be bad. I promise. It's just that bad things are easier to predict with any degree of certainty. We do know that by this time next year, Blair will be gone, even if we're not entirely sure when he's planning on going (place your bets here), so at least there's that to look forward to. I also believe that none of the foregoing is inevitable. History shows that if people get themselves organised in sufficient numbers, governments have to sit up and pay attention. (On which note I predict the Save the NHS campaign is going to be one of the big movements of next year.) The future really is in our hands. I just wish we didn't seem so butter fingered.

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

Kabul, Afghanistan

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Basra, Iraq