The Virtual Stoa

I’m so worried about what’s happening today, in the Middle East, you know / And I’m so worried about the baggage retrieval system they’ve got at Heathrow.

From my Balliol colleague Adam Roberts’ valedictory lecture, on retiring from the Montague Burton chair in International Relations at Oxford (and reproduced in this week’s Oxford Magazine):

Montague Burton (1885-1952), the great pioneer of mass production tailoring and the benefactor of the chair, was an incurable believer in modernity. In his extensive travels, his notes on which he published privately in two volumes entitled Global Girdling, he demonstrated a love of the modern and, with only a few exceptions, a dislike of antiquity. Visiting the Middle East in the 1930s, he hated the Pyramids and the Wailing Wall. By contrast he loved the railway on which one could glide from Cairo to Tel Aviv and thence to Jerusalem - a symbol of modernity to him that now seems to us to belong to an era long gone. He praise the Jerusalem Electricity Works - and he had no higher terms of praise than this - as ‘reminiscent of Bourneville and Port Sunlight. He was a passionate believer in the League of Nations: 6,000 of the employees at his Leeds factory belonged to the Montague Burton Branch of the League of Nations Union. His progressivism itself looks charmingly antique - as does his belief that if you put all men in suits you would deliver a body blow to the class system. Indeed, he developed ingenious schemes whereby customers could buy not just the suit but all that goes with it - the shirt, the tie, even socks and shows. This is almost certainly the origin of the phrase ‘The Full Monty’. I was tempted to entitle this lecture ‘The Full Monty’, but I don’t believe in encouraging false expectations, especially as by a perverse irony, thanks to Peter Cattaneo’s memorable 1997 film, The Full Monty now means the exact opposite of what it did originally.

Dan Hardie writes:

David Miliband is the Minister responsible for Government policy towards its Iraqi ex-employees, including those in fear of their lives. In a recent webchat on the Number 10website, Mr Miliband was asked the following question by Justin McKeating:

‘I would like to ask the Foreign Secretary why the assistance being offered to locally employed staff in Iraq, who are being threatened with reprisals - including torture and death - from local militias, is being rationed according to length of service. Isn’t it perfectly possible for an Iraqi employee who has only been employed for five months to face the same dangers as a colleague who has been employed for twelve months or longer?’…

[Read the Foreign Secretary’s reply, and more, over the fold.]

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Dan Hardie writes: I’ve had emails from three people who claim to be - and who almost certainly are- Iraqi former employees of the British Government. All three say that they and their former colleagues are still at risk of death for their ‘collaboration’.

We’ll call the first man Employee One. He worked for the British for three years: ‘I started in the beginning of the war with Commandos (in 30 of March 2003) then continued with 23 Pioneer Regt, and in 08 / 07 / 2003 I have joined the Labour Support Unit (LSU)’. His British friends knew him as Chris. The British Government has announced that he can apply for help if he can transport himself to the British base outside Basra, or to the Embassies in Syria or Jordan. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that there might be problems with this. I can email and telephone this man: so can any Foreign Office official. It should not be impossible to verify his story and then send him the funds he needs to get to a less unsafe Arab country. But that is not happening.

Go over the fold for Dan’s email exchange with Employee One, details of two more cases, and information about what you — what we — can be doing about this.

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Traffic has recently gone through the roof at the ironically-named Socialist Unity Blog, as Andy Newman has been giving us all invaluable blow-by-blow coverage of the split in the Respect coalition [now here and here]. And having built up a huge readership for the blog, it can finally turn its attention to the issues that matter — so Tawfiq Chahboune has been brooding on the issue that bugged me here and here, concerning Martin Amis, camels and wheels. Continue over the fold for the relevant portion, or visit the original over here.

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There’s a helpful round-up of the recent Martin Amis kerfuffle over at Matt’s place.

All I’ll add is that we need to see the remarks about his urges to stripsearch people who look as if they might be from Pakistan (etc.) in a slightly wider context. Amis is also someone who thinks he can discern murderous intentions towards his family in the glance of an Arab doing his job, who can write things like “the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male”, who seems to absorb Bernard Lewis-like explanations of historical problems when non-crazy explanations are readily available, who recycles inflammatory quotations from Hezbollah’s leader that circulate freely around the internet, but which no-one ever quite manages to trace back to an authentic-looking source, and so on.

(This last one strikes me as weird, because presumably it’s not too hard to find Hezbollah leaders saying offensive things, so why is the very-possibly-made-up quote the one that everyone’s heard somewhere or other?)

We can practice our careful reading skills as much as we like on that particular “urges” passage, and we can be as charitable towards him as we want to be (though we should also bear in mind that there’s a long history of people with really offensive views managing to present them in ways that aren’t quite so offensive on a charitable reading of their words). But Amis also has form here when it comes to saying the kinds of things about Muslims that the real crazies also like to say, and it’d be a shame to lose sight of that fact in the parsing of his words from the interview.

I’m not sure enough about what I really think is going on in Amis’s head (and I’m not interested enough in either him or his books to spend too much time on trying to work it out), but he seems to me to be somewhere on the slippery slope that has Mark Steyn and Melanie Phillips festering at the bottom, and it doesn’t look to me as if he’s too anxious to be stepping off it any time soon. (But perhaps I’m being uncharitable.)

This made me laugh, from tehgraun:

“Blair was really astonished and angry,” says the UN official who gave him a presentation on the devastating effects of Israel’s “security barrier”, settlements, checkpoints, and closures on the lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories. “He asked very smart questions, though I did think that someone who was prime minister for so long should already have known these facts.”

Apparently in response to queries from people like me, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband has posted on his blog about the on-going Iraqi employees issue. Please read what he has to say and comment, but please please please take extra care to be polite when you’re over at his blog. If you’re looking for points to make, some suitable thoughts are easily available in the bulletpoints here.

One other thing: I’ve had comments I’ve posted at that blog vanish without trace in the past. I think it’s cock-up rather than conspiracy, and that the FCO isn’t entirely in control of how to run blogging software. So save a copy of your comment before you hit “submit”, just in case, and do be patient — the comments don’t appear immediately (I suppose for fairly obvious reasons).

The ministerial statement is here; comments from Dan Hardie, Daniel Davies, Jamie Kenny, Tim Ireland.

I agree — and I also have the same reaction I used to have when Michael Howard used to beat up on refugees and asylum seekers.

It seems to me extraordinary that the Foreign Secretary, whose father escaped from Ostend on the last boat to leave for England in May 1940 and was granted refugee status while at sea, should sign his name to a document arbitrarily abandoning some of the Iraqis whom we employed in and around Basra to the tender mercies of the Shi’ite death squads, and to whom we can easily offer sanctuary, just because they were employed for less than a year. That’s pretty disgraceful, and I expected better from Ralph Miliband’s son.

UPDATE [6.45pm]: Also: Sunny Hundal.

There was a pretty good segment on the Today Programme this morning at about ten to eight. You can listen to it (I think) by clicking this link (at least for a bit, at any rate).

And then the Prime Minister made his statement this afternoon about Iraq, in which he said this:

Mr Speaker, I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances exposing themselves and their families to danger.

And I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in uniquely difficult circumstances.

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or - in agreed circumstances - for admission to the UK. And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

We will make a further written statement on the detail of this scheme this week.

Well, obviously we’ll have to wait to see what’s in the further written statement.

But if anyone thinks this campaign is over, think again. We don’t want a quota of 500 (as floated in the papers quite recently), we don’t want the “financial packages” and the “agreed circumstances” to mean “bullying people into not seeking refuge in Britain”, and we badly need an explanation of why the assistance will only go to those who “have been employed by us for more than twelve months”, as it’s not unreasonable to think that there are people who worked for the British Armed Forces in Iraq for shorter periods of time who are nevertheless being threatened, tortured and killed. (If the death squads don’t make these fine discriminations, it’s not especially clear why HMG should, either.)

So tomorrow’s campaign meeting will still go ahead, as planned, but please note the change of venue: it’s now in the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House, but at the same time, from 7-9pm. We haven’t seen the written statement, and there’s still time to make a difference, and to tell the politicians what we think of them.

Dan Hardie, who is not and has never been any kind of doctor, writes:

I can’t make it down to London on Tuesday, owing to teaching commitments. But I’ve urged my MPs to attend; and if you’re around the capital, perhaps you’d like to show up, too?

After a flurry of stories earlier in the Summer, the papers have quietened down a bit about the ongoing question of whether Iraqis who worked for the British in and around Basra are going to be given sanctuary in this country. The Government says it’s looking at the matter, and we expect to hear something later in the Autumn, but nothing has been done yet, many people are at risk of lethal attack right now, and we don’t have any reason to think that the Government will end up honouring the key demand that all those who have worked for the UK Armed Forces in Southern Iraq be granted asylum over here.

The papers aren’t entirely silent, though. You can read here about the grim situation in Basra and here about the violent death of Moayed Ahmed Khalaf.

And you can continue to do your bit for the cause: write to your MP, if you haven’t already; reply to your MP to emphasise your on-going concern, just in case you think he or she might be thinking that the issue has gone away; and, in particular, try to encourage your MP to go along to Committee Room 14 (St Stephen’s Entrance) on Tuesday 9 October, 7-9pm, for a cross-party meeting organised by the on-line campaign, and supported by Amnesty International and other groups. And if you’re in London that day , you might want to pop along yourself.

PARTLY UPDATED [20.9.2007]: See also here for a recent radio snippet, in which Mark Brockway presents some pretty grim details; here for Dan H’s most recent posting; and here, which is where you should send any details of MPs’ responses. But they can be crap: my local Lib Dem MP Evan Harris, for example, still hasn’t replied to the letter I sent him on 24 July.

BBC Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs show recently covered the Iraqi employees story, and the blog-based campaign in support of asylum in the UK for those threatened by death-squads in Southern Iraq. You can listen to the relevant segment here, which includes an interview with a man who has been working as a translator with American forces, now in the USA, and with Dan Hardie, too, who stresses that wars have consequences.

If you haven’t already, do write to your MP about this important issue (though a real letter would be even better: the postcode for the House of Commons is SW1A 0AA). If you want to get up to speed on where things stand right now, Dan’s blog is probably the best place to start.

Neil Clark is even more objectionably stupid than Stephen Pollard. In fact, it’s not even close. He’s been ahead of Pollard in the stupidity stakes ever since he started conversing with a spambot in the comments section of his own blog (18 months ago or so? not sure), but he’s now way, way out ahead of the rest of the field.

And remember: this isn’t just about 91 interpreters, and nothing, but nothing has actually yet been achieved. This campaign is about everyone who is in in fear of their lives owing to their links to the British forces in Iraq, and their families: i.e., quite a few thousand people. If you haven’t already, write to your MP. Especially if your MP is Hugh Bayley, who doesn’t seem to have much of a clue.

Campaign video over here. (It’s both funny and gruesome, so be careful.)

UPDATE [5 minutes later]: Jamie Kenny says it so much better than I ever could.

My old friend Dan Hardie, whom I met at university and haven’t seen for many years, pops up on blogs from time to time to have arguments with people with whom he disagrees. (They can get quite heated.) But now he’s turned his attention to starting a political campaign, which I want to publicise here, and to support.

The British have been occupying Basra and a chunk of Southern Iraq for four years now. During this time, lots of Iraqis will have worked in one way or another for the occupying forces. And those Iraqis are now the targets of local death squads: see here, for example, for details of what’s been happening to people who have worked as interpreters.

Incredibly, it seems that the British Government is not willing as a matter of course to grant refugee status and asylum in the UK to these people. Dan wants us to write to our MPs to ask that they be promised this status immediately. Whether or not you thought the war was ever a good idea, whatever you think the future of British forces in Southern Iraq should or should not be, however many other Iraqis you think the British Government ought to take in as refugees in recognition of its share of the responsibility for creating the bloody mess that is Iraq today, you ought to be able to agree that those Iraqis whose lives are now at risk because of their work for the British Government in Iraq are at the very least owed sanctuary by that Government.

So write to your MP: this website can be helpful (though politicians always take letters that arrive in the mail on a bit of paper and with a stamp on them a bit more seriously). I’ll be sending my letters off to the two Oxford MPs tomorrow.

And Dan’s original post [here], which provides more details, is reproduced over the fold:

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Johann Hari reviews Nick Cohen’s recent book for Dissent. It’s quite a good piece.

Below the fold is a statement from the Oxford branch of UCU, which will appear in the next issue of the Oxford Magazine.

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Apologies for the gap. I was off in the Holy Land with a gang of archaeologists and similar.

The Psalmist also wrote, “Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe” (60.8). Go over the fold for some shoe-casting out over Edom.

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Apparently almost three quarters of American Mormons think that the Iraq war was not a mistake. That’s a lot of Mormons. Survey data over here [via].

From Amnesty International:

Amnesty International today called for the immediate and unconditional release of Karim Amer, the first Egyptian blogger to be tried for writing blogs criticizing Egypt’s al-Azhar religious authorities, President Husni Mubarak and Islam.

Karim Amer, a former al-Azhar University student and blogger, is facing up to 10 years in prison for his writings in a trial that resumes today. Charges against him include “spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country‚s reputation”, “incitement to hate Islam” and “defaming the President of the Republic”.

“Karim Amer’s trial appears intended as a warning by the authorities to other bloggers who dare criticize the government or use their blogs to spread information considered harmful to Egypt‚s reputation,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme. “This is particularly worrying as bloggers have increasingly been posting information about human rights abuses in Egypt, including torture and police violence against peaceful protesters.”

The trial opened on 18 January 2007 before Maharram Bek Court in Alexandria. Karim Amer was charged under Articles 102, 176 and 179 of Egypt’s Penal Code. Amnesty International has been urging the Egyptian authorities to review or abolish this and other legislation that, in violation of international standards, stipulates prison sentences for the mere exercise of the rights of freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion.

“Amnesty International considers Karim Amer to be a prisoner of conscience who is being prosecuted on account of the peaceful expression of his views about Islam and the al-Azhar religious authorities. We are calling for his immediate and unconditional release.”

Following Richard’s recommendation in comments below, I got myself a copy of Thomas E. Ricks’s Fiasco, and am now halfway through. It’s alright, though it’s a bit heavy-handed, and I still prefer the reporter George Packer’s book (The Assassins’ Gate) to the stay-at-home-and-swap-emails-with-the-troops approach of Ricks.

Anyway: my  favourite detail so far concerns the role of PowerPoint in the run-up to the war:

[Army Lt Gen David] McKiernan had another, smaller but nagging, issue. He couldn’t get [Tommy] Franks to issue clear orders that stated explicitly what he wanted done, how he wanted to do it, and why. Rather, Franks passed along PowerPoint briefing slides that he had shown to Rumsfeld. “It’s quite frustrating the way this works, but the way we do things nowadays is combatant commanders brief their products in PowerPoint up in Washington to OSD [Office of Strategic Defense] and Secretary of Defense… In lieu of an order, or a frag [fragmentary] order, or plan, you get a set of PowerPoint slides… [T]hat is frustrating, because nobody wants to plan against PowerPoint slides.”

That reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld’s amateurish approach to war planning. “Here may be the clearest manifestation of OSD’s contempt for the accumulated wisdom of the military profession and of the assumption among forward thinkers that technology - above all information technology - has rendered obsolete the conventions traditionally governing the preparation and conduct of war,” commented retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a former commander of an armored cavalry regiment. “To imagine that PowerPoint slides can substitute for such means is really the height of recklessness.” It was like telling an automobile mechanic to use a manufacturer’s glossy sales brochure to figure out how to repair an engine.

[Thomas E Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Allen Lane, 2006, pp.75-6.]

… Can anyone recommend any good recent books?

I enjoyed Rory’s book (UK title: Occupational Hazards; US title: The Prince of the Marshes), and recently read through George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate, but haven’t really been paying a great deal of attention to what’s been coming out over the last couple of years. Is Patrick Cockburn’s book good?

If you missed it last night — and it’s just conceivable that you weren’t watching BBC News24 at 11.30pm — you can watch my friend Rory Stewart being interviewed on the HARDtalk show about Iraq. (I don’t know why it calls itself HARDtalk, which is a silly name for a show.) About half an hour. His books are both excellent, too, in case you’re looking for something to spend your Christmas book tokens on.

You can download The Lancet’s new report on “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey” by Gilbert Burnham et al here [pdf].