Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses

by Mark Curtis

  The forces needed include cruise missiles which 'offer a versatile capability for projecting land and air power ashore', and two new aircraft carriers and combat aircraft which will 'offer a step increase in our ability to project air power from the sea'. These are key elements in a 'modern expeditionary strategy'. It reiterates 'the need to confront international terrorism abroad rather than waiting for attacks within the UK'.

  In all this, the report states that 'our armed forces will need to be interoperable with US command and control structures'. At the same time, it notes that 'we do not believe the world community should accept the acquisition of nuclear weapons by further states' – only the exclusive club of which Britain is a member has this right.

  The report continues:

  Whereas in the past it was possible to regard military force as a separate element in crisis resolution, it is now evident that the successful management of international security problems will require ever more integrated planning of military, diplomatic and economic instruments.

  Translated: we will increasingly threaten those who do not do what we say with the prospect of military force.

  Elsewhere, the report highlights the importance of 'effects based operations', which means:

  that military force exists to serve political or strategic ends . . . Our conventional military superiority now allows us more choice in how we deliver the effect we wish to achieve.

  While terrorism is meant to provide the rationale for this increased force-projection capability, the report notes in a section called 'UK policy aims' that:

  more widely the UK has a range of global interests including economic well-being based around trade, overseas and foreign investment and the continuing free flow of natural resources.14

  At the same time as the MoD was producing this strategy paper, the Foreign Office released a report on 'UK international priorities', stating that 'our ability to project armed force will be a key instrument of our foreign policy' and that 'early action to prevent conflict' played an important part in this. The context was the identification of 'eight international strategic priorities' for British foreign policy, one of which was 'security of UK and global energy supplies'. It was also reported that the Prime Minister's strategy unit, based in the Cabinet Office, was conducting a review of 'how to create a consensus on the legitimacy of external interventions' in 'failed states'.15

  This strategy of enhanced intervention is confirmed in various speeches given by Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who has said that the British military is being equipped 'for more frequent operations' and 'higher numbers of concurrent smaller operations' in regions beyond Europe. Indeed, Hoon has observed that since the SDR in 1998 there has been 'a new operation arising on average about once a year'.16

  It was Britain not the US that first committed itself to the strategy that is mislabelled 'pre-emption'. A better description would be 'preventive': it means that military force will be undertaken not in response to an imminent threat, but before a threat materialises. The first is a kind of self-defence; the 'threat' posited in the latter is open to interpretation and can easily be used to justify offence, as in the invasion of Iraq.

  Indeed, these documents amount to a reconfiguration of British military strategy to an overt focus on offensive operations; Britain now has a Ministry of Offence. 'Defence' was always a misnomer intended largely for public relations: Britain has always had a strong intervention capability and has conducted numerous offensive operations which have had nothing to do with defending Britain or the interests of the public. But now this is barely even being hidden. Geoff Hoon has said that 'long experience indicates that a wholly defensive posture will not be enough'; the key 'is to take the fight to the terrorist'.17 This 'terrorist' threat is the cover for greater and more frequent interventions. While the media have been sidetracked by issues such as who named David Kelly when and at what meeting, the Defence Secretary has been pushing ahead with plans for a new 'expeditionary strategy' that envisages more Iraqs all over the world. Presumably, only the current humiliation in Iraq, together with public opposition, is holding the Blair cabal back.

  The intellectual justification for this new phase in imperial strategy comes from 'liberal imperialists' such as Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat close to Tony Blair. Cooper has written, apparently without irony, that 'the challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards'. 'Among ourselves', he believes, 'we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security'. . .

  But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.18

  The comparison of declassified files and recent government publications suggests that basic strategies alter very little over time; only the pretexts change. The February 2003 report on securing foreign energy supplies and the December 2003 strategy for enhanced global intervention are two sides of the same coin. The earlier document is a clearly stated rationale for the latter – a new period of global intervention, which provides a more plausible motivation for the invasion of Iraq than the proclamations about 'humanitarian intervention', terrorism and WMD parroted by many media commentators and academic analysts.

  5

  MASSACRES IN IRAQ:

  THE SECRET HISTORY

  Britain has long been complicit in aggression and humanrights abuses in Iraq. Indeed, many of the roots of the current crisis in the country can be found in the horrific events of the 1960s. Formerly secret British files tell the story of British backing for repression and killings by regimes in Baghdad well before the arrival of Saddam Hussein. They reveal stunning levels of complicity in aggression against the Kurds, including in the use of chemical weapons – policies which are the roots of the later Western support extended to Saddam.

  At the moment, London and Washington are bent on maintaining in power a friendly regime in Baghdad. It is a policy with a long historical precedent, and a background which does not bode well for the future of Iraq.

  The fall of the monarchy

  The British-backed monarchical regime of King Faisal and Prime Minister Nuri El Said was overthrown in an Arab nationalist revolution on 14 July 1958, which established a republic under Brigadier Abdul Karim Qasim. Said and the royal family were killed and the British embassy, long known to be the power behind the throne, was sacked by a mob with the loss of one British life. British embassy officials described it as 'popular revolution' based on 'pent-up passions of hatred and frustration, nourished on unsatisfied nationalist emotion, hostility to autocratic government, resentment at Western predominance, disgust at unrelieved poverty'.1

  The regime Britain had supported for so long was one of the most unpopular in the history of the Middle East. The British were well aware of its repressive features. A Foreign Office brief noted, for example, that 'wealth and power have remained concentrated in the hands of a few rich landowners and tribal sheikhs centred round [sic] the Court'.2

  Three months before the revolution, Sir Michael Wright, Britain's ambassador in Baghdad, had told Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd that 'the constitutional position in Iraq is very like what it was in the United Kingdom at the accession of George III'. Political power resided in the palace, the King appointed and dismissed prime ministers at will while 'the opposition may not hold public meetings or express opposition to the regime itself in the press'. Wright also noted that 'the efficiency of the Iraqi security service has increased materially in the last year, thanks largely to British assistance with training and equipment'; the situation had been one of 'complete political suppression'. Wright then outlined his opposition to democracy by saying that 'a complete relaxation of present controls on freedom of expression
coupled with completely free elections' would 'produce chaos and possibly a revolution'; his recommendations extended no further than to allow the formation of political parties.3

  In one stroke, the popular nationalist revolution removed a pro-British regime and a key pillar of British imperial policy in the Middle East. Still worse, Qasim was conceded by Whitehall to be personally 'extremely popular'.4 His rule was certainly autocratic and his police force often savage in its repression, but compared to the previous Said regime, Qasim's was relatively benign. Although in the early days, Qasim was tolerated by Britain, he soon joined the ranks of Sukarno in Indonesia, Jagan in British Guiana and Nasser in Egypt as popular, nationalist enemies to British interests in the Third World.

  The threats posed by Qasim were aptly summed up by a British member of the Iraq Petroleum Corporation, which controlled Iraq's oil, in a memo to the Foreign Office just months before the regime was overthrown. Qasim, he wrote:

  wished to give Iraq what he considered political independence, dignity and unity, in brotherly cooperation with other Arabs and in neutrality between the world power blocs; he wished to increase and distribute the national wealth, partly on grounds of nationalist and socialist principle, partly out of simply [sic] sympathy for the poor; on the basis of economic prosperity and justice he wished to found a new society and a new democracy; and he wished to use this strong, democratic, Arabist Iraq as an instrument to free and elevate other Arabs and Afro-Asians and to assist the destruction of 'imperialism', by which he largely meant British influence in the underdeveloped countries.5

  Qasim's policy, on oil is the subject of a huge amount of correspondence in the declassified files and a major reason why Whitehall wanted him removed. The background was that in 1961 Qasim announced that the Iraqi government wanted to take more than 50 per cent of the profits from oil exports; he had also complained that the British companies were fixing the oil prices. In a law in December, he purported to deprive the IPC of about 99.5 per cent of its concession, the expropriated areas including valuable proven oil fields. A draft law setting up a new Iraqi National Oil Corporation had been published in October 1962 but had not come into force by the time of the coup that removed Qasim in February 1963.

  Also of major concern to Britain was Iraq's claim to Kuwait. In 1961, Britain landed troops in Kuwait supposedly to defend it from an imminent Iraqi attack. The declassified files, however, show that British planners fabricated the Iraqi threat to justify a British intervention in order to secure the reliance of the leaders of the oil-rich state on British 'protection', as described in Web of Deceit.6

  The 1963 massacres

  The Qasim regime fell, its leader executed, on 8 February 1963 in a coup under General Abdul Arif and Prime Minister General Abdul al-Bakr of the Baath party, which thus secured power for the first time. The coup was the result of substantial CIA backing and organisation and was masterminded by William Lakeland, stationed as an attahé at the US embassy in Baghdad. The US had previously actively conspired to murder Qasim and the CIA's Health Alteration Committee, as it was called, once sent Qasim a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though it either failed to work or to reach its intended victim.

  According to author Said Aburish, the US had insisted beforehand on implementing a detailed plan to eliminate the Iraqi Communist party as a force in Iraqi politics, meaning physical extermination of its members. The CIA provided the February coup leaders with a list of names, around 5,000 of whom were hunted down and murdered. They included senior army officers as well as lawyers, professors, teachers and doctors. There were pregnant women and old men among them, many of whom were tortured in front of their children. The eliminations mostly took place on an individual basis, house-to-house visits by hit squads who knew where their victims were and who carried out on-the-spot executions. 'The coup is a gain for our side', Robert Komer, a member of the National Security Council, told President Kennedy immediately after.7

  Saddam Hussein, then a junior Baath party member, was closely involved in the coup. As an Iraqi exile in Cairo he and other plotters had since 1961 benefited from contacts with the CIA arranged by the Iraqi section of Egyptian intelligence. During the coup Saddam had rushed back from Cairo and was personally involved in the torture of leftists during the massacres.8

  Britain had also long wanted to see the fall of Qasim. The declassified files contain mentions of British willingness to be involved in his ousting, and several of the files from this period have not been declassified. It appears that Britain may have known of the coup in advance, but there is no direct evidence that Britain was in contact with the plotters.

  Five months before the February coup, a note by a Foreign Office official refers to the British ambassador's view 'that the sooner Qasim falls the better and that we should not be too choosy about doing things to help towards this end'. The ambassador, Sir Roger Allen, was also reported to be supporting 'a forward policy against Qasim'. One note from Allen five weeks before the coup refers to a plot against Qasim, stating that 'we have been assured that the plot is carefully worked out in detail and that the names of all those destined for key positions has been chosen'; but this note does not suggest that General Arif, who eventually led the coup, would be its figurehead. Allen also notes the importance of his staff in Baghdad not 'appearing to be aware or mixed up in plotting and I have recently emphasised again to members of the staff, including the new Air Attaché, that we must always act with the greatest caution'.9

  Eleven days before the coup, Ambassador Allen was told by the US chargé d'affaires in Baghdad that 'it was time to start building up a credit with Qasim's opponents, against the day when there would be a change of government here'. Allen concluded that 'for the first time since I have been here, I have the feeling that the end may just possibly come in the foreseeable future'. This does seem like a tip-off, at least, from the US, whose embassy was closely conniving with the plotters. Indeed, one day after the coup, on 9 February, Roger Allen cabled the Foreign Office that the new Minister of Defence 'was expected to become Air Force Commander in the event of a coup' – indicating some kind of advance knowledge.10

  What is indisputable is that British officials in Baghdad and London knew of the massacres and welcomed the new regime carrying them out. The files make clear that Roger Allen and another embassy official were monitoring Iraqi radio reports on the first two days of the coup. Messages from the new regime called on people to 'help wipe out all those who belong to the Communists and finish them off'. They urged people to 'destroy the criminals' and to 'kill them all, kill all the criminals'. These announcements were all repeated several times. Allen told the Foreign Office on 11 February that 'the radio has been exhorting people to hound down the communists. Such fighting as had taken place seems to have been directed at any rate in part against communist sympathisers'. He sent a transcript of all these messages to the Foreign Office on 15 February.11

  Britain's military attaché in the Baghdad embassy said in a despatch of 19 February that on 9 February there had been 'firing throughout the city' and the 'rounding up of communists', adding: 'since the embassy is in a communist stronghold area, considerable small arms firing was heard throughout most of the day'. On 10 February the embassy was telling the Foreign Office of the 'rounding up of Communists' and 'some sporadic shooting in various parts of the city'. On the same day, the Foreign Office noted that 'strong action is being taken against the Communists'.12

  On 11 February, the embassy was reporting 'some firing' in outlying districts where there were believed to be Communists, with 'stories of heavy casualties, presumably among civilians, but these are not confirmed'.13

  By 26 February, the embassy was saying that the new government was trying 'to crush organised communism in Iraq' and that there were rumours that 'all the top communists have been seized and that fifty have been quietly executed', although adding that 'there may be no truth in this'.14

  The following month, a letter from the Iraq Petroleum Corpo
ration to the Foreign Office referred to 'the hunt for communists' and that 'it remains to be seen how far they will be physically destroyed'. Writing six weeks after the coup, a Foreign Office official refers to a 'bloodbath' and 'we should not wish to be seen publicly to advocate such methods of suppressing communism'. 'Such harshness', the official noted, 'may well have been necessary as a short term expedient'.15

  'The communist menace was tackled with determination', Britain's ambassador to Iraq reflected in a note to Alec Douglas-Home in May, adding that the Iraqi government said there were now 14,000 political prisoners and that 'the prisons are still overflowing with political detainees'. By June, Foreign Office official Percy Cradock – later to become chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee – noted that 'the Iraqi regime is continuing its severe repression of communists', with 39 executions recently announced.16