Even by the usual standards of Home Office casuistry you’d have to go some to top Liam Byrne’s current article on Comment is Free, which he also manages to drop right in the middle of week long debate on the politics of race and identity.

Deporting illegal migrants is not populist, apparently, its ‘progressive’ - and to prove the point he notes that:

Immigration is either one or two on the public’s issue list, depending on which poll you read.

…which looks rather like a populist argument, doesn’t it.

It’s also, apparently, definitely NOT ’some kind of craven pandering to a tabloid agenda’.

So we can be sure that Liam hasn’t noticed today’s headline in the Daily Express, ‘55,000 Migrants Claiming Benefits’.

Of course, as is invariably the case when it comes to the screamsheets, things aren’t always quite what they appear, as once one gets past the usual tendentious bollocks at the start of the article:

AROUND 55,000 East Europeans who have flooded into Britain to work are getting millions of pounds a year in benefits.

More than one in 10 Lithuanians, Poles - like those pictured arriving at London’s Victoria coach station - and others are receiving state handouts.

One finds that the actual breakdown of benefit claimants from Eastern Europe is…

35,448 receiving child benefit at up to £17.45 a week…

…which is, of course, a universal benefit paid to all families with children under the age of 16.

According to the most recent statistics from HM Revenue & Customs, 7.4 million families currently receive child benefit for a total of 13.2 million children, and as one suspects that the figure of 35,448 cited by the Express is the number of children for which child benefit is being claimed and not the number families making claims, this amounts to a staggering 0.26% of the total number of children for whom child benefit is paid.

Wow, that’s really going to put the system under major strain.

17,512 getting tax credits which could be between £1,365 a year for a single worker and £5,300 a year for a couple with children.

The operative phrase here being ‘worker’ as someone doing a low paid job.

There are also 353 in line for income support (at £57.45 a week), 859 in line for jobseeker’s allowance (also at £57.45 a week) and 32 in line for state pension credit (at £43.55 a week).

So, out of 510,000 migrant workers who’ve entered the UK from Eastern Europe since 2004, a whole 1212 are currently unemployed and ‘in line’ for receiving welfare benefits… possibly… maybe… look, what ‘in-line’ actually means is not that they’re actually receiving benefits but that they’ve made a claim which has been allowed to progress through the system to be assessed, i.e. they’ve not been turned down automatically as being ineligible for benefits outright.
Council housing is also being provided for whole 128 migrants and local authorities are providing housing support for a further 524 - one would guess this to mean simply helping them find somewhere to live.

So a quick bit of maths shows that out of 510,000 migrants, less that 20,000 are receiving, or might receive work-related benefits, leaving 490,000 out there working in Britian’s economy, generating profits and paying taxes, give or take any that couldn’t find suitable work and have since gone elsewhere.

Still, I suppose ‘490,000 Migrants Pay Income Tax’ is not the kind of headline that fits the prejudices of the Express and its readers.

But that’s, to some extent, by the by as what Liam’s talking about is illegal and not legal migration and the craven pandering to a tabloid agenda in the latter area is already done and dusted in terms of the restrictions that will imposed on migration from Bulgaria and Romania when they joined the European Union.

So why, pay tell, is taking a tough line on immigration a ‘progressive’ policy?

Well, according to Liam its because illegal immigration is not a victimless crime, in the sense that it support exploitation by unscrupulous and conniving businesses and an ‘industry’ in people traffiking run by organised group.

So it’s not a victimless crime, but in the main it’s the illegal migrants who’re the actual victims, here.

So the logic here seems to be that a tough policy on immigration is progressive because it enable us to deport the victims.

Looking a little further down the article we find a few more examples of the government’s ‘progressive’ approach to immigration.

Crimestoppers will help us take information from the public.

Or as Stalinists used to call it ‘denunciation’…

…a much bigger detention estate will mean more can be held

More detention centres… and to cap it all…

…we will consult on how to keep to a minimum abusive judicial review applications that simply frustrate legitimate deportations.

There’s a Latin phrase that leaps to mind here… ah, yes! Habeas Corpus. Yes our wonderfully progressive government is looking for a way to restrict the right of habeas corpus in immigration cases.

All wonderfully progressive, eh? And don’t think that Liam’s finished yet…

Together we have to find a solution to a big problem. Remittances from foreign workers are second only to foreign direct investment in value for the developing world. But for European nations, committed like us to international development, we need help from states taking back their own people who are here illegally. Providing passports and permission to return is one of the single biggest barriers to removing immigration offenders.

As Labour thinks ahead, the global challenge of migration is perhaps one of biggest issues that has changed since we took power. The 1997 manifesto devoted 135 words to immigration. But, in the months to come, we shouldn’t be afraid of arguing today’s policy with confidence. It is rooted in a fairness that is fundamentally Labour.

What’s particularly irritating about this article is not only the obvious absurdity of trying to sell a policy in which the ‘victim’ (as identified by Liam) may be first denounced to the state, then incarcerated, denied their rights under habeas corpus and finally deported on the basis of it being [allegedly] progressive; but its complete and utter banality.

One gets the definite sense that it really doesn’t matter what the policy is, it could just as easily be the restoration of hanging, the use of torture, the reconsitution of the Star Chamber or the cancellation of Christmas, somewhere along the line a colourless drone of junior minister will be despatched to tell us that we’ve all got it wrong and the policy is really ‘progressive’, ‘fair’ and ‘rooted in Labour values’ as if, on hearing that, we’ll all just think to ourselves, ‘Oh well, that’s alright then’. The one consolation here is that at least Liam doesn’t use the dreaded ‘m’-word, modern, although he does get pretty close to it at the end by talking about immigration as one of biggest issues that has changed since we took power.

A genuinely progressive policy on immigration has to begin with the question, ‘why are people coming here illegally in the first place’, to which the answer is the same that it always was - to escape poverty and try to build a better life for themselves. (The clue’s in the name, economic migrants).

Economic migration is driven, unsurprisingly, by economics and, more particularly at the present time, by the manifest failings of the much-vaunted doctrine of globalisation, which far from offering free and open trade and, therefore, prosperity, for all, has been for the most part a one-way street in which developing countries have been forced (with their arm pushed firmly up their back) into adopting a uniform package of economic ‘medicine’ by the IMF and World Bank consisting of financial austerity, privatisation of key industries, public services and utilities and the opening of domestic markets to exploitation of Western corporate interests while America and Europe continue to play the same old game of protectionism, subsidies and self-interest.

Even acts of apparent philanthropy are locked firmly into the preservation and promotion of corporate interests and corporate capitalism. Bill Gates may be committing part of his personal fortune to tackling the spead of HIV and that age old killer, malaria, in Africa but look a little more closely and you’ll find that Bill’s largesse comes at a price; the unquestioning acceptance of the WTO’s TRIPS agreement on intellectual property, of which one of the main beneficiaries just happens to be Microsoft - another major supporter of and beneficiary from TRIPS, unsurprisingly, is ‘Big Pharma’.

The progressive way to tackle the issues of economic (and illegal) migration is not by more draconian law and tighter border controls - as ever these are only the symptoms of the problem - but by tackling its main causes; poverty and lack of economic opportunity, at source.

It is the simplest of equations to understand - many, if not most, of the people we’re now trying to deport would have had no need to migrate to the UK in the first place if only they could have made a decent living for themselves in their country of origin.

100th British soldier killed in Iraq

A British soldier from the 7th Armoured Brigade was killed by an explosion in southern Iraq this morning, the 100th UK serviceman to die since the invasion in March 2003.

The Ministry of Defence said three other soldiers were hurt, one seriously, in the blast which took place on Tuesday morning in Um Qasr, Basra province.

Do you think that now we hit a nice round number, Tony might remember how many British servicemen have died in Iraq?

…it has to be done.

You’d have thought Harry’s Place would have been straight off the mark with this story:

Victory for Hamas

Figures from Palestinian officials tonight confirmed Hamas’s shock win in the Palestinian parliamentary election over the once-dominant Fatah party.

Polls had predicted a coalition between the two parties as the most likely outcome of the vote, but a surprise surge in support for the Islamists took a party that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel into power.

The preliminary count put Hamas on 76 seats to Fatah’s 43 in the 132 seat chamber. The result could complicate hopes of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

I love that wonderfully understated observation there: “The result could complicate hopes of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Nah. You don’t say.

Mention the name of Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean and most people will respond; who?

If you’re a little more clued in you may have noticed that she has just been appointed by Blair as his special representative in talks for “memoranda of understanding”. In her hands lies the responsibility for negotiating deals with several countries in the Arab world that are suspected or known to practice torture which will see them make a paper commitment not to torture anyone we deport to their shores in future.

The list of countries here is about as unedifying as it gets. We already have such memoranda with Libya and Jordan and are seeking further agreements with other countries; Algeria we know is one of them and its suspected that the other will include Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.

On the back of that list alone, scepticism as to whether these agreements will mean anything is entire understandable.

However, that’s not why I’m writing about her - its not what she’s about to do, shabby though that is, that occupies my thoughts, but something she did last Decemeber - December 13th 2004 to be exact, when as a Foreign Office Minister she made a misleading and untrue statenent to the House of Lords.

That, as parliament watchers will know, is a very serious allegation - it’s certainly one I wouldn’t be making had I not the evidence to back it up.

Before we get to her statement and the evidence that it was misleading, let’s look first at what the Ministerial Code of Conduct has to say on the subject of misleading the House.

“It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister;”

Now, before I go on, I’m not alleging that Baroness Symons has deliberately or knowingly misled the House of Lords - I simply do not know whether the untruthful statement made is one of her own crafting or the product of a briefing received from her Civil Service advisors; that is ultimately a matter for the House of Lords to decide, but what I do know is that she did mislead the House of Lords and that at no time has she offered the House the correction required by the Ministerial Code - she may, to this point in time, genuinely be unaware of her error.

I’ve written, only recently, of the appaling treatment meted out to the former inhabitant of the Chagos Islands by the British government; its a story that has interested and appalled me since first reading it in Tim Slessor’s ‘Lying in State’.

The statement made by Baroness Symons in which she mislead the House relates directly to this sorry episode in our history, coming as it did in response to a question from Lord Beaumont of Whitley who asked the government simply:

“Whether they will reconsider their decision to prevent the British people of the Chagos Islands returning to their original homes.”

In answering this question, Baroness Symons made the following comments:

The expulsion of the people from these islands took place in the late 1960s and, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, is aware, the Government have already paid compensation to the Chagossians. There were two payments, which altogether amounted at the time to almost £5 million. In today’s value that amounts to some £14.5 million. At that time, the Chagossians’ own lawyers advised them that that represented a fair and reasonable settlement. It is important to remember that when the noble Lord implies—as he managed to do in his Question—that we have somehow behaved dishonourably.

I can correct one minor factual error straight away - the expulsion took place in 1971, under the Conservative government of Edward Heath, and not the 1960’s; although the policy and decisions leading to their expulsions were formulated by the previous Labour government of Harold Wilson. This is of no particular consequence as Baroness Symons’s temporal error at least places the primary responsibility for this matter with the right government.

Where we move, here, for genuine error to clear untruth is in the matter of the payments made to the Chagossians and the advice they allegedly received from their own solicitors.

There were two payments made in lieu of the expulsion of the Chagossians from their homes. The first, a sum of £650,000, was paid in 1973. This money, as Slessor notes, was not paid to the Chagossians themselves, but rather to the government of Mauritius where they were unceremonously dumped on the dockside with no one to meet them nor explain why they had been removed from their homes or what would happen to the next.

There were, at that time, around 1,500 Chagossians removed from the islands - Britain’s ‘generous’ settlement was, therefore, a little of £400 per head.

A second payment was offered, initially in 1979, of £1.25 million. In the intervening years, parliamentary questions from Tam Dalyell and others and a long feature articles in the Sunday Times in 1975, entitled ‘The Islanders that Britian Sold’ had ensured that questions about the conduct of the British governement toward the Chagossians had not, as the Foreign Office must surely have hoped, dropped entirely off the political radar.

This offer was upped, by 1983, to £4 million, still by no means a geneous figure had we been dealing with only the original 1,500 Chaggosians expelled some 12 years earlier without considering that, a populations so, that the actual number of people of direct Chagossian descent had increased over time - today, there are around 4,500 Chagossians when one factors in the descendents of those originally expelled from the islands.

It is in Tim Slessor’s account of the 1979 offer in which we find the evidence that Symons mislead the house in her statement:

Something must have pricked (just a little) the conscience of the Foreign Office, because in 1979 it tried another ‘full and final settlement’. This time the amount was £1.25 million. But there was a condition: each Ilois [Chagossian] had to sign a binding agreement to renounce any claim ever to eturn to the Chagos Islands. Some of the most destitute families signed without appreciating what they were doing [many were illiterate]. One imagines that it was a case of ‘if you want some money, then sign here’. But when other Ilois realised what was happening, they sent the English lawyer charged with the arrangements back to London - with a flea in his ear. Strangely, it was a law firm started by this same lawyer, Bernard Sheridan, which later became the legal champion of the Ilois.

Note the critical discrepancy between Symons’s statement and Slessor’s account - back in 1979, the Chagossians were indeed advised to accept the government’s compensation offer by the lawyer who is, today, the head of the law firm which has, since the mid-late 1980’s, represented their interests in taking British government to court (although it is a lawyer named Richard Gifford and not Bernard Sheridan, himself, who has actually represented them during this period) - however, at the time they were advised by Bernard Sheridan in relation to this offer, Sheridan was not acting for the Chagossians but for the British government.

All rather different from Baroness Symons contention that “the Chagossians’ own lawyers advised them that that represented a fair and reasonable settlement”.

Baroness Symons is no longer a Foreign Office minister; the duty to represent the Foreign Office in the House of Lords now rest with the FO’s Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Triesman, while Symons scours the Arab world cutting deals with repressive, undemocratic regimes.

Nevertheless, having demonstrated that Baroness Symons’s statement to the House of Lords on 13th December 2004 is, I think, clearly and unequivocally misleading in identifying the solicitor who advised the Chagossians on the government’s compensation offer as being their own solicitor when they were, in fact, acting for the government at that time, I think it only right and proper that I invite Lord Triesman or Baroness Symons (doesn’t matter which) to do as ther Ministerial Code of Conduct demands, correct this misleading statement and offer the House the obligatory and extremely humble apology that such occasions call for.

As for the matter of Symons remark that:

“It is important to remember that when the noble Lord implies—as he managed to do in his Question—that we have somehow behaved dishonourably.”

I would invite anyone to read my earlier piece on this subject and follow the links in it - you should then gain a full picture of exactly how successive British governments have treated the Chagossians over the last 30 years to the extent that, today, only a fool or a liar could possibly claim that we have behaved ‘honourably’ in this matter.

I suppose a blogswarm on this is out of the question? It would be appreciated.

UPDATE:

Disillusioned Kid has news that the Chagossian’s challenge to the Orders in Council banning them from ever returning to their home is set to go to a judicial review on December 6th.

The release of a letter, allegedly from Al Qaeda’s chief ideologue, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi outlining AQ’s strategy for creating a transnational Muslim susperstate has drawn a few highly sceptical reactions, noted here at Lenin’s Tomb.

The overriding question seems to be whether this letter is genuine or merely a bit of well constructed propaganda to support the continuation of US involvement in Iraq - a question which, for the moment, seems to hinge on apparent logical anomalies in the text of the letter itself, anomalies whihc, it has to be remembered, could be more the product of problems in translation and transliteration than evidence of forgery - one assumes the original letter was written in Arabic.

To a considerable extent whether this letter is real or otherwise is not really of any great consequence.

What is important is that it contains details of a strategy that I’ve been expected to hear about for quite some time, in fact I’m only surprised that its taken quite so long for it emerge at all.

Is Al Qaeda really plotting to take over Iraq? Who knows, but based on its stated objectives - the creation of a new Islamic Caliphate - even if it isn’t, it should be. In fact, taking history as a guide, Iraq or rather Baghdad should have been a central, if unspoken, feature in its future plans all along.

I’ve mentioned this before and certainly upset a few people in doing so but to understand why Baghdad is so important you need to understand the finer points of Jihad, as its defined within Islamic jurisprudence.

Jihad is not a single, linear and all-encompassing concept but a concept with important subtleties and limitations; limitations which serve for the time being to inhibit the capacity of Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups to full pursue their goals. Not only can Jihad be put into practice is several different ways; the sword [violence] being only one method, but within the concept of Jihad there is both a defensive and and offensive form of Jihad, the jurisprudential rules for which are very different from each other.

Defensive Jihad, as the name suggests, has the purpose of defending Muslim lands; expelling invaders, etc such that any attack or occupation of Muslim territory can trigger a Jihad which can be called by any Muslim leader who has been properly educated in the eight schools of Islamic Jurisprudence. One of the key reasons why Al Qaeda find its difficult to attract mainstream support within Islam is that its characterisation of attacks on non-Muslim soil; on New York, Madrid and London, stretches this idea of defensive Jihad pretty much to breaking point. Al Qaeda might claim these attacks are justified as a form of defensive Jihad but in doing so they are pushing the definition of the term down lines which the majority of Muslim scholars would not and could not support, raising real question marks as to the legitimacy of their actions.

By know you may be thinking ‘well if there’s defensive Jihad, then there surely must be offensive Jihad as well’ - and you’d be right - ’so why don’t Al Qaeda simply call an offensive Jihad’.

This is where Islamic jurisprudence intervenes to complicate matters - while a defensive Jihad can be called by any suitably qualified Muslim scholar, the right to call and authorise an offensive Jihad is one reserved exclusively to the Caliph, which rather puts Al Qaeda et al in a bit of a bind as no Caliph means no offensive Jihad - this also explains references to ‘80 years’ in Al Qaeda statements, it being around 80 years since the last recognised Islamic Caliphate, or rather Sultanate as we’re talking about the Ottoman Empire, came to a end at the hands of Attaturk.

Radical Islam needs a Caliph and they need one badly, as only through the restoration of a Caliphate can their aim of an offensive Jihad against the west gain legitimacy and mainstream support. Unfortunately, in Islamic tradition one cannot simply set up a Caliphate whenever and wherever you like, it a bit more complicated than that because unless a new Caliphate is set up is one of a very small number of key locations, the traditional ’seats’ of past Caliphates, then the majority of Muslims simply won’t recognise the radical’s new Caliph as a Caliph.

There are, perhaps, no more than three or four cities in the world which would provide a putative Caliph with the legitimacy necessary to gain widespead acceptance in the Islamic world. Istanbul and Cairo, certainly. Agra, in India, possibly although I’m unsure how mainstream Islam regards the Mughal empire and whether it really is considered in the same way as the Ottomans.

The most important of all these cities, historically, is Baghdad. Istanbul, Cairo and Agra may have been seats of Muslim Caliphates, then Baghdad was the seat of THE Caliphate, the term Caliph originated there and refered specifically to the ruler of Baghdad. A new Caliphate centred on Baghdad would be one that mainstream Islam could not ignore; radicals would flock from all over the Islamic world to join the cause secure in the knowledge that with a Caliph at the helm the questions of the legitimacy of a new campaign of conquest would be at an end while the rest of Islam would face the starkest of choices - do they heed the call to arms of the new Caliph or walk away from centuries of tradition and Islamic law.

Al-Zahwiri’s letter, real or not, demostrates that the invasion of Iraq has been Bush & Blair unwitting gift to the radical Islamic cause. With Arab ‘hard men’ [Saddam and Mubarak] at the helm in Baghdad and Cairo and Istanbul no longer even the capital of a secular Turkish republic; dreams of new Caliphate could remain only that, dreams. A fantasy radical utopia so distant that it might as well have been the Moon.

By invading Iraq the west has, however inadvertantly, given hope to Al Qaeda and to Islamic radicalism - if only they can drive out the forces of the west and raise a new Caliph to the throne in Baghdad then their dreams of conquest come alive once again. Of all the Islamic countries we could have invaded and destabilised, we picked the one most likely to stir up and revive the long dormant dreams of Islam and empire.

For once I’m not particularly going to take sides on this issue other than to note that, unlike Bush and Blair [and Galloway too] it seems, I do possess a clear sense of history and from that I find the contents of this letter to be all too predictable - I, and anyone else with a decent layman’s understanding of Islamic history and jurisprudence could have told you this would happen before ever the 2003 invasion was mounted. For me, therefore, this was just one more good reason not to go to war - others might see it otherwise.

What should be clear from this, however, is that whatever we might think of the invasion itself and its rights and wrongs, Iraq is not a country, unlike Vietnam before it, where we can simply walk away when it all gets too difficult. Having invading the country, not only do we have a moral duty to the Iraqi people to put things right but the stakes are now so high we simply cannot leave the job half done.

We should also, however, be clear that this situation, this strategy, was all too predictable right from the outset - reason enough that we should finish what we’ve started but all the more reason why we should hold those responsible for starting this war [and I don’t mean Saddam] to account.

Update: The full text of the ‘letter’ can be found here - Lenin’s right, it’s bullshit.

I especially like this bit:

“(4) The Bitter Harvest - The Muslim Brotherhood in 60 Years - Second Edition 1426h - 2005m.

In this edition, I wanted to delete all the extreme phrases for which there’s no proof, and I referred to the book a number of times, then I wrote a new preface. In it I pointed out a dangerous trend of the Brotherhood, especially in the circumstances of the New Crusader War which was launched on the Islamic Umma. In my opinion, this edition is better than the first with respect to the calmness of the presentation instead of being emotional. The Brotherhood’s danger is demonstrated by the weakening of the Islamic Resistance to the campaign of the Crusaders and their supporters. God is the only one who is perfect.”

Which is missing only the bit about ‘available from all good Islamic bookstores, only $14.94 - and don’t forget that Amazon does free delivery on orders over $35′

What a crock of shit!

Update: Now even Al Qaeda reckon its bullshit

“Jean-Luc, we’re only moving six hundred people.” — Admiral Dougherty

“How many people does it take before it becomes wrong? Hmm? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, Admiral!?” — Picard
Star Trek: Insurrection

I first came across the story of the Chagos Islanders in Tim Slessor’s book ‘Lying in State’, a story I read with a mixture of shame, sorrow and anger.

You’ll find a fair synopsis of the events leading to the forced relocation of the Chagossians in this report [from 2000] on the BBC News website - it omits a few basic details; for example, the partitioning off of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius before independence was illegal under international law, a fact known to civil servants in the Foreign Office at the time, hence the strenous efforts they went to to conceal their actions from the United Nations but otherwise sets the scene quite nicely.

At the point at which Slessor’s account ends there did seem room for hope for the future of the Chagossians - as the BBC report notes, the Foreign Office did not appeal the decision of the High Court that they had been illegally expelled from their homeland in 1971; a feasibility study into the possibility of a return to those islands not now occupied by the US Naval Base on Diego Garcia - a supposedly ‘austere facility’, although you can assess its austerity for yourself here and see how its developed into ‘Camp Justice’ [an ironic name in the circumstances] over the years here - had been carried out and if the representatives of the government that the UK Chagos Support Association were meeting with were dragging their heels rather, well the High Court had ruled and the law was, so they thought, on their side.

Or so they thought until June 10 2004 when, on the day that local and European elections took place and the news filled with stories of Labour defeats at the polls, a meeting of the Privy Council passed two orders in relation to the British Indian Ocean Territory - the territory illegally created in 1965 which encompasses the Chagos Islands - the The British Indian Ocean Territory (Constitution) Order 2004 and the The British Indian Ocean Territory (Immigration) Order 2004.

[Don’t bother looking for the text of these orders, neither has been published openly - the best you’ll find is two lines referring to them on the second page of the notice of orders approved by the Privy Council on that date.]

These orders, which were passed at the meeting in the most perfunctory fashion [Peter Hain, on behalf of the government, read their respective titles - not even the full text was read - and those present said ‘aye’] in government speak ‘restore the legal position to what it had been understood to be before the High Court decision of 3 November 2000′ - actions which were illegal in UK and international law at the time they were taken and which had been ruled illegal by the High Court at judicial review, suddenly became legal by executive order. No debate. No right of Appeal. The Chagossians right to go home to the land of their birth was removed at the stroke of a pen, in secret - no one informed the Chagossians of this order in advance - and in perpetuity.

If you’re curious as to the thinking behind these orders, this written Ministerial statement from Jack Straw to the Chairman of the Common Foreign Affairs Select Committee [reproduced below] should explain everything - you’ll note the line in Straw’s prefatory comments which states:

“This is a case where I had to exercise the right, which I reserved in the last paragraph of my letter, not to follow that procedure in certain circumstances, because the sensitivity of the issue meant that confidentiality was imperative until the measures were taken.”

Presumably the imperative Straw mentions is that of not allowing the Chagossians and their supporters to know what was being planned until it was too late, precluding legal proceeding to prevent these orders being made.

From this point forward my own comments and annotations are included in italics.

BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Bill Rammell): I would like to inform the House of developments in relation to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

In 1965, prior to Mauritius achieving independence in 1968, and with the agreement of the Mauritius Council of Ministers, the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were detached [illegally] from Mauritius to form part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. The territory was created to provide for the defence needs of both Britain and the United States of America [The US were granted a 50 year lease on Diego Garcia under which they demanded, and were granted a 150 mile ‘exclusion zone’ around the island. There are two other inhabitable islands in the chain which the chaogossians could have been safely relocated to, both being more than 80 miles from Diego Garcia, were it not for this]. Subsequently, the plantations on which the population of the islands had depended for their livelihood were run down and closed; and the inhabitants—the Chagossians—were in due course relocated to Mauritius and Seychelles, from where they or their families originated. [The first that any Chagossians knew of this was when, after a visit to Mauritius for supplies, they were refused the right to embark for the return journey. As for their having originated on Mauritius and the Seychelles, what they Foreign Office deliberately concealed at the time of the relocation was that some of the islanders were, by then, third and fourth generation inhabitants of Diego Garcia. In UN terms that made them ‘belongers’ with a legal right, in international law, to live on the islands.] The vast majority of them automatically acquired Mauritian or Seychelles citizenship when those countries respectively achieved independence. In addition, the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 gave a large number of them British citizenship. This carries with it the right of abode in this country, which some of them have already taken up, and freedom of access to other EU countries. Following the relocation, Britain made £650,000 available for the express purpose of assisting resettlement. And in 1982 Britain made a further ex gratia payment of £4 million for the benefit of the Chagossian community in Mauritius. [There are now over 4,500 Chagossians living in exile, many of them elderly, which means Britain’s ex-gratia ’settlement’ works out to just over £1,000 per person. In order to get their share of the £4 million payoff from 1982, the most illiterate Chagossians were asked to sign full-on legal documents in which they signed away, without realising it, their rights to ever return to the islands - yep, we pulled out all the legal stops on this one. This was to result, when matters came before a court, in a parade of elderly islanders standing in the witness box before a British court in full regalia, where they we condescendingly informed by the Crown’s barrister - via a translator in most cases - that they must have known what they we signing for when they signed the paperwork. One is only surprised that, as they did the McLibel case, the Crown’s barrister didn’t then resort to conversing in Latin just to make doubly sure that the Chagossian’s hadn’t got a clue what the fuck was going on.]

In November 2000 the High Court in the UK held in judicial review proceedings that a provision of the territory’s immigration law that had previously precluded the Chagossians from returning to the territory without a permit was invalid. In the circumstances which then obtained, it was decided not to appeal against that ruling, and the immigration law was amended to reflect it.

Following the [forced] departure of the Chagossians in the late 60s and early 70s, the economic conditions and infrastructure that had supported the community of plantation workers ceased to exist [Fuck me, you don’t say!]. While the judicial review proceedings were still pending, the Government therefore commissioned a feasibility study by independent experts to examine and report on the prospects for re-establishing a viable community in the outer islands of the territory. The latest report of the study was delivered after the November 2000 judgment and it was then placed in the Library of the House. It concluded that:

“. . . whilst it may be feasible to resettle the islands in the short-term, the costs of maintaining long-term inhabitation are likely to be prohibitive. Even in the short-term, natural events such as periodic flooding from storms and seismic activity are likely to make life difficult for a resettled population . . . Human interference within the atolls, however well managed, is likely to exacerbate stress on the marine and terrestrial environment and will accelerate the effects of global warming. Thus resettlement is likely to become less feasible over time.”

[So having deliberately fucked up what passed for their economy, a modest trade in copra which made enough to sustain the islanders quite happily, you’re now going to add global warming to your excuses for not allowing them go home. It’s also a little odd to find that the presence of a mere 4,500 islanders can be considered a threat to the environment so bad that it will actually accelerate global warming yet the big fuck off US Naval Base at Diego Garcia, which has a 2 mile long runway big enough to accomodate B2 bombers is of no environmental concern at all.

Guess what? The Chagos Islands even have their own tame band of officially sanctioned ‘treehuggers’ - the Chagos Conservation Trust which was set up in 1992 and registered as a charity in 1994 - you can read their entry on the register of charities here. Interestingly, when we come to look at this organisation’s trustees we find that one, a Mr Nigel Wenban-Smith, just happens to be a former British Commissioner of the Chagos Islands (resident in London) from 1982 to 1986, while the secretary of the Trust, and its main contact, is a Mr Simon Hughes, residing in a flat in Camberwell - you don’t suppose this could be THE Simon Hughes, it’s impossible to tell as the MP’s register of interests excludes unremunerated positions in the charity and voluntary sector. Yet another trustee is - wait for it - Paul Pearce-Kelly, curator of invertebrates (how appropriate) at the Zoological Society in London - that’s Regent’s Park Zoo if anyone’s unsure. So the Chagos Islands, lo and behold, has its own ‘conservation organisation’ that is absolutely fucking raddled with establishment interests - anyone smell a rat, here? Or would that upset the delicate ecology of the area]

Specifically with reference to climate change, the report advised that:

“. . . the main issue facing a resettled population on the low-lying islands will be flooding events, which are likely to increase in periodicity and intensity and will not only threaten infrastructure, but also the freshwater aquifers and agricultural production. Severe events may even threaten life.”

The report also highlighted the implications for resettlement on such low-lying islands of the predicted increase in global sea levels as a result of climate change.

In effect, therefore, anything other than short-term resettlement on a purely subsistence basis would be highly precarious and would involve expensive underwriting by the UK Government for an open-ended period-probably permanently. Accordingly, the Government consider that there would be no purpose in commissioning any further study into the feasibility of resettlement; and that it would be impossible for the Government to promote or even permit resettlement to take place. After long and careful consideration, we have therefore decided to legislate to prevent it.

[Given that there is an absolutely fucking huge US Naval Base in the area, is anyone else thinking here that this whole ‘global warming’ argument is just about the biggest pile of horse shit they’ve ever read in their life.

I mean seriously, that whole business about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed in 45 minutes looks more convincing than this pile of bullshit]

Equally, restoration of full immigration control over the entire territory is necessary to ensure and maintain the availability and effective use of the territory for defence purposes, for which it was in fact constituted and set aside in accordance with the UK’s treaty obligations entered into almost 40 years ago. Especially in the light of recent developments in the international security climate since the November 2000 judgment, this is a factor to which due weight has had to be given.

[Now we finally get to the real reason why the government will not allow the Chagossians to go home - precisely because their IS a big fuck off US Naval Base on Diego Garcia; one which in every material respect is sited there illegally and in violation of international law and the rights of the Chagos islanders. Environmental concerns my arse, the sole reason the Chagossians are being denied their rights to their own homeland is because the Yanks are there and their attitude is ‘it’s ours now - you can just fuck off’.

And what have we got to say to the US about that? Yes boss!]

It was for these reasons that on 10 June 2004 Her Majesty made two Orders in Council, the combined effect of which is to restore full immigration control over all the islands of the British Indian Ocean Territory. These controls extend to all persons, including members of the Chagossian community.

The first of these two orders replaces the existing constitution of the territory and makes clear, as a principle of the constitution, that no person has the right of abode in the territory or has unrestricted access to any part of it. The second order replaces the existing immigration ordinance of the territory and contains the detailed provisions giving effect to that principle and setting out the necessary immigration controls. These two orders restore the legal position to what it had been understood to be before the High Court decision of 3 November 2000. I am arranging for copies of the orders to be placed in the Library of the House [But not the internet where we, the Chagossians and the rest of the world can see just what a shameless bunch of wankers the British government really are].

—–

I’ll leave things there for now, but with a few questions I’d like you ponder.

If the British government - any government of the last 40 years, as lets not forget that while this whole business started with a Labour government [Wilson] and continues today under another Labour government [Blair] the Chagossian’s fight for justice and the right to a homeland to call their own; a homeland that was their own until we signed their birthright away to the US for a few cut-price nukes, continued right through three different Tory administrations [Health, Thatcher and Major] as well - can so easily sign away the rights of the Chagos islanders when it suits them, then what makes us think we can believe them when they talk about protecting our rights.

A Court of Law - the High Court, no less, and in a judicial review - ruled the forced expulsion of the Chagossians and the refusal to permit them to return to their homeland to be illegal - and how do Blair and co respond?

They prevaricate until the dust has settled on the embarrassment of the Chagossian’s court victory and then, in total secrecy - which includes deliberately withholding information from a select committee of the House of Commons - they move the goal posts, making use of the royal prerogative to slip changes in law through the Privy Council without debate or Act of Parliament…

…and to add mortal insult to injury, they do it on the same day as local and European elections take place, just to make absolutely certain of burying their shame where no one will notice it.

Hell, ain’t democracy great!

I don’t know about you but I certainly don’t feel any safer for knowing that.

The second question should be obvious - it’s the title of this piece after all…

How many people does it take before it becomes wrong?

What value do we, as citizens, place on the lives and the rights of the 4,500 Chagossian exiles - are they worth less than us, as our government clearly seems to think, or should we accord them the same rights and the same value as human beings that we accord ourselves.

And don’t you just feel absolutely fucking ashamed for even having to consider that question at all?

So, next time you find yourself being lectured by politician about ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ - if that kind of thing happens to you - especially one associated with our present government then why not ask them what they are going to do to protect the rights of the Chagossians and discharge their responsiblity to put right one of the great hidden injustices of the 20th Century - our own dirty little secret, our private East Timor.

Because if our politicians lack the moral courage to protect the rights of the weakest amongst us, as the displaced Chagossians are, then how can we possibly trust them to protect our own rights?

One last conundrum for you - if there’s no one allowed to live on the Chagos Islands but a few British adminsitrators, 1500 UK and American servicemen and 2000 mostly Fillipino civilian contractors, then how come we imported £57,000 worth of essential oils, resinoids, perfume materials, clothing and accessories from there last year - and why does the CIA’s World Factbook state that there are no industrial or agricultural activities on the islands?

UPDATE: The Disillusioned Kid has a whole section [check the sidebar] and shed load of good stuff on the plight of the Chagos islanders - well worth a visit.

UPDATE: A booklet which accompainied John Pilger’s documentary ‘Stealing A Nation’ chronicling the shameful treatment of the Chagos Islanders can be found here - if you do nothing else, read it.

I think everyone would view this story with revulsion…

Security forces in Israel have been sent to the town of Shfaram, where an Israeli soldier was lynched after he shot dead four Israeli Arabs on a bus…

…Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the shooting a reprehensible act by a “bloodthirsty terrorist”.

The army said the 19-year-old soldier had deserted over the Gaza pullout.

Named as Eden Natan Zaada, he was beaten to death by a crowd of people who stormed the bus after his weapon ran out of bullets.

The gunman, from the Jewish settlement of Tapuah in the West Bank, was wearing his army uniform and a skullcap when he opened fire in the northern Israeli Arab town.

Not everyone would, I hope, subscribe to the absurdity of Gene’s comments at Harry’s Place.

There should be no attempt to “understand” his motivation. Nothing– absolutely nothing– justified this horrific crime.

At the risk of being pedantic, the definition of ‘understand’ is…

un·der·stand
v. un·der·stood, (-std) un·der·stand·ing, un·der·stands
v. tr.

1.
1. To have understanding, knowledge, or comprehension.
2. To have sympathy or tolerance.
2. To learn something indirectly or secondhand; gather.

While the definition of justify is…

jus·ti·fy
v. jus·ti·fied, jus·ti·fy·ing, jus·ti·fies
v. tr.

1. To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid: justified each budgetary expense as necessary; anger that is justified by the circumstances.
2. To declare free of blame; absolve.
3. To free (a human) of the guilt and penalty attached to grievous sin. Used of God.
4. Law.
1. To demonstrate sufficient legal reason for (an action taken).
2. To prove to be qualified as a bondsman.
5. Printing. To adjust the spacing within (lines in a document, for example), so that the lines end evenly at a straight margin.

Which means that seven out of eight uses of the term understand do not involve offering any trace of justification of such an act - and the one use that does encompass such a concept admits to disagreement with the act itself.

Or to put it another way…

I understand the motives of the perpetrator of this attack and consider them to be reprehensible. I also understand the reaction of the Palestinians to this attack but I disagree with their response - i.e. stoning the perpetrator to death on the spot - on principle, justice always being preferable to revenge.

Now, does that make sense or would you prefer Gene’s point of view?

On a lighter note, Tim Worstall has some first class advice for would-be suicide bombers.

There’s a first rate ruck going on over at Crooked Timber arising out Daniel having noticed that the agenda of Unite Against Terror seems to be expanding to include attacking the BBC for not editorialising its news coverage in the style of Fox News.

Oddly enough, since this thread started, UAT’s news section seems to have disappeared.

Time, then, for another good fisking - this time of the main statement on UAT’s website. Same drill as last time - original in normal text and my own sarky comments in italics.

Terrorist attacks against Londoners on July 7th killed at least 54 people. The suicide bombers who struck in Netanya, Israel, on July 12 ended five lives, including two 16 year old girls. And on July 13, in Iraq, suicide bombers slaughtered 24 children. We stand in solidarity with all these strangers, hand holding hand, from London to Netanya to Baghdad: communities united against terror.

Between July 1 to July 13 2005 there were also terrorist attacks reported in the Lebanon (2 deaths), at the disputed Ayodha Temple – until 13 years ago the site of the Babri Mosque - in Utter Pradesh, India (90-minute gun battle in which all six attackers we killed), in Spain (4 bombs at a power station resulting in minimal damage - claimed by ETA) and a fifth in the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona (minimal damage, one policeman injured – thought to be the work of Italian anarchists) and a fake bomb in a Jerusalem bus station which was traced to two members of an Israeli infantry regiment protesting at the policy of disengagement.

I note this merely to point out that there is far more to terrorism than either radical Islamic groups and/or suicide-bombing.

These attacks were the latest atrocities committed by terrorist groups inspired by a poisonous and perverted politics that disguises itself as a form of the religion of Islam. The terrorists seek a closed society of fear and conformity. They are opposed by Muslims the world over. Muslim community leaders have condemned the London attacks unequivocally. We reject the terrorists’ claim that they represent authentic Islam. They do not.

So within the first couple of paragraphs we’ve gone from the generic ‘Unite Against Terror’ to the rather more specific ‘Unite Against Islamic Terrorism’ or, more to the point, ‘Unite Against Terrorism which threatens us and our allies’, rather like the US State Department which defines terrorism – in legal terms – only by reference to whether a particular terrorist group is perceived to constitute a threat to US interests.

As this Wikipedia article on terrorist groups shows there is rather more to terrorism than the narrow focus chosen by this campaign, which rather compromises its pretensions of ‘internationalism’ by excluding consideration of the diverse nature of terrorism and the varying contexts in which it takes place – contexts which don’t lend themselves quite so easily to the promulgation of a clear and absolutist moral position.

This is of interest primarily because it disregards the moral ambivalence which lies at the heart of one of the key doctrines which underpins the ideological position of this campaign’s founders – Humanitarian Interventionism, otherwise referred to as the ‘Blair Doctrine’ which developed out of NATO’s intervention in Kosovo during the late 1990’s. The generally accepted ‘history’ of this conflict is that the West intervened to protect Kosovo, and particularly ethnic Albanian’s who made up the majority of Kosovo’s population against Serbian aggression – this is, however, only half the story in so far as it ignores one the main causes of this aggression, a two year terrorist campaign by the ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’ against Serbian interests in Kosovo.

The aftermath of Kosovo is a study in moral relativism – while the West has pursued, and continues to pursue, charges of crimes against humanity against key players on the Serbian side, former KLA members who allowed themselves to be disarmed at the end of the conflict and embraced democracy were given a ‘clean slate’ and remain highly influential in Kosovan political society – others, it should be noted, took alternate routes, forging post-conflict ‘careers’ in either organised crime or as ‘foreign’ insurgents in neighbouring regions, such as Macedonia, continuing their attacks on ethnic Slavs. I may be wrong but I am unaware of any efforts on the part of either the ‘West’ or the Kosovan authorities to bring terrorist charges against member of the KLA relating to their actions from 1997-99.

Perhaps ‘Unite Against Some Kinds of Terror – the kinds which lend themselves to easy and simplistic moral judgements - and which threatens us and our allies’ would better characterise this campaign, even if as titles go it’s rather less snappy.

We remember the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 and in Madrid on March 11, 2004. But we know that al Qaeda and groups that are inspired by Bin-Ladenism have carried out atrocities in France, Pakistan, Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, Tunisia, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, North Osetia and many other countries.

Bin-Ladenism? Here there seems to be the suggestion that Bin Laden is somehow the ideological ‘engine’ behind Al Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorism in general.

This is fundamentally incorrect on two counts.

First, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are relative latecomers to world of radical Islamic terrorism – they have been such groups operating in Egypt and other parts of North Africa, Pakistan and Kashmir, the Philippines and South East Asia – in Malaysia and Indonesia in particular, since the late 1960’s and 1970’s, and all to the same basic agenda, demanding the creation of a strict Islamic state and imposition of Shariah law

Second, Bin Laden’s talents lie in his organisational abilities and his grasp of the strategy of asymmetric warfare, a skill he picked through his contact with the CIA, MI6 and the Pakistani SIS during the course of the Afghan conflict of the 1980’s. Al Qaeda’s primary ideologue is Ayman al-Zawahiri as evidenced by Al Qaeda’s 1996 ‘fatwa’ against the US and its allies which was released jointly and in the name of both Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri – neither, it should be noted, have the legitimate authority within Islamic jurisprudence, to issue such a fatwa.

Bin-Ladenism is a complete misnomer and a misstatement of the ideological foundations of Al Qaeda – his, and Al Qaeda’s, sole ‘innovation’ has been to move Islamic terrorism into the global arena and carry out attacks outside the Islamic world, directly involving the West in an internal conflict within the Islamic world which has going on for the last forty years.

The vast majority of the victims of al Qaeda’s violence have been Muslims. Those who have suffered at the hands of violent Islamic Fundamentalist movements in Iran and Algeria have also been ordinary Muslims.

Hang on a second, we’re getting off the subject of terrorism here.

Let’s get this into a proper perspective…

Al Qaeda = Global Terrorist Organisation

Iran = Constitutional Islamic Republic arising from the overthrow of a monarchical state by a Shi’a-led popular revolution.

Algeria = Ongoing civil war since 1991, now mostly over with the surrender of the ‘Islamic Salvation Army’ – the relevant point here being that the cause of the civil war was the cancellation of democratic elections by the incumbent government after the first round of voting which it became obvious that the radical ‘Islamic Salvation Front’ (FIS) would win the election.

Is it me or is this staring to look less and less like its actually about terrorism and more and about promoting an ideological conflict with Islamic conservatism.

This terrorist violence is not a response by ‘Muslims’ to the injustices perpetrated upon them by ‘the west’. Western democracies have been responsible for some of the ills of this world but not for the terrorist murders of these deluded Bin-Ladenists.

Right, we’re back on to terrorism now – note how ‘response’ as in “not a response by ‘Muslims’” leads into the notion of ‘responsibility’ as in ‘ Western democracies have been responsible for some of the ills of this world but not for the terrorist murders…”

The claim that ‘the West’ are not responsible of Al Qaeda’s actions does not preclude those actions arising as a response to actions undertaken by the West – one can dispute the legitimacy of the response but not its existence. Here the narrow concept of responsibility is being used to deny the existence of any relationship between Western actions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks on the West by Al Qaeda – this is fundamentally a false premise and pure sophistry.

Also there’s the use of ‘Muslims’ in quotes following on directly from a reference to Iran. Is there some sort of suggestion here that we should include the Shi’a – the second largest sect within Islam which makes up around 15-20% of the total Muslim population – in the list of ‘not proper Muslims’.

These attacks did not begin in 2003. The first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center took place ten years before, in 1993.

This is deliberately disingenuous, offering a limited and inaccurate historical perspective on Al-Qaeda. As is widely acknowledged by, amongst others, the US Congressional Research Service, Al Qaeda turned its attentions to the West and to the US in particular following the 1990 Gulf War and the decision of Saudi Arabia to seek western assistance in expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait rather that make use of Al Qaeda and the pan-Islamic militia left over from the Afghan conflict. This reference to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, which was in any case the work of an Egyptian terrorist group and never fully linked to Al Qaeda itself, deliberately foreshortens the historical perspective to create a false impression that these attacks begin ‘out of nothing’, which is simply not the case.

As noted earlier, the history of Islamic terrorism extends back to the 1960’s – long before Al Qaeda came together.

These terrorists do not hate what is worst in the societies they attack, but what is best. They despise individual liberty, critical thought, gender equality, religious tolerance, the rights of minorities and political pluralism. They do not criticize democracy because it sometimes fails to live up to its principles; they oppose those principles.

Back, again, to the presumed superiority of our own values over those of not only Al Qaeda but, by including references to gender equality, of Islamic conservatism in general – again, the attack here is not merely on Islamic radicalism/terrorism but on elements of Islam which are very much part of the mainstream – Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights, critical thought, gender equality and political pluralism is no better than that of Iran. Is the House of Saud no included in the things we’re supposed to be uniting against or has campaign just not thought things through properly.

Strip away considerations of morality for a moment and it becomes clear that the basic ideological position being put forward here – that ‘our’ values are the right values and therefore everyone should live by them, is identical to that of Al Qaeda – the details differ markedly but the basic premise is the same.

In areas of conflict, the terrorists have damaged attempts at peaceful and political solutions to problems. They choose killing and reject mutual recognition, accommodation, negotiation, understanding, and compromise.

Again, we have the projection of our values and value systems – ‘compromise’ is offered but only on our terms with no particular consideration of how that might conflict with or affect their values. This is an emerging strand of conflict in efforts to develop a constitution for the post-Invasion Iraq – the Shi’a majority want a constitution which reflects their position on a number of things, gender inequality being one, which conflicts with our own ideas and values so, if they vote, democratically, to introduce their position in law over and above the liberal position the West favours, what do we do then? Do we ignore their democratically expressed wishes – the will of their people – or not?

In the face of such an enemy, we believe it is vital that democratic political forces in all countries unite. We need a global movement of solidarity linking together communities threatened by terror. United we stand against terror.

But that’s not what you said earlier when you made it pretty clear that your interest is solely in Islamic terrorism, or are you now proposing we take sides in, say, the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka or the conflict in Kashmir – and if so who’s side are they suggesting we take?

Or are we still excluding messy situations from this ‘global movement of solidarity’?

We can find our inspiration in the behavior of ordinary people in the immediate aftermath of terrorist atrocities. Always the story is the same. A fractured world is mended by the kindness of strangers. We see, amidst the pain and anguish, in the rubble of the Twin Towers, the wreckage of a London bus, the bloodied glass across a Tel Aviv street, and among the Mothers searching for their children in Baghdad, that a common humanity asserts itself. Extraordinary acts of courage and selflessness become commonplace. The impulse of solidarity overwhelms fear and help comes from strangers.

Well quite. Couldn’t help noticing, however, the reference to Tel Aviv here – are we being partisan or do we also condemn disproportionate responses to terrorism which also kill innocent civilians as we did in relation to the Serbs in Kosovo? Say, for instance, like the firing of missiles into a civilian-occupied block of flats from a helicopter gunship in order to kill a couple terrorists who are hiding in the block?

Counting casualties is a somewhat inexact business but the most reliable sets of figures available show that casualties figure in the first Palestinian Intifada (1987 – 1993) came in at 160 Israelis – almost all members of the Israeli Defence Force – and 1,162 Palestinians. 159 of those Palestinian casualties – only one less than the total number of Israeli casualties - were children under the age of 16, the majority of whom were shot while throwing stones at Israeli troops.

Casualty figure since the start of the second (al-Aqsa) Intifada are subject to rather more dispute.

Figures for Israeli casualties are fairly consistent, around 1,000 deaths - of whom around 700 were civilians – and around 6,700 wounded.

On the Palestinian side, figure for the total number of deaths and wounded are fairly consistent – anything from 2,200 to 2,500 deaths and more than 22,000 wounded – however the apportionment of death between civilians and ‘combatants’ - i.e. members of terrorist groups and irregular militias – is disputed. Israel’s security services claim that only around a third of Palestinian casualties were civilians, which would make both sides even in terms of their respective civilian death tolls, however human rights organisations contend that the real figure for civilian casualties amongst the Palestinians is around 55-60% of their total casualties, around twice that of the Israeli side.

Now you tell me what the absolute moral position is on that set of figures, because I’m buggered if I can see it.

With every healing gesture between strangers we feel a candle of hope has been lit in a dark world. On 7/7 a London tube worker rushed towards the blast, running down a smoke-filled tunnel, torch in hand, to lead out the survivors.

These ordinary yet heroic rescuers teach us the ethic of responsibility. It is time to assert our common humanity against all who would divide us. It is time to forge communities united against terror, respectful of the dignity of difference, and organised to extend active solidarity to each other across the globe.

Is it me or is this all getting a bit ‘trendy vicar’ here – people often respond to crises with acts of compassion – so what! If we’re meant to sign up for things just out of admiration for the work of the emergency services then why not start a campaign to unite against earthquakes.

This is meaningless rhetoric, marketing spiel for selling ribbons, t-shirts and rubber wristbands.

We are frequently urged to understand the terrorists, but too often the call to understand is code for justification and apology. There are always other, better, more effective, and more human ways of opposing injustice than by killing yourself and others in a symbolic act of hatred. Muslims who have pursued modern democratic politics have often been the first in the firing line of the terrorists. The road to a just solution in Israel-Palestine is signposted by ‘mutual recognition’ and ‘political dialogue’ not the blind alley of terrorism.

Ah, yes – the ‘apologists’ trope. Actually very little of the discussion around causes, links and trying to formulate an understanding of terrorism has sought either to justify it or apologise for the actions of the perpetrators – most of us are rather more concerned with understanding terrorism from the point of view of working out how to combat it effectively and, in particular, how the wider context in which it takes place serves to radicalise young Muslims to the extent that they are willing to commit such acts on the basis that identifying and addressing their disaffection we might persuade them that terrorism is actually the wrong way of going about things.

Perhaps you might like to recognise that somewhere along the line, if its not too much trouble. We’re not all members of RESPECT or the SWP you know…

Mind you it is worth noting this post, entitled “I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse” , from Harry’s Place - who are amongst the founders of this campaign - which kicks off with…

“It’s a possibly useful task to read quotes from supporters of the ‘resistance’ and other apologists for terrorism in a heavy Italian-American accent. Give it a try with these examples:”

Before going on to note these comments from ‘Don’ George Galloway MP:

“If the British government continues with this disastrous policy, greater disasters will follow — to the people of Iraq, to our troops in Iraq and to the citizens of our country.”

However lets consider the following comments as well…

“I condemn the act that was committed this morning. I have no need to speculate about its authorship. It is absolutely clear that Islamist extremists, inspired by the al-Qaeda world outlook, are responsible. I condemn it utterly as a despicable act, committed against working people on their way to work, without warning, on tubes and buses. Let there be no equivocation: the primary responsibility for this morning’s bloodshed lies with the perpetrators of those acts.”

Now who do you think said that? Blair? Ken Livingstone? One of the signatories to this campaign – after all it mirrors one of Unite Against Terror’s central premises, that the terrorists are responsible for their actions?

No. Those comments were made in speech in the House of Commons on July 7…

… by George Galloway MP.

Now I’m no great fan of Gorgeous George but I do think that if you’re going to try to hang someone, at least do it for something they’ve done – oh and do feel free to search Harry’ Place for a reference to this latter comment – you won’t find it.

We stand firmly against the racists who seek to exploit the current tensions for their own agenda.

Yet, this campaign doesn’t seem to notice that much of its basic argument, by focusing exclusively on Islamic terrorism, is proving highly attractive to those same ‘racists who seek to exploit the current tensions for their own agenda’ and, indeed, lending an undeserved air of legitimacy to that agenda – or is it just that they think that by simply tacking the term ‘fascism’ onto Islam when referring to Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups they’re actually making a distinction between your own position and that of those who might pursue a similar line of argument from altogether different motives?

We stand firmly against those who apologize for the terrorists and who misrepresent terrorist atrocities as ‘resistance’.

I refer the reader to the comments I made some moments ago.

We offer our support and solidarity to all those within the Muslim faith who work in opposition to the terrorists and who seek to win young people away from extremism and nihilism, towards an engagement with democratic politics.

What, unconditionally?

There’s a solid body of evidence to show that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has caused a significant degree of disaffection amongst young Muslims, disaffection which has proven to be fertile ground for those radicals seeking to recruit people to their cause. So what happens if, as seems likely, those within the Muslim community who are seeking to ‘win young people away from extremism’ come back to you and point out that invading Iraq hasn’t really helped their case for engagement with democratic politics and is, in fact, a key cause of just the kind of resentment and disaffection that the radicals are playing on.

Are you still going to offer them support and solidarity – or are you just going to call them a bunch of apologists and ignore what they have to say.

We believe that democracy and human rights are worth defending with all our strength. The human values of respect and tolerance and dignity are not ‘western’ but universal.

So you’re all off to sign up for a tour of duty in Iraq, then? No, thought not…

Oh, and if respect and tolerance are universal values, does that mean you’ll respect and tolerate those who tell you to piss off because they prefer to stick to their own values rather than adopt yours? Didn’t think so either…

We are not afraid. But we are not vengeful. We believe the kindness of strangers has lit the way and this light will drive away the darkness. We want to join light to light to show that evil, injustice and oppression will not have the final word. Through these acts of human solidarity we will mend the world the terrorists have fractured.

“[A]nd this light will drive away the darkness. We want to join light to light to show that evil, injustice and oppression will not have the final word”.

And is that doesn’t work I suppose you can always send in the ‘Justice League’…

We seem here to be overly reliant on what is fairly blatant Christian rhetoric – not so much ‘Unite Against Terror’ as come join the great crusade of the sanctimonious missionaries of democracy. There appears to be a distinct subtext here, one which equates humanitarian/democratic values with Christian values and which, in the context of campaign against terrorism arising from within the community of a theological rival, makes me more than a little bit uneasy to say the least.

The underlying message here seems to be that we can all get along just fine in this world… as long as its done our terms, under our system of values and, by implication, if and only if ‘you Muslims’ become more like us and buy into our values – no doubt the Gideon’s are already planning their first shipments to the Baghdad Hilton in anticipation.

We invite you to sign this statement as a small first step to building a global movement of citizens against terrorism.

Far too much of this stated position is based on an assumption of the superiority of western values and an set of absolute moral positions, many of which I just don’t share in the same blind, unquestioning way that’s being promoted here.

Looked at objectively and without moral bias, this position is basically; “We believe the world would be a better place is everyone shared our values and believed the same thing we do” - and so too is that of Al Qaeda and other radical elements within Islam. They’re really not so different as those behind this campaign might like to believe – just opposite sides of the same coin, each pursuing their own utopian dream of a perfect society and a new world order based on the pre-eminence of their own beliefs, certain in the knowledge that they – and only they – are right. Its a position that can only lead to more conflict, not less – the perfect recipe for a perpetual state of war.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then this campaign has already started laying slabs - Unite Against Terror? More like come join the new moral army.

No thanks.

Okay, after savaging the pro-war left a couple of days ago I think its time I set about courting a bit more controversy and shooting another sacred cow along the way, even if I do it in a rather more considered manner.

Q. In this whole escapade that is Iraq, what is the one assumption that almost no one ever questions, no matter what side of the debate they’re on?

A. That whatever else happens, democracy can only be good for the Iraqi people.

Well is that necessarily true? Is democracy really what the Iraqi people need and will it really benefit them as much as everyone supposes or are we merely projecting our own values and ideas into a situation we don’t really understand because it makes us feel better?

Now before everyone starts reaching for their keyboard to start composing a political/philosophical defence of the principle of democracy lets be clear that where I’m going here is not down the road of some sort of study in comparative government nor am I about to attempt a general polemic against democracy. The question here is not ‘is democracy a good thing?’, or ‘is democracy a better system of government than a totalitarian dictatorship or a absolute monarchy?. No, the question I want to pose is one that is specific to Iraq’s present circumstances.

‘Is democracy the right way to go about building a nation state?’

As a starting point we need to get a bit of background under our belts, both in terms of what is a nation state and how one comes about and also about the formation and foundations of present day Iraq.

What is a nation state?

Probably the best description I can find comes from the ever reliable Wikipedia, which defines the nation state as follows:

A nation-state is a specific form of state, which exists to provide a sovereign territory for a particular nation, and derives its legitimacy from that function. In the ideal model of the nation-state, the population consists of the nation and only of the nation: the state not only houses it, but protects it and its national identity.

Before going on to note:

A nation-state is typically a unitary state with a single system of law and government. It is almost by definition a sovereign state, meaning that there is no external authority above the state itself. Dependent territories of any kind are not considered nation-states, until they achieve independence. The nation-state implies the parallel occurrence of a state and a nation. In the ideal model, they coincide exactly: every member of the nation is a permanent resident of the nation-state, and no member of the nation permanently resides outside it. In reality this is unusual, not to say impossible. That does not mean that there are no nation-states, the ideal has influenced almost all existing sovereign states, and they can not be understood without reference to that model. It also explains how they are different from their predecessor states.

This contrasts with the kind of states which preceded the advent of the nation state which were defined almost exclusively in relation to the ruling dynastic house of the state, the prevalent model being a monarchical state, the boundaries of which were defined by the extent of the territory ruled by the King, Emperor or, in the case of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan. Factors which tend, these days, to define a common identity amongst groups of people, e.g. ethnicity, religion, language tended not to get much a look in – the archetypal non-nation state tended to be a multi-ethnic empire, although there was usually some advantage to belonging to the same, usually dominant, ethnic group as the ruling house.

The nation state is a relatively recent innovation, one which dates, depending on your preferred perspective, either to the rise of European nationalism, and particularly ‘Romantic Nationalism’ in the late 18th and early 19th Century or to the mid 17th Century, albeit in a rather limited way. This confusion arises out of the question of whether nationalism, which in its full flowering is very much a 19th Century concept, and the idea of a common national identity are synonymous – if you believe they are then nation states like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States of America and France, all of which emerged before the concept of nationalism took hold are a kind of hybrid, a step on the road to the nation state but ones which were not fully realised until their sense of common identity evolved into a sense of nationalism. This, for me, is rather too literalist a view; one that’s too limited in its notion of what it is that makes for a common identity and its understanding of where and how the common identity required for nationhood forms. It also ignores, in a fairly typical piece of Eurocentric conceit, that nation states developed outside of Europe, in South America, independently of the main strands of European nationalism.

Whatever your take on the disputed origins of the nation state it remains the case that a nation state is defined by reference to its people who, so the model assumes, will share a common identity. Common identity in central to and, in fact, a prerequisite for successful nation building. Its also its biggest complication and not only is there no single way to develop such a common identity but the various options which could be used as a basis for a common identity are often contradictory and a source of conflict.

Inherent in the practice of nation building is therefore not only the process of forging a common identity but also the process of suppressing or expelling identities which don’t fit in with the preferred route to nationhood – usually by the use of violence, repression and social engineering. It’s often forgotten, in England at least, that creating the British nation state involved the wholesale destruction of the Scottish clan system following the Jacobite rebellion, the wholesale and deliberate Anglicisation of the Scottish and Irish aristocracy and the colonisation of Ireland, and Ulster in the particular, with loyal Scottish protestants, displacing the Catholic Irish in the process. Building the United States of America, likewise, required the widespread destruction of the varied cultures of its indigenous population, a process which was still going on up until very recently through the practice of forcing Native American children, often by removing them from their families entirely, to attend ‘Missionary’ schools which would give them ‘a good Christian upbringing’ – a practice which has also been used to devastating effect by the Spanish, in South America, by several European nations during the colonisation of Africa and as recently as the 1960’s in Australia. Lets also not forget that the people of the United States have had cause to dispute the nature of the common America identity amongst themselves, leading to the American Civil War of 1861-65. It’s also largely forgotten that France, up to an including the period of the French revolution, was by no means possessed of a common identity either. Regional variations in culture and language were, in pre-revolutionary France, so pronounced that a peasant born barely 30 miles from Paris could barely make themselves understood on visiting the capital. In fact, much as it is tempting to point to the French revolution as the beginning of French nationhood, its effect outside of Paris and France’s other major towns and cities was very limited – The real architect of the French nation was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, a despot and arch-imperialist, who forged modern France out of his own imperial pretensions by standardising everything from its administration and language to its legal system under the Napoleonic Civil code, imposing a uniform and dominant ‘French’ culture in the process.

What history tells us about the process of nation building is that, with very few exceptions, that process leads invariably to a conflict of identities which is resolved only when a single identity achieves dominance. Exceptions to this rule are extremely rare. Switzerland is one, in fact the only one in which a consensual civic identity has formed the foundations of a nation state. Japan, due to is almost total isolation until the middle of the 19th Century, is arguably another although this is primarily a result of it having more or less dealt with the question of identity during its imperial phase, long before making the transition to becoming a nation state, and was not accomplished without it own acts of repression, the subjugation of the indigenous Ainu population being, in many respects, similar to the subjugation of the Welsh and subsequent destruction of the Welsh culture by the English during the reign of Edward I.

What history also tells us is that democracy and the idea of a common identity founded on civic values is rarely strong enough to sustain or force through the process of building a more or less cohesive nation. Few, if any, nation states are founded successfully on the principle of democracy and a common civic society without this being supported, fully, by a common identity derived from another source. This is because democracy, which supports and encourages the development of society based on diversity and plurality is fundamentally at odds with the process of nation building which demands the development, in its initial stages, of a homogeneous and dominant monoculture. Only when a nation state has succeeded in finding and stabilising its common identity are the conditions absolutely right for democracy; prior to that democracy tends to be divisive and to work against the process of defining the nation’s common identity by legitimising, even from the minority position, identities which diverge from and conflict with the common identity upon which the nation state is being built.

Nation building by purely civic means and on the basis of a common civic identity is, therefore, rarely successful; other than in the case of Switzerland it success is generally predicated on there being a lack of competition from other means of defining identity. In the United States the development of its civic identity and, therefore, its nation state was supported both by the liberal political philosophy of the enlightenment and by the colonist’s rejection of the idea of a uniform religious or ethnic identity, an extremely rare event in itself as, by and large, religious and ethnic identities tend to carry far more weight with a defined population. One can also point to a small number of former British colonies; Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which have had the benefit not only of developing from an established civic nation, the UK – although the road to nationhood in this country did not begin with it civic identity but with its religious identity derived from the reformation and refined by Puritanism – and, again, a lack of competition from other identity markers like ethnicity and religion.

Why a civic identity should be seemingly so weak in the face of competition from other potential common identities is a function of the extent to which an identity is perceived to be either personal/natural or ideological/artificial. Generally speaking there exists a distinct hierarchy of identity, one in which the strongest tends to be ethnicity, followed very closely by – and under the right conditions even superseded - religion, then culture with the weakest being the state, ideological and civic identities. The state-based identity treats the nation and the state as being entirely synonymous as in Italian Fascism or the Turkish nationalism of Attaturk. Communism could also be argued to be a state-based identity however this ignores its internationalist leanings and is, therefore, better thought of as an ideological identity even though, in practice, it has typically resulted in the creation of a strong and, by varying degrees, repressive state.

The strongest identities, in terms of nation building, are therefore those which are felt most personally by members of the nation, the ones which are perceived to be an intrinsic part of the individual, and by extension, national character. With very few exceptions – the USA being one – these are also the identities which engender the greatest sense of both personal and collective history and which, therefore, largely pre-date the European enlightenment. State, ideological and civic identities, by contrast, are very much products of the enlightenment and offer a far weaker and more abstract sense of common identity.

What this means in terms of the theory of building a nation state is that not only that it will work effectively only where there is a common identity but where, in turn, that common identity is one of the stronger, pre-enlightenment personal identities or where more than one of those identities combine and work together. Conversely where two of more of these potential common identities come into conflict and, in particular, where an abstract post-enlightenment identity comes into conflict with one of the stronger identities, i.e. ethnicity or religion it is difficult, if not impossible to build a common identity…

… other than by means of force.

This, in particular, is where the civic identity based on democracy runs into real problems when it comes to nation building as in the absence of a solid and consensual common identity it is almost impossible to obtain support sufficient to legitimise the use of force to maintain social order with the result that either social order within the state dissolves leading to chaos and civil war or, alternatively, a single faction, typically but not always the military, seizes control of the state in order to re-impose order turning the state into a dictatorship. The worst case scenario in terms of the latter arises where the faction which seizes control not only identifies itself with one of the identities which was previously vying for the position of becoming the common identity of the nation but also sees itself as being diametrically opposed to any of the other identities within the state, a situation which results at the very least in severe political repression but which can also lead on to acts of genocide, particularly where divisions are based on conflict between ethnic identities.

In general terms, this is why nation building in the post-war, post-colonial era is often so unsuccessful and has seen so many states which were set up as democracies by their former colonial ‘masters’ fail, collapsing into civil war and/or despotism.

Where does all this leave modern day Iraq? Not very well situated as it happens.

Iraq, like many of the states of the Middle East in and around the area of the Arabian peninsula, did not exist until the 20th Century. Up until the end of World War I, Iraq was not one but three separate provinces of the Ottoman Empire; Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, an arrangement which broadly reflects the religious and ethnic divisions of Iraq in the modern day – such arrangements, which were deliberately drawn up to reflect areas of common ethnic or religious identity were entirely commonplace in imperial non-nation states as they tended to make such areas rather more easy to govern.

Following World War I, Iraq became a British Mandate - the British League of Nations Trust Territory of Iraq – until 1932 when it was granted independence as one of two Hashemite Kingdom’s set up by Britain in the Middle East; the second one being Jordan, then called Transjordan, which remains an independent state and one of Britain’s closest allies in the region, today. It should be noted that the Hashemites had no historical territorial claim to Iraq later than than the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 AD which brought an end to the Abbasid Caliphate, rather the Hashemites controlled the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia under the Ottoman Empire until the collapse of its power in 1917, following which the Hashemite leader, Husain ibn Ali ruled the Hejaz as an independent state, declare himself King, until 1924. The Hashemites were finally expelled from the Hejaz after it was annexed by their chief rival in the Arabian peninsula, a tribal warlord named Ibn Saud, the founder of the House of Saud, which has ruled Saudi Arabia since this same period.

Hashemite rule in Iraq lasted until 1958 when it was overthrown by a popular revolution, installing a left-wing, pro-Soviet military government. This was, in turn, overthrown some ten years later by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party of which Saddam Hussain become the leader in 1979 resulting in the inevitable Stalin-style purge of his political opponents.

As should be obvious from this brief history, Iraq not only has no history of democratic rule whatsoever but also no real history of having developed or even of having tried to develop a common Iraqi identity of the kind which would sustain it as a unified nation state. Throughout its entire existence as an independent entity, the identity of its people as Iraqis has been enforced upon them by, in the first instance, a British supported monarchy and, since the 1950’s, by an all-powerful and controlling state.

In terms of trying to build a viable nation state out of Iraq, the last ninety or so years might just as well have not happened at all.

Instead of moving towards a common identity Iraq, as it is today, is little different from what it was under the Ottomans, three largely separate and distinct provinces, each of which has it own sense of common identity which is different from and conflicts with the others, a situation which has been made even more confused by the Ba’athist’s Al Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the north of Iraq, a component of which was a deliberate policy of ‘Arabisation’ in the region which has since been characterised as an attempt at ethnic cleansing.

So what we have today in a country made up of three large self-identifying groups and competing groups, ethnic Kurds - who are also Sunni Muslims – Arab Sunni Muslims and Arab Shi’a Muslims, placing the two most powerful determinants of identity, ethnicity and religion, into a three-way conflict.

To make matters even more complicated there is also the influence and expectations of neighbouring states to be taken into account.

In the north the ethnic homeland of the Kurds, Kurdistan, is divided between Iraq and the Turkish Republic, a key strategic ally of the West in the region, member of NATO and, itself, under increasing internal pressure to move towards an Islamic rather than secular state. In terms of common identity and the idea of a nation state, the Kurdish preference would undoubtedly be their secession from Iraq and the formation of an independent Kurdish state, which would seem, at first sight, a feasible option were it not for the fact that this would undoubtedly result in the Kurdish population of Eastern Turkey seeking secession in order to join with the Iraqi Kurds to form a unified Kurdish state. Such a move would not only destabilise Turkey and its government, placing its own secular state at greater risk but also provoke an opposite reaction to Kurdish demands for secession in which the Turks decide to resolve the problem by annexing the Kurdish region of northern Iraq and incorporating it into a ‘Greater Turkey’.

In the south, the situation is equally confused. On might assume that the Southern Shi’a Muslim population’s natural ally is neighbouring Iran, a revolutionary Islamic state which, since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 has viewed, and been viewed by, the West with varying degrees of suspicion and downright hostility – and indeed its clerical leadership does to some extent look to Iran for it lead. However this is not such a clear cut situation as it might first appear and for all that the share a clear of identity with Iran in terms of religion, the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980’s and, in particular, the ferocity of the conflict in the area between Basra and Abadan, centred of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, has left a legacy of mistrust and suspicion and a fear of reprisals which makes any idea that the two populations might join forces in a formal sense highly unlikely. It needs also to be remembered that as the largest of the three groups, the Shi’a Muslims have potentially the most to gain from the initial stages of democratic rule by virtue of sheer weight of numbers, which make them the most influential of the three groups even if it is insufficient of itself to give them overall dominance. The unanswered question with the Shi’a population is the extent to which they will be prepared to moderate their ultra-conservative religious values in dealings with the state sufficiently to accommodate the less conservative position of the other two groups.

In the middle of all this are the third main group, the Sunni Arabs, who were at least nominally the dominant group prior to the 2003 invasion, as it was from this group that the Ba’ath Party emerged and drew its support. The Sunnis have been, to date, the group least inclined to play ball with the process of nation building in Iraq for reasons which almost certainly include everything from lingering sympathies and support for the Ba’athists to a fear of reprisals with middle ground in their thinking being the suspicion that no matter what the new-look Iraqi state ends up looking like, they’ll be on the losing end of it one way or another. With competing self-identifying groups on either side, each of whom are, in their own way, pulling in very different directions the position in which the Sunni Arabs of Iraq now find themselves is many respects similar to the position of Germany following World War I in the sense that they have been stripped of their previous power and authority and are surrounded by enemies of their own making - the only difference being that no one ever expected Germany to build a single nation state and common identity in partnership with France and Poland, which the Sunni Arabs are expected to do in partnership with the Kurd and the Shi’a.

In short, you could not have chosen a worse set of circumstances in which to try to build a unified nation state than exist today in Iraq if you’d tried, especially if your goal is to create a democratic nation state based on a civic identity. As has all too often been the case in Africa, where state boundaries were for the most part drawn up by the colonial powers without, almost, any reference to pre-existing ethnic/tribal territories and long-standing rivalries, this is a recipe for instability and conflict from which a unified and stable democratic Iraqi state has little or no prospect of emerging. Indeed, as our experiences in Africa should have taught us, the most likely outcome of our latest attempt at nation building is likely to be civil war and the balkanisation of Iraq or the emergence of new ’strongman’ leader, most probably from the military, to hold the the country together by the enforcement of a similar state-based identity and approach to that of the recently deposed Ba’athists. In terms of any democratic aspirations we might have for Iraq, probably the best we can hope for is a situation similar to that which has prevailed in countries like Pakistan and Nigeria which tend to flip-flop between democratic and military rule depending on the relative stability of the state during a particular period, with the military steeping in every time democracy becomes so troublesome and divisive that it is seen to threaten the integrity of the state and, of course, that if such a leader does emerge, that they are reasonably well disposed towards our interests and interested in a diplomatic relationship with the West.

Of all the errors made by the West the one that will prove to be the gravest in the long run will be the one that derives from our greatest and, since World War II, most consistent conceit, the idea that we can take states like Iraq, artificial states which we created during the the colonial era and which lack the coherent sense of common identity necessary to form a stable nation state, and create democracies from them out of nothing.

If we put aside our political and cultural prejudices for a moment and consider only what history teaches us, it should be obvious that the history of the formation of nation states and nation building is not the same history as that of democracy but rather the history of the military and/or political ’strongman’, the dictator and the despot, of Bonaparte, Bismark, Stalin, Tito, Mao Tse Tung, Mugabe, Salazar, Nasser, Idi Amin and a whole host of others…

…including Saddam Hussain.

If you supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 then somewhere along the line you’ll have told yourself that whatever other reasons there may have been for that invasion, it will all work out for the good in the end because at least the Iraqi people will have gained democracy and the right of self-determination , which they didn’t have before. Indeed, the more it became apparent that the reasons we we told we had to go to war, the alleged threat posed by Saddam Hussain to neighbouring states and the stability of the region, we a work of total fiction, the more you’ll have come to rely on the idea that democracy will be good for them to justify and explain your position.

On the other hand, If you’ve read and understood this article in full, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be starting to wonder whether that particular argument is just a bit of ‘reach’ and whether, in long run, the best that Iraqi people can hope for down the line is a relatively benevolent dictator, by dictatorial standards; one in the mould of a Zia-ul-Haq or Pervez Musharraf, someone who is no less a strongman but at least fairly pragmatic in their use of force and repression – in which case this piece has done its job…

…and if not, I’d be interested to hear your arguments as to how and why Iraq will be any different from all the other failed and semi-failed attempts at nation building through democracy that have gone before.