Web Of Deceit: Britain's Real Foreign Policy

by Mark Curtis

  Increasing emotional attachment to the outside world, fuelled by immediate and graphic media coverage, and a public desire to see the UK act as a force for good, is likely to lead to public support, and possibly public demand, for operations prompted by humanitarian motives.

  Therefore, ‘public support will be vital to the conduct of military interventions.’ In future, ‘more effort will be required to ensure that such public debate is properly informed’.29

  Clearly, the government has no intention of objectively informing the public. So the meaning of this appears to be: first, government propaganda is key to attaining objectives and we should expect a lot more of it; second, this propaganda will tell us that the government is acting from humanitarian (rather than baser) motives. It is interesting to see a government openly committing itself to a strategy of propaganda; there are no longer any excuses for journalists simply to report government statements or opinions at face value, without ridicule.

  Don’t mention the war

  The full-scale onslaught against Iraq began in March 2003 but the war began much earlier, although this was barely noticed in the mainstream political culture.

  Britain really started the new phase of the war against Iraq in August or September 2002, when British and US attacks in the ‘no fly zones’ (NFZs) in northern and southern Iraq were significantly stepped up. We cannot be precise about the date since this secret war was not announced by the government and was barely reported by the media. Indeed, the continual British and US bombing of Iraq in the NFZs for well over a decade received the barest of attention in the mainstream.

  In August 2002, US and British aircraft undertook nine missile and bomb attacks against Iraqi air-defence targets in the NFZs, the highest strike rate since May 2000. This was followed on September 5th with a British and US attack on an Iraqi military air-defence centre west of Baghdad involving 100 jets, reported cursorily in the Guardian and barely elsewhere. Further regular bombings were (sparsely) reported in October and November, in what was obviously a prelude to full-scale war and invasion. By December, the Guardian reported that RAF fighters based in Saudi Arabia were practising bombing runs on Iraqi targets in the NFZs.30

  From 1991 to December 1998, the RAF flew 15,500 sorties in the northern and southern NFZs. By November 1999, US and British forces had flown 28,000 sorties, dropping over 1,800 bombs and missiles on 450 targets.31

  The bombing was secretly stepped up in 1998: 150 bombs were dropped on southern Iraq between December 1998 and June 2000. British aircraft dropped 0.025 tonnes of bombs on average per month between April 1991 and December 1998 and five tonnes on average between December 1998 and February 2001.32

  This previous new phase in the war was not announced or explained to parliament; nor were the changes in the ‘rules of engagement’ for British and US pilots. The official argument was that they only acted defensively when fired upon by Iraqi forces on the ground, but the reality was of a gradual creep towards offensive operations.

  Soon after the December 1998 bombing, President Clinton quietly sanctioned changes in the rules of engagement. This allowed US pilots to strike at any part of the Iraqi air defence system, not just those that directly targeted their aircraft. This role was escalated further when anti-aircraft batteries were attacked for locking on their radar screens to allied aircraft, even without firing. In February 1999, a US Defence Department spokesman said that the targets included missile sites, anti-aircraft sites, command and control sites, relay stations and some intelligence gathering sites. The Bush administration escalated things still further, targeting radar and command and control installations well beyond the NFZs.33

  In early 1999, the British government conceded for the first time that the changes affected its pilots as well. It was reported that the ‘self-defence’ policy had been expanded into ‘an active campaign aimed at fatally weakening’ the Iraqi regime. Also reported was a government go-ahead to the commander in the southern zone to hit Iraqi aircraft moving north, away from the no fly zone.34

  The Guardian also reported briefly in February 1999 on five weeks of heightened skirmishes, which had done more damage to Iraq than the four-day bombing campaign in December the previous year. US and British fighters had reportedly destroyed or damaged about forty targets since 28 December.35

  A similar secret escalation in the war seems to have been ordered in August 2001, when fifty US and British aircraft struck missile sites, a radar installation and a military communications centre in the southern NFZ. One press report noted a recent National Security Council meeting at which President Bush called for more ‘robust reinforcement’ of the NFZs. It seems that the US and Britain changed the rules of engagement at will, and stepped up attacks when they so desired by always citing self-defence.36

  The NFZs were plain violations of international law, having received no UN authorisation. London justified its patrolling of the zones – which was only rarely required, given the lack of scrutiny of the policy – by referring to UN Security Council resolution 688. This resolution, from 1991, ‘demanded an end of Saddam Hussein’s repression of the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south for clear humanitarian reasons’. The purpose of the zones, the government argued, was to monitor Iraqi compliance with resolution 688. ‘Such action is entirely justified within international law in response to a situation of overwhelming necessity’, Geoff Hoon said in April 2000. This was the same justification the government used for the bombing of Yugoslavia, which was also illegal.37

  According to its own argument, Britain had as much justification for its military action in the NFZs as, for example, Iran (or Iraq, for that matter) would have if it declared, say, Palestine, a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ and decided to patrol the skies over the West Bank, deterring Israeli aircraft from repeatedly striking Palestinian homes.

  The existence of the NFZs undoubtedly deterred the Iraqi regime from further repression of the Kurds. However, the argument that the NFZs were there for humanitarian purposes, to protect Kurds, was more or less openly refuted by British officials, at a time when increased airstrikes were acting as a prelude to full-scale onslaught. The Guardian noted, for example, that ‘British defence sources have now given up the pretence that the southern no-fly zone is a humanitarian exercise designed to protect Iraqi Shias and Marsh Arabs.’38

  It is unclear how many civilians were killed in the undeclared war in the NFZs. UN officials documented 144 killed by bombing in 1999. On 25 January 1999, for example, a guided missile killed more than ten people when it struck a civilian neighbourhood in Basra, according to the UN’s Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. Baghdad claimed that 323 civilians were killed and 960 injured between December 1998 and the beginning of 2001.39

  There was no effective parliamentary scrutiny of this secret, permanent war, as with so many other policies considered in this book. A Defence Committee inquiry into the NFZs failed to mention civilian casualties and kept to the myth that ‘coalition’ aircraft (ie, British and US) acted only in self-defence. It also stated that its view on the legality of the NFZs was the same as on Kosovo: ‘of dubious legality in the current state of international law’ but ‘justified on moral grounds’. It supported the aim of ‘establishing in the United Nations new principles governing humanitarian intervention’.40

  Thus the all-party committee concluded that military action can be viewed as moral even when it is illegal, and that we should set about rewriting the law so that it supports our policy – a nice illustration of the thinking of the British political class, consistent with New Labour’s attempts to rewrite international law to suit its interests in Iraq.

  The irrelevance of human rights

  British planners have always claimed that they are acting to support the human rights of Iraqis. They have had various recent chances to show such a commitment; how have they fared? Let us turn first to the issue of sanctions.

  Sir Timothy Garden, a former Air Marshal and director of the Royal Institut
e of International Affairs, has written that ‘the international community has had a remarkably successful policy of containing the Iraq problem’, referring especially to sanctions.41 These were imposed in August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and have been consistently renewed every six months since. The US and Britain have ensured that sanctions remain in place, defying much of the rest of the world, as report after report shows their devastating impact.

  Sanctions have helped to kill more children per month in Iraq than were killed on September 11th. The UN estimates that 500,000 Iraqi children under five have died since 1990, as a result both of the sanctions and the effects of the Gulf War in 1990–1. Former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, has said that the death toll is ‘probably closer now to 600,000 and that’s over the period of 1990–98. If you include adults, it’s well over 1 million people.’ An August 1999 Unicef report found that under-five mortality had more than doubled since the imposition of sanctions. It said in 1997 that ‘malnutrition was not a public health problem prior to the embargo. Its extent became apparent by 1991 and the prevalence has increased greatly since then … By 1997 it was estimated about one million children under five were chronically malnourished.’ Such is the reality of the ‘remarkably successful policy’ to which Sir Timothy Garden was referring above.42

  Certainly not all the human suffering in Iraq is the result of sanctions; Saddam Hussein’s brutally repressive regime is also responsible. But as the UN Security Council’s Panel on Humanitarian Issues put it: ‘Even if not all the suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war.’43

  A July 2000 report by the UN Secretary General noted the ‘suffering of Iraqi children’ and the ‘immediate and long term costs [of sanctions] to children, including the collapse of health and education infrastructures … and increased infant morbidity and mortality’. And an article in the US establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, estimated that Iraqi deaths from sanctions exceed the number ‘slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history’.44

  The British government that now professes its commitment to the human rights of Iraqis has, for the previous decade, consistently rejected the overwhelming evidence about the impact of sanctions. Foreign Office minister Brian Wilson said bluntly in February 2001 that ‘there is no evidence that sanctions are hurting the Iraqi people’. Tony Blair had previously informed the House of Commons that ‘we reject claims that the Iraqi people are suffering because of sanctions’.45

  To me, these are simply cold-blooded apologias for the slaughter of children. The reality is that Britain has helped to kill people by the tens of thousands in Iraq; indeed, it is likely that Britain has contributed to the deaths of more Iraqis than Saddam. London’s attitude is no different to Washington’s: when asked about the deaths of half a million children from sanctions as a result of the US policy of containment, US Secretary of State under Clinton, Madeleine Albright, replied that it was a ‘hard choice’ but that: ‘We think the price is worth it’.46

  Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday resigned in protest over sanctions and has since said that ‘this policy constitutes genocide and Washington and London are responsible … It … is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq … We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is illegal and immoral.’47

  Halliday’s successor in the role of Humanitarian Coordinator to Iraq was Hans von Sponeck, who also resigned in protest against sanctions. Together they have written:

  The UK and the US, as permanent members of the [UN security] council, are fully aware that the UN embargo operates in breach of the UN covenants on human rights, the Geneva and Hague conventions and other international laws … The two governments have consistently opposed allowing the UN security council to carry out its mandated responsibilities to assess the impact of sanctions policies on civilians. We know about this first hand because the governments repeatedly tried to prevent us from briefing the security council about it.48

  Many international lawyers argue that, even though the sanctions are applied by the UN (though in reality maintained by the US and British veto), they are nevertheless violations of international law. A report written for the UN by Belgian law professor Marc Bossuyt, for example, notes that ‘the sanctions regime against Iraq is unequivocally illegal under existing international law and human rights law’ and ‘could raise questions under the Genocide Convention’. Former US Attorney General Ramsay Clark has said the economic blockade is a weapon of mass destruction, ‘a crime against humanity, in the Nuremberg sense … The blockade is a weapon for the destruction of the masses, and it attacks those segments of the society that are the most vulnerable. Inherently, it attacks infants and children, the chronically ill, the elderly and emergency medical cases.’49

  Sanctions against Iraq have violated the majority of the articles in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while a protocol to the Geneva convention states that the starvation of children is illegal and ethically indefensible. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Britain is also obligated to ‘take appropriate measures’ to reduce child mortality, to ensure necessary health care to all children and to combat disease and malnutrition, all of which have been exacerbated by sanctions.50

  Whitehall has claimed that only the Iraqi regime is responsible for suffering in Iraq and Tony Blair said that ‘the Iraqi authorities can import as much food and medicines as they need. If there are nutritional problems in Iraq, they are not the result of sanctions.’51

  In response, Halliday and von Sponeck noted that in October 2001 the US and Britain were blocking $4 billion in humanitarian supplies, which was ‘by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food programme’ (the deal whereby Iraq is allowed to sell its oil in exchange for importing food). They noted a UN report stating that the Iraqi government’s distribution of humanitarian supplies was fully satisfactory and concluded that ‘the death of some 5–6,000 children a month is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments’ delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad.’52

  In May 2002, sanctions on Iraq were renewed and the sanctions regime moderated in a way likely to relax the policy of holds but with potential ‘dual-use’ goods still needing approval. By this time $5 billion in goods were being blocked, about 90 per cent by the US and Britain. This included $4.6 billion of humanitarian supplies, according to the UN Office of the Iraq Programme.53

  Items blocked by Britain in the 1990s included boxes of nail polish and lipsticks, consignments of paper for hospital doctors, cotton for medical use (swabs, gauze etc), water purification chemicals, a consignment of children’s bicycles, and a consignment of ping pong balls from Vietnam. Drugs, various medical supplies and even such basic items as soap and syringes, have either been permanently blocked or delayed to the point where their usefulness has been eroded. Antibiotics have been held up for so long they passed their sell-by dates. The government admitted in January 2000 that it had held up the delivery of ‘a number of vaccines which were of potential dual use concern’.54

  Von Sponeck and Halliday have sought to ‘encourage people everywhere to protest against unscrupulous policies and against the appalling disinformation put out about Iraq and by those who know better, but are willing to sacrifice people’s lives with false and malicious arguments’.55

  However, British policy has been met by a terrible silence on the part of parliament and much of the media. It is simply amazing that a government policy which, by credible indicators, has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people has been widely met with only murmurs of objections, and sometimes outright support, in the mainstream political culture. The political class has acquiesced in
the deaths of half a million children.

  The second test of the British government’s commitment to human rights concerns the worst atrocities committed by Baghdad against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq in the 1980s. These past brutalities are now regularly invoked by the Blair government to justify attacking Iraq. It is simply amazing that Blair is able to deploy this argument without immediate ridicule from journalists and others, in light of London’s backing for Saddam at that time.

  Before the country became an Official Enemy by invading Kuwait in August 1990, Western policy had been to support Saddam’s Iraq since it served two useful functions: first, fighting the new Ayatollah’s regime in Iran and second, brutally suppressing Kurds in Iraq: London has always opposed full self-determination or statehood for the Kurds for fear of destabilising its allies in the region, principally Turkey and Iraq.

  From 1980 to 1990 Britain provided £3.5 billion in trade credits to Baghdad – critical economic support that had the effect of freeing up resources for the Iraqi military. British ministerial trade missions were regular throughout the war years and continued as Iraq used poison gas against the Iranians in 1983–4. In 1987, following the extension of export credits after UK–Iraq trade talks, a Department of Trade and Industry press release noted that ‘the new facilities amounted to an expression of confidence in UK/Iraq commercial relations’.56

  Britain sold Iraq £2.3 billion worth of machinery and transport equipment between 1981 and 1990, according to DTI figures, much of it military-related. As early as January 1981 the Cabinet’s Overseas and Defence Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Thatcher, was discussing how to ‘exploit Iraq’s promising market for arms’. In the 1980s, Britain exported a huge range of equipment to Saddam’s war machine, including explosives, electronic surveillance equipment, a launch site for Exocet missiles, long range radio systems, pistols, rifles and shotguns, military vehicles, fast assault craft and night-vision equipment.57