Tuesday, September 18, 2012 

The point of no return.

Have we at long last reached the point of no return on Afghanistan? It's a question worth asking, not because of the decision made by the Americans to put an immediate stop to joint patrols and training in the country as a result of the ever increasing number of "green on blue" attacks, or to put it in English, Afghans in uniform we're meant to be handing control over to killing their trainers, but due to how at long last a substantial number of our own MPs have been prepared to say what was previously confined only to comment pieces. Yesterday Denis MacShane, Paul Flynn, David Winnick and John Redwood all called either for a withdrawal from the country by Christmas, or as soon as humanly possible after that. While the latter three have been making similar arguments for some time, Denis MacShane is most certainly not one of the usual suspects, and was among the strongest supporters and then defenders of the Iraq war. Indeed, he was previously a supporter of the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank that has long supported the (forced) democratisation of the Middle East.

This isn't to ignore the fact that during yesterday's debate there were just as many MPs pushing the same old unbelievably out of date argument that our presence in Afghanistan is in some way protecting our national security, or that alternatively to leave now would somehow mean all those who have given their lives would have done so in vain, but it's clearly progress of a sort. Certainly, if that incessantly repeated two word answer given to the question of why we are still in the country has always been a nonsense, it never sounded quite as hollow as it did when Philip Hammond stated it yet again on Newsnight yesterday. How can our mission possibly be about national security when al-Qaida was cleared out of Afghanistan years ago, as even Hammond himself has admitted? As John Baron asked yesterday of the defence secretary, either our continuing presence is about nation building and the training up of Afghan forces, a mission which he himself said we shouldn't be putting lives at risk for, or it isn't. If it isn't about that, then we're expending blood and treasure for seemingly little other reason than our continuing obsession with riding on the coattails of America, a decision made for reasons of prestige rather than pragmatism.

The sad fact is that our contribution to America's post 9/11 wars are increasingly resented rather than welcomed. US commanders have long been dismissive about our role in Helmand, and the US military in general now tends to regard our unwarranted boasting and pride as exactly that, unwarranted. They've never really cared whether or not decisions made at the top have been relayed to all of their allies swiftly, yet it's surely come to something when our defence secretary, completely unaware of the change in strategy made we're told on Sunday stood up in parliament and told everyone that nothing had been altered. Recalled to the Commons today to alter his comments, Hammond was left claiming that in fact everything was just as it had been, only that now we would have to apply to the Americans for permission to carry on joint patrols below company level. Last week in an interview with the Graun Hammond was claiming that we could draw down our forces quicker, despite the "green on blue" "problems" as the work had been progressing so swimmingly; now they can't even go out together without asking the Americans first.

According to Richard Norton-Taylor, the military has long wanted to get out of Afghanistan and it's been the politicians holding them back. Alternatively, according to MacShane, the problem has been the "unelected military-Ministry of Defence nexus" which has been in control of policy. The reality is that both the military and the politicians have wanted to stay in Afghanistan; it was after all the military which while desperate to get out of Iraq wanted to do more in Helmand, and John "without a single shot" Reid was happy to oblige. Nothing has changed since then, regardless of the coming to power of the coalition. What else explains the second deployment of "Harry Wales" to the country, other than an attempt on behalf of the MoD to conjure up some good news and easily sellable propaganda? Harry's at relatively little risk in an Apache, but clearly you can never be too careful, as reports of Harry's bundling to a safe place in Camp Bastion when the Taliban carried out their most devastating attack in terms of destroyed equipment and buildings of the entire war on the base testifies. Hammond didn't even deny this was the case last night, merely that such treatment was given to all "VIPs" when at the camp. Not many VIPs are actually serving soldiers though, are they? Either Harry's a squaddie like all the rest and therefore should face the same risks as them, or he's the equivalent of a regimental goat. That the MoD can't decide which it is speaks volumes.

Clearly then, something has to break. Not a single politician can possibly claim with a straight face that our remaining in Afghanistan is achieving anything. It isn't improving our relationship with the United States, it isn't stopping al-Qaida from returning as al-Qaida central has effectively ceased to exist, it's helping to prop up a hideously corrupt government that is widely loathed by Afghans themselves, and those we're training are so mistrustful and bitter at how we see them that they're prepared to kill us, as not every recruit who's turned their gun on foreign forces can possibly be a Taliban infiltrator. If anything, the only thing we're providing is continuing target practice for the Taliban, and while they might not be as strong as they were in previous years, they're clearly capable of the odd spectacular assault when they feel like it. What we should be doing now is pushing ever more fiercely for some kind of accord between the Karzai government and the sections of the Taliban prepared to negotiate, even if that means making really unpleasant decisions about the carving out of autonomous regions within the country. Afghanistan has been at war now since 1978; just as the Russians admitted defeat, so must we.

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9/18/2012 05:38:00 pm | |

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 

The falsity and ritual of the "essential" relationship.

Much of politics is thoroughly pointless. The centre point of our parliamentary democracy, prime minister's questions, is a weekly exercise in miserable theatre, the very lowest rhetoric (you knifed your brother in the back!) and planted feeble jibes at the opposite party. On occasion some very worthy causes are raised but these are always dealt with behind the scenes, if at all. Similarly, you can hardly begrudge the wider public attitude towards politics when the very shows they are invited to take part in, such as Question Time, are almost always interminable, all the more so since the coalition took power, as it often means there are two all but identical party hacks on the panel completely agreeing with each other. Add in the obligatory professional attention seekers who always take the fifth seat, whether it's David Starkey, Mad Mel or Alastair Campbell, and the number of hastily switched channels as soon as David Dimbleby appears must be close to incalculable.

Neither of these rituals or any other you can think of compare though to the spectacular inanity that is the official state visit. Very occasionally they move from the pointless to the obscene, such as when the Saudis or other authoritarians come to the visit, the red carpet rolled out for some of the most venal and vile individuals on the planet, but mostly they just demonstrate that stifling protocol and appearances matter as much as they ever have.

Rather than attempting to cool down this falsity, if anything it keeps becoming more and more layered. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for David Cameron to go to Washington this week, let alone take George Osborne and William Hague along with him, not to mention the whole scrum of media following in their wake. All of the policies supposedly to be discussed tomorrow could have been settled over the phone or video conference, as we are told Cameron and Barack Obama often communicate; instead, we're being treated to sights that can never be unseen, such as Obama and Cameron having to look as though they're making small talk as they board a helicopter taking them to a basketball game. This is of course to demonstrate that both are just such ordinary, down to earth guys and to prove it they'll be giving an interview at half-time.

As is also now set down in stone, one or both of the leaders will have to give their name to a ridiculous newspaper article (written usually by a chief spin doctor, the real author of a Bill Clinton "piece" during the Blair years having been a certain A Campbell), setting out just how close the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom remains. Rebranded from being "special" to being "essential", perhaps because the very meaning of the former has changed, it goes unremarked that Obama has been fairly liberal in who he says America has an extraordinary relationship with, with both French and Israeli leaders told they are the true apple of the world superpower's roving eye. In reality, the only relationship that matters is the one with Israel, such is the now phenomenal power of the lobby, propped up by a mixture of neo-Conservative zeal, fundamentalist Christian dogma, with many evangelicals believing Israel will be the literal site of the battle of Armageddon and the massive success of AIPAC in getting prospective politicians to agree to support Israeli policies. If David Cameron were to tomorrow lecture Obama in the way that Benjamin Netanyahu has now twice done, it's a fair bet that he wouldn't be invited back any time soon.

For as previously noted, regardless of the role we've played in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US could have easily done both alone. Cameron and Obama's joint article ends with the statement that together they believe there "is hardly anything we cannot do", yet the entire piece is made up of things that we've in fact done or are doing as part of partnerships, organisations or wider alliances. The only part where this isn't the case is in the mention of extra care for military veterans, something we wouldn't have to be putting so much aside for if we didn't keep involving ourselves in needless conflicts, or alternatively knew when to cut our losses. Obama and Cameron are not fools: they both know that our continuing blundering in Afghanistan is likely to eventually make Iraq look like a success story by comparison. Both though keep listening to the advisers and military spokesmen who haven't had a clue since the outset, the end result being the needless deaths of the six British servicemen last week, and the massacre by the American soldier at the end of it.

If there was really anything that we couldn't do together, such as provide a positive vision of the future that doesn't involve almost perpetual conflict, then there might have been some mention of a push for movement on a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians, something all but forgotten now that Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions have taken precedence. The truth is that we can't even agree on a joint response to the recession, although this isn't especially surprising when the two parties in the coalition can't either. The Guardian's leader says that Cameron hasn't gone out of his way to "pursue an Atlanticist foreign policy", which is accurate up to a point, the point being that it was ourselves who were pushing for intervention in Libya whereas Obama had to be convinced, while we haven't ruled out joining in an attack on Iran. Our foreign policy has in practice not changed one jot since the days of the first Gulf War.

We clutch to the coattails of America for the reason that our politicians seem to think we have to for the sake of image and history. The French may have been ungrateful ever since the day after the liberation of Paris, but at least they're confident and comfortable in having plotted their own course. Our leaders meanwhile continue to pretend that we mean something to the Americans beyond our usefulness as a fig leaf, while even that is increasingly being regarded as more trouble than it's worth in terms of our unjustified high opinion of ourselves. Like with the pointless rituals of politics, it's time we realised that when we have nothing to offer we should offer nothing. Change and reform though is not for those who insist upon it for everyone else.

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3/13/2012 10:15:00 pm | |

Thursday, March 08, 2012 

A reappraisal of the Power of Nightmares.

Not to keep banging on about Adam Curtis or anything, but it's about time that the Power of Nightmares was reappraised. Broadcast on BBC2 in 2004, it was broadly welcomed (as his films in general are) on the left and criticised by the right. As set out in his introduction to the first film, his thesis was that the threat posed by al-Qaida had been massively exaggerated by both politicians and the media, turning what was a dysfunctional and small organisation that had nonetheless pulled off a massive coup into a vast network that was close to threatening our very existence. In reality, this was a fiction: the really dangerous thing about al-Qaida was not the network itself, but the ideology. Politicians in turn had discovered that by promising to protect their voters from this existential threat, it invested them with the power they had lost as a result of the turn to neoliberalism in the 80s.

Then 7/7 happened. The Power of Nightmares, with its title apparently suggesting that jihadists were nothing but bad dreams and that the politicians, police and security services were just imagining the threats they were talking about, was ridiculed and derided and still is now. Just recently over on Liberal Conspiracy Flowerpower responded to one of my cross-posted blogs on Abu Qatada to take issue with my use of the word phantom. It was perhaps a bit careless to use phantom instead of spectre in the context of us being unconcerned about Islamic extremism in the 90s, but it was obvious I wasn't saying there isn't a threat. To quote him:

The last time some idiot lefty (Adam Curtis) started peddling that line of nonsense, Muslims soon start exploding on the London Underground.

This might be slightly unfair to Flowerpower, but his remark in itself is a caricature of most of the criticism of Curtis. Curtis most certainly didn't suggest there weren't any suicide bombers, just that politicians were abusing the threat there was, most of which was only tenuously linked with al-Qaida in Pakistan, for their own ends. If anything, as John B wrote at the time on his recently resurrected blog from back then, 7/7 proved him right. The bombers were not foreigners, but born and raised here; they were trained in Pakistan in making explosives, and filmed a couple of martyrdom videos which were subsequently released by al-Qaida's media arm, and that's pretty much the extent of their connections. It was the ideology which had brought them together. As the security services claimed in the immediate aftermath, they were not a sleeper cell waiting for the moment to attack; they were "clean skins", with few or no links to those they expected to launch an assault.

As it turned out, this was wrong. The 7/7 group were connected to those who had been arrested under Operation Crevice, although whether the attack could have prevented is doubtful. This pattern of British citizens or residents being the ones behind planned attacks continued, right up to the supposed disrupted 2009 plot, where it was Pakistani students here on visas who were arrested and later released. By that point al-Qaida central's influence, as discussed yesterday, was heavily on the wane. Instead, the very idea of al-Qaida as a brand had spread globally. Jihadist groups with nationalist motives started to pledge allegiance to al-Qaida, although this has often meant little other than a change in name. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has continued to focus on North Africa, just as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat as they were formally known had. There have been some attacks linked back to al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq outside of that country, but apart from the bomb in Jordan these have been minor or failed. The same will almost certainly be the case with al-Shabaab, which pledged allegiance earlier in the year.

The one exception is Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, whose de facto leader had taken note of the foiled or failed spectaculars linked back to al-Qaida central and started to push for a change in tactics. AQAP still clearly felt there was a place for major attacks with the potential for debilitating effects, as seen in the antics of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and 2010's cargo bomb attempt, but at the same time Anwar al-Awlaki started pushing for those who had become radicalised online to do what they could for the cause of global jihad on their own. His suggestion wasn't that they become suicide bombers in foreign countries, or form cells with like-minded individuals which could be more easily monitored and disrupted, it was for them to launch what have become known as "lone wolf" attacks. Al-Awlaki had allegedly been in direct contact with the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Similarly, his sermons have been said to have inspired Roshonara Choudhry in this country, although her true reasoning for stabbing Stephen Timms might never be fully known, while the magazines AQAP has published also promote the same notion of individual action.

Anwar al-Awlaki's message has been so successful and influential in changing the minds of those who might have previously sought refuge for their ideas with others that the security services now regard those completely off their radar as posing the biggest threat to the Olympics. Whereas al-Qaida had felt that multiple attacks at the same time would have the most impact, their adherents now think that the best way to emphasise that their ideology isn't going anywhere is to do it alone, regardless of how this will make it much harder to achieve multiple casualties. In spite of how this makes it likely an attack, should it come, will be far less devastating than 7/7 (Anders Breivik not withstanding, and few have the resources that were available to Tim McVeigh, who was helped in any case), ever larger amounts of money are being spent to prevent it. An astonishing £1bn is going on security at the Olympics.

Adam Curtis has then essentially been proven right. Al-Qaida as a cohesive organisation directing groups of those trained in the camps in Afghanistan to attack at a precise moment was a fiction. It took the credit for the attacks that were successful mainly because those who carrying them out believed in the Salafist vision of a global caliphate, with bin Laden and al-Zawahiri in the vanguard, even if the real role those back in Pakistan had in them was slight. As consecutive plots failed, its influence began to wane. The triumph of the ideology though has been such that it can motivate individuals who have never been to a training camp to do what they are told will be their bit for the cause. At the same time, our politicians have locked us into a perpetual war against people who pose no real threat whatsoever to our way of life. It has come at an immense cost in terms of money and lives, and reality shows no sign of entering the picture any time soon.

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3/08/2012 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, March 07, 2012 

Lying about Afghanistan.

Politics and lies go hand in hand, always have, always will. On rare occasions we are lied to for "good" reasons, with the media voluntarily going along with it: see the role of the D-Notice committee. More often the lies are simply to avoid embarrassment, such as David Cameron (or his office) denying that he had ever gone horse riding with Rebekah Brooks as was claimed by Peter Oborne, only for him to have to admit that he had at the very least gone hacking with his old Eton pal Charlie Brooks, and on the horse loaned to Brooks by the Met no less.

Occasionally though the lies are so blatant and yet so repeated that they become accepted by almost everyone, to the point where it's only those on the outer fringes of politics who challenge them. One such lie has been repeated multiple times today, and by spokespeople for all three of the main political parties in this country. According to David Cameron, Philip Hammond, Jim Murphy (on Newsnight) and countless others, our continuing military presence in Afghanistan is essential to our own national security, even to the point where we are fighting there to ensure that we don't have to do so in our own cities.

This is a lie so outrageous as to rival the ones that led us into the Iraq war. At least those were somewhat believed by the politicians, even if that was because they had personally convinced themselves that they were true and that to back down would have done irreparable damage to their credibility; with Afghanistan this has long since ceased to be the case. Back in 2009 David Petraeus, the then head of the ISAF, made known that al-Qaida was barely operating in Afghanistan, having moved into Pakistan. This was reiterated by an official in the Obama administration last year.

More to the point, "al-Qaida central" has been weakened to the point where its role in the planning of attacks against the West (always overstated in any case, as cells have acted on their own initiative as well) is very slight. The last foiled plot in this country that was linked directly back to al-Qaida in Pakistan was the liquid bombs one; Operation Pathway supposedly disrupted a plot to carry out attacks in Manchester but no one was charged, even if the investigation eventually lead to arrests in America. Far more active has been the offshoot al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, responsible for the infamous "underpants" bomber and the bombs hidden in printers placed on flights to the US. Also worried about is al-Shabaab in Somalia, yet no one is suggesting we invade either country to guarantee our national security back here.

Ah, some will say, the fear is not al-Qaida is currently a threat in Afghanistan, but they would quickly return should we leave. Except we are of course planning to leave, as are the Americans, by the end of 2014. There is no chance whatsoever that by that point the situation in Afghanistan will be comparable to the one in Iraq at the end of the last year, with the insurgency mostly defeated and the army and police trained to an acceptable standard. There is an incredibly remote possibility that somehow the Taliban, the Americans and Hamid Karzai could reach something approaching a peace accord, but that would almost certainly mean the break-up of the country, or at the very least the setting up of autonomous zones within it. Unless the Taliban severs all links with al-Qaida, something that it has shown no inclination of doing even if the Taliban is fundamentally nationalist while al-Qaida is internationalist, then this leaves wide open the chance that al-Qaida could still return even then.

Why then are we still in Afghanistan? For the simple reason that we continue to regard our alliance with the US as being so important that the "sacrifice" of men and exorbitant cost of operations there is worth it overall. It's also why we will almost certainly be involved in an attack on Iran should the US decide it has to act against their nuclear programme. It doesn't matter that the US could easily do all of these things itself; by giving our support we ensure America isn't left on its own, improving its global image, and in return we receive both American intelligence and military technology, as well as being able to project an image of ourselves as remaining a global power on the world stage. While some American politicians are genuinely grateful for how this gives them extra leeway, others regard it as bordering on the pathetic, as Obama almost certainly does, even if he feels he has to continue to regard the alliance as the "special relationship" for appearances.

Present this in its stark reality and the war in Afghanistan would be even more unpopular. Far better to lie and continue to pretend that al-Qaida remains just as much a threat as it always has been. And why change the message when it's worked for the past decade?

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3/07/2012 11:59:00 pm | |

Friday, February 03, 2012 

The good war.

Simon Jenkins on Afghanistan:

All military and diplomatic experience, all the history and the scholarship in the world, did not stop this crude punitive venture being backed by conservatives and liberals alike in both the US and Britain. It was declared a good war. The drumbeats of battle stifled criticism. Any general got a cheer who could boast that the war would be over in weeks, and without a shot fired. Critics were met with the timeless, drear refrain, that their talk was defeatist, cowardly and lacked patriotism. Like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, they were drowned by the lust for glory.

Nor were the lobbies idle. Bruised from its Iraq debacle, the British army wanted somewhere to walk tall. Helmand, with its echoes of Beau Geste and Lawrence of Arabia, was ideal. Behind the army lurked the call of money, an ever-burgeoning regiment of arms suppliers, security firms, contractors, NGOs and aid agencies, all fat on the war's staggering $500bn cost. Add to them Kabul's kleptocrats, politicians and aid recipients, and the war took on a self-sustaining quality. Even today few participants have an interest in its ending. Hundreds, then thousands, die, and no one can honestly say why.

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2/03/2012 06:22:00 pm | |

Friday, September 30, 2011 

Glenn Greenwald on the extrajudicial execution of Anwar al-Awlaki.


What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

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9/30/2011 06:59:00 pm | |

Monday, September 12, 2011 

100 years ago.

Thomas L. Friedman, 10 years ago:

We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules, and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. It won't be easy. It will require our best strategists, our most creative diplomats and our bravest soldiers. Semper Fi.

Both ourselves and the US managed the first part. The second, not so much.

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9/12/2011 08:43:00 pm | |

Friday, September 02, 2011 

Eliza Manningham-Bullshitter speech shock.

"I was actually against everything I did while I was head of MI5. Shame I didn't do something about it then."

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9/02/2011 05:53:00 pm | |

Monday, May 02, 2011 

The American way of death.

(Yep, this is long.)

When they finally came for him, you'd imagine it was exactly as Osama himself would have expected and feared. Two helicopter gunships suddenly swooping in, one of which swiftly crashed, continuing the image of marines as being capable of both great moments of farce and swift acts of terrifying retribution, delivering between 20 and 25 Navy Seals into what proved to a short battle. Without confirmation of how many were in the compound and whether bin Laden had much more defence than a few bodyguards and members of his own family, forty minutes seems about right for what was an operation which would have planned for little overall resistance. Most of that time was probably spent breaching the buildings themselves; if otherwise, those defending bin Laden must have held their own for at least a few minutes against overwhelming odds.

As the news came through last night that Obama was to make an unexpected announcement so late in the evening, my initial thought was it would be to tell the world that the other current thorn in the side of the West, Colonel Gaddafi, had been killed. Certainly, that bin Laden's life was ended in such close proximity to the missile strike in Tripoli that that killed Gaddafi's second-youngest son and some of his grandchildren is no mere coincidence. Instead, it's the ultimate expression of American geopolitical power, something that even Israel with its permissive attitude towards the assassination of those that threaten her can't match: the willingness to kill foreign leaders or terrorists without even the merest nod to international law, or extended justification as to why other means could not have been taken first.

For it's clear that just as the mission on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad was to kill rather than even attempt to capture, so was the strike in Libya designed to cut off the head of the Gaddafi regime. What the US decides to do about bin Laden on their own is up to them and their consciences, and for the rest of us to muse about; killing children, even those with the misfortune to be born into the Gaddafi clan under the dubious terms of a UN resolution which calls for a ceasefire is something quite different. It's worth noting that this came after a new call for just that had come from the Libyan government, immediately rejected by the rebels and the NATO alliance without so much as a glance at the details. For now, small reversals in fortune have once again emboldened the opposition, while that members of Gaddafi's clan have been killed suggests there may well be an intelligence leak from within his inner circle. Stalemate nonetheless still looks the most likely outcome.

Passing judgement both on the operation to kill bin Laden and on the notable, if small-scale celebrations which followed last night in Washington and New York is doubly difficult when sitting across the ocean from where the 9/11 attacks took place. This country may well have faced down the IRA and dealt with the 7/7 bombings, yet we can't properly understand just what feelings the events of that day stirred up and which are still playing out now. As such, as distasteful as it seemed for someone's death to be celebrated in such a way as it was outside the White House, even someone with as much blood on their hands as bin Laden, you can't really condemn it and are instead left to tolerate such a reaction.

Indeed, if there's anyone to blame for the manner in which bin Laden was to be "brought to justice", which we'll come to, then it's the Bush administration. While Obama became president promising to kill the al-Qaida leader, he was pushed into such a position by his predecessors and their policy on "enemy combatants". With Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most senior al-Qaida operative in US custody unlikely to face any sort of trial in the near future, trying to take bin Laden alive should it even have been achievable would have left the US with an unsolvable conundrum as to what to do with him. It seems almost certain that he too would have been left to rot in Guantanamo, indefinitely held with little prospect of judicial proceedings. Virtually no one in the States has criticised Obama for killing rather than attempting to seize bin Laden, with those on the right predictably congratulating the president for "pulling the trigger" rather than bringing him back alive.

Obama, it should be said, has mainly struck exactly the right tone. Getting the balance right between triumphalism, which it would have so easy to slip into, without underplaying just how significant bin Laden's death would be to those with relatives who lost their lives on 9/11 and so many others affected by the wars that followed was going to be difficult. If anything, he managed it better today than last night. While no one can claim with a straight face that this isn't a victory, even if a very belated one, there was still something troubling about how the violent death of one man was presented by Obama as a "testament to the greatness of our country" and how it was a reminder that "America can do whatever we set our mind to". From the outside, it looks like the opposite: that the greatest and most powerful superpower to have ever bestrode the planet took almost ten years to find one man and then blow his brains out looks like weakness, of a hollowness at its very centre.

Similarly, quite how the killing of bin Laden is synonymous with bringing him to justice, as opposed to being an act of vengeance, something which politicians on both sides of the US divide have said has happened, is difficult to see. Even taking into account the difficulties there would have been with trying him had he been captured alive, his death and quick disposal at sea is the sort of operation which leaves behind a bitter taste. Justice following both wars and crimes against humanity has been variable, it must be said, yet it will always be preferable to the bullet to the head. More than this, bin Laden simply didn't deserve to go down in what will be so easily be presented by jihadists as heroic circumstances. Along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's spiritual leader, bin Laden barely took part in any actual fighting, save for a disastrous battle after the Russians had already left Afghanistan. It was the hundreds, if not thousands of others who were inspired by him who were willing to take part in the "martyrdom operations" that made his brand of takfirist jihadism so virulent and feared. Like with KSM, he wanted to die a shaheed without being prepared to practice what he preached, and he's been given his wish.

This was all part of the bin Laden myth, relentlessly stoked and mined by al-Qaida's exceptional propaganda. His image was honed until he was the equivalent of an Islamist Che Guevara, and those dedicated to the jihadist cause looked to bin Laden not just for guidance but saw him and his messages as being close to unquestionable. This was all the more remarkable for the fact that he had no religious training whatsoever, yet he issued fatwas and took on the title of sheikh regardless. His relative absence which has increased over the last few years dulled nothing of the respect in which he was held, and repeatedly underlined just how much of a second in command al-Zawahiri was, even as he answered questions posed to him on the jihadist forums in official releases from as-Sahab. The only real rival he had was the even more brutal Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, whom was given the "franchise" in the country despite the differences over tactics between the groups.

All the same, and as others have pointed out, al-Qaida's influence has been waning ever since the Islamic State of Iraq's back was broken by the awakening groups in the country, and there have been no major attacks in the West linked to the original base, as opposed to the "franchises" set up in its image for a number of years. This isn't to diminish bin Laden's ultimate success: he knew there was never any possibility that his tiny group on its own could defeat America. His plan was instead to draw a response from the West through attacks like 9/11, which he believed would ultimately result in Muslims across the Middle East rising up against their rulers through their complicity with attacks on the Ummah. He got his first wish, as the continuing war in Afghanistan demonstrates; what didn't happen is any great rallying to the jihadist cause. Rather than fighting for the caliphate, the battles being waged by the Taliban and other Islamic groups are nationalist rather than internationalist. Moreover, the nascent Arab spring and the revolution in Egypt especially have shown as never before that rather than wanting the medieval, fundamentalist vision of society which al-Qaida wishes to impose, the vast majority favour democracy, even if it eventually takes on a distinct Islamist-influenced flavour.

Osama bin Laden's death is then a major setback for al-Qaida, if not for jihadism itself. His ultimate legacy could well be the inspiring of a second generation of even more brutal ideologues, ready to carry on the mantle of spectacular attacks against soft targets. For now, his closest successor is likely to be Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual leader of al-Qaida in Yemen, already linked to multiple attacks. The first phase in what will almost certainly be a long conflict against the ideology of takfirist jihadism may now be over, but there are many others already fighting just waiting for the opportunity to carry on what al-Qaida and bin Laden began.

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5/02/2011 08:50:00 pm | |

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 

Guantanamo, new realities and crumbling empires.

The release of the Guantanamo files ought to serve as a timely reminder of just how out of control the United States government briefly was in the aftermath of the September the 11th attacks, something which has already sadly been cast to the back of our minds, even as the war in Afghanistan inexorably continues and US troops remain in Iraq. As brief as the talk of a Pax Americana was, no one ever managed to articulate the vision of how the Bush administration was operating better than Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove, who told Ron Suskind of how

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Rove wasn't exaggerating. The rendition program and Guantanamo are monumental examples of how a new reality was created, a reality in which a nation's historic values were temporarily turned on their head. In the environment 9/11 put in place, almost anything was permissible, whether it was indefinite detention without charge, the rejection of the Geneva conventions, the outsourcing of torture or the active promotion of cruel and unusual punishment, to the extent that government lawyers gave the go ahead for specific acts of "enhanced interrogation". Even in the new reality there had to be some euphemisms.

You have to understand this in order to be able to put the documents released by Wikileaks in their proper context. The files on the detainees now being put fully into the public domain were not written by dispassionate, independent observers who carefully considered the evidence for and against their role in terrorism; they were instead collated by the military themselves, by officers who were all too aware of the pressure on them to get "results", and who repeatedly decided that even the weakest intelligence or easily disproved details were the ocular proof of the threat these individuals would pose should they be released. Joint Task Force Guantanamo weren't the only ones doing the evaluating: also at the camp were the Criminal Investigation Task Force, which mainly drew on those who had formerly working in law enforcement and often reached quite different conclusions but who were almost always overruled by the military, and the Behavioural Science Consultation Team, which actively collaborated with the intelligence officials in suggesting new interrogation techniques.

In addition, the files also make clear just how reliant the camp authorities were on those who either chose to talk, a tiny overall number and whose credibility is incredibly dubious, and those who were tortured, whom predictably told their interrogators whatever they wanted to hear. For the most part their evidence has now been struck out as being worthless as a result, even as those at the highest levels of the Bush administration continue to claim that waterboarding produced intelligence that stopped attacks and saved lives. Abu Zubayadah, who the US now accepts was never a member of al-Qaida, was subjected to "simulated" drowning 83 times, and is referenced in the records of 104 other detainees, while Mohamed al-Qahtani's treatment was so severe that it was even recognised as torture by Bush appointee Susan Crawford. Mohammed Basardah meanwhile willingly provided information on an astonishing 131 of his fellow prisoners, which almost needless to say has since come to be acknowledged as unreliable.

Why then so much of the media relied on just these documents, carrying as much disinformation and baggage as they do, to claim once again that London was a veritable hub of takfirist activism without providing anything even approaching a disclaimer is astonishing. Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza are fingered as indoctrinating asylum seekers at an alarming rate, while the Telegraph, Wikileaks' new newspaper of choice after Julian Assange's fallout with the Guardian, even manages to find something to smear the BBC with. Also revived are the most imaginative and laughable of the plots supposedly aimed against the West: given much attention was the claim that al-Qaida had a nuclear weapon assembled and primed to detonate in Europe in the event of the death of Osama bin Laden. Not given quite the same prominence was that this was from the mind of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, one of the ghost detainees subject to repeated mistreatment, nor did the fact that he was sent back to Libya and subsequently died in prison there manage to put a dampener on such a sensational detail.

The very fact that the US has not complained anywhere near as much about the leaking of these documents ought to tip you off as to the nature of their providence, as should how Obama established a new, untainted review system after he became president, as a precursor to shutting Guantanamo down, a promise he's been unable to fulfil. We shouldn't have expected much in the week of a certain state ceremony, admittedly, and especially when Andrew Marr admitted he shouldn't have stopped the media from reporting on him shagging another journalist, yet these documents also showcase in an unrelenting light that other aspect of newly created realities: the imperial arrogance and incompetence of those given such bewildering powers to detain and capture with a view gaining intelligence.

Little attention has then been given to how these documents show that over 150 of those detained at Guantanamo were completely innocent of any offence, recognised as such even by the JTFG. They show just how wide the signs of being a member of al-Qaida were drawn by the JTFG, determined as they were to find anything which with to incriminate the poor souls who had found themselves in Cuba, stretching to having been detained with a $100 US bill in their possession, while those captured without any identification documentation were likewise found to be instantly suspicious. About the only other detail which did manage to get some attention was how those captured with a F91-W Casio watch were considered to be al-Qaida, as this mass manufactured cheap digital watch had been used in training camps as an IED detonator. Then there are just the simple outrages, like Sami al-Hajj, the al-Jazeera cameraman held at the prison for six years before finally being released. His file explains that one of the reasons for his transfer to Guantanamo, indeed, perhaps the key reason, was so that he could provide details on the station's training programme and news gathering operation. If that's not enough, then even more bewilderingly there's Haji Faiz Mohammed, the 70-year-old with senile dementia who was transferred to the prison as his file shamefacedly admits for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Whether or not these files would have eventually been declassified, they provide the kind of record of a superpower at the zenith of its overreach more normally associated with fallen dictatorships and autocracies. The difficulty as we have already seen is in getting people to care, or rather come to a view other than that Guantanamo was an acceptable construct at a time of asymmetric warfare. When Obama can't even convince a congress under Democratic control of that, blocking his attempt to transfer those remaining there to the mainland, it's not surprising that the files on a scandal have been met with an almost universal shrug. The Bush administration's new realities have been accepted with the minimum of protest, even as their attempt at constructing an empire continues to crumble.

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4/27/2011 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, June 14, 2010 

How tabloid journalism works.

1. Patrick Mercer, former chief pusher of Glen Jenvey, gets wind of a new horror being deployed by the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan: fake IEDs buried with used hypodermic needles, intended to cut and scratch those attempting to defuse such devices.

2. The Sun is informed of this development. These fake devices are turned by Tom Newton Dunn, former defence editor and now political editor, into "HIV bombs", where if the IED goes off the needles become "deadly shrapnel".

3. A quote is later added to the initial Sun report from Deborah Jack of the National Aids Trust that "there is no risk of HIV transmission from dirty needles".

4. An actual journalist from Stars and Stripes magazine looks into whether such devices are genuinely being deployed. He asks Mercer himself whether he actually had confirmation that such fake IEDs were being planted, and the best he came up with was that he "had the impression" they were. Inquiries to the International Security Forces-Afghanistan were answered "[N]o reports, no intel, nothing - but we're checking". The best answer he got was from the Joint IED Defeat Organization, who despite having no confirmed reports of such bombs said the Taliban often "employed anti-tamper devices".

5. Jeff Schogol's verdict? "More like an enemy propaganda campaign than a widespread new tactic". Nice of the Sun and Patrick Mercer to do the job of the Taliban for them.

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6/14/2010 11:41:00 pm | |

Friday, June 04, 2010 

This blog is protected by ANPR cameras.

The Graun reports on automatic number plate recognition cameras turning up in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook in Birmingham without consultation, and despite councillors being informed that they were intended to prevent the usual "anti-social behaviour, vehicle crime and drug dealing" it turns out they were in fact funded using a grant from the Terrorism and Allied Matters fund.

It's not just areas heavily populated by Muslims that these cameras are turning up though; over the last month a couple of villages near me have had signs erected informing drivers that "this village is protected by ANPR cameras". These villages are not known for being potential hotbeds of radicalism, nor are they places where any sort of crime is anything other than rare. Quite what their purpose is is therefore rather uncertain, that is if there are actually are cameras rather than just signs, as they certainly aren't visible to the naked eye. Again, like in Birmingham, there doesn't seem to have been any real consultation, just the sudden appearance of foreboding signs and presumably cameras that are far more likely to keep tabs on the locals and their movements as they are on any criminals that happen to be passing through. More than anything, one suspects that they are just further additions to the burgeoning national network, which itself was almost entirely the construct of the police rather than parliament. One for the Con-Demolition then, who after all promised that CCTV would be far more effectively regulated. Perhaps they should start with the police's pet project and its no doubt highly disproportionate cost?

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6/04/2010 08:57:00 pm | |

Friday, August 07, 2009 

Greek tragedy.

Pakistani and American authorities were celebrating today after they had succeeded in cutting off the head of the hydra, also known as Baitullah Mehsud. The weapon used to decapitate the hydra, the pilotless drone, armed with the missile of Hades, aimed a successful strike against the beast's head, cutting it clean off.

Others were however sceptical at whether the cutting off of the Hydra's head would end its reign of terror. One expert said: "This is by no means the end. The cutting off of the Hydra's head will simply result in it growing back two where once there was just one. The only way to bring this battle to an end is not just to cut off the head, but also to scorch the ends where they would otherwise grow back. That is far more difficult."

Osama bin Hercules could not be reached for comment.

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8/07/2009 10:10:00 pm | |

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 

Scum-watch: The "chain of terror".

It probably says something about the mounting cynicism concerning the war in Afghanistan that even the Sun, by far the most ardent supporter of our presence in Helmand province, has been moved to commission a justificatory article on the "chain of terror". As you might have expected though, to call the arguments made piss poor, utterly confused and easy to rebut would be an understatement.

To begin with, Oliver Harvey seems to be confused exactly where it is and who it is we're at war with. It is Afghanistan or Pakistan? Is it the Taliban or is it the Pakistani Taliban, who for the most part are entirely separate? This extends to Harvey's geographical knowledge: he claims that Malakand is near to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border when it is in fact quite some distance from it. This is an attempt to link Mohammad Sidique Khan and Omar Khyam to the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban; the problem here is that there is no link. Khan and Khyam, if trained by any particular grouping, were most likely trained by individuals with links to al-Qaida. Khan might well have left for Pakistan with the intention of fighting in Afghanistan; he left behind a video for his daughter which made clear he wasn't expecting to return. The fact that he did rather undermines any links he had with the Taliban, who are fighting only in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than having worldwide ambitions.

Next we have just the word of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama to convince us that somehow British troops in Afghanistan do make us safer:

Gordon Brown made his remarks last week as the war in Afghanistan entered a particularly grim phase, with 17 British soldiers killed already this month.

The PM argued the sacrifice made by our troops - 186 have died since operations began in Afghanistan - was vital and that to stop fighting the Taliban would make the UK "less safe".

Justifying the UK military presence in Helmand, he said: "It comes back to terrorism on the streets of Britain.

"There is a chain of terror that links what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain.

"If we were to allow the Taliban to be back in power in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda then to have the freedom of manoeuvre it had before 2001, we would be less safe as a country."

US President Barack Obama agreed, insisting: "The mission in Afghanistan is one that the Europeans have as much, if not more, of a stake in than we do.

"The likelihood of a terrorist attack in London is at least as high, if not higher, than it is in the United States."

Government officials state around three quarters of the most advanced plots monitored by MI5 have Pakistani links.

They said the security service is aware of around 30 serious plots at any given moment, suggesting that at least 21 of them are tied to Pakistani groups.


Again, we're meant to take it that Afghanistan and Pakistan are inseparable. Yet we have no military presence in Pakistan, and nor does the United States. The only thing that comes closest to it is the incessant drone strikes on alleged high profile militant targets. Afghanistan and Pakistan might be connected, but our military offensive is not, despite the recent AfPak change in emphasis by the Americans. The fact remains the al-Qaida doesn't need the freedom of manoeuvre it had in Afghanistan up to October 2001, both because it has something approaching that freedom in Pakistan and because its ideology has gone global, just as it hoped it would. 9/11 was mostly planned in Germany, having been first proposed years before by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, just as 7/7 was mostly planned in this country. While attending a training camp is still integral to those who go on to become terrorists, most information can now be found and accessed through the internet. Furthermore, the fact that so many of these plots have roots in Pakistan is not always to do with how they can be linked back to the Taliban or al-Qaida there, but simply because so many of the Muslims in this country originate from Pakistan and have support or themselves support relatives back there.

And Afghanistan provides the bulk of the heroin on Britain's streets - with the profits funding Taliban guerrillas.

A staggering 93 per cent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan - two thirds of it from Helmand, where British troops are fighting and dying.

Taliban chiefs often "tax" narcotics gangs ten per cent for providing security.

Afghan police chief Lt Col Abdul Qader Zaheer, 45, told me last year: "If it wasn't for heroin there wouldn't be a war here. It pays for Taliban guns."


Of course, this omits the fact that the Taliban themselves first almost eradicated the poppy crop. They only turned to it once they needed to. It also fails to acknowledge that solutions to the poppy crop, such as buying it to be turned into medicines have been ignored or rejected. That the Sun also objects to even the most timid moves towards liberalisation of the drug laws also means that the opportunities that legislation offers are completely off the table. Heroin itself though has nothing to do with our presence in Helmand - we're not fighting a war against drugs in Afghanistan - this is just another distraction.

The tentacles of jihad linking Britain and Afghanistan begin on the Helmand frontline.

One dead Taliban fighter was found with an Aston Villa tattoo. The discovery suggested the insurgent was from the UK and followed news that RAF radio spies picked up Brummie accents while listening in on Taliban "chatter" over the airwaves.

These UK-born fighters arrive through the mountainous and sieve-like border from Pakistan - the same desolate, lawless region where Khyam and Khan received their bomb-making masterclass.


We've dealt with these same, unconfirmed and impossible to verify claims before. There probably are some Brits fighting in Afghanistan, but if there weren't fighting there, they probably would be somewhere else. In a way, this actually gives some credence to the claim that we're safer due to our presence in Afghanistan - fight those jihadists who want to do battle with their own countrymen outside the actual country rather than here. This isn't though the government's case - their case is that through defeating the Taliban and preventing al-Qaida from returning they're making us safer, which was dealt with somewhat above.

It is believed Khan filmed his "martyrdom" video in Pakistan. In it, he glares at the camera with his hatred of the West clearly evident and declares icily: "We are at war and I am a soldier."

Pakistan is the next link in the chain of terror. British jihadis receive not only weapons training there but are also further radicalised by preachers of hate at madrassas or religious schools.

Khan's fellow 7/7 murderer, Shehzad Tanweer, is said to have worshipped at Islamabad's notorious Red Mosque.


This is more nonsense - the idea that jihadists go to Pakistan to be "further radicalised" is specious. They wouldn't have gone in the first place if they weren't already somewhat committed to the cause. If anything, this further undermines the case for presence in Afghanistan: if all the radicalisation, training and hatred is going on in Pakistan, why are we in Helmand province? How does being there make us safer than stopping what goes on in Pakistan would?

We're then treated to some boilerplate rabble-rousing from a cleric whom Harvey had the privilege to meet:

The Islamist radicals in Afghanistan and Pakistan make no effort to disguise their aim to introduce Sharia law to Britain. In the dusty Pakistani town of Kahuta, a cleric was happy to tell me last year of his desire to bring beheadings and stonings to our shores.

Imam Qari Hifzur Rehamn, 60 said of Britain: "Non-believers must be converted to Islam. Morals in your society, with women wearing revealing clothes, have gone wrong.

"We want Islamic law for all Pakistan and then the world.

"We would like to do this by preaching. But if not then we would use force."

The Imam of the town's religious school, where kids as young as nine are taught jihad or holy war, added: "Adulterers should be buried in earth to the waist and stoned to death.

"Thieves should have their hands cut off. Women should remain indoors and films and pop music should be banned.

"Homosexuals must be killed - it's the only way to stop them spreading. It should be by beheading or stoning, which the general public can do."


Again, this fails to even begin to back up the case for our presence in Afghanistan. If Harvey had met this imam in that country perhaps he might have a point - but he didn't. The idea that those taught similar things are suddenly going to be any sort of threat to this country except as an irritant is ludicrous - if they can't even begin to impose their beliefs on Pakistan, how are they meant to do it in a country thousands of miles away?

But the US-led coalition has vowed to stop the radicals from governing the desperately poor nation again and fermenting an ideology of holy war against the West.

The final link in the jihadi chain is a return to Britain.

Khan slipped back into the UK in February 2005. Just five months later he detonated his rucksack bomb at Edgware Road Tube station, murdering six people.

On the sun-baked plains and river valleys of Helmand today, our forces - some just 18 - are locked in deadly combat with a resilient Taliban army.

The prize in this bloody war, and the legacy for those brave soldiers who have returned here to heroes' funerals, is to snap the chain of terror for good.


Except there is no such thing as a Taliban "army", just as there is no such thing as one Taliban. This so-called "chain of terror" cannot be snapped by an army based in just one province, with just less than 10,000 soldiers on the ground, in a country which has been at war for almost 30 years. It would require an army at least 10 times that size to have even the slightest chance of controlling the whole of Afghanistan, let alone Pakistan, which this piece invokes repeatedly. The Soviets had over 100,000 units on the ground post-1980 and they couldn't manage it. How can such a fragmented coalition as Nato currently is even begin to?

The article doesn't even begin to consider any alternatives, let alone any counter-arguments. It can be argued that our very presence in Afghanistan in fact makes us less safe: it makes us a target for reprisals whereas if we were not involved we would not be. 9/11 and 7/7 did not occur in vacuums; they did not happen simply because "they hate us". The chain of terror would have breaks in it if we did not involve ourselves in battles in which we have no dog in. It would not completely remove the threat, but it would decrease it exponentially. That the Sun doesn't even start to imagine the opposing side even exists speaks volumes.

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7/21/2009 10:11:00 pm | |

Monday, July 20, 2009 

Of Revelation and terror threat levels.

Thanks to my glorious religious upbringing, an upbringing so successful that instead of inculcating the fear of God in me it instead made me a God mocker, I can't approach the "terror threat level-o-meter" without thinking of Revelation. It brings to mind the four horsemen, the seven seals, the pouring of bowls, the moon turning to blood, the whore of Babylon and the 1,000 year reign. There are, of course, dozens of different interpretations of Revelation, as well as those that dismiss it as either the hallucinations of a madman or drug-inspired similar visions. I, belonging to a well-known sect which preach expressly that the end is nigh, was only taught the strictly literal interpretation; indeed, there is an entire book dedicated to "understanding" Revelation, which was relatively recently updated to take account of "changes" to the interpretation. Also connected in is the "King of the North and King of the South", both of which are mentioned in Daniel, and also taken literally. During the Cold War the King of the North was Russia, while the South was the United States, or rather the "Anglo-American" world power; since the Soviet Union's collapse they have hedged their bets and said they don't yet know who the King of the North will be.

Some of the more independently theorising members (something which itself is not often encouraged) believe that the King of the North may yet turn out to be radical Islam. This fits in with the belief that the Wild Beast of Revelation 13:1-18 is the United Nations, and that at some point in the near future the United Nations, probably prompted by war between the South and North, will attempt to eradicate all religion except for the chosen sect, which will then be turned on once all other belief has been stamped out, heralding the beginning of Armageddon proper. That this entire utterly bizarre interpretation gives the United Nations the sort of power which some of its members could only dream of, and that members of the UN keep attempting to get it recognise religious defamation as well as the other varieties makes no difference to the true believers: it's simply going to happen.

Waiting for the apocalypse and for the four horsemen to appear is much like the sort of belief required to think that the brown trousers-o-meter actually means something. In a long predicted move, the level of threat has been lowered from "severe" to "substantial", although why has not been explained. In fact, those making the decision have gone out of their way to say that there'll be no change in actual resources being used to ensure that the level doesn't have to rise, and that rather gives the impression that they're doing it simply because you can't in a democracy where there hasn't been an attack in four years forever keep up the impression that exploding Muslims are just around the corner or over the hill. Even politicians and terrorism "experts" eventually get weary of maintaining that the sky is perpetually dark, and that death, famine, war and conquest will soon be clippity-clopping along the High St.

You can't however not notice that it still is a step change from the last few years, where scaremongering was the order of the day and where there was talk of 30 plots and 2,000 individuals ready to heed their own call of duty. What's happened to those 30 plots and those 2,000 individuals? Few of those plots have been publicly broken up, as we're sure to have heard about them had they been, and while the courts have been relatively busy dealing with those charged with terrorism "offences", the numbers don't come close to the magic round number which was pushed around. It might simply be that like the intelligence which suggested that Pakistani students were ready to go with their own attack, it was wrong; it might be that the security services are telling lies, having enjoyed years of plenty after their own years of famine which were the mid-90s; or a cynical "expert" on the BBC suggests it might be to underline just how fabulously the troops in Afghanistan are doing in protecting us from terrorists here, yet not even the politicians themselves believe their own lie, and Gordon Brown has after all said himself that the crucible of terrorism is Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

Whatever the reason, it's one we should embrace, even if the "threat level", then not publicly declared, was similarly lowered before 7/7 occurred. Now that the threat isn't so severe, any further legislation on terrorism should be even more rigorously opposed, and the target should be set on repealing control orders, bringing the detention limit back to 14 days, lifting the Kafkaesque ban on some "suspects" not being informed of the evidence against them, and campaigning for investigations into our role in rendition and the potential "outsourcing" of torture. Fear, whether it's of the end of the world or of terrorism, is what makes numerous individual worlds go round.

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7/20/2009 09:31:00 pm | |

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 

Her Majesty's Willing Torturers.

Since the allegations first emerged that this country had been complicit in the rendition and torture of those picked up in the so-called war on terror, we've almost never had a complete picture of what happened when, why and how. The closest we've came to was the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, associates of Abu Qatada who were visited prior to leaving the country to travel to Gambia by MI5, and where they were picked up by the CIA and taken to Guantanamo Bay. It later transpired that Bisher al-Rawi had in fact been providing the police and intelligence services with information on Qatada; once Qatada himself was in custody, it seems al-Rawi was disposed of.

Thanks to David Davis, we now have the fullest account of just how complicit both the police and the security services have been in such practices, almost outsourcing torture in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed. Using parliamentary privilege to get round reporting restrictions and the secrecy which the government has easily imposed on the trials of the men alleging that they were tortured, he detailed how despite knowing that Ahmed intended to travel first to Dubai and then onto Pakistan, they let him leave the country. This was a man who they knew was almost certainly a terrorist, and whom they had evidence on which later convicted him as one, yet they let him go to what has since been called the "crucible of world terrorism". There was a method to their madness though: they suggested once he had arrived that Pakistan's inter-services intelligence arrest him. That was their exact message: they "suggested" that the ISI might be interested in him.

The ISI was happy to oblige. Once they had arrested Ahmed, both Greater Manchester Police and MI5 supplied the ISI with questions to which the ISI was more than willing to provide answers. Ahmed's torture, compared to perhaps that which Binyam Mohamed underwent, was mild by comparison. He had just the three fingernails removed, which an independent pathologist confirmed were removed whilst he was in the custody of the ISI, was beaten with wooden staves the size of cricket stumps, and whipped with a 3ft length of tyre rubber. He was, like the others who allege they were tortured, visited by officers from both MI5 and MI6, except this time, after telling them he was being tortured, they didn't return. The policy it seems, after the first allegations were made that intelligence officers had visited those who had been tortured, was that officers would not return if they were explicitly told by the person they were questioning that they were being tortured.

After 13 months in Pakistani custody, Ahmed was deported back to the UK and was convicted last December of being a member of al-Qaida and of "directing terrorism". The attempts by his legal team to have the case thrown out on the basis of the complicity of the police and the intelligence services in his torture failed, having been held in secret. His conviction does not diminish the fact that we felt the need for this man to be tortured, despite the fact he could have been arrested before he left the country, where it was quite possible he could have disappeared. His conviction also appears to have purely been down to the information acquired whilst he was in this country; his torture it seems added absolutely nothing. It seems instead to have been almost vindictive, plotted by MI5 and the police, presumably safe in the knowledge that the government wouldn't allow what they were doing to leak out. Unfortunately for them, it has.

David Davis in his statement to the Commons pointed out that the United States has somewhat attempted to wipe the slate clean when it came to their complicity and use of torture against various "terrorist suspects", even if no one responsible for putting the policy into action has been brought to justice. Instead here we still have ministers and ex-ministers completely denying that they would ever condone torture, when they quite clearly must have known what was going on, and if they didn't, they should never have been in the job in the first place and it would suggest that we have intelligence services that are completely unaccountable even to those ostensibly in charge of them. Quite obviously, there needs to be, as Davis called for, a full judicial inquiry into all the alleged cases of rendition and torture that have come to light down the years. It is also equally clear that like the Bush administration, the current government will never admit willingly that it has colluded and indulged in such medieval practices. That might just be the best possible reason that the current lot, Her Majesty's Willing Torturers, if you will, should be kicked out at the first possible opportunity.

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7/08/2009 11:30:00 pm | |

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