Big Sticks and Small Carrots

Yet more violence in Iraq today. Today’s Washington Post makes grim reading.

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week’s bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis [update on this below], making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad’s main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
…

Claiming the dead has become automated. Morgue workers directed families to a barred window in the narrow courtyard outside the main entrance. A computer screen angled to face the window flashed the contorted, staring faces of the dead: men shot in the mouth, men shot in the head, men covered with blood, men with bindings twisted around their necks.

Men and a few women in black abayas pressed up to the window’s black bars as the reek of the bodies inside spilled out.

Is is impossible for a pampered westerner like myself to fully grasp the horrors of it. This merely offers a tiny glimpse into the sheer inhumanity of the situation. News reports today, even from Sky News, are reporting that Iraq is on the brink of civil war (Tim Marshall for Sky reported that the “country teeters on the brink” and that this is “the most dangerous period for four years”.) In an interview with James Rubin on Sky, Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, the man who would be king, said that historians will judge that the civil war started in 2005, not 2006. His view was that the media had failed to accurately report the scale of the tit-for-tat sectarian killings which have been going on for months. It may be an exaggeration to say that civil war has already started but the seriousness of the crisis is not in question.

The ICG report on Iraq says that the crisis could yet be controlled but warns that:

[R]egrettable though it is that this is necessary, the international community, including neighbouring states, should start planning for the contingency that Iraq will fall apart, so as to contain the inevitable fall-out on regional stability and security. Such an effort has been a taboo, but failure to anticipate such a possibility may lead to further disasters in the future.

Over the course of the last three years, many Iraqi leaders, political and religious, have made enormous efforts to try to prevent the break up of Iraq. And, genuinely, there are some truly heroic people in Iraq trying to maintain peace and stability. The many honest Iraqi election officials, working for democracy despite the death threats, are an insperation to us all.

The sectarian tensions, however, are not going away. On the contrary, every attack puts further pressure on already strained relationships. The bombing of the al-Askari shrine, and the reaction to it, will have a lasting impact on Shi’ites and Sunnis.

Yesterday, I noted that the clerics and religious Shi’ites of the UIA are the key to defusing the crisis. These Shi’ites are continually being attacked and sometimes killed by Sunni extremists and those extremists have suspected links to the Sunni political groups. To illustrate the difficulties the Shi’ites would have in compromising, here’s a not perfect analogy. How likely is it that the Ulster Unionists would agree to a powersharing arrangment with Sinn Fein at a time when the IRA was still actively conducting it’s “armed struggle” against unionists in Northern Ireland? This is obviously not a straight comparison but it does give some idea of the scale of the problem.

Like the IGC, I don’t think all-out civil war is inevitable. (Unlike them, I have my doubts as to whether the continuing presence of US and UK troops is going to make any difference one way or the other though. More on that another time.) But civil war is an ever growing possibility. We are relying on the Shi’ites to compromise at at time when we, faced with a similar situation, almost certainly would not.

It is hard to know whether the coalition has contingencies in place to deal with the disintegration of Iraq if it does happen. They certainly should have but, at the moment, it’d obviously not be helpful for them to reveal any such plans. Realpolitik, and indeed just plain old politics, means that any planning for this contingency must be conducted in secret. We, the public, must trust that our elected representatives are acting in a competant and professional manner and have prepared for this eventuality.

That’s a problem, of course. For those who opposed the war, the idea that we should trust our governments to act in this way is a joke which has long since ceased being funny. Even among those who support the war, there seems to be a growing acceptance that both the planning and the implementation of the policy has been very badly handled. Do you trust them to be able to plan for and implement an effective strategy against this scenario?

Any attempt to suggest that the incompetence and mismanagement of the UK and US governments is partly responsible for creating this situation will be met with howls of indignation in some quarters. The howls are, I presume, meant to drown out an uncomfortable truth. Iraq is today, after almost three years of inept coalition occupation*, very close to civil war.

We must hope that it doesn’t some to that. For many Iraqis, it already has.

Update
The 1,300 deaths reported by the WaPo may be questionable. Aljazeera report that Baghdad’s main morgue has received 309 bodies since Wednesday. The BBC report that the Iraqi government, apparently in response to the WaPo claim, has announced an official death toll of around 400. Not a pleasant topic of conversation.

* It appears that some people dispute that the current situation is an occupation. Technically that may be true. To most Iraqis, I suspect it would also be considered to be sophistry of the highest order.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq

Auntie makes me laugh sometimes. I’d just watched a BBC news report on the continuing problem of child obesity in the UK and logged on to blog about it. Right, start at the BBC homepage. Mmm… pancakes.

Totally disrupted by chain of thought actually. They do look awfully tasty.

Anyway, fat kids. Parents obviously have a responsibility. And government should not have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into agreeing to do something about improving the nutritional value of school dinners (in England. The Scottish Executive did something like this a wee while back). And they should obviously do more to promote physical exercise in schools. And the media…

Ach, it’s no use. I’m off to the kitchen. I think there’s some ice cream in the freezer.

Tags: News, Politics, Health

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has released a report on the situation in Iraq*.

Iraqi political actors and the international community must act urgently to prevent a low-intensity conflict from escalating into an all-out civil war that could lead to Iraq’s disintegration and destabilize the entire region.

The report argues that there is still the possibility that all-out civil war can be prevented. It offers policy recommendations designed to prevent the disintegration of the country. As listed by CNN and Reuters, the report:

1. Calls for changes to the constitution Iraqi voters adopted in October that would foster the inclusion of Sunni Arabs.
2. Warns against provisions that allow for the creation of a Shiite autonomous region in southern Iraq and calls for “establishing administrative federalism on the basis of provincial boundaries”
3. Calls for a fair distribution of Iraq’s oil wealth and the creation of an independent agency to prevent corruption.
4. Urges the United States to continue to push for national unity, promote a constitution that ensures inclusiveness to all and help build up Iraq’s security forces.
5. Recommends that U.S. troop withdrawals should be “gradual” and must take into account the country’s progress in politics and developing indigenous troops.
6. Urged Iraqi leaders to disband militias and crack down on security forces who commit human rights abuses.

In short, the religious Shi’ite leaders have got to give concessions.

Most Shi’ite politicians favour the federal constitution, and the associated distribution of oil wealth, for obvious reasons. They maintain that it has been approved by referendum and that only minor alterations will be considered. (Al-Sadr, interestingly, does not like it. I suspect that’s got a lot to do with his pretentions of grandeur. He reckons he could be the leader of unified Iraqi. No-one in the coalition will be claiming a victory if that ever happens though.) The Shi’ite politicians won the most seat in the election and, quite understandably, expect to be the dominant power in the new government.

What carrots can be offered to the Shi’ites to persuade them to give ground on these issues? There is, it seems to me, only one. If they make concessions, it might prevent civil war and the disintegration of Iraq. That’s really all that can be offered and it is, it appears, in the balance.

Do the religious Shi’ite leaders want to keep Iraq together? At this juncture, it is worth pointing out that, for all that factions of the UIA have links to Iran, most Iraqis do have a strong sense of an Iraqi identity. The religious Shi’ites don’t want to be part of Greater Iran; what they want is to be an independent country with friendly relations with their Persian Shi’ite neighbours. It is this Iraqi nationalism, in large part, which has kept the conflict in check.

But that nationalism is being damaged by the long steady rise of (already existing) sectarian tensions since the fall of Saddam. Will the religious Shi’ites be content to play but one part in a unified Iraq? Will they cede powers which they believe are rightfully theirs to Sunni groups in the hope that this will provide stability? Or will they now prefer to keep the powers they have gained, even if that means civil war? In crude terms, that is the decision they must make.

As for disbanding the militias, the ministry of defence is talking a good game.

Director of operations Maj Gen Abdul Aziz Jasim said anyone carrying weapons who was not in the legitimate security forces would be treated as a terrorist.

But that, it should be obvious, is bluster, not a sustainable position. Iraq is chock full of armed militias (and indeed just people with AK 47’s). If these militias resist disarmament, the situation would descend into chaos in short order. The only way to disband the militias is to persuade those who belong to them and those who control them that it is in their best interest. As above, this is primarily a decision for religious Shi’ite leaders. Will they agree to disband the militias in the current security environment?

The country, and possibly the stability of the region, is very much in their hands.

* I’d normally have a look for the report on the IGC website but as I write this, it’s broken. Visitor overload, most likely.

Tags: News, Iraq

Here’s a taste of how al-Sadr is looking to unite the Iraqi people and calm sectarian tensions after the bloodshed of recent days (translated by Juan Cole and worth reading in full):

Do not forget the plotting of the Occupation, for if we forget its plots, it will kill us all without exception. Sometimes they curse the Messenger of God [Muhammad] and defame him [with their cartoons], and sometimes they blow up our Imams. This series of attacks is not the first and it will not be the last. The attacks will continue. Beware, and be responsible. Religion is your responsibility, mosques are your responsibility, the Muslim people is your responsibility, so do not attack the secure houses of God. Love one another and be brethren of one another so that our Iraq will be secure and stable and independent. We want the expulsion of the Occupier and not the American ambassador.

Great stuff. We may yet unite Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Unfortunately, our troops might be the enemy they unite against. Al-Sadr, in the style of Bush’s mythical Saddam/Osama/Sep 11th connection, has decided that he’s going to insinuate that the US attacked the shrine. When an enemy uses fictional allegations to further his own political agenda, can you still say that’s wrong if you’ve done it yourself? I’m not sure.

By the way, he’s not defending the US ambassador if you’re wondering. Some Iraqis are calling for Khalilzad to leave. Al-Sadr wants all “occupiers” to leave with him.

Some other stuff about the clerics.

New York Times (via): Younger Clerics Showing Power in Iraq’s Unrest

American officials have been repeatedly stunned and frequently thwarted in the past three years by the extraordinary power of Muslim clerics over Iraqi society. But in the sectarian violence of the past few days, that power has taken an ominous turn, as rival hard-line Shiite clerical factions have pushed each other toward more militant and anti-American stances, Iraqi and Western officials say.

Houston Cronicle: Crisis puts al-Sadr at Forefront

The message was clear: al-Sadr controls the streets in much of the country, and no agreement to restore order has a chance of success unless he signs off on it. No major Shiite figure, including the country’s top cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani himself, would at this point challenge al-Sadr openly.

Reuters: Iraqi Sunni, Shi’ite groups meet on violence

Sharaa [al-Sadr spokescleric] blamed the U.S. occupation for acts designed to spread sectarian tensions and called for American troops to leave Iraq or set a timetable for withdrawal.

The Detroit News: Clerics wield the real power

Rarely since the U.S.-led invasion have Iraq’s politicians appeared so insignificant and its religious clergy loomed so large as in the aftermath of the bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Few Iraqis paid attention to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other leaders of political parties who called for calm. But many winced or smiled as the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the paramount Shiite leader here, issued an unusually bellicose statement suggesting it was time for “the faithful” to protect religious sites — an apparent endorsement of militias.

Others listened to every word uttered and watched every gesture made by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, as he rushed from Lebanon back to Iraq after the explosion.

The political dominance of clerics on both sides of the Shiite-Sunni divide marks a dramatic reversal of 85 years of secular rule in Iraq.

Tags: News, Iraq

The PMOS has said that the PM fully supports Tessa Jowell. He said that “Peter Mandleson, Peter Mandleson, Geoffrey Robinson, Keith Vaz, Stephen Byers, David Blunkett, David Blunkett, Tessa Jowell has said that she believes that she hasn’t done anything that conflicts with her interests as secretary of state and she’s kept within the ministerial code”.

Do you think she screamed “NOOOOOO!” when she heard that?

I truth, I haven’t the faintest idea whether she’s on her way out. Here’s the Sunday Times article. If the allegations are true, it’s hard to see how she could survive. In fact, if they are true, my understanding is that she may have committed a criminal offence. I think, under money laundering legislation, you have a responsibility to ensure that you do not handle illegal money. The “I didn’t know” defence wouldn’t be available because the law explicitly states that you have a duty to make sure you do know. I think. But that is all just speculation at this stage.

Potential scandals aside, is it just me or is it just plain wrong for a Labour minister to be married to an “expert in off-shore tax avoidance vehicles”? I seem to vaguely remember that politicians used to have these things called principles. It’s been so long now, and I can’t remember exactly what they were for, but I have a feeling that at some point in the past they might have been relevant to this. It just doesn’t seem right somehow.

On the other hand, this feeling of “wrongness” might just be another symptom of my refusal to understand the modern world. Who can tell?

Tags: News, Politics, Tessa Jowell, Media

Oh look everyone. A nice juicy bone. Now wag your tails like the obedient little dogs you are.

Looking on the bright side, perhaps this shows that they are listening. They might actually introduce some useful Lords reforms. Given their track record, you’ll forgive me if I don’t start celebrating just yet though. And Lords reform is only a small part of the problem.

On the wider issue, here’s a test for any die hard Labour people who doesn’t understand why people are so concerned with the government’s attitude towards civil liberties. Let’s look at the last election campaign. Remember this?

If Michael Howard wanted to hold suspects for 90 days without charge, what would you say? If Michael Howard wanted to construct an enormous national register to store the personal information of everyone in the country, what would you say? If Michael Howard insisted that you must apply to the powers that be for permission (at least a week in advance) if you want to hold a demonstration outside parliament, what would you say?

Worse still, what if it was Thatcher? (I’m pretty much in agreement with Pete, but this is for those who are not.) Would it be a good idea to have given Thatcher these powers?

The essential point is that legislation outlasts government. No-one knows exactly what sort of Prime Minister we might elect in the future. One of the essential duties of any parliament is to legislate with this in mind. It can be summed up a couple of questions.

Could this legislation, which we are passing into law today, make it easier for a future wannabe dictator to subvert the democratic process? Have we made sure that there are suitable safeguards in this bill to combat this possibility to the best of our ability?

All too often, this government has failed to ask these questions when legislating away key freedoms and protections. They display not even a hint of understanding of the law of unintended consequence.

And this leaves very many people asking that same question: ignorance or mendacity? At the moment, I’ve got them at around 8/3 on the ignorance/mendacity ratio. I suspect there are many others who would not be so generous.

And talking of other people, Tim Neale has a good look at Blair’s nonsense. MatGB has collected a few more. And Tim Worstall goes for a broad view.

Update
As rightly pointed out by Bloggers4Labour in the comments, I did them an injustice by using their site for the “Labour” link above in the way that I have. I offer my apologies.

Tags: News, Politics, Lords Reform, Civil Liberty, Tony Blair

Try to stay calm when you read these pearls of wisdom from our prime minister. It will not, I fear, be easy.

There is a charge, crafted by parts of the right wing and now taken up by parts of the left, that New Labour is authoritarian, in particular, that I am. We are intent on savaging British liberties, locking up those who dissent and we abhor parliamentary or other accountability.

Right wing conspiracy? Try here. Or here. Accepting that you’ve go a problem is the first step towards dealing with it. Blair is clearly in denial.

An interlude about personality politics. It is clear that Blair has decided on a strategy to try to deal with the many criticisms of him personally. In short, the strategy is to claim that these criticisms come from people who are obsessed with personality politics and do not care about real politics and policy issues. The implication is that their criticisms are petty and irrelevant. This is classic Blair.

Rather than dealing with the issues, he deflects attention by misrepresenting the criticisms which come his way. Let me spell it out. Blair has centralised keys powers to an enormous degree. To take one example, Blair’s twelve point plan to tackle terrorism was launched when the Home Secretary was on holiday. It is abundantly clear that, despite Clarke’s feeble protestations, this twelve point plan came primarily from Downing Street, not the Home Office. It was even announced by the PM rather than the Home Secretary.

If the twelve point plan had been a good one, Blair would have received only limited criticism for stepping on the toes of the Home Secretary. But, to be blunt, it was a shit plan. The criticisms have come from left, right and centre. They are motivated, in very many cases, by extreme concerns over real policy issues. And they are often directed at Blair. Because we all know that it was his plan. Not the Home Office’s plan and certainly not the government’s plan. It was Tony’s shit plan.

Blair has intentionally sought to impose his will on every aspect of the proposals which have come from his government and he has succeeded to a large degree. Almost every government policy produced over the last eight years has been a reflection of the inner workings of the mind of Anthony Charles Linton Blair. For him to then claim that criticisms of him personally are an irrelevance is just typical his lack of regard for the realities of a situation.

But back to Blair’s, yes Blair’s, systematic destruction of civil liberties and his defence of that destruction. The key line is this one:

The question is not one of individual liberty vs the state but of which approach best guarantees most liberty for the largest number of people.

It is another classic Blair strategy. The question *is* one of individual liberty vs the state. If you read the article you’ll see that at no point does he address concerns regarding the dangers involved in granting too much power to the state. Just pretending that this isn’t a problem doesn’t really add much to a grown up debate.

Instead, Blair relies on his old fall back, the fear factor - “Do as I say unless you want the the country overrun by antisocial Islamic mafia extremist criminals.” Not good enough, not by a long shot. A perfect illustration of authoritarianism, in fact.

What’s possibly more worrying is that, while I’m almost certain that Blair doesn’t realise it, there are distinct facist undertones here. The state will guarantee your liberty to live your life in the way that the state demands. For the good of the nation.

Blair isn’t a facist. He is, I suspect, ignorant as to exactly what facism is. He certainly doesn’t understand that a government official with unrestricted power poses a greater danger to our society than a disaffected youth in a hoodie or a terrorist.

Btw, I did notice that the word “civil” appears only once in this article. Hence title of this post. The debate is being moved on focus onthe liberties which the government choose to grant us out of the goodness of their hearts. Gee, thanks. And here we was me thinking I had certain inalienable civil liberties. Like the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. Turns out I only get that if the government generously allows it. Who would have thought?

Tags: News, Politics, Tony Blair, Civil Liberty

We don’t win that many. This made me happy.

Tags: Sport

Friday has always been the Bush administration’s favourite day for releasing news they’d rather people didn’t pay any attention to. Here’s the perfect demonstration of this in practice, via CNN.

The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.

The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.

So, just to get this straight, nearly three years after the invasion, there is today not one single Iraqi battalion which the US military believes can operate without it’s assistance. That’s what I call progess. It’s like Dubya said; as Iraqi forces stand up, we will stand down.

There are those who would believe that I’m happy to relate news like this, that “stoppers” love to see bad news from Iraq. I can’t speak for anyone else but I can speak for myself. For me, far from being happy at news like this, the incompetance of the coalition’s handling of post-invasion Iraq makes me exceedingly angry. The UK and US government’s now, after the event, claim that the welfare of the Iraqi people is the main goal of the invasion and occupation. But the mistakes made by the coalition, and there have been many, have made the situation far more difficult for Iraqis than might have been the case. The post-invasion years have been riven with coalition incompetence, scandal and abuse, corruption, poor military tactics, and just plain stupidity.

One of the reasons I opposed the invasion was because I thought neither Bush nor Blair understood how difficult the post-war period would be. Mission Accomplished? Idiocy. And this incompetance continues. It is not us in the West, with our secure neighbourhoods, and our 24 hours of constant electricity, who are paying for this incompetance; it is the people of Iraq. Those who claim to support the Iraqi people would do well to remember that they do them a disservice when they ignore the coalition failures which are ruining their lives and their future.

Whatever happens in Iraq from now on, and I genuinely hope that things improve dramatically, the leaders who took us to war without having anything like a workable plan to build the peace must, in my view, be held to account.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq