|
 t was a strange, exhilarating feeling to be part of an
assembly of more than a million even though it took me three
hours to fail to get to the end of Gower Street. What made
it more bearable was the optimistic spirit of people unburdened
with the cynicism of a hundred previous marches and demos
where the protesters were outnumbered by bewildered shoppers
and tourists. However not everyone was so happy. In the Mirror
on the following Monday, Christopher Hitchens moaned that
he ‘hoped that it would pour with rain during last
Saturday's march for ‘peace’. This is a man who
thinks that the war on Afghanistan wasn’t fought ruthlessly
enough and gloated over the possibility that cluster bombs
could rip through Korans into the chests of Taliban soldiers.
Bizarrely, Hitchens is still thought by some in this country
to be part of the left, even being invited to speak at the
Tribune rally at the last Labour conference. Martin Amis
once characterised Hitchens as his father’s ideal reader
and predictably he has followed Kingsley Amis’s well-trodden
path from youthful leftism to middle-aged, red-faced, saloon
bar reaction to end up to the right of his own ludicrous
brother. In the USA he has been welcomed into the ranks of
the many former Trotskyists who have become neo-conservative
warmongers and has boasted that he will campaign for George
Bush at the next election. Conveniently, Hitchens has now
forgotten that he opposed the first Gulf War.
Hitchens seems to be the malign influence over the Observer’s
Nick Cohen and the ubiquitous Johann Hari, both of whom echo
his arguments for a war against Iraq. Cohen and Hari are
less bloodthirsty than Hitchens, but they believe that a
war can be justified by the inevitable overthrow of Saddam
Hussein and the possibility of a democratic Iraq. Nick Cohen
cites the experience of the Kurds in northern Iraq who have
created what he describes as democracy but which has continued
the domination of the hereditary clan leaders Jalal Talabani
and Massoud Barzani. The Kurds have had a tragic history
and were certainly betrayed by the Western powers when they
were denied their own state after WW1, but they have not
helped themselves by ill-advised alliances with the USA,
USSR, Israel, Iran and even Saddam Hussein.
Yes, that Saddam Hussein. Perhaps you will be unaware of
how in 1996 the PDK of Massoud Barzani fought alongside Saddam’s
army against the Iranian-backed PUK of Jalal Talabani. Of
course they’ve patched things up - for now. These opportunistic
tactics have helped to alienate them from the non-Kurdish
populations of the countries they inhabit. I tried to correct
Nick Cohen on some of his war propaganda and was somewhat
taken aback to receive a reply in which he urged me as part
of the left to support an independent state for the Kurds
in Iraq. I had to point out to him that firstly both Turkey
and Iran had larger Kurdish populations than Iraq so that
NATO could create a Kurdish state on its own territory should
it wish; and also that the Iraqi Kurds had abandoned independence
in favour of autonomy. Nick didn’t even write back
to thank me. Recently Cohen has had a go at Red Pepper for
their claim that the PUK is opposed to war when the PUK website
says the opposite. Sadly for the credibility of the PUK,
they have held both positions and seem to tell people what
they want to hear.
Another non-marcher, Johann Hari has taken a break from
seducing Nazi skinheads and bedding Islamic fundamentalists
to lecture
the left on the benefits of war. As a measure of his naiveté,
Hari relies on the International Crisis Group which he describes
as ‘a Brussels-based independent think-tank, by no
means pro-war’. Excuse me while I recover from an attack
of insane laughter. The ICG is in fact a pro-intervention
think-tank funded by western and mostly NATO governments,
US foundations, and convicted fraudster George Soros. George
Soros is often touted as a pro-democracy, humanitarian philanthropist,
but when he thought a Lula victory might endanger his investments
in Brazil, the mask slipped. "In the Roman Empire, only
the Romans voted," said Soros. In a press interview
Soros said, “In modern global capitalism, only the
Americans vote. Not the Brazilians.” Nor the Iraqis
perhaps?
The ICG board also includes several American diplomats
and those famous pacifists Zbigniew Brzezinski and General
Wesley
Clark. Hari wants us to believe this poisoned source when
it claims that most Iraqis would welcome a war. Johann might
reflect on the strange but telling presence on the board
of the ICG of one Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, described as former
Kuwaiti Ambassador to the UK and US and former Minister of
Information and Oil. It was his daughter Nayirah who in 1990
gave the infamous evidence to a US congressional committee
when she alleged that the Iraqis had taken hundreds of babies
out of their incubators and left them to die. This evidence
was used to tip the balance in favour of war. Her membership
of the Al-Sabah family was kept secret despite the presence
of her father in the room. The story was of course a pack
of lies. For those who hope for a democratic Iraq it is useful
to note that the ‘liberation’ of Kuwait resulted
in the country being handed back into the private ownership
of the Al-Sabah family.
The warriors for democracy claim repeatedly that the left
opposition to war was proved wrong in Bosnia, Kosovo and
Afghanistan. I’ll take these in turn. As a result of
the Dayton agreement Bosnia is now run as a UN protectorate
and democracy is severely limited, but the political structure
with the division of the country into three parts bears close
comparison to that agreed by all three parties at Lisbon
in 1992 before there was any real conflict. This agreement
was sabotaged by the Americans when their Ambassador Warren
Zimmerman encouraged Alija Izetbegovic to go back on his
word. So much for the benefits of intervention - and to make
matters worse they are now ruled over by Paddy Ashdown who
could not win an election in his own country.
As for Kosovo, the war against Yugoslavia was sold as a
war against ethnic cleansing but NATO troops did little to
protect
minorities from the KLA when the Yugoslav army withdrew.
The result has been over 200,000 Serbs, Roma and other minorities
fleeing Kosovo and being unable to return. More than 2500
people, both Serbs and Albanians have been murdered by the
KLA since the entry of NATO. Those minorities remaining are
living in ghettos and often have armed guards to go shopping
or pick up their pensions. In Pristina you can be killed
if you are heard speaking Serbo-Croat, as in the case of
an unfortunate Bulgarian UN worker. This doesn’t get
much publicity as it ruins the success story image. At least
they don’t have Paddy Ashdown. Afghanistan is barely more of a democracy than under Taliban
rule. Hamid Karzai who is known to his guards as ‘The
Mayor of Kabul (in daylight hours)’ was imposed by
the Americans on the Loya Jirga when they wanted the King
as head of government. Girls schools have opened - and then
closed or been bombed. The country has been turned back over
to the regional warlords who were in power before and sometimes
during the Taliban era and the opium is back on sale. The
wrecker of Kabul, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has returned from Iran
and is now organising resistance to his former American allies
who in turn have just killed another seventeen innocent civilians.
The total civilian death toll so far is about 4000 but that
ignores the military casualties and those dying of hunger
and uncounted. The original war aim was to kill or capture
Osama bin Laden. How can you call a war a success when it
fails to achieve its principal war aim? Beats me, the removal
of the Taliban was a by-product.
Of course the results of all these interventions were not
as disastrous as some predicted but nor did they produce
the results the intereventionists claimed. The Taliban collapsed
when Pakistan pulled the plugs but they nearly held out long
enough for the winter to kill many thousands more. Yugoslavia
held out for more than two months against the most powerful
military alliance in the world and pulled out of Kosovo with
minimal casualties and their armour intact. Iraq will probably
put up less resistance, but who knows? A military axiom which
I’ve found useful in teaching is that no plan survives
its first contact with the enemy.
We are being asked to buy into a war on the basis that
democracy might be a bonus feature despite the anti-democratic
record
of the USA. We are told that the Kurds will get freedom and
autonomy despite public announcements from the Turkish government
that they will not accept any Kurdish entity on their borders.
What has happened is that the Kurds, the Turks and the Iranians
have decided that war is inevitable (Bush has told them so)
and the Americans will win and they are all trying to get
a cut of the post-war settlement. Is it really the role of
the left to collude in this? I thought we were trying to
create a better world.
Call me old-fashioned but I think we should oppose both
Imperialism and tyranny as they usually go together, and
liberation comes
best from within. In 1999 I went to a meeting during the
war on Yugoslavia to hear a Kurdish speaker say, “We
asked only for the West to stop supporting the Turkish government,
we never called for the bombing of Ankara”.
|
This
month
Archive
of past articles