History > 2007 > UK > Wars > Iraq (I) - Warning: graphic

Morland

cartoon

Times

January 3, 2007

L to R: (?), Tony Blair, John Prescott

Background

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2528934,00.html - broken link

Robert Fisk:

In Iraq, the killing of 18 teenagers

is a horrible routine

Published: 28 February 2007
The Independent

This is a story with a caution. Eighteen teenagers were killed on Monday at a football field east of Baghdad. On Sunday, equally young students of Mustansiriya University - the oldest in Baghdad - were blown up by a suicide bomber. It has become a routine, at one and the same time more horrible and more normal each day. Only two years ago, a suicide bomber drove into an American convoy in Baghdad, killing 27 civilians, half of them children taking sweets from American soldiers. What price innocence?

Well, as usual, nothing is as it seems in Iraq. Within hours of the mass deaths in Ramadi yesterday came a disturbing statement by the US military. They knew of no deaths in Ramadi, although - and here was the sinister part of the whole thing - it was true, the Americans said, that 30 people had been "slightly wounded" in Ramadi when US troops set off a "controlled explosion" near a football field. "I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," an American officer announced. Quite so.

Then he apparently half-acknowledged that there was another explosion near the soccer field, a "barbaric crime" by al-Qa'ida. The police said it was a car bomb. The American-funded Iraqi television service said it was a roadside bomb. A local tribal leader said that of the 18 dead, six were women - not, presumably, football players.

In Iraq, as we all know now, they go for the jugular. The old, the young, pregnant women, infants, soldiers, gunmen, murderers. They all die violently, the innocent along with the guilty. One of the insurgents' principal financial supporters - we had met in Amman, of course, not in Baghad - put it very succinctly to me. "A decision was made that we have to accept civilian casualties. If we attack the Americans, the innocent will die. We know that. What do you people call it when you kill women and children? Collateral damage?"

But exactly what happened in Ramadi remained suspiciously unclear. The football stadium where the 18 youths were reported to have been killed was near a US base. But there are no American troops on the campus at Mustansiriya. There was talk yesterday that a local Sunni imam in Ramadi had denounced al-Qa'ida - which operates in loose co-operation with Sunni insurgent groups - and that this might have prompted a revenge attack by the organisation.

But such is the level of violence and anarchy in Iraq today that all such events are filtered through pro-American Iraqi security officials or through the US army or through insurgents' websites. Insurgents' victims are claimed to have been killed by the Americans, civilians killed by US troops are said to have been murdered by insurgents. Who knows if that did not happen in Ramadi? In fear of their lives, Western journalists can no longer investigate these atrocities. The Americans like it that way. So, one suspects, do the insurgents. Accurate information in Iraq is like water in the desert: precious, rare, often polluted.

Ramadi is a no-go area for every Westerner, including most US troops. So who set off the truck bomb near a mosque in the city which killed 52 people on Saturday? Or the ambulance outside a police station near Ramadi, which killed 14 people on Monday? Shia militiamen seeking further blood in their war on Sunni fighters? Sunni groups trying to implicate Shia? Al-Qa'ida? Or the other shadowy groups who have affiliations with the American-supported Iraqi government, with the ministries of interior or health or "defence"?

The reality is that Iraq's war now exists in a fog through which we can see only vague figures. They may be insurgents or they may be soldiers. Or they may, for all the Iraqis know, be units from the 120,000 - yes, 120,000 - Western mercenaries now believed to be operating in Iraq for any number of legal and quasi-legal organisations. These hired gunmen constitute a force almost equal to the entire US contingent in Iraq. Who do they work for? What are their rules? The answer to the first may be "everyone". The answer to the second question? None.

Besides these great mysteries, what did the lives of 18 teenagers matter to the world yesterday, let alone who killed them?

Robert Fisk: In Iraq, the killing of 18 teenagers is a horrible routine, I, 28.2.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2311301.ece

Army commanders

wanted bigger and faster troop pullout

Presence on Basra streets

seen as doing more harm than good

Thursday February 22, 2007
Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor,
Michael Howard in Baghdad, and Will Woodward

Military chiefs had been pushing for much bigger cuts in the number of British troops in Iraq than those announced yesterday by Tony Blair, defence officials made clear last night.

For months, army commanders have suggested that their presence on the streets of Basra was doing more harm than good, that it was time to lower expectations and let Iraqi forces take charge of security. They were forced to agree to a more gradual reduction partly in deference to US sensitivities. They also recognised the importance of "managing risk", a senior defence source said.

"You don't want them to have to go back in," he added.

Mr Blair confirmed yesterday that the number of British troops in southern Iraq, currently 7,100, would be reduced by 1,600 over the next few months, and by a further 500 by late summer. That would bring the number down to 5,000, with possible further cuts by the end of this year, he said. Military and defence officials make clear the aim is for all troops, bar a few instructors, to leave Iraq by the end of 2008.

It also emerged last night that troops from the Blues and Royals - including Prince Harry - would be deployed to Iraq this spring as part of a Household Cavalry detachment as 1 Mechanised Brigade replaces 19 Light Brigade, which is returning home after a six-month tour of duty. The extent of the prince's duties remains unclear, but he could be sent on frontline missions.

Mr Blair told MPs yesterday only that "the UK military presence will continue into 2008, for as long as we are wanted and have a job to do". He added: "Increasingly our role will be support and training, and our numbers will be able to reduce accordingly."

Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, told the Guardian that while news of the withdrawal "had not come as a surprise to anyone", it was "a welcome catalyst for Iraqi security forces ... to stand on their own feet". Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, said the announcement was "an affirmation that in parts of Iraq ... things are going pretty well", while the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was keen to stress "the coalition remains intact".

Basra's civic leaders and residents expressed relief at what they saw as the first step toward the end of the difficult British presence. Hakim al-Mayyahi, a member of Basra's provincial council, said Mr Blair's statement was overdue. "Lately, they [the British troops] were not helping the stability of the security situation in Basra," he said. "On the contrary, their constant conflicts with the anti-British groups here was simply contributing to a negative impact among the public."

Salam al-Maliki, a senior official in the bloc loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which has long opposed a foreign presence, said: "The militias and militant groups in these areas only fired their weapons at the occupier and when they go, all of the violence here will end."

Though some expressed trepidation at the potential negative consequences of a drawdown in British forces before their Iraqi counterparts were fully ready to take responsibility for security, one senior provincial official in Basra said: "If after four years they can't withdraw 1,600 troops without destabilising the situation, then God help us."

In the Commons, Mr Blair said an unconditional timetable for withdrawal "would be absolutely disastrous".

David Cameron, the Tory leader, supported the pullout, though he painted a less positive picture of the position in Basra, saying the security situation had "deteriorated dramatically over the last three years". Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: "The unpalatable truth is that we will leave behind a country on the brink of civil war, in which reconstruction has stalled and corruption is endemic".

Meanwhile the MoD said last night that a Royal Marine from 45 Commando was killed when he stepped on an anti-personnel mine in southern Afghanistan.

State of the coalition


Albania 120 non-combat troops, mainly patrolling airport in Mosul; no plans to withdraw


Armenia 46 soldiers, serving as medics, engineers and drivers under Polish command; staying to end of 2007


Australia Around 550 troops training security forces in southern Iraq


Azerbaijan 150 troops; no plans to withdraw


Bosnia-Herzegovina 36 soldiers


Bulgaria 155 in total 120 non-combat troops guarding refugee camp near Baghdad, 35 support personnel


Czech Republic 99 troops


Denmark 460 troops patrolling Basra; to be withdrawn by August


El Salvador 380 soldiers in Hillah; no immediate plans to withdraw


Estonia 35 troops under US command in the Baghdad area


Georgia 900 combat, medical and support personnel under US command in Baqouba; no plans to withdraw or reduce contingent


Kazakhstan 27 military engineers; no plans to withdraw


Latvia 125 troops under Polish command in Diwaniya


Lithuania 60 troops, part of a Danish battalion near Basra


Macedonia 40 troops in Taji


Moldova 11 bomb-defusing experts returned home at end of January


Mongolia 160 troops; no plans to withdraw


Netherlands 15 soldiers as part of Nato mission training police, army officers; no plans to withdraw


Poland 900 non-combat troops; commands multinational force; mission extended to end of 2007


Romania about 600 troops, most serving under UK command; prime minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu wants them withdrawn


Slovenia 4 instructors training Iraqi security forces


South Korea 2,300 troops in Irbil; plans to bring home 1,100; parliament insists on complete withdrawal by end of 2007

    Army commanders wanted bigger and faster troop pullout, G, 22.2.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2018287,00.html

Comment

This is driven by poll ratings,

not by conditions in Iraq

British troops could and should have left in 2005.

Their departure has been led by political, not military, priorities

Thursday February 22, 2007
The Guardian
Jonathan Steele

Tony Blair has always said that there would be no "artificial timetable" for pulling British troops from Iraq. Their departure would depend on conditions. His announcement yesterday of a minor reduction in troop levels this year reveals what those conditions are: the state of his poll ratings and the degree of movement he is allowed by George Bush.

The prime minister is desperately trying to get a last surge from a British public that has long been disillusioned with the war, while not embarrassing an American president who is slumping at home even as he surges in Baghdad. Withdrawing less than a quarter of the British contingent in Iraq is Blair's attempt at balance. It will satisfy nobody, least of all the British military who would like to have wrapped up the entire Basra adventure this year or last. Now it will be up to Gordon Brown to show whether he has the courage or the survival instinct, in a few months' time, to make 2008 the year of the full pull-out. Defeating David Cameron may depend upon it.

Tony Blair pointed out yesterday afternoon that there is no Sunni insurgency in Basra, no al-Qaida, and very little Shia v Sunni violence. The last point applies because the Sunni community is too small to fight back, and up to two-thirds of them have been forced to flee. Basra's Christians are also escaping while they can. So, then, who is the enemy? The prime minister did not go into detail in yesterday's announcement, although everyone knows that it consists of a cocktail of different Shia Islamist militias, armed tribes and criminal gangs. Dealing with them cannot be the task of an army, either foreign or Iraqi. It is a job for police.

The task is made harder in Basra by the fact that the two main militias, the Badr organisation and the Mahdi army, are linked to different Islamist political parties that are vying for supremacy. The governor of Basra and the chairman of the provincial council have ties to one side, and the police chief to the other, while the police force beneath him is packed with men from both. They are engaged in a kind of civic civil war, a local struggle over who controls revenues, both legal and illegal - the most lucrative of which is the siphoning-off of Basra's oil.

None of this lethal crew likes the British, so it is no surprise that British casualties over the past four months have tripled as troops go valiantly about Operation Sinbad, an effort largely aimed at "cleaning up" some of the city's police stations. The Ministry of Defence keeps no monthly count of attacks on British troops, but the figures for the wounded who are taken to field hospitals have gone up from a rate of five a month between February and October 2006 to 17 a month since then. On the plus side, the MoD claims that in terms of reduced corruption 55% of police stations are now considered "acceptable", compared with only 20% when Sinbad began.

But the larger question remains. Why are British troops being asked to do this at all, especially as it is highly probable that the struggle within the Basra police will continue long after the British have gone? Before Sinbad began, extensive areas of Basra were a no-go zone for law enforcement. They will undoubtedly revert.

It is foolish enough for the Bush administration to think it can use American troops to end the civil war in Baghdad and Iraq's last few mixed cities. It is even more foolish for Downing Street to think it can end a civil war that is raging inside a police force. Britain's military commanders are pragmatic enough to know this, which is why they have long been hoping for orders to leave. They are not swept along by ideological naivety or inappropriate notions of a war on terror with its front lines along the Shatt al-Arab waterway. What they see in Basra is Chicago circa 1927, not Jihad Central 2007.

Britain's soft approach of leaving the Islamist militias largely alone, at least before Sinbad, has worked little better than the harder American one according to Anthony Cordesman, an independent analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The British were not defeated in a military sense, but lost in the political sense, if 'victory' means securing the south-east for the central government and some form of national unity," he says. "Soft ethnic cleansing has been going on in Basra for more than two years, and the south has been the scene of a less violent form of civil war for control of political and economic space that is as important as the more openly violent struggles in Anbar and Baghdad."

If Blair believed in a genuine "conditions-related" withdrawal, he would have brought Britain's troops out of Iraq two years ago. In January 2005 Basra's provincial elections put the present rulers in power. Voters there and in the three other Iraqi provinces under British command went to the polls with scarcely a mortar fired or a grenade launched. The occupation spin machines painted a picture of brave voters "defying the terrorists" as they cast the first free ballots of their lives for local and national government. Whatever truth there was in this appealing image in Baghdad, it did not apply in Basra.

At the city's polling stations, the long queues I watched were certainly impressive and poignant. There was a strong element of collective celebration - but one in which the militias and the parties to which they were linked also took part. Why bomb voters when you have candidates running and they are almost certain to win?

With no insurgents or al-Qaida in sight, British troops could have left south-eastern Iraq in 2005 as Robin Cook, Douglas Hurd and Menzies Campbell suggested at the time. Instead, their image as occupiers has become increasingly provocative even as the tasks they are assigned to do have grown more futile. Had they left Basra after the January 2005 elections, they could have claimed victory. When they go next year, leaving a local civil war behind, their departure will inevitably look like retreat.

· Jonathan Steele is writing a book about Iraq

    This is driven by poll ratings, not by conditions in Iraq, G, 22.2.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2018425,00.html

Iraq: the British endgame

· 1,000 troops out by May, all gone by end of 2008
· Pace of pullout much slower than anticipated

Wednesday February 21, 2007
Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor

All British troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of 2008, starting with the withdrawal of 1,000 in the early summer, the Guardian has learned.

Tony Blair is to announce the moves - the result of months of intense debate in Whitehall - within 24 hours, possibly later today, according to officials.

The prime minister is expected to say that Britain intends to gradually reduce the number of troops in southern Iraq over the next 22 months as Iraqi forces take on more responsibility for the security of Basra and the surrounding areas.

Ministers have taken on board the message coming from military chiefs over many months - namely that the presence of British troops on the streets of Basra is increasingly unnecessary, even provocative. The reduction of just 1,000 by early summer cited by officials yesterday is significantly less than anticipated in reports that British troops in southern Iraq, presently totalling 7,200, would be cut by half by May.

A more cautious reduction may reflect concern expressed by the Iraqi and US governments about British intentions. The US has privately admonished Britain claiming it is interested only in Basra. British ministers and officials say the situation in the Shia-dominated south cannot be compared to Baghdad, which is plagued by Sunni-Shia sectarian violence.

Under the plan due to be outlined by Mr Blair, British troops will gradually move into a single base on the outskirts of Basra. They will continue to take part in operations but in a role supporting Iraqi security forces rather than leading them, according to defence officials.

They will also continue operating long range desert patrols in Maysan province, north of Basra, along the border with Iran - a mission pressed on Britain by the US which says it is concerned about the smuggling of weapons from Iran. By the end of next year, all but a few army instructors will have left the country.

Military commanders insist they are encouraged by evidence that the Iraqi army and even local police are now able to maintain order in southern Iraq. As evidence of progress, Britain yesterday handed over control of an Iraqi army division based in Basra in what it called "a significant step towards Iraqi forces taking responsibility for security in the city".

For the first time the Iraqi army's 10th division, trained by British troops, will take orders from Iraqi military headquarters in Baghdad. Until now, it has been under British control. Major General Jonathan Shaw, British commander in southern Iraq, signed a memorandum of understanding with General Abdul Lateef Thu'ban, the 10th division commander.

British defence officials also say they have been encouraged by the role played by Iraqi forces in Operation Sinbad, a winter-long campaign designed to root out criminals and supporters of Shia militia from the Basra police force. In last week's Operation Troy, Iraqi and British forces sealed the city of Basra and set up checkpoints at border crossings with Iran.

Mr Blair gave an upbeat message when interviewed on Sunday AM on BBC1. "It is absolutely true, as we have said for months, that as the Iraqis are more capable in Basra of taking control of their own security we will scale down. But you've got to make sure you have sufficient forces in support and in reserve to be able to help the Iraqis if a problem arises," he said.

Yesterday a bomb destroyed a truck carrying chlorine north of Baghdad, killing at least five people and spewing toxic fumes that left 140 others ill, Iraqi police said. It was not immediately clear if the blast was caused by a roadside bomb or if the truck was rigged with explosives as a makeshift chemical gas bomb.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber and two car bombs killed at least 17 yesterday and police said 20 unidentified bodies were found on Monday, a spike in the daily toll after a marked reduction since the start of a US-backed security crackdown.

    Iraq: the British endgame, G, 21.2.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,2017824,00.html

The Army 'approved abuse of prisoners'

November 17, 2006
The Times
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor

THE Army’s high command was accused last night of officially sanctioning the hooding and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention.

The claims were made by a witness in the court martial of seven soldiers charged in relation to the abuse and ill-treatment of nine Iraqis in Basra in 2003.

Major Antony Royce, called as a witness by the judge in the case, told the court that he was instructed by those higher up the chain of command in Basra to use “conditioning techniques”, including putting prisoners in stress positions and hooding them, to prepare detainees for tactical questioning.

He said that the advice had come from a senior army legal adviser. Such techniques are against both the Geneva Convention and the Army’s own rules of engagement.

Major Royce told the court that, after being put in charge of internment, he was told by Major Mark Robinson, a brigade intelligence adviser, to “condition” prisoners. Fearing that this might contravene prisoner-handling tuition he had received in Britain, Major Royce said that he then checked with Major Russel Clifton, the brigade’s legal adviser, and was again told that “ conditioning” and hooding were acceptable.

“He [Robinson] instructed me to use conditioning as part of the tactical questioning process,” he said. “I then contacted Major Clifton to make sure that what I had been told was right.”

Julian Bevan, QC, for the prosecution, put it to Major Royce that both men deny having said that conditioning was acceptable. Of Major Robinson, Major Royce replied: “But he did [say so].” And of Major Clifton he countered: “Yes, he did.”

He added: “They washed their hands of it, and left us to it.”

Major Royce, formerly The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment’s internment review officer, said that Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the former commanding officer of the QLR who is one of the soldiers on trial, had himself seen the Iraqi prisoners being “conditioned” at the regiment’s detention centre. “He asked why it was taking place,” Major Royce said. “I explained that I had cleared it with the chain of command. He was happy that the chain of command and legal advisers had given us that clearance.”

Five members of The QLR and two from the Intelligence Corps are on trial. One of the prisoners, Baha Musa, died after 36 hours of being hooded, handcuffed, beaten and deprived of sleep.

The accusations against the British soldiers have alarming parallels with the abuse by some US troops of Iraqi prisoners, notably at the infamous Abu Ghraib detention centre in Baghdad.

A senior British army officer is investigating whether there was any evidence of widespread systemic abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Britain’s area of responsibility in southern Iraq.

Brigadier Robert Aitken, director of army personnel strategy, has been examining the conduct and reputation of officers and soldiers from May 1, 2003, to the end of that year, when many accusations were levelled. His report to army chiefs is due to be handed over after the end of the court martial of the seven soldiers.

The trial, which has been running at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire for eight weeks, will not be completed until the new year.

Colonel Mendonca has pleaded not guilty to the charge of negligently performing a duty by failing to ensure that the Iraqi civilian prisoners under his authority were not ill-treated. Three of his soldiers are charged with a war crime of inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The trial has already heard that hooding prisoners was banned by a government directive as far back as 1972 after accusations of abuse of suspected Irish terrorists in a Northern Ireland detention centre.

Under cross-examination, Major Royce said that it would have been “complete madness” for him to have told Colonel Mendonca that conditioning of prisoners was cleared legally if it had not been the case.

Corporal Donald Payne, 35, has pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating the detainees. He has denied two further charges of the manslaughter of Mr Musa and perverting the course of justice.

The six other defendants have pleaded not guilty to all charges. The trial, before a “jury” panel of senior military officers, continues on Monday.

THE CONVENTION

The Geneva Convention on handling prisoners bans:

Cruel treatment

Physical and mental torture

Humiliating and degrading treatment

Outrages upon personal dignity

Reprisals

    The Army 'approved abuse of prisoners', Ts, 17.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article639653.ece

Basra military abuse case:

what the court martial heard

The highest-profile British court martial of the Iraq war

dealt with how suspected insurgents were treated after their capture

February 14, 2007
From Times Online
Michael Evans, Defence Editor

Operation Salerno was launched on the morning of September 14, 2003, following intelligence that a hotel in the city was being used to store arms for insurgents who had been attacking British troops in southern Iraq ever since the end of the combat phase of the war on May 1.

Soldiers from The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (QLR) went to the hotel and arrested nine Iraqis, including Baha Musa, the 26-year-old receptionist, and took them back to a temporary detention centre run by the QLR, commanded by Colonel Jorge Mendonca. The regiment had had a tough tour of duty, constantly under attack by an increasingly confident group of Shia militia insurgents battling for power in Iraq’s second biggest city.

The prosecution case was that over the next 36 hours, the nine detainees were hooded with Hessian sacks, handcuffed, forced to adopt a “stress position” - standing up with knees bent and arms outstretched - and deprived of sleep. Witnesses for the prosecution claimed that during their detention, the Iraqis were also beaten up and kicked by soldiers from the QLR who had been given the task of conditioning the detainees for eventual “tactical questioning” by military intelligence officers.

The soldiers were under instruction to “maintain the shock of capture” in the hope that they would divulge crucial information about the insurgency. The temperature in the small three-room building over the 36 hours was about 60C.

The arrests had occurred within months of two significant incidents which had underlined the dangers facing the British troops in the period which was supposed to be post-war, a time when fighting should have been replaced by humanitarian and nation-building programmes.

Captain David Jones, 29, of The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, died when a roadside bomb exploded in Basra as he was passing in a military ambulance taking a colleague to hospital; and on June 24 six members of the Royal Military Police were murdered by a mob in the town of al-Majar al-Kabir in Maysan province.

The QLR soldiers believed that the Iraqis detained may have been involved in the incident with the Royal Military Police, the court heard.

During the five-month court martial, it became clear that the treatment of detainees was subject to guidance issued by the brigade headquarters in Basra which appeared to allow for prisoners to be hooded and forced to adopt the stress position as a way of encouraging them to talk at a later stage.

This was despite the clear rules of the Geneva Convention and the laws on armed conflict which state that all prisoners of war must be treated humanely and with dignity. A British Government ban on hooding of prisoners had also been imposed in 1972 following the discovery that suspected Irish terrorists had been ill-treated in detention facilities in Northern Ireland.

The court martial heard that during the 36 hours, Mr Musa alone suffered 93 injuries including a broken nose and a fractured rib. Julian Bevan, QC, counsel for the prosecution, told the court martial that the beatings started at the outset, and continued throughout the detention of the nine Iraqis. One of the detainees, a 17-year-old boy, claims he was urinated on by one of the soldiers.

Corporal Donald Payne was at the heart of the prosecution case because he was in control of the soldiers deployed to guard the detainees, and the other QLR members took their orders from him, according to Mr Bevan. On the first day of the court-martial, Corporal Payne pleaded guilty to the war crimes charge of inhumane treatment of persons. He was the only one of the seven defendants who made a guilty plea.

Video footage of the detention centre was shown in court, and as the prosecution made clear, the soldiers inside the detention facility would have known that they were being filmed. The court was told that Corporal Payne liked to create his own “choir” by getting the detainees to cry out as they were being beaten.

When the issue was raised in court over the treatment of the detainees, it emerged that the British military in Basra had been under pressure from the Americans to use tougher interrogation methods because they were not impressed by the intelligence which had been produced so far, and they wanted more information from captured insurgents.

Mr Musa died after he made a bid to escape. He took off his handcuffs and had to be restrained. In the struggle he banged his head and at one point his face, still hooded, was pressed into the floor. One soldier noted that he had stopped breathing. Another Iraqi detainee suffered serious kidney damage and was treated in hospital. He survived, although subsequently died when the roof of his house fell on top of him.

    Basra military abuse case: what the court martial heard, Ts Online, 14.2.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1385291.ece

Firms accused of bribing Saddam

to be investigated by fraud office

· British companies named in United Nations report

· Kickbacks 'enabled Iraqi leader to amass $1.8bn'

Wednesday February 14, 2007
Guardian
David Leigh and Rob Evans

The Serious Fraud Office has launched an investigation into allegations that a number of major UK-based firms paid bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The firms being targeted include the drug giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly. The international oil traders and UK bridge-builders Mabey and Johnson are also to be investigated.

They are on a long list of international companies accused in a UN report of paying kickbacks under the discredited oil-for-food sanctions regime, which enabled Saddam to illicitly amass an estimated $1.8bn. Ministers have agreed to fund the investigation with £22m over three years.

The inquiry was ordered last week by the SFO director, Robert Wardle. Yesterday the agency confirmed: "The director of the SFO has opened an investigation centred on alleged breaches of sanctions in respect of the UN oil-for-food programme."

Under their wide-ranging powers, investigators from the SFO can order companies to disclose documentation and call witnesses for questioning. Ultimately, the SFO could launch criminal prosecutions.

The investigation - the first official inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal - was urged on the British government by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, who compiled a UN report, delivered two years ago, into abuses of the programme after investigating the sanctions regime that enabled Saddam to survive for so long.

Mr Volcker said the programme - in which Iraq was only allowed to sell limited amounts of oil abroad to buy food and medicines - had become corrupted as the Saddam regime demanded kickbacks from foreign companies in return for the contracts. He identified French and Russian politicians as the chief culprits.

Mr Volcker said the kickbacks were disguised by various subterfuges. Contracts were inflated, usually by 10% to cover so-called "after-sales services" fees. More than 2,200 companies were listed, using evidence drawn from banking records and Iraqi government documents.

The inquiry will draw on Mr Volcker's evidence. He accused GSK of paying kickbacks worth $1m to win nine contracts valued at $11.9m to supply medicines. Yesterday GSK denied any wrongdoing. It said: "The UN oil-for-food programme was run in the UK by the Department of Trade and Industry and GSK operated entirely within DTI guidance in this area. Indeed, GSK had a regular dialogue with officials at the DTI in order to ensure that all its dealings under the oil-for-food programme were transparent and in accordance with the regulations."

AstraZeneca was named as having paid bribes of $162,000 to secure three contracts worth $2.9m. The company said: "We deny any allegation of unethical behaviour on our part in our trading relationships with Iraq. AstraZeneca sent a consignment of medicines originally requested by the Saddam government under the UN oil-for-food programme. Most of the consignment was delivered after the coalition forces of the US and UK had taken control of the country.

"The consignment was sent with all relevant United Nations permissions and UK government Department of Trade and Industry export licences in place."

Another company, Eli Lilly, was accused of securing a $3.2m contract with a bribe of $343,000. It said: "Eli Lilly and Company ... denies any wrongdoing with regard to the oil-for-food scheme. As the report highlights, we deny that payments were made to the government of Iraq or its agents in violation of the programme."

The Volcker report, citing banking records, alleged that the Berkshire-based bridge-builder Mabey and Johnson paid a $202,000 kickback between 2001 and 2003 and in return was given a $3.6m contract by the Iraqis. The company said there was no truth in the allegations.

The report identified a number of UK-linked oil companies and individuals accused of profiting from backdoor deals with Saddam Hussein. One was Taurus Petroleum, run by an American oil trader, Ben Pollner, from an address in Knightsbridge, west London. It was alleged that his front companies paid illicit kickbacks to Baghdad in return for consignments that could be sold on world markets. A contract with one of his Liechtenstein front companies was discovered to contain the phone number of the Taurus office in Princes Gate, central London. Taurus was also alleged to have marketed shipments of Iraqi oil on behalf of a Jordanian associate of the Respect MP George Galloway. Taurus denied all the allegations.

Another company named by Mr Volcker was Trafigura, the London end of a prominent Dutch-registered firm. Trafigura was accused of complicity in an oil-smuggling scheme in which tankers loading UN-sanctioned cargos at an Iraqi port were illicitly "topped up" with extra oil. Trafigura denied that the oil was smuggled.

The Volcker report said that because a firm was named it "does not necessarily mean that the company - as opposed to an agent or secondary purchaser with an interest in the transaction - made, authorised or knew about an illicit payment".

    Firms accused of bribing Saddam to be investigated by fraud office, G, 14.2.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2012485,00.html

Robert Fisk:

Iraqi insurgents offer peace

in return for US concessions

For the first time,

Sunni insurgents disclose their conditions for ceasefire in Iraq

Published: 09 February 2007
The Independent

For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.

The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.

Shia militias are nowhere mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies in the Iraqi war.

"Discussions and negotiations are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace, then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."

Al-Jeelani suggests the United Nations, the Arab League or the Islamic Conference might lead such negotiations and would have to guarantee the security of the participants.

Then come the conditions:

* The release of 5,000 detainees held in Iraqi prisons as "proof of goodwill".

* Recognition "of the legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing the will of the Iraqi people".

* An internationally guaranteed timetable for all agreements.

* The negotiations to take place in public.

* The resistance "must be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all the jihadist brigades".

* The US to be represented by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.

It is not difficult to see why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to talk to men they have been describing as "terrorists" for the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the "resistance" represented "the will of the Iraqi people" then their support for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.

Indeed, the insurgent leader specifically calls for the "dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution..."

He also insists that all agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces should be declared null and void.

But there are other points which show that considerable discussion must have gone on within the insurgency movement - possibly involving the group's rival, the Iraqi Islamic Army.

They call, for example, for the disbandment of militias and the outlawing of militia organisations - something the US government has been urging the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to do for months.

The terms also include the legalisation of the old Iraqi army, an "Anglo-American commitment to rebuild Iraq and reconstruct all war damage" - something the occupying powers claim they have been trying to do for a long time - and integrating "resistance fighters" into the recomposed army.

Al-Jeelani described President George Bush's new plans for countering the insurgents as "political chicanery" and added that "on the field of battle, we do not believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation ...

"The resistance groups are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad... we fight for a divine aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our land of Iraq."

There will, the group says, be no negotiations with Mr Maliki's government because they consider it "complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security apparatus and death squads". But they do call for the unity of Iraq and say they "do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi people".

It is not difficult to guess any American response to those proposals. But FLN [National Liberation Front] contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by Algeria began with such a series of demands - equally impossible to meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French withdrawal.

What is unclear, of course, is the degree to which al-Jeelani's statement represents the collective ideas of the Sunni insurgents. And, ominously, no mention is made of al-Qa'ida.

    Robert Fisk: Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions, I, 9.2.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2251354.ece

2pm

Roadside bomb

kills British soldier in Basra

Friday February 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Staff and agencies

A British soldier was killed and three others were wounded today when a roadside bomb exploded just outside Basra, in southern Iraq, military officials said.

The attack took place around 1pm local time (1000 GMT) at an intersection about three miles south-east of the city, according to a spokeswoman for British forces in Iraq.

News of the death came as the US defence secretary said there was mounting evidence Iran was helping to arm Iraqi insurgents attacking US and British troops.

The unnamed soldier is the 101st member of British forces to die though hostile action in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003.

Another 31 have died though road accidents, illness and natural causes, or for unexplained reasons, according to Ministry of Defence figures.

Earlier this week, the 100th British soldier to die in action in Iraq was named as Second Lieutenant Jonathan Carlos Bracho-Cooke. The 24-year-old, from Hove, Sussex, was killed when the bomb exploded as he took part in a routine patrol in the al-Ashar district of Basra. Some 7,500 British troops are currently based in the city.

Also today, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provided "pretty good" evidence that Iran was providing either weapons or technology to militants.

"I think there's some serial numbers. There may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found [that point to Iran]," he said.

Last month, US forces detained five Iranians in northern Iraq, accusing them of having links to an Iranian military faction blamed for funding and arming Iraqi militants. Iran said they were diplomats and should be released.

    Roadside bomb kills British soldier in Basra, G, 9.2.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2009686,00.html

The death toll of 31 days in Iraq

In this war-torn country, nobody is safe from bloodshed.

In Ramadi, Kirkuk and Basra,

they count the dead as the violence worsens

Published: 06 February 2007
The New York Times
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
 

From north to south, from east to west, violence and insecurity have gripped the entirety of Iraq. In January alone, at least 2,000 civilians, Iraqi security forces and US and British troops were killed in violence across the nation.

As President George Bush dispatches an additional 21,500 combat troops ­ and at least as many again in a supporting role ­ to try to bring calm to Baghdad, new figures suggest that violent death is becoming an everyday occurrence across all of Iraq and in cities that rarely make the headlines. In recent weeks places such as Kut and Mosul have reported civilian deaths as a result of gunfire or explosions.

"There has long been this idea that if you control Baghdad you can control the whole country, but that just does not make sense," said Nir Rosen, a fellow at the Washington-based New America Foundation who has spent more than two years in Iraq reporting on the violence. "Iraq has fragmented. I don't think Baghdad has any relevance to what is happening in Kirkuk, Mosul, Basra or Ramadi."

In December, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, said: "I think it's still the case that 80 per cent of the violence that we are hearing about is taking place... in four provinces out of the 18."

Of Mr Bush's plan, Mr Rosen said: "It would not make a difference if we sent 100,000 troops... I cannot imagine how they think they can succeed. Americans are not the solution."

Available data suggests that Baghdad is the most perilous place in Iraq. Just last weekend, at least 132 people were killed and more than 300 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a lorry in the city's Sadriya market.

But it appears that few, if any, parts of the country are safe. Indeed, the most recent figures, collated by The New York Times, may well underestimate the levels of violence in other parts of the country because they rely on media reports, the Iraqi government and the US military, which almost certainly include only a portion of the numbers killed.

Professor Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist at Columbia University and co-author of a 2004 study which estimated that at least 100,000 Iraqis had died since the 2003 invasion, said: "One of the myths that Washington has been pushing is that it is pretty peaceful in Iraq and that the problems only exist in four governates. But if you only count [casualties] in four governates that is what you will find." He added: "There are lots of cities with high amounts of fighting that we don't even know about."

Almost four years after the US and British invasion of Iraq, reliable statistics on the human cost of the war remain scarce. A report, published last October by Dr Garfield's colleagues, estimated that 655,000 civilians and security personnel had lost their lives.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that about two million Iraqis ­ about 8 per cent of the pre-war population ­ have fled the country. An additional 1.7 million people are displaced inside Iraq.

Violence continued to rock Baghdad yesterday, where an Iraqi general took formal control of the security operation. Reports said at least 38 people were killed in bomb and mortar attacks.

Meanwhile, the Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview yesterday that the Bush administration does not have the vision to bring peace.

"We're not the only player, we're not the single player. But we are the main player in this issue," he said. "Our role is going to be through supporting the dialogue between the different parties inside Iraq with support from the other parties, like the Americans and any other country in the world."

    The death toll of 31 days in Iraq, I, 6.2.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2241457.ece

Britain loses 100th soldier in action

Published: 06 February 2007
The Independent
By Kim Sengupta

In another grim milestone in the Iraq war yesterday, a British soldier became the 100th to die in action when his patrol was hit by a roadside bomb .

The attack happened in the British-controlled southern city of Basra, where the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr wields considerable influence.

It came as US and Iraqi government forces killed one of Sadr's senior aides, Khadhim al-Hamadani, in Baghdad and another well-known Sadr official, Sheikh Khalil al-Maliki, died in a drive-by shooting in Basra. Officials at Sadr's political office described the killings as acts of "political assassination" and warned of serious consequences.

The British military is already concerned about a backlash in the overwhelmingly Shia south when US troops begin their "surge" against Shia militias in Baghdad.

Members of Sadr's Mehdi Army were arrested by British troops during Operation Sinbad, aimed at rooting out militia fighters who had infiltrated the police force. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said last month that more than 400 Mehdi Army members had been arrested in the south.

The soldier who died yesterday was from the 2nd Battalion the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment. He was travelling in a Warrior armoured vehicle when the device exploded, injuring a number of civilians.

A total of 131 British service personnel have been killed since the invasion by US and UK forces in 2003. Out of these, 100 have been classified by the MoD as either killed in action or from wounds suffered in action. Other deaths were accidents or linked to natural causes, illness remaining unexplained or are still under investigation.

In the first fortnight of this year, the MoD said 99 British military and civilian personnel were treated for injuries in action, and 1,242 were admitted to field hospitals for disease or injuries not suffered in combat. In the same period, 724 British military and civilian personnel were evacuated from the country.

British forces are carrying out patrols in Maysan province which has a long border with Iran. The US is said to be gravely worried about escalated infiltration and has been pressuring the British military to postpone plans to withdraw the patrols by the end of the month.

Under current planning, Britain is due to pull out about 3,000 of its Iraq force of 7,200 by the spring when there is expected to be renewed and large-scale fighting in Afghanistan.

Senior officers have intimated, however, that this may not be possible if there is an outbreak of violence from Shia militias in the south as the US offensive in Baghdad gets under way.

    Britain loses 100th soldier in action, I, 6.2.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2241458.ece

Leading article: British and US interests are still fatally entwined

Published: 06 February 2007
The Independent

The death of the 100th British soldier to be killed in Iraq as a result of hostile action is the latest sad milestone to have been reached since the start of this ill-conceived war. The soldier was on patrol near the US consulate in Basra when his convoy was struck by a roadside bomb. A number of Iraqis were also killed.

By comparison with the US death toll in Iraq, which is nudging 2,500, and the number of Iraqis killed - an estimated 1,000 last week alone - the number of British dead and wounded remains mercifully low. Basra and the Shia south are still quieter than many other parts of Iraq. The region is not as quiet as once it was, however, and the recent trend has been in the wrong direction. The handover to Iraqi authorities of neighbouring Meysan Province, initially set for the end of January, has been quietly postponed.

The Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, was circumspect last month when addressing reports that half the British contingent could be withdrawn by May. She was clear, though, that any reduction in numbers would depend on the situation on the ground and the transfer of responsibility for security to Iraqis. If the handover of Meysan Province is now on hold, then so must be any plans for even a partial British withdrawal.

It would appear, then, that the 7,500-strong British contingent will remain in southern Iraq for what will certainly be unpredictable - and could be extremely turbulent - times. The US has not said precisely when its additional 21,000 troops will arrive and when the security "surge" is to begin. Some officials hint that it could be months away; others speak of a progressive crackdown, moving outwards from Baghdad.

Yesterday's announcement that an Iraqi general and two deputies had taken charge of the security operation in the capital and that Iraqi troops, backed by US forces, were setting up roadblocks, suggested that the first stage of the planned security operation might already be in train. Equally, though, this could be a rushed response to the swelling tide of violence. On Saturday, 130 people were killed in the worst single attack since the war began. Outside Iraq, even this atrocity received scant attention, so frequent has such slaughter become.

With Iraqi ministers promising more security and the US timetable unpublished, it is hard to judge what is cause and what effect. Are Sunni and other insurgents upping the ante for fear it will be more difficult in future, or are we seeing just the latest stage in Iraq's unstoppable descent into civil war? The "surge" in Baghdad will be the third attempt to get to grips with violence in the capital in a year. The US administration's political will suffices for the moment, but there is already concern that Iraq's newly trained forces are too few and (still) lack the stomach for the necessary fight.

Mrs Beckett and the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, insist US operations in Baghdad are separate from any plans the British have for the south. They insist, too, there are no plans for British troops to join US operations further north. In two respects, though, the fates of US and British forces are intertwined. First, any crackdown in Baghdad could displace the violence to other parts of Iraq; indeed, the more successful the operation in the capital, the greater the displacement effect could be. Second, British forces are training Iraqi troops in Basra for dispatch to Baghdad. What happens if, as is feared, too few of those troops deploy to the capital?

It may be true that even a partial British withdrawal depends on the security situation in the south. But security in the south cannot be isolated from security elsewhere. Ministers may claim otherwise, but British forces are still yoked to the Americans in Iraq.

    Leading article: British and US interests are still fatally entwined, I, 6.2.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2241423.ece

Inside Baghdad:

A city paralysed by fear

Published: 25 January 2007
The Independent
By Patrick Cockburn

Baghdad is paralysed by fear. Iraqi drivers are terrified of running into impromptu checkpoints where heavily armed men in civilian clothes may drag them out of their cars and kill them for being the wrong religion. Some districts exchange mortar fire every night. This is mayhem beyond the comprehension of George Bush and Tony Blair.

Black smoke was rising over the city centre yesterday as American and Iraqi army troops tried to fight their way into the insurgent district of Haifa Street only a mile north of the Green Zone, home to the government and the US and British embassies. Helicopters flew fast and low past tower blocks, hunting snipers, and armoured vehicles manoeuvred in the streets below.

Many Iraqis who watched the State of the Union address shrugged it off as an irrelevance. "An extra 16,000 US soldiers are not going to be enough to restore order to Baghdad," said Ismail, a Sunni who fled his house in the west of the city, fearing he would be arrested and tortured by the much-feared Shia police commandos.

It is extraordinary that, almost four years after US forces captured Baghdad, they control so little of it. The outlook for Mr Bush's strategy of driving out insurgents from strongholds and preventing them coming back does not look good.

On Monday, a helicopter belonging to the US security company Blackwater was shot down as it flew over the Sunni neighbourhood of al-Fadhil, close to the central markets of Baghdad. Several of the five American crew members may have survived the crash but they were later found with gunshot wounds to their heads, as if they had been executed on the ground.

Baghdad has broken up into hostile townships, Sunni and Shia, where strangers are treated with suspicion and shot if they cannot explain what they are doing. In the militant Sunni district of al-Amariyah in west Baghdad the Shia have been driven out and a resurgent Baath party has taken over. One slogan in red paint on a wall reads: "Saddam Hussein will live for ever, the symbol of the Arab nation." Another says: "Death to Muqtada [Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist Shia cleric] and his army of fools."

Restaurants in districts of Baghdad like the embassy quarter in al-Mansur, where I once used to have lunch, are now far too dangerous to visit. Any foreigner on the streets is likely to be kidnapped or killed. In any case, most of the restaurants closed long ago.

It is difficult for Iraqis to avoid joining one side or the other in the conflict. Many districts, such as al-Hurriya in west Baghdad, have seen the minority - in this case the Sunni - driven out.

A Sunni friend called Adnan, living in the neighbouring district of al-Adel, was visited by Sunni militiamen. They said: "You must help us to protect you from the Shia in Hurriya by going on patrol with us. Otherwise, we will give your house to somebody who will help us." He patrolled with the militiamen for several nights, clutching a Kalashnikov, and then fled the area.

The fear in Baghdad is so intense that rumours of even bloodier battles sweep through the city. Two weeks ago, many Sunni believed that the Shia Mehdi Army was going to launch a final "battle of Baghdad" aimed at killing or expelling the Sunni minority in the capital. The Sunni insurgents stored weapons and ammunition in order to make a last-ditch effort to defend their districts. In the event, they believe the ultimate battle was postponed at the last minute. Mr Bush insisted that the Iraqi government, with US military support, "must stop the sectarian violence in the capital". Quite how they are going to do this is not clear. American reinforcements might limit the ability of death squads to roam at will for a few months, but this will not provide a long-term solution.

Mr Bush's speech is likely to deepen sectarianism in Iraq by identifying the Shia militias with Iran. In fact, the most powerful Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, is traditionally anti-Iranian. It is the Badr Organisation, now co-operating with US forces, which was formed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In the Arab world as a whole, Mr Bush seems to be trying to rally the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to support him in Iraq by exaggerating the Iranian threat.

Iraqis also wonder what will happen in the rest of Iraq while the US concentrates on trying to secure Baghdad. The degree of violence in the countryside is often underestimated because it is less reported than in the capital. In Baquba, the capital of Diyala province north-east of Baghdad, US and Iraqi army commanders were lauding their achievements at a press conference last weekend, claiming: "The situation in Baquba is reassuring and under control but there are some rumours circulated by bad people." Within hours, Sunni insurgents kidnapped the mayor and blew up his office.

The situation in the south of Iraq is no more reassuring. Five American soldiers were killed in the Shia holy city of Karbala last Saturday by gunmen wearing American and Iraqi uniforms, carrying American weapons and driving vehicles used by US or Iraqi government forces. A licence plate belonging to a car registered to Iraq's Minister of Trade was found on one of the vehicles used in the attack. It is a measure of the chaos in Iraq today that US officials do not know if their men were killed by Sunni or Shia guerrillas.

US commanders and the Mehdi Army seem to be edging away from all-out confrontation in Baghdad. Neither the US nor Iraqi government has the resources to eliminate the Shia militias. Even Kurdish units in the capital have a high number of desertions. The Mehdi Army, if under pressure in the capital, could probably take over much of southern Iraq.

Mr Bush's supposedly new strategy is less of a strategy than a collection of tactics unlikely to change dramatically the situation on the ground. But if his systematic demonising of Iran is a precursor to air strikes or other military action against Iran, then Iraqis will once more pay a heavy price.

    Inside Baghdad: A city paralysed by fear, I, 25.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2183852.ece

The battle to save Iraq's children

Doctors issue plea to Tony Blair

to end the scandal of medical shortages in the war zone

Published: 19 January 2007
The Independent
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

The desperate plight of children who are dying in Iraqi hospitals for the lack of simple equipment that in some cases can cost as little as 95p is revealed today in a letter signed by nearly 100 eminent doctors.

They are backed by a group of international lawyers, who say the conditions in hospitals revealed in their letter amount to a breach of the Geneva conventions that require Britain and the US as occupying forces to protect human life.

In a direct appeal to Tony Blair, the doctors describe desperate shortages causing "hundreds" of children to die in hospitals. The signatories include Iraqi doctors, British doctors who have worked in Iraqi hospitals, and leading UK consultants and GPs.

"Sick or injured children who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources," the doctors say. "Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated," they add.

They say babies are being ventilated with a plastic tube in their noses and dying for want of an oxygen mask, while other babies are dying because of the lack of a phial of vitamin K or sterile needles, all costing about 95p. Hospitals have little hope of stopping fatal infections spreading from baby to baby because of the lack of surgical gloves, which cost about 3.5p a pair.

Among those who have signed the letter are Chris Burns-Cox, a consultant physician at Gloucester Royal Hospital; Dr Maggie Wright, the director of intensive care at James Page University Hospital; Professor Debbie Lawlor, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London; Professor George Davey Smith, professor of clinical epidemiology at Bristol university; Dr Philip Wilson, senior clinical research fellow at Glasgow University; and Dr Heba al-Naseri, who has experienced the conditions in Iraqi hospitals. Dr al-Naseri, who has worked at Diwaniyah Maternity Hospital and the Diwaniyah University Hospital, describes in harrowing detail what the conditions were like for a newborn baby - one of the lucky ones who survived - called Amin.

"Amin had to be fed powdered milk, diluted with tap water. There wasn't enough money to buy expensive formula milk or bottled water - their price had risen above the increase in wages since 2003. The problems with the intermittent electricity and gas supply meant regular boiled water could not be guaranteed. With the dormant waste and sewage disposal systems, drinking-water is more likely to be contaminated," he said.

Cases the doctors highlight include a child who died because the doctor only had a sterile needle for an adult and could not find a needle small enough to fit the vein, and another child who died because the doctors had no oxygen mask that fitted.

The doctors say the UK, as one of the occupying powers under UN resolution 1483, has to comply with the Geneva and Hague conventions that require the UK and the US to "maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population". But, the doctors say: "This they failed to do and the knock-on effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's hospitals with increasing ferocity."

They call on the UK to account properly for the $33bn (£16.7bn) in the development fund for Iraq which should have supplied the means for hospitals to treat children properly. They say more than half of the money - $14bn - is believed to have vanished through corruption, theft and payments to mercenaries.

They say that all revenues from Iraq's oil exports should now pass directly to the Iraqi people and that illegal contracts entered into by the Coalition Provisional Authority be revoked.

Their letter was supported by experts in international law, including Harvey Goldstein, professor of social statistics at the University of Bristol, and Bill Bowring, a barrister and professor of law at Birkbeck College.

Nicholas Wood, an architect who helped to organise the protest, said they had evidence on film of dead babies being dumped in cardboard boxes. "In one hospital, there were three babies to an incubator. The incubators are 36 years old and are held together by tape and a bit of wire. They are wrecks. They cost about £5,000 each, but that is nothing to compared to the cost of a missile," he said.

The letter was sent to Downing Street via Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, by his predecessor, Clare Short.

A system in meltdown

* Save the Children estimate that 59 in 1,000 newborn babies are dying in Iraq, one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Thousands of infants are dying because of the lack of basic cheap equipment. In Diwaniyah hospital, south of Baghdad, one doctor had to try to ventilate a baby with a plastic tube in its nose because he lacked an oxygen mask costing just 95p. The baby died.

* In the same hospital, a baby with a rare illness causing internal bleeding died due to lack of a phial of vitamin K, which would have cost less than £1.

* One doctor in a Baghdad hospital recently tried to save the life of a child with a drip, but he lacked a sterile needle for a child and the child died. The lack of rubber surgical gloves, which cost 3.5p a pair, has hugely increased the risk of infections.

* Premature babies are crammed three to an incubator, when an incubator can be found. An incubator costs about £5,000.

* Only 50 per cent of the pre-war total of doctors remain in Iraq. The US clearout of Ba'ath party members sympathetic to Saddam Hussein after the invasion has led to a breakdown of health administration.

* The British doctors are calling for guarantees of safety to be given to all medical staff in Iraq by the US and British forces. Above all there is a need to stop the militias killing doctors and nurses.

* Hospitals have been bombed and ambulances shot at. Helicopters could be laid on by the US and UK to ferry cases to Jordan, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia for treatment of acute trauma and disease.

* Doctors are calling on Britain and America to restore at least $2bn (£1bn) of $14bn that has gone missing since the invasion. Part of this sum, lost in corruption or to militias, was earmarked for hospitals.

* Up to 260,000 children may have died since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

    The battle to save Iraq's children, I, 19.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2165470.ece

5pm update

Film of Saddam aides' hanging shown

Monday January 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Staff and agencies

Journalists saw video footage of the execution of two of Saddam Hussein's top aides today that showed the former dictator's half-brother having his head severed as he fell from the gallows.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a feared intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, a former head of Iraq's revolutionary court, were hanged before dawn today in Baghdad, two weeks after Saddam's chaotic execution.

The Iraqi government-filmed video of the hanging sees the two men wearing red prison jumpsuits and black hoods are put on their heads as they reach the platform. Masked men then place their necks in the nooses.

A short while later, the footage, which is silent, shows both men drop. Almost immediately, the rope that was around Barzan's neck flicks upwards, with the body dropping below.

The former leader's half-brother is then shown lying below the gallows, his severed head still covered with the hood several yards away.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said all three hangings had been carried out "according to Iraqi process and Iraqi law" but made Washington's strongest yet denunciation of the manner in which Saddam was executed and of the appearance of mobile phone video footage of his death.

"There is no doubt that this should have been handled with dignity," she said at a press conference in Egypt. "I hope that those who are responsible for the way that came out will be indeed punished." The video of Saddam being executed, which showed the former dictator being taunted on the gallows, caused international outrage. A second leaked video showed a gaping neck wound on his corpse.

Iraqi government officials said the executions of the two aides was orderly. Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, said neither man was taunted. "Those present signed documents pledging not to violate the rules or otherwise face legal penalties. All the people present abided by the government's rule and there were no violations.

"No one shouted slogans or said anything that would taint the execution. None of those charged were insulted."

But Khalaf al-Olayan, a leader of the main Sunni bloc in parliament, said it was "impossible for a person to be decapitated during a hanging". He told al-Jazeera television: "This shows that they have mutilated the body, and this is a violation of the law."

Barzan and Bandar were found guilty alongside Saddam last year of involvement in the killing of 148 Shia men and boys after a 1982 assassination attempt against the former dictator in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

The pair were due to be buried tonight near Saddam in Ouja, the town just outside Tikrit where the former dictator was born, local officials said. The bodies were flown from Baghdad to a US military base in Tikrit after the execution.

The latest hangings could further exacerbate sectarian violence in Iraq, which the US president, George Bush, hopes to quell by sending an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq soon.

Today, at least 16 other people were killed or found dead in Iraq, including four Iraqi soldiers who died when a suicide car bombing struck a military checkpoint in west Baghdad. At least 78 people were reported killed or found dead in Iraq yesterday.

Tony Blair's official spokesman today said Britain remained opposed to capital punishment, but it was a sovereign choice for Iraq. "Our position on the death penalty is well known. We've made our position known to the Iraqi government," he said.

    Film of Saddam aides' hanging shown, G, 15.1.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1990677,00.html

9.45am

New video shows Saddam's body

Tuesday January 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matt Weaver

A secretly filmed video of Saddam Hussein's body has been posted on the internet today, showing the hanged former president's twisted neck and gashed face.

The grainy clip - which lasts for 27 seconds and appears to have been shot on a mobile phone - shows a sheet being removed from the body as it lies on a hospital trolley, revealing the wounds.

It is the third piece of unofficial footage of the December 30 hanging and its aftermath to emerge.

The new film is likely to stir up more violence from Saddam's Sunni supporters and add to international condemnation of Iraq's handling of the execution.

An investigation to determine who released and filmed Shia officials taunting the former Iraqi dictator seconds before he was hanged is under way.

Today's video, posted by supporters of Saddam on a website backing the Ba'ath party, is likely to increase the pressure on Tony Blair to condemn the way the execution was carried out.

Mr Blair has so far made no public comment, despite widespread outrage having been voiced by his senior cabinet colleagues.

In an interview on Sunday, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, described the handling of the execution as "completely unacceptable".

Mr Brown's comments appeared to have bounced the prime minister into planning to make a statement on the execution to avoid giving the impression of being isolated.

Yesterday, Mr Blair's official spokesman confirmed that the prime minister would address the issue at some point this week.

New video shows Saddam's body,
G, 9.1.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1986129,00.html


 

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

Published: 07 January 2007
The Independent on Sunday
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the "false claim" that "we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: "It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil."

Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. "They would lose out massively," he said, "because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal."

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country's oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. "It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard," said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March.

Several major oil companies are said to have sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, though the big names are considered unlikely to invest until the violence in Iraq abates.

James Paul, executive director at the Global Policy Forum, the international government watchdog, said: "It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this. To do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire."

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman and a former chief economist at Shell, said it was crucial that any deal would guarantee funds for rebuilding Iraq. "It is absolutely vital that the revenue from the oil industry goes into Iraqi development and is seen to do so," he said. "Although it does make sense to collaborate with foreign investors, it is very important the terms are seen to be fair."

    Future of Iraq: The spoils of war, IoS, 7.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece

Blood and oil:

How the West will profit

from Iraq's most precious commodity

The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves
in the world.

To the victors, the oil?

That is how some experts view
this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years

Published: 07 January 2007
The Independent on Sunday

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's number one and two oil exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Opec.

Critics fear that given Iraq's weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. "Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome," said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.

"Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinise this legislation than most Iraqis," said Mr Muttitt. "The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had."

Britain and the US have always hotly denied that the war was fought for oil. On 18 March 2003, with the invasion imminent, Tony Blair proposed the House of Commons motion to back the war. "The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN," he said.

"The United Kingdom should seek a new Security Council Resolution that would affirm... the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people."

That suggestion came to nothing. In May 2003, just after President Bush declared major combat operations at an end, under a banner boasting "Mission Accomplished", Britain co-sponsored a resolution in the Security Council which gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, Resolution 1483 continued to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

That exception aside, however, the often-stated aim of the US and Britain was that Iraq's oil money would be used to pay for reconstruction. In July 2003, for example, Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, insisted: "We have not taken one drop of Iraqi oil for US purposes, or for coalition purposes. Quite the contrary... It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil."

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary at the time of the war and now head of the World Bank, told Congress: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

But this optimism has proved unjustified. Since the invasion, Iraqi oil production has dropped off dramatically. The country is now producing about two million barrels per day. That is down from a pre-war peak of 3.5 million barrels. Not only is Iraq's whole oil infrastructure creaking under the effects of years of sanctions, insurgents have constantly attacked pipelines, so that the only steady flow of exports is through the Shia-dominated south of the country.

Worsening sectarian violence and gangsterism have driven most of the educated élite out of the country for safety, depriving the oil industry of the Iraqi experts and administrators it desperately needs.

And even the present stunted operation is rife with corruption and smuggling. The Oil Ministry's inspector-general recently reported that a tanker driver who paid $500 in bribes to police patrols to take oil over the western or northern border would still make a profit on the shipment of $8,400.

"In the present state, it would be crazy to pump in more money, just to be stolen," said Greg Muttitt. "It's another reason not to bring in $20bn of foreign money now."

Before the war, Mr Bush endorsed claims that Iraq's oil would pay for reconstruction. But the shortage of revenues afterwards has silenced him on this point. More recently he has argued that oil should be used as a means to unify the country, "so the people have faith in central government", as he put it last summer.

But in a country more dependent than almost any other on oil - it accounts for 70 per cent of the economy - control of the assets has proved a recipe for endless wrangling. Most of the oil reserves are in areas controlled by the Kurds and Shias, heightening the fears of the Sunnis that their loss of power with the fall of Saddam is about to be compounded by economic deprivation.

The Kurds in particular have been eager to press ahead, and even signed some small PSA deals on their own last year, setting off a struggle with Baghdad. These issues now appear to have been resolved, however: a revenue-sharing agreement based on population was reached some months ago, and sources have told the IoS that regional oil companies will be set up to handle the PSA deals envisaged by the new law.

The Independent on Sunday has obtained a copy of an early draft which was circulated to oil companies in July. It is understood there have been no significant changes made in the final draft. The terms outlined to govern future PSAs are generous: according to the draft, they could be fixed for at least 30 years. The revelation will raise Iraqi fears that oil companies will be able to exploit its weak state by securing favourable terms that cannot be changed in future.

Iraq's sovereign right to manage its own natural resources could also be threatened by the provision in the draft that any disputes with a foreign company must ultimately be settled by international, rather than Iraqi, arbitration.

In the July draft obtained by The Independent on Sunday, legislators recognise the controversy over this, annotating the relevant paragraph with the note, "Some countries do not accept arbitration between a commercial enterprise and themselves on the basis of sovereignty of the state."

It is not clear whether this clause has been retained in the final draft.

Under the chapter entitled "Fiscal Regime", the draft spells out that foreign companies have no restrictions on taking their profits out of the country, and are not subject to any tax when doing this.

"A Foreign Person may repatriate its exports proceeds [in accordance with the foreign exchange regulations in force at the time]." Shares in oil projects can also be sold to other foreign companies: "It may freely transfer shares pertaining to any non-Iraqi partners." The final draft outlines general terms for production sharing agreements, including a standard 12.5 per cent royalty tax for companies.

It is also understood that once companies have recouped their costs from developing the oil field, they are allowed to keep 20 per cent of the profits, with the rest going to the government. According to analysts and oil company executives, this is because Iraq is so dangerous, but Dr Muhammad-Ali Zainy, a senior economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, said: "Twenty per cent of the profits in a production sharing agreement, once all the costs have been recouped, is a large amount." In more stable countries, 10 per cent would be the norm.

While the costs are being recovered, companies will be able to recoup 60 to 70 per cent of revenue; 40 per cent is more usual. David Horgan, managing director of Petrel Resources, an Aim-listed oil company focused on Iraq, said: "They are reasonable rates of return, and take account of the bad security situation in Iraq. The government needs people, technology and capital to develop its oil reserves. It has got to come up with terms which are good enough to attract companies. The major companies tend to be conservative."

Dr Zainy, an Iraqi who has recently visited the country, said: "It's very dangerous ... although the security situation is far better in the north." Even taking that into account, however, he believed that "for a company to take 20 per cent of the profits in a production sharing agreement once all the costs have been recouped is large".

He pointed to the example of Total, which agreed terms with Saddam Hussein before the second Iraq war to develop a huge field. Although the contract was never signed, the French company would only have kept 10 per cent of the profits once the company had recovered its costs.

And while the company was recovering its costs, it is understood it agreed to take only 40 per cent of the profits, the Iraqi government receiving the rest.

Production sharing agreements of more than 30 years are unusual, and more commonly used for challenging regions like the Amazon where it can take up to a decade to start production. Iraq, in contrast, is one of the cheapest and easiest places in the world to drill for and produce oil. Many fields have already been discovered, and are waiting to be developed.

Analysts estimate that despite the size of Iraq's reserves - the third largest in the world - only 2,300 wells have been drilled in total, fewer than in the North Sea.

Confirmation of the generous terms - widely feared by international non government organisations and Iraqis alike - have prompted some to draw parallels with the production-sharing agreements Russia signed in the 1990s, when it was bankrupt and in chaos.

At the time Shell was able to sign very favourable terms to develop oil and gas reserves off the coast of Sakhalin island in the far east of Russia. But at the end of last year, after months of thinly veiled threats from the environment regulator, the Anglo-Dutch company was forced to give Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom a share in the project.

Although most other oil experts endorsed the view that PSAs would be needed to kick-start exports from Iraq, Mr Muttitt disagreed. "The most commonly mentioned target has been for Iraq to increase production to 6 million barrels a day by 2015 or so," he said. "Iraq has estimated that it would need $20bn to $25bn of investment over the next five or six years, roughly $4bn to $5bn a year. But even last year, according to reports, the Oil Ministry had between $3bn and $4bn it couldn't invest. The shortfall is around $1bn a year, and that could easily be made up if the security situation improved.

"PSAs have a cost in sovereignty and future revenues. It is not true at all that this is the only way to do it." Technical services agreements, of the type common in countries which have a state-run oil corporation, would be all that was necessary.

James Paul of Global Policy Forum, another advocacy group, said: "The US and the UK have been pressing hard on this. It's pretty clear that this is one of their main goals in Iraq." The Iraqi authorities, he said, were "a government under occupation, and it is highly influenced by that. The US has a lot of leverage... Iraq is in no condition right now to go ahead and do this."

Mr Paul added: "It is relatively easy to get the oil in Iraq. It is nowhere near as complicated as the North Sea. There are super giant fields that are completely mapped, [and] there is absolutely no exploration cost and no risk. So the argument that these agreements are needed to hedge risk is specious."

One point on which all agree, however, is that only small, maverick oil companies are likely to risk any activity in Iraq in the foreseeable future. "Production over the next year in Iraq is probably going to fall rather than go up," said Kevin Norrish, an oil analyst from Barclays. "The whole thing is held together by a shoestring; it's desperate."

An oil industry executive agreed, saying: "All the majors will be in Iraq, but they won't start work for years. Even Lukoil [of Russia], the Chinese and Total [of France] are not in a rush to endanger themselves. It's now very hard for US and allied companies because of the disastrous war."

Mr Muttitt echoed warnings that unfavourable deals done now could unravel a few years down the line, just when Iraq might become peaceful enough for development of its oil resources to become attractive. The seeds could be sown for a future struggle over natural resources which has led to decades of suspicion of Western motives in countries such as Iran.

Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis.

"The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors," their statement said. "The occupier seeks and wishes to secure... energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation."

The resentment implied in their words is ominous, and not only for oil company executives in London or Houston. The perception that Iraq's wealth is being carved up among foreigners can only add further fuel to the flames of the insurgency, defeating the purpose of sending more American troops to a country already described in a US intelligence report as a cause célèbre for terrorism.

America protects its fuel supplies - and contracts

Despite US and British denials that oil was a war aim, American troops were detailed to secure oil facilities as they fought their way to Baghdad in 2003. And while former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld shrugged off the orgy of looting after the fall of Saddam's statue in Baghdad, the Oil Ministry - alone of all the seats of power in the Iraqi capital - was under American guard.

Halliburton, the firm that Dick Cheney used to run, was among US-based multinationals that won most of the reconstruction deals - one of its workers is pictured, tackling an oil fire. British firms won some contracts, mainly in security. But constant violence has crippled rebuilding operations. Bechtel, another US giant, has pulled out, saying it could not make a profit on work in Iraq.

In just 40 pages, Iraq is locked into sharing its oil with foreign investors for the next 30 years

A 40-page document leaked to the 'IoS' sets out the legal framework for the Iraqi government to sign production- sharing agreement contracts with foreign companies to develop its vast oil reserves.

The paper lays the groundwork for profit-sharing partnerships between the Iraqi government and international oil companies. It also lays out the basis for co-operation between Iraq's federal government and its regional authorities to develop oil fields.

The document adds that oil companies will enjoy contracts to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years, and stresses that Iraq needs foreign investment for the "quick and substantial funding of reconstruction and modernisation projects".

It concludes that the proposed hydrocarbon law is of "great importance to the whole nation as well as to all investors in the sector" and that the proceeds from foreign investment in Iraq's oilfields would, in the long term, decrease dependence on oil and gas revenues.

The role of oil in Iraq's fortunes

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves - 10 per cent of the world total. There are 71 discovered oilfields, of which only 24 have been developed. Oil accounts for 70 per cent of Iraq's GDP and 95 per cent of government revenue. Iraq's oil would be recovered under a production sharing agreement (PSA) with the private sector. These are used in only 12 per cent of world oil reserves and apply in none of the other major Middle Eastern oil-producing countries. In some countries such as Russia, where they were signed at a time of political upheaval, politicians are now regretting them.

The $50bn bonanza for US companies piecing a broken Iraq together

The task of rebuilding a shattered Iraq has gone mainly to US companies.

As well as contractors to restore the infrastructure, such as its water, electricity and gas networks, a huge number of companies have found lucrative work supporting the ongoing coalition military presence in the country. Other companies have won contracts to restore Iraq's media; its schools and hospitals; its financial services industry; and, of course, its oil industry.

In May 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), part of the US Department of Defence, created the Project Management Office in Baghdad to oversee Iraq's reconstruction.

In June 2004 the CPA was dissolved and the Iraqi interim government took power. But the US maintained its grip on allocating contracts to private companies. The management of reconstruction projects was transferred to the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office, a division of the US Department of State, and the Project and Contracting Office, in the Department of Defence.

The largest beneficiary of reconstruction work in Iraq has been KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root), a division of US giant Halliburton, which to date has secured contracts in Iraq worth $13bn (£7bn), including an uncontested $7bn contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure. Other companies benefiting from Iraq contracts include Bechtel, the giant US conglomerate, BearingPoint, the consultant group that advised on the drawing up of Iraq's new oil legislation, and General Electric. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, 150-plus US companies have won contracts in Iraq worth over $50bn.

30,000 Number of Kellogg, Brown and Root employees in Iraq.

36 The number of interrogators employed by Caci, a US company, that have worked in the Abu Ghraib prison since August 2003.

$12.1bn UN's estimate of the cost of rebuilding Iraq's electricity network.

$2 trillion Estimated cost of the Iraq war to the US, according to the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

WHAT THEY SAID

"Oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people"

Tony Blair; Moving motion for war with Iraq, 18 March 2003

"Oil belongs to the Iraqi people; the government has... to be good stewards of that valuable asset "

George Bush; Press conference, 14 June 2006

"The oil of the Iraqi people... is their wealth. We did not [invade Iraq] for oil "

Colin Powell; Press briefing, 10 July 2003

"Oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50bn and $100bn in two or three years... [Iraq] can finance its reconstruction"

Paul Wolfowitz; Deputy Defense Secretary, March 2003

"By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies"

Dick Cheney; US Vice-President, 1999

    Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity, IoS, 7.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132574.ece

Geoffrey Lean: Oil.

The fast-vanishing drug

the world can't yet live without

Production may peak within a decade,

causing massive withdrawal symptoms to the world and its economy

Published: 07 January 2007
The Independent on Sunday

Say what you like about Dick Cheney, but you can't accuse him of not giving us fair warning. A year, almost to the day, before he was dubiously elected Vice-President of the United States - while still chairman of the energy giant Halliburton - he gave a riveting insight into the thinking that has since guided the administration's oil policy.

In a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in November 1999 he shed light on our front-page revelation - that in the wake of the occupation of Iraq, Western companies are to be let loose on its vast, and previously state-owned, oil reserves. Perhaps even more importantly he flagged up an impending crisis that the world urgently needs to grasp - that supplies of oil may be about to shrink alarmingly.

The "basic, fundamental building block of the world economy" was, he warned, in danger of becoming extremely scarce.

Estimates suggested that production from existing reserves would soon decline sharply, by 3 per cent a year, even as world demand for oil grew by 2 per cent. That meant that the world would soon need to be producing "an additional 50 million barrels a day", more than half as much again as the 82 million now being wrested from the ground.

"So where is this oil going to come from?" he asked. His answer: the Middle East was "where the prize ultimately lies". The problem was that "governments and national oil companies" controlled almost all of the "assets", and "even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow".

Lest there be any doubt about what was at stake, the man who was to become one of the most powerful proponents of the invasion of Iraq went on: "Oil is unique because it is so strategic in nature. We are not talking about soapflakes or leisurewear ... The Gulf War was a reflection of that reality."

Well, seven years on, Mr Cheney's solution to the impending oil crisis is well on its way to being implemented. In the aftermath of another war, Iraq's Council of Ministers is today expected to throw open the doors to the country's oil reserves - the third-largest in the world - to private companies, the first time a major Middle Eastern producer has ever done so.

Whether this will work for the oil giants depends on an end to the insurgency being achieved, while a compliant government is maintained, which looks more unlikely as each week goes by. But whatever the practicality - and morality - of his solution, the Vice-President's diagnosis is sound enough. Indeed it probably understates the crisis facing the world.

For a start, as Mr Cheney put it, "oil is unlike any other commodity". The world is deeply hooked on it, and any reduction in its massive daily fix will cause devastating, and possibly catastrophic, withdrawal symptoms.

It is not just that it makes up 40 per cent of all the energy that is traded worldwide, and no less than 90 per cent of all the fuel used in transport. Every aspect of our lives and our economies has been designed around the assumption that it would continue to be plentiful and cheap.

Our cities have been allowed to sprawl - particularly in the US, where, until recently, petrol cost less than bottled water. And almost everything we consume in developed countries depends on it. About 10 calories of fossil fuels - principally oil - are burned to produce every calorie of food consumed in the US. A staggering 630g of them are burned to produce a single gram of microchips. And making a car consumes the equivalent of 840 gallons of petrol, enough to drive it for the first two years of its life.

Even some alternative energy sources advanced as oil's replacements in fact crucially depend on it. Nuclear power is fuelled by uranium, mined and transported by oil-powered machinery and vehicles. Biofuels depend on crops grown by oil-powered intensive agriculture.

Worse, the world's entire financial system is based on the assumption that the decades of growth fuelled by cheap oil will continue. A permanent shortage, by some predictions, would lead to another Great Depression lasting for generations, sparking conflicts as nations fought over shrinking supplies.

Yet, as Mr Cheney indicated, such a shortage is becoming a real and present danger. More and more experts are convinced that the world is rapidly approaching a uniquely dangerous threshold when, for the first time, humanity will suffer a cut in supplies of its main source of energy before an alternative is available.

After all - as the current issue of the scientific journal 'Nature' points out - there were still plenty of forests standing when the world switched from wood to coal as its principal fuel, and there were hundreds of years of supplies of coal still in the ground when oil took over. Yet there is no other source of energy versatile enough or ready to be exploited fast enough and on a large enough scale to take up the slack if oil supplies suddenly begin to decline.

The tipping point at which this decline begins goes under the increasingly popular tag of "peak oil". It marks the moment at which what have - for the past 150 years - been ever-expanding, and therefore generally cheap, supplies of the stuff turn into steadily declining, ever more costly ones.

The prediction is based on the observation - first made by an American geophysicist called M King Hubbert 50 years ago - that oil production rises sharply to a peak, and then slumps equally rapidly. Hubbert thought, on this basis, that production in the US's 48 states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) would peak in this way in the early 1970s.

Official statement after reassuring official statement rubbished his apparent pessimism - even suggesting that the peak would not come until the 22nd century. But, sure enough, it arrived in 1970.

Much the same thing has been happening in the North Sea. New, but unpublicised, official figures buried in the latest issue of Energy Trends - a dry Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) report published on Thursday - show that UK production has been falling sharply for the seventh successive year.

On 18 June 1975, when the first British North Sea oil arrived by tanker at the Isle of Grain refinery in Kent, a rising British politician called Tony Benn - recently appointed Energy Secretary - raised a bottle of it above his head, grandiosely declaring: "I hold the future of Britain in my hand."

He was right, in a sense. Production soared until, in 1980, the country became self-sufficient in oil, and became an overall exporter. The revenues rescued Britain from the balance of payments crises - exacerbated by rising oil import bills - that dogged successive governments in the 1970s.

After a short-lived slump in the late 1980s and early 1990s, caused by low oil prices and the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, production built up to a peak of more than 2.9 million barrels a day in 1999, the very year in which Mr Cheney delivered his speech. Since then it has slumped by almost half.

Crucially, it has now fallen so low that Britain, for the first time in a quarter of a century, has become an overall importer of oil.

Ministers and the industry seek to deny this. The latest Economic Report by the UK Offshore Operators Association, which represents the oil and gas companies in the North Sea, insists: "The UK has been self-sufficient in oil for the last 25 years and is expected to remain so for the next four or five years". The DTI says much the same.

But the department's own figures reveal the truth. Since August 2005, the UK has been an oil-importing nation. Estimates by the official International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest that the country produced just 1.65 million barrels a day last year, compared to consumption of about 1.7 million.

Ministers and the industry are hoping that a new field, due to come onstream in the next couple of weeks, will put the country briefly back into the black. The Buzzard field in the outer Moray Firth is the biggest to have been discovered in British waters for more than a decade.

But David Fyfe, the IEA's principal oil supply analyst, says he expects production to be raised to only 1.68 million barrels a day this year - still not enough to meet consumption - before the decline resumes in 2008.

Britain is not alone in its troubles, either in the North Sea or the world as a whole. Norway and Denmark have also passed peak production. And last year, half of the world's 44 main oil-producing nations produced less oil than they did the year before. The chain of peaks is beginning to take on Himalayan proportions.

"In all," says Chris Skrebowski, editor of the Energy Institute's 'Petroleum Review', "40 per cent of the world's oil is coming from areas where production is in clear and substantial decline." When the figure reaches 50 per cent, he adds, the world as a whole will have reached the "peak oil" tipping point.

The world's first oil well was dug on the Greek Island of Zante around 400 BC, but it was not until 1859 that the Pennsylvania Rock Oil company struck the black gold 69 feet below ground, setting the scene for the oil age.

Little more than 7,000 barrels of it were produced in the whole of 1860, the first full year of pumping. Since then, it is generally agreed, the world has burned nearly 1.1 trillion barrels. But nobody knows how much is left and can be economically recovered.

So while everyone agrees that some day oil production will peak - since there is a finite amount of it on the planet - there is wide debate over when this will be. At one extreme, some experts believe that time has already arrived. Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton University - who worked with M King Hubbert - plumped for the astonishingly precise date of 16 December 2005. At the other extreme, analysts at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Massachusetts think the peak will not come until the 2030s.

But a growing number of experts are coming to believe that it will be upon us disturbingly soon, at around 2010 or 2011. Mr Skrebowski, once sceptical of the more pessimistic estimates, is among them. "All the work I have done suggests that you just can't get it beyond then," he says.

Optimists put their faith in new discoveries and improved technology. But the world has now been burning much more oil than it has found for a quarter of a century, and despite vast investment in prospecting, the discovery of new fields is at a record low.

Mr Skrebowski points out that new discoveries will still be made even after world production is past its peak, but that "the deadweight of the general decline will overwhelm them".

Similarly, as oil prices rise it will be economic to get more out of existing wells, but again this is not expected to be enough to reverse the sharp decline. And though there are vast reserves in Canadian tar sands and US oil shales, these are costly and difficult to exploit - and unlikely to come onstream quickly enough.

Whenever it is, the world is not likely to get much warning from the market. Prices did not rise sharply in the US just before oil production peaked there, mainly because the costs of production remained about the same.

But nasty surprises can be expected before the world is far along the downward slope. Oil prices almost quadrupled during the 1970s oil shocks, even though production fell only by around 5 per cent. And after peak oil the decline would be permanent and intensifying, not short-term and reversible as it was then.

And it may be that Mr Cheney's prediction of a 3 per cent annual decline, immensely disruptive as it would be, is indeed, as he said, "conservative". The head of one giant oil services firm has suggested that production might fall by 8 per cent a year, which would mean that supplies fell by half in just nine years. That, after all, is about what is happening in the British North Sea.

Such a slump could hardly be less than catastrophic to the world economy. All we can do is to pray that the peak will be later, and the downward slope less severe - and embark on a crash programme to save energy and develop renewable sources as fast as possible, something we already urgently need to do to try to control global warming.

Dick Cheney has decried both energy efficiency and renewable sources in the past. It seems he has another plan. And indeed some experts believe that, if peace were miraculously to break out in Iraq and oil production can be miraculously increased, the peak-oil tipping point could be pushed back four or five years. But it would then come just as unrelentingly.

But the Vice-President can be sure of one consolation. In his speech seven years ago he complained that oil was "the only large industry whose leverage has not been all that effective in the political arena". If ever that were so, six years of two oilmen running the world's most powerful nation has certainly sorted that out. But whether the world - or Iraq - has benefited, is entirely another matter.

    Geoffrey Lean: Oil. The fast-vanishing drug the world can't yet live without, IoS, 7.1.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2132501.ece

Leading article: The oil rush

Published: 07 January 2007
The Independent on Sunday

"The oil can is mightier than the sword," said the 19th-century US Senator Everett Dirksen. Nowhere does this seem more true than in contemporary Iraq where, despite widespread despair about the war's costs in terms of blood and treasure, US corporations look set to be some of the conflict's few winners. The announcement that the Iraqi government is planning to change its constitution to allow foreign extraction of oil will give Western companies access to the world's third largest oil reserves. Production sharing agreements (PSAs), lasting for up to 30 years, will divert up to 75 per cent of Iraqi oil revenues to Western drilling companies until their initial investment costs have been recouped. The importance of this cannot be overstated for a shattered country still reliant on oil for 95 per cent of its income.

Of course, the Iraqi oil industry, starved through years of sanctions and now under constant insurgent attack, badly needs Western investment. Only a small proportion of Iraq's known oil fields have been developed, and production still languishes below pre-invasion levels. The neo-conservative dream - indulged in by Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney prior to the conflict - that the invasion and reconstruction would be self-financed through a twist of the oil taps, dissipated long ago.

In a country where unemployment has hit 70 per cent, a policy that will quicken the pace of economic reconstruction should be universally welcomed. At face value, the measure is not being imposed by the fiat of a US general: it will be voted on in the Iraqi parliament and, if passed, enacted by a democratically elected government. And objections that foreign companies will steal Iraq's birthright seem faintly anachronistic in the global economy: specialist engineering is an international industry these days, and Iraq's command economy, isolated from the rest of the world, urgently requires liberalisation.

But it doesn't demand the fevered imaginings of a conspiracy theorist to think that this law, struck while the beleaguered Iraqi government is facing opposition from all quarters, protects the interests of oil wealth (which is so well represented in the White House) more than it does the Iraqi people. Production sharing agreements don't apply in most other major Middle Eastern oil producers because they are widely thought to grant greater control to companies than governments. With economies so heavily dependent on oil, it's hard to see how countries can truly be self-governing if they sign away influence over their almost exclusive source of wealth.

Legitimate questions must be asked. How did this decision come to be made? How much pressure was President Nouri al-Maliki placed under to bend to the American corporate interests? Conservative US thinktanks such as the Heritage Foundation have been plotting the wholesale privatisation of the Iraqi oil industry for years. Since 2003, the supposed reconstruction of Iraq by US companies has left a bitter taste with most Iraqis who see a symbiotic relationship between the US military and big business that would make a British district commissioner in imperial Africa blush.

From the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the ill-fated US proconsul, Paul Bremer, denied the Iraqi government the ability to give preference to Iraqis in the reconstruction effort. Instead, US companies were awarded contracts totalling more than $50bn. And they have conspicuously failed to deliver. Despite billions spent, clean water, sanitation and electricity are below pre-war levels. The spectre of Americans scouting the country for oil at the same time as the death toll from the insurgency reaches new heights could shatter whatever residual faith is left among the Iraqis in the intentions of Western policy. Iraqis will reach the natural conclusion that, from the beginning, the Iraq adventure was an attempt to steal imperial spoils.

Before the war, to meet precisely these criticisms, Tony Blair promised that a development fund for Iraq was to be established to hold in trust the proceeds from oil sales under United Nations control. But, like so many of the concessions that the Prime Minister attempted to squeeze out of the President, this got lost somewhere in the Oval Office.

This is not the moment to rehearse the causes of the Iraq war, disputed as they are, but this newspaper has always been sceptical that it was "all about oil". Yet, at a time when the Americans and British are desperate to establish some sort of credit on the ground in Iraq, to make some claim on Iraqi hearts and minds, this arrangement looks terrible. What greater fuel could a conspiracy theorist want than the news of this oilman's bonanza? Was it mere coincidence that the war's most vociferous champions, such as Dick Cheney, were former oilmen? Policymakers would do well to remember that long and lucrative contracts handed to Western oil companies by the Shah of Iran during the 1960s led to a widespread feeling that the country was raped.

The Iranian revolution was the bitter harvest of a previous generation's oil greed in the Middle East. It would be to heap a further tragedy on Iraq if, in a country where the appearance of things can be as important as how they really are, the perception was to grow yet further that it was American greed that took the country to war. The importance of reflecting honourable intentions towards the Iraqi people is all the more important in a week when, in the teeth of a new Democrat-controlled Congress, President Bush is expected to announce a "surge" of 20,000 troops to "secure" Baghdad. After spending the Christmas break reflecting on Iraq policy, the President seems to have chosen what his obstinate character always suggested: to ignore the conventional wisdom and dig the hole in which Iraq policy is mired ever deeper.

After years of repeating his stay-the-course mantra, it was unlikely that, whatever the appalling evidence from Baghdad, George Bush would suffer the ignominy of admitting defeat. With ratings of his handling of the war at an all-time low, this is George Bush's final chance to avoid his presidency being branded as one of the worst in history. Like a gambler who has stacked up losses and hopes that one more lucky throw will rescue him, the President thinks that a modest additional deployment in Baghdad will see him vindicated by what he likes to call the "long march of history".

But, as General Wesley Clark writes today, the situation in Baghdad departed from the well-laid plans of Pentagon planners long ago. There have been attempts to retake Baghdad before by flooding it with troops stationed in the rest of the country - only to see the violence get worse. US troops are not in a position to stem the Sunni-Shia violence, and an overwhelming majority of Iraqis from across the ethnic divide now no longer believe that the troops are helping the situation.

With the death toll of US troops slipping over the 3,000 mark during the Christmas lull, there is a real risk that additional men and materiel in Iraq will merely provide more sitting targets for the insurgents to attack.

    Leading article: The oil rush, IoS, 7.1.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2132500.ece

Saddam was hanged

in "deplorable" way: UK's Brown

Sun Jan 7, 2007 1:21 AM ET
Reuters
By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Gordon Brown has condemned the way Saddam Hussein was hanged as "deplorable" -- in contrast to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has so far stayed silent on the execution.

Brown, expected to take over as premier when Blair steps down this year, said: "Now that we know the full picture of what happened, we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events."

A mobile phone video showed observers taunting Saddam with shouts of "Go to hell" and chanting the name of a Shi'ite cleric before the former Iraqi leader fell through a gallows trapdoor.

The images provoked international criticism and further inflamed sectarian passions in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has pledged to investigate the way the hanging was conducted.

Asked about the hanging when visiting a London hospital on Friday, Blair said: "I've decided to talk about health today. I will talk about all those other issues next week."

Blair was on holiday at the Miami home of pop star Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees when the execution took place.

President Bush has said Saddam's hanging should have been carried out in a "more dignified way" but argued that he received justice, unlike his victims.

Brown, laying out his stall as a future prime minister in a BBC TV interview to be broadcast on Sunday, said:

"Even those people, unlike me, who are in favor of capital punishment found this completely unacceptable. It has done nothing to lessen tensions between the Shia and Sunni communities."

Brown flew to Iraq in November to visit British troops stationed in the south of the country.

He faces a tough challenge stepping into Blair's shoes. The Labour government has been undermined by the war in Iraq and is beset by scandals, while the opposition Conservatives have revived their fortunes under youthful leader David Cameron.

    Saddam was hanged in "deplorable" way: UK's Brown, R, 7.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-07T062118Z_01_L06730781_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BRITAIN.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-6

Robert Fisk:

The whole bloody thing was obscene

Butchery was supposed
to have been presented as a solemn execution

Published: 06 January 2007
The Independent

The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq.

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. Or, as a good friend of mine in Ballymena said to me on the phone a few hours later, "The whole bloody thing was obscene." Quite so. On this occasion, I'll go along with the voice of Protestant Ulster.

Of course, Saddam gave his victims no trial; his enemies had no opportunity to hear the evidence against them; they were mown down into mass graves, not handed a black scarf to prevent the hangman's noose from burning their neck as it broke their spine. Justice was "done", even if a trifle cruelly. But this is not the point. Regime change was done in our name and Saddam's execution was a direct result of our crusade for a "new" Middle East. To watch a uniformed American general - despite the indiscipline of more and more US troops in Iraq - wheedling and whining at a press conference that his men were very courteous to Saddam until the very moment of handover to Muqtada al-Sadr's killers could only be appreciated with the blackest of humour.

Note how the best "our" Iraqi government's officials could do by way of reply was to order an "enquiry" to find out how mobile phones were taken into the execution room - not to identify the creatures who bawled abuse at Saddam Hussein in his last moments. How very Blairite of the al-Maliki government to search for the snitches rather than the criminals who abused their power. And somehow, they got away with it; acres of agency copy from the Green Zone reporters were expended on the Iraqi government's consternation, as if al- Maliki did not know what had transpired in the execution chamber. His own officials were present - and did nothing.

That's why the "official" videotape of the hanging was silent - and discreetly faded out - before Saddam was abused. It was cut at this point, not for reasons of good taste but because that democratically elected Iraqi government - whose election was such "great news for the people of Iraq" in the words of Lord Blair - knew all too well what the world would make of the terrible seconds that followed. Like the lies of Bush and Blair - that everything in Iraq was getting better when in fact it was getting worse - butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn judicial execution.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that the hanging of Saddam mimicked, in ghostly, miniature form, the manner of his own regime's bestial executions. Saddam's own hangman at Abu Ghraib, a certain Abu Widad, would also taunt his victims before pulling the trap door lever, a last cruelty before extinction. Is this where Saddam's hangmen learned their job? And just who exactly were those leather-jacketed hangmen last week, by the way? No one, it seemed, bothered to ask this salient question. Who chose them? Al-Maliki's militia chums? Or the Americans who managed the whole roadshow from the start, who so organised Saddam's trial that he was never allowed to reveal details of his friendly relations with three US administrations - and thus took the secrets of the murderous, decade-long Baghdad-Washington military alliance to his grave?

I would not ask this question were it not for the sense of profound shock I experienced when touring the Abu Ghraib prison after "Iraq's liberation" and meeting the US-appointed senior Iraqi medical officer at the jail. When his minders were distracted, he admitted to me he had also been the senior "medical officer" at Abu Ghraib when Saddam's prisoners were tortured to death there. No wonder our enemies-become-friends are turning into our enemies again.

But this is not just about Iraq. More than 35 years ago, I was being driven home from school by my Dad when his new-fangled car radio broadcast a report of the dawn hanging of a man at - I think - Wormwood Scrubs. I remember the unpleasant look of sanctity that came over my father's face when I asked him if this was right. "It's the law, Old Boy," he said, as if such cruelties were immutable to the human race. Yet this was the same father who, as a young soldier in the First World War, was threatened with court martial because he refused to command the firing party to execute an equally young Australian soldier.

Maybe only older men, sensing their failing powers, enjoy the prerogatives of execution. More than 10 years ago, the now-dead President Hrawi of Lebanon and the since-murdered prime minister Rafiq Hariri signed the death warrants of two young Muslim men. One of them had panicked during a domestic robbery north of Beirut and shot a Christian man and his sister. Hrawi - in the words of one of his top security officers at the time - "wanted to show he could hang Muslims in a Christian area". He got his way. The two men - one of whom had not even been present in the house during the robbery - were taken to their public execution beside the main Beirut-Jounieh highway, swooning with fear at the sight of their white-hooded executioners, while the Christian glitterati, heading home from night-clubs with their mini-skirted girlfriends, pulled up to watch the fun.

I suggested at the time, much to Hrawi's disgust, that this should become a permanent feature of Beirut's nightlife, that regular public hangings on the Mediterranean Corniche would bring in tens of thousands more tourists, especially from Saudi Arabia where you could catch the odd beheading only at Friday prayers.

No, it's not about the wickedness of the hanged man. Unlike the Thane of Cawdor, Saddam did not "set forth a deep repentance" on the scaffold. We merely shamed ourselves in an utterly predictable way. Either you support the death penalty - whatever the nastiness or innocence of the condemned. Or you don't. C'est tout.

    Robert Fisk: The whole bloody thing was obscene, I, 6.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2129966.ece

Blair still silent on Saddam

Published: 06 January 2007
The Independent
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor

Tony Blair has refused again to comment on the execution of Saddam Hussein, leaving himself out of step with members of his Cabinet.

On his first public appearance since returning from holiday in Miami, the Prime Minister said at a London hospital: "I've decided to talk about health today. I will talk about all those other issues next week but not today." Asked if he thought he should be talking about the execution, he said: "I'll find a way to talk about it, but not today. I want to concentrate on the NHS."

Mr Blair's refusal has angered MPs. He may not make his first public response until Prime Minister's Questions next Wednesday, 11 days after the Saddam's execution.

    Blair still silent on Saddam, I, 6.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2129997.ece

Patrick Cockburn:

Perceptive analysis contrasts

with White House rhetoric

Published: 05 January 2007
The Independent

Ali A Allawi, until recently an Iraqi minister, is one of Iraq's most respected Shia politicians of the post-Saddam era. His study of the crisis in Iraq is by far the most perceptive analysis of the extent of the disaster in his country, and how it might best be resolved. It is in sharp contrast to the ill-thought-out maunderings of experts and officials devising fresh policies in the White House and Downing Street.

At the centre of Mr Allawi's ideas on how "to pull the Middle East from its death spiral" is finding a means to meet the fears generated inside and outside Iraq by the tectonic changes within the country.

This means recognition of the gains of the Shia and the Kurds, but also restraint on their part so the Sunni do not see themselves as being marginalised. It requires that the anxieties of Iraq's neighbours be allayed and the regional powers "Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran" be involved in a final settlement.

It may be too late. Mr Allawi speaks of finding a way "to save America's face" while the US exits Iraq, but this will be difficult while George Bush still has dreams of victory and is sending reinforcements.

But Mr Allawi's study, which is based on familiarity with all the main players gained during his years in government, is the first real attempt to suggest the Middle East might pull out of its death spiral. Born into a Baghdad family in 1947, Mr Allawi acquired most of his higher education abroad, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, LSE and Harvard, then working for financial companies and merchant banks.

He is closely related to prominent Iraqi politicians and joined joined the anti-Baathist opposition in 1968 as a member of Iraq's exile community in London where much of the early opposition to Saddam was based.

Mr Allawi fears that the Shia ascendancy in Iraq will lead to the persecution of Shia in countries where they are a minority, such as Saudi Arabia.

There is already a rekindling of anti-Shia rhetoric in a remarkably similar rerun of the pattern that accompanied the Saudi-led campaign to contain the Iranian revolution in the 1980s.

After the invasion in 2003, Mr Allawi was plucked from his post as a Middle East specialist at St Anthony's College, Oxford, and was appointed Trade Minister in the first post-Saddam government. In 2004, he was made Minister of Defence, and served as Finance Minister.

He is widely viewed by Western governments as one of the more capable of Iraq's post-Saddam politicians.

Although a member of a prominent Shia family, he has largely managed to avoid the sectarian divides of Iraqi politics and he has taken a strong stance against the Shia militias responsible for much of the inter-ethnic violence that has blighted Iraq over the past year. At present, he is a senior adviser to the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki and divides his time between London and Baghdad.

A problem is that whatever President Bush and Tony Blair thought they were doing when they invaded Iraq in 2003, the outcome has been very different. The limits of US military and political power have been exposed by its failure to overcome the resistance of the five million-strong Sunni community.

    Patrick Cockburn: Perceptive analysis contrasts with White House rhetoric, I, 5.1.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2125377.ece

For the first time,

a real blueprint for peace in Iraq

Published: 05 January 2007
The Independent
By Ali Allawi, former Iraqi Defence Minister
 

The Iraqi state that was formed in the aftermath of the First World War has come to an end. Its successor state is struggling to be born in an environment of crises and chaos. The collapse of the entire order in the Middle East now threatens as the Iraq imbroglio unleashes forces in the area that have been gathering in virulence over the past decades.

It took the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the mismanagement of the country by both the Coalition Provisional Administration and subsequent Iraqi governments, to bring matters to this dire situation.

What was supposed to be a straightforward process of overthrowing a dictatorship and replacing it with a liberal-leaning and secular democracy under the benign tutelage of the United States, has instead turned into an existential battle for identity, power and legitimacy that is affecting not only Iraq, but the entire tottering state system in the Middle East.

The Iraq war is a global predicament of the first order and its resolution will influence the course of events in the Middle East and beyond for a considerable time. What we are witnessing in Iraq is the beginning of the unravelling of the unjust and unstable system that was carved out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire. It had held for nearly 100 years by a mixture of foreign occupation,outside meddling, brutal dictatorships and minority rule.

At the same time, it signally failed in providing a permanent sense of legitimacy to its power, engaged its citizens in their governance, or provided a modicum of well-being and a decent standard of existence for its people.

The Key Challenges

The nature and scope of the Iraq crisis can be encapsulated in the emergence of four vital issues that have challenged the entire project for remaking the Iraq state. In one form or another, these forces also affect the countries of the Arab Middle East, as well as Turkey and Iran, and the relationships between all of them.

Firstly, the invasion of Iraq tipped the scales in favour of the Shia, who are now determined to emerge as the governing majority after decades, if not centuries, of perceived disempowerment and oppression. The consequences of this historic shift inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East are incalculable.

Secondly, the invasion of Iraq legitimised the semi-independent region that Iraq's Kurds had forged over the past decade. The Kurds whose rights to self-determination were acknowledged in the 1920 Sevres Treaty, and then subsequently ignored by the states of the post-Ottoman Middle East, have received an enormous fillip in their march towards recognition of their unique status.

What is still left to be decided is the geographic extent of the Kurdish region in Iraq, and whether it would have proprietary access to the resources of that area. This may prove a way station to the beginnings of the formation of a Kurdish state. The challenges that will pose to the integrity and self-definition of Turkey, Iran and Syria now or in the future is another formidable side effect of the overthrow of the old Baathist state.

Thirdly, the uneven, poorly prepared and messy introduction in Iraq of democratic norms for elections, constitution-writing and governance structures is a stark break with the authoritarian and dictatorial systems that have prevailed in the Middle East. While the Iraqi experiment has so far been marred by violence, irregularities and manipulation, it is quite likely to survive as the mechanism through which governments will be chosen in the future.

Lastly, the overthrow of Saddam coincided with the attempts by Iran to assert its influence and to gain entry into regional counsels. That has exercised a number of countries in the area no end, giving rise to alarmist warnings of Iranian hegemonistic designs and "Shia crescents". The responses that are being planned for the perceived threat are terrifying in their implications, with scant attention paid to their consequences to the peace and stability of the area.

Iraq was used as a foil to revolutionary Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, with devastating consequences for both. We are witnessing a possible reprise, the consequence of which, if the new warmongers get their way, will be catastrophic for it will go to the heart of the fragile societies of the Middle East. Shia will be pitted against Sunni not only in Iraq but in Lebanon, and the Gulf countries.

Dangers of Sunni Insurgency

In the sterile world of zero-sum politics, the loss of power of the Sunni Arab community in Iraq was soon translated into a raging insurgency that challenged not only the US occupation but also the new political dispensation.

The insurgency fed on the deep resentment Sunni Arabs felt to their loss of power and prestige. It has been aggravated by the fact it was a totally unexpected force that achieved the impossible- the dethronement of the community from centuries of power in favour of, as they saw it, a rabble led by Persianate clerics. The Sunni Arabs' refusal to countenance any serious engagement with the new political order had effectively pushed them into a cul-de-sac and has played into the hands of their most determined enemies.

The state is now moving inexorably under the control of the Shia Islamists, albeit with a supporting role for the Kurds. The boundaries of Shia-controlled Baghdad are moving ever westwards so that the capital itself may fall entirely under the sway of the Shia militias.

The only thing stopping that is the deployment of American troops to block the entry of the Shia militias in force into these mixed or Sunni neighbourhoods. The geographic space outside Baghdad in which the insurgency can flourish will persist but the country will be inevitably divided. Under such circumstances, the power of the Shia's demographic advantage can only be counter-balanced by the Sunni Arabs' recourse to support from the neighbouring Arab states. It is inconceivable that such an outcome can possibly lead to a stable Iraqi state unless one side or another vanquishes its opponent or if the country is divided into separate states.

Impact of Shia Ascendancy

The response to these existential challenges emanating from the invasion of Iraq, both inside Iraq and in the Arab world has been panic-stricken or fearful, and potentially disastrous to the stability in the area and the prospects for its inhabitants.

The Arab countries of the Middle East have been unable to adjust to events in Iraq, not so much because of the contagion effect of the changes that have taken place there. This had virtually disappeared as Iraq cannot be seen as model for anything worth emulating. It has less to do with the instability that might spill over from the violence in the country. It is more to do with accommodating an unknown quantity into a system that can barely acknowledge pluralism and democracy, let alone a Shia ascendancy in Iraq.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, linchpins of the American security order in the Arab world, cannot accept the principle of a Shia-dominated Iraq, each for its own reasons. They will do their utmost to thwart such a possibility, and failing that, will probably try to isolate such an entity from regional counsels

Implications for Middle East

It is this with this backdrop that solutions are being proffered to resolve the Iraqi crisis. However, rather than treat the problem in a much wider context, each party is determined to stake out its narrow position irrespective of its effects on other communities, groups and countries.

The seeds of another 100 years of crisis are being sown, with the Middle East consigned to decades of turbulence and the persistence of unmitigated hatreds and grudges. The most serious issue that is emerging is the exacerbation of sectarian differences between Shia and Sunni. That is a profoundly dangerous issue for it affects not only Iraq but also Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and the Gulf countries.

It is plausible that the cost of a Shia ascendancy in Iraq, if it is marked as such, will be further pressure on the vulnerable Shia communities in the Gulf countries. There is already the rekindling of anti-Shia rhetoric in a remarkably similar rerun to the pattern that accompanied the Saudi-led campaign to contain the Iranian revolution in the 1980s. The effect of that was the rise of the jihadi culture that was the harbinger of mass terrorism and suicide bombings.

This may drag the entire area into war or even the forced movement of people as fearful countries seek to "quarantine" or expel their Shia population.

The Solution

It requires genuine vision and statesmanship to pull the Middle East from its death spiral. The elements of a possible solution are there if the will exists to postulate an alternative to the politics of fear, bigotry and hatred.

The first step must be the recognition that the solution to the Iraq crisis must be generated first internally, and then, importantly, at the regional level. The two are linked and the successful resolution of one would lead to the other.

No foreign power, no matter how benevolent, should be allowed to dictate the terms of a possible historic and stable settlement in the Middle East. No other region of the world would tolerate such a wanton interference in its affairs.

That is not to say that due consideration should not be given to the legitimate interests of the great powers in the area, but the future of the area should not be held hostage to their designs and exclusive interests.

Secondly, the basis of a settlement must take into account the fact that the forces that have been unleashed by the invasion of Iraq must be acknowledged and accommodated. These forces, in turn, must accept limits to their demands and claims. That would apply, in particular, to the Shias and the Kurds, the two communities who have been seen to have gained from the invasion of Iraq.

Thirdly, the Sunni Arab community must become convinced that its loss of undivided power will not lead to marginalisation and discrimination. A mechanism must be found to allow the Sunni Arabs to monitor and regulate and, if need be, correct, any signs of discrimination that may emerge in the new Iraqi state.

Fourthly, the existing states surrounding Iraq feel deeply threatened by the changes there. That needs to be recognised and treated in any lasting deal for Iraq and the area.

A way has to be found for introducing Iran and Turkey into a new security structure for the Middle East that would take into account their legitimate concerns, fears and interests. It is far better that these countries are seen to be part of a stable order for the area rather than as outsiders who need to be confronted and challenged.

The Iraqi government that has arisen as a result of the admittedly flawed political process must be accepted as a sovereign and responsible government. No settlement can possibly succeed if its starting point is the illegitimacy of the Iraqi government or one that considers it expendable.

A Brighter Future

The end state of this process would be three interlinked outcomes. The first would be a decentralised Iraqi state with new regional governing authorities with wide powers and resources.

Devolution of power must be fair, well planned, and executed with equitable revenue-distribution. Federal institutions would have to act as adjudicators between regions. Security must be decentralised until such time as confidence between the communities is re-established.

The second essential outcome would be a treaty that would establish a confederation or constellation of states of the Middle East, initially including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The main aim of the confederation would be to establish a number of conventions and supra-regional bodies that would have the effect of acting as guarantors of civil, minority and community rights.

The existence of such institutions can go a long way towards removing the anxiety disadvantaged groups feel when confronted with the radical changes sweeping the area. The gradual build up of such supra-national institutions in the proposed confederation may also expand to cover an increased degree of economic integration and harmonisation.

That may include a regional development body which would help establish and fund common energy and infrastructure policies. Lastly, an indispensable end outcome is a regional security pact that would group the countries of the Arab Middle East with Iran and Turkey, at first in some form of anti-terrorism pact, but later a broader framework for discussing and resolving major security issues that impinge on the area as a whole.

That would also provide the forum for combating the spread of virulent ideologies and sectarian hatreds and provide the basis for peacefully containing and resolving the alarm that some countries feel from the apparent expansion of Iranian influence in the area.

The Importance of the US

It was the US that launched this phase of the interminable Middle East crisis, by invading Iraq and assuming direct authority over it. Whatever project it had for Iraq has vanished, a victim of inappropriate or incoherent policies, and the violent upending of Iraq's power structures.

Nevertheless, the US is still the most powerful actor in the Iraq crisis, and its decisions can sway the direction and the manner in which events could unfold.

In other areas of the world, the US has used its immense influence and power to cement regional security and economic associations. There is no reason why the regional associations being mooted in conjunction with a decentralised Iraqi state, could not play an equally important part in resolving the Iraqi crisis and dispersing the dangerous clouds threatening the region.

The Iraqi proposals

1 Iraq government calls for regional security conference including Iraq's neighbours to produce an agreement/treaty on non-intervention and combating terrorism. Signatory states will be responsible to set of markers for commitments.

Purpose: To reduce/eliminate neighbouring countries' support for insurgents, terrorists and militias.

2 Iraq government calls for preparatory conference on a Middle-Eastern Confederation of States that will examine proposals on economic, trade and investment union. Proposals will be presented for a convention on civil, human and minority rights in the Near East, with a supreme court/tribunal with enforcement powers.

Purpose: To increase regional economic integration and provide minorities in signatory countries with supra-national protection.

3 Iraq government calls for an international conference on Iraq that would include Iraq, its regional neighbours, Egypt, the UAE, the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China that would aim to produce a treaty guaranteeing:

a. Iraq's frontiers.
b. The broad principles of Iraq's constitutional arrangements.
c. Establishing international force to replace the multi-national force over 12 to 18 months. Appointing international co-ordinator to oversee treaty implementation.

Purpose: To arrange for the gradual and orderly withdrawal of American troops, ensure that Iraq develops along constitutional lines, confirm Iraq and its neighbours' common frontiers.

4 Iraq government will introduce changes to government by creating two statuary bodies with autonomous financing and independent boards:

a. A reconstruction and development council run by Iraqi professionals and technocrats with World Bank/UN support.
b. A security council which will oversee professional ministries of defence, interior, intelligence and national security.

Purpose: To remove the reconstruction and development programme from incompetent hands and transfer them to an apolitical, professional and independent body. Also to remove the oversight, command and control over the security ministries from politicised party control to an independent, professional and accountable body.

5 The entire peace plan, its preamble and its details must be put before the Iraqi parliament for its approval.

Ali A Allawi was Minister of Trade and Minister of Defence in the Iraqi Governing Council Cabinet (2003-2004). He was in the Transitional National Assembly, and Minister of Finance, Transitional National Government of Iraq (2005-2006). His book, 'The Occupation of Iraq Winning the War, Losing the Peace' will be published in March

    For the first time, a real blueprint for peace in Iraq, I, 5.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2125419.ece

 

Saddam: From monster to martyr?

How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq,

culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war
 

Published: 04 January 2007
The Independent
By Patrick Cockburn

It takes real genius to create a martyr out of Saddam Hussein. Here is a man dyed deep with the blood of his own people who refused to fight for him during the United States-led invasion three-and-a-half years ago. His tomb in his home village of Awja is already becoming a place of pilgrimage for the five million Sunni Arabs of Iraq who are at the core of the uprising.

During his trial, Saddam himself was clearly trying to position himself to be a martyr in the cause of Iraqi independence and unity and Arab nationalism. His manifest failure to do anything effective for these causes during the quarter of a century he misruled Iraq should have made his task difficult. But an execution which vied in barbarity with a sectarian lynching in the backstreets of Belfast 30 years ago is elevating him to heroic status in the eyes of the Sunni - the community to which most Arabs belong - across the Middle East.

The old nostrum of Winston Churchill that "grass may grow on the battlefield but never under the gallows" is likely to prove as true in Iraq as it has done so frequently in the rest of the world. Nor is the US likely to be successful in claiming that the execution was purely an Iraqi affair.

Many Iraqis recall that the announcement of the verdict on Saddam sentencing him to death was conveniently switched last year to 5 November, the last daily news cycle before the US mid-term elections. The US largely orchestrated the trial from behind the scenes. Yesterday the Iraqi government arrested an official who supervised the execution for making the mobile-phone video that has stirred so much controversy.

The Iraqi Shia and Kurds are overwhelmingly delighted that Saddam is in his grave. But the timing of his death at the start of the Eid al-Adha feast makes his killing appear like a deliberate affront to the Sunni community. The execution of his half-brother Barzan in the next few days will confirm it in its sense that it is the target of an assault by the majority Shia.

Why was the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki so keen to kill Saddam Hussein? First, there is the entirely understandable desire for revenge. Members of the old opposition to Saddam Hussein are often blamed for their past ineffectiveness but most lost family members to his torture chambers and execution squads. Every family in Iraq lost a member to his disastrous wars or his savage repressions.

There is also a fear among Shia leaders that the US might suddenly change sides. This is not as outlandish as it might at first appear. The US has been cultivating the Sunni in Iraq for the past 18 months. It has sought talks with the insurgents. It has tried to reverse the de-Baathification campaign. US commentators and politicians blithely talk about eliminating the anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and fighting his militia, the Mehdi Army. No wonder Shias feel that it is better to get Saddam under the ground just as quickly as possible. Americans may have forgotten that they were once allied to him but Iraqis have not.

When Saddam fell Iraqis expected life to get better. They hoped to live like Saudis and Kuwaitis. They knew he had ruined his country by hot and cold wars. When he came to power as president in 1979, Iraq had large oil revenues, vast oil reserves, a well-educated people and a competent administration. By invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, he reduced his nation to poverty. This was made worse by the economic siege imposed by 13 years of UN sanctions.

But life did not get better after 2003. Face-to-face interviews with 2,000 Iraqi adults by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies in November revealed that 90 per cent of them said the situation in their country had been better before the US-led invasion. Only 5 per cent of people said it was better today. The survey was carried out in Baghdad, in the wholly Sunni Anbar province and the entirely Shia Najaf province. It does not include the Kurds, who remain favourable to the occupation.

This does not mean that Iraqis want Saddam back. But it is clearly true that the chances of dying violently in Iraq are far greater today everywhere in the country outside the three Kurdish provinces than they were in 2002. The myth put about by Republican neoconservatives that large parts of Iraq enjoyed pastoral calm post-war but were ignored by the liberal media was always a fiction. None of the neocons who claim that the good news from Iraq was being suppressed ever made any effort to visit those Iraqi provinces which they claimed were at peace.

Saddam should not have been a hard act to follow. It was not inevitable that the country should revert to Hobbesian anarchy. At first the US and Britain did not care what Iraqis thought. Their victory over the Iraqi army - and earlier over the Taliban in Afghanistan - had been too easy. They installed a semi-colonial regime. By the time they realised that the guerrilla war was serious it was too late.

It could get worse yet. The so-called "surge" in US troop levels by 20,000 to 30,000 men on top of the 145,000 soldiers already in the country is unlikely to produce many dividends. It seems primarily designed so that President George Bush does not have to admit defeat or take hard choices about talking to Iran and Syria. But these reinforcements might tempt the US to assault the Mehdi Army.

Somehow many senior US officials have convinced themselves that it is Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Shia, who is the obstacle to a moderate Iraqi government. In fact his legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Shia Iraqis, the great majority of the population, is far greater than the "moderate" politicians whom the US has in its pocket and who seldom venture out of the Green Zone. Mr Sadr is a supporter of Mr Maliki, whose relations with Washington are ambivalent.

An attack on the Shia militia men of the Mehdi Army could finally lead to the collapse of Iraq into total anarchy. Saddam must already be laughing in his grave.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, which is published by Verso

'I felt quite sickened, appalled and disgusted'

A S Byatt

Booker Prize-winning author

The only absolute moral value I have is that the death penalty is wrong. And I think that it's wrong not because of the sanctity of the life of the dead person but because of the evil it does to the executioners. Of course it has now turned Saddam into a kind of martyr because people have now started to imagine what was actually done to him. The death penalty produces a kind of horror in me that not even paedophilia can. I think it is the absolute evil thing that humans do.

Sir Crispin Tickell

Former British ambassador to the United Nations and permanent representative to the Security Council

I thought the way the execution was carried out was quite disgraceful. But then the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has, as we know, been a disaster. Everything that I feared has, sadly, come true. I am against the death penalty and thus I was against this execution. Having said that, this one death, in the context of all the others in Iraq, probably will not have such a huge impact on the long term.

Louise Christian

Solicitor for former Guantanamo Bay detainees

I felt quite sickened, appalled and disgusted by what we saw. I hate everything that Saddam Hussein stood for and wanted him brought to justice. This [his death] is the worst kind of outcome.I think the prosecutor should have stopped it. It sends the message that it is revenge by the Shias and not impartial justice. I would support an international moratorium on the death penalty but we need all international leaders to sign up to it.

Nitin Sawhney

Musician

The killing was barbaric. I find it strangely coincidental that it happened at Eid - a time when Muslims are trying to celebrate. Instead, a brown-skinned man with a noose around their neck dominated the front page of every newspaper. George Bush, himself a historically prolific perpetrator of capital punishment, described the execution as "a milestone"; which is equally as abhorrent. I wonder what

message this action of internationally condoned murder sends out to children across the world during Christmas, Eid and the New Year. The situation is so extreme: I feel incredibly angry - and emotional - about so many things around it.

Ann Widdecombe

Former Home Office minister

I have no problem with the decision to execute Saddam, but I have an enormous problem with the way it was made into a public spectacle. I didn't see the slightest justification for the official pictures. I know the justification was that if they didn't take pictures, people may not believe the execution had happened, but there are 5,000 ways of getting around that. Things went from bad to worse with the informal footage. Yes, I voted for the death penalty in this country, particularly for police killers.

    Saddam: From monster to martyr?, I, 4.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2124262.ece

Blair fails to condemn hanging

as Bush ducks the question

Published: 04 January 2007
The Independent
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor

Downing Street has welcomed the Iraqi government's decision to hold an inquiry into the fiasco over the execution of Saddam Hussein and admitted that mistakes had been made.

But No 10 declined to endorse comments by John Prescott who said the unauthorised filming and taunting of the former Iraqi dictator by guards who told him to "go to hell" was "deplorable" and that those responsible should be "ashamed." A spokeswoman said the Deputy Prime Minister was giving his "personal" view.

When he returns from his holiday in Miami, Mr Blair will come under pressure to condemn the way Saddam was executed last Saturday. He has so far avoided any public comment.

Yesterday George Bush ­ who said he had not seen the illicit video of the hanging because he was focused on the "way forward" in Iraq ­ dodged questions about the execution as the Americans sought to distance themselves from the way it was handled. Major General William Caldwell said in Baghdad that the US would have carried it out "differently" and did not play a role in the proceedings. "If you're asking me, would we have done things differently, yes, we would have," he said. "But that's not our decision. That's a government of Iraq decision."

He said a US military team only transported Saddam to the site of his execution, and the Iraqi government maintained custody of the former leader throughout. After delivering Saddam to the Iraqi Ministry of Justice's As-Buratha prison, American personnel "withdrew from the building, back from the whole location", he added.

In Britain, MPs believe the controversy risks turning Saddam into a martyr. His execution is sensitive for Mr Blair because the Government opposes the death penalty. Downing Street declined to say whether Britain would back Italian calls for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment via the United Nations but reaffirmed the Government's opposition to it.

The spokeswoman said: "The Iraqi government is going to conduct an inquiry into the manner in which the execution was conducted. We fully support that decision and believe it is the right thing to do. As they have said, there were obviously things that went wrong."

She insisted that Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, had spoken on behalf of the whole Government by saying the UK was against the death penalty but that Saddam had been "held to account".

No 10 backed Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who said in an interview that he would not seek a second term and wished he could leave office before his four-year term is up and would not run again. "I didn't want to take this position," Mr Maliki told the Wall Street Journal. "I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again."

Amnesty International warned that Saddam's execution was just one of a fast-rising number in Iraq, claiming at least 54 were carried out last year. Tim Hancock, its UK campaigns director, said: "Iraq had a chance to turn its back on the cruelty of the Saddam years and respect human rights, pursuing real justice with fair trials and humane punishment of those found guilty."

Iraqi authorities have not yet set a date to hang Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and a former judge, Awad al-Bander, convicted with him for crimes against humanity.

    Blair fails to condemn hanging as Bush ducks the question, I, 4.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2124244.ece

Blair silent about death of Saddam

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/01/2007
The Daily Telegraph
By Boris Johnson


What, nothing? Not a peep, not a dickie bird? How long can Blair maintain radio silence? If some soap star had popped her clogs or some Newcastle striker had gone to the great subs bench in the sky, then you may be sure that the Number 10 machine would have chuntered out some tabloid-friendly quote.

This is the Prime Minister who once used an official statement to call for the release of "Deirdre" from her fictional Coronation Street jail — and yet he won't give the nation the benefit of his views on the death of Saddam Hussein.

You will note that in the case of all the soap queens and pop stars whose deaths were marked by Downing Street, Blair had no personal knowledge of them, let alone responsibility for their deaths. In the case of Saddam Hussein, Blair was not only personally implicated, but for better or worse he has implicated the entire country.

advertisementI can't believe you missed the manner in which they bumped off the former Iraqi leader, but in case you are one of the few on the planet who does not have access to a television or the internet, it was a hellish business.

The viewer was led by cameraphone into some dark dungeon full of hooded men. There was a rope and scaffold, and the only visible face was Saddam's, looking calm and dignified.

You could see flash after flash from the cameras and hear them goading and taunting a man on the verge of his death. He replied rather mildly.

Then there was a yammering of "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!", in honour of the fanatical Shia cleric, and a chanting of the name of the Prophet, and then — whoosh — almost in slow motion you saw him fall through the trap.

There was a great scuffling, and joyous shouts, and at last you had what they call the money shot: a man in death, his bloody neck at right angles.

Was this what we fought for? Is this really the lesson in human rights and Western values we hoped to deliver to the people of Iraq? This wasn't justice. This was a sectarian lynch mob. This was a snuff movie.

How dare the Prime Minister pretend that it is somehow nothing to do with him? He was the only Western leader of any importance to join George W. Bush in the war to remove Saddam.

It was Blair who sent thousands of British troops to join the coalition, and Blair who authorised the spending of at least £5 billion on a war in Mesopotamia, and it was Blair who was therefore directly co-responsible for putting Saddam Hussein on the end of that rope.

Bush has at least had the guts to say something. Why not Tony? It is ridiculous to suggest that a silence is somehow tactful because this "is a matter for the Iraqis".

The trial itself was a farce, and, as for the six judges who attempted to preside, their careers can be summarised like the wives of Henry VIII: assassinated, resigned, sacked, resigned, sacked, survived (for now). Seven of the other lawyers were murdered, including Saddam's chief defence lawyer.

As for the suggestion that this was nothing to do with us, but "independent Iraqi justice", what total and utter tripe. Let us leave on one side the laughable suggestion that "America and Britain do not intervene in the affairs of sovereign Iraq" (tell that to Saddam). At every stage the Americans were in charge.

Saddam was guarded by American soldiers, and ministered to by American nurses, and it was in an American helicopter that the "witnesses" were taken to the execution.

The Iraqis could have performed this job only with the active and intimate support of the coalition, of which we are meant to be partners.

Did we say nothing about the death penalty, against which this country now has a constitutional opposition? And how can Blair keep silent about that chilling note of Shia triumphalism?

This Moqtada al-Sadr is the leader of a vicious militia directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Shias and Sunnis, as well as hundreds of British troops, and here they are — cheering his name in the death chamber, at the moment of Saddam's execution.

Was that really our game-plan? You may recall that most Arabs are Sunnis, and deeply mistrustful of the Shias, and you may have noticed that we are ratcheting up the pressure on Shia Iran, and yet our crowning achievement in Iraq has been to hand it over to an Iranian-backed Shia militia.

Or am I wrong? If so, please could the Prime Minister get a T-shirt on and get out of that Bee Gee mansion and just for 30 seconds could he do what he normally does with such practised ease almost every day.

Come on Tony, give us one of your sound bites. What is your reaction to the Saddam snuff movie? It was Tony Blair who persuaded so many of us that Iraq would be better off without Saddam. Can he give a single piece of evidence in support of that claim?

Perhaps he can, even though 58,000 civilians have died, and 100 are dying every day; but we want it from the man himself. We don't want to hear any more from Margaret Beckett, with her babble about opposing the death penalty and yet being glad that Saddam "has been held to account". You can hold someone to account without strangling them in a dungeon, Margaret.

And we don't want Prescott with his moronic complaint that the release of the snuff movie was tasteless, as though the content itself was innocuous.

I want to hear from Blair himself. What does it tell him about his legacy in Iraq, that the execution of Saddam was accompanied by sectarian taunts and shouts? What does that tell him about his defining political accomplishment?

"You can tell, by the way I walk, I'm a busy man, no time to talk", sang the Bee Gees. Well, if Blair is so busy on his yachts that he has no time to talk to the British people, then he should stay in that Bee Gee mansion.

If he can't articulate his thoughts — our thoughts — on the disgusting death of Saddam, then he has ceased to give leadership. His premiership is effectively over.

Boris Johnson is MP for Henley

    Blair silent about death of Saddam, DTel, 4.1.2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/01/04/do0401.xml

After the YouTube execution,

what now for death penalty?

Published: 04 January 2007
The Independent
By Justin Huggler

It was never meant to be a public execution. But two and a half minutes of jerky footage, shot with a mobile phone, brought the hanging of Saddam Hussein into living rooms across the world. By yesterday, it had provoked a wave of international condemnation, and put the question of capital punishment under renewed scrutiny.

"Welcome to the sordid world of the execution chamber, brought to you by the YouTube generation," Amnesty International said. More than half of all countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; Iraq has now rejoined the small number of countries where executions are routine and justice uncertain. That roll call includes China, Saudi Arabia, the US and Iran, where more than 90 per cent of executions are committed.

A total of 128 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Although 69 other countries retain the death penalty, the number of countries that actually execute prisoners in any year is much smaller.

Saddam's Iraq was notorious for arbitrary killings. He used torture, murders, targeted assassinations, and court-ordered executions to maintain an iron grip. One respected human rights organisation reported how he ordered public beheadings of women accused of being prostitutes. Their heads were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honour of Iraq".

His execution has come at a time when the death penalty is under more pressure than it has been for years. No less a figure than Governor Jeb Bush of Florida - whose brother, President George Bush, is a noted supporter of capital punishment - has just ordered a moratorium on executions in the state after a botched lethal injection in which the prisoner took twice as long as usual to die and is believed to have been in agony.

Executions have been suspended in California and Missouri after judges ruled lethal injection unconstitutional because the pain it causes amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

And a special commission in New Jersey yesterday recommended that the state become the first to abolish the death penalty since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

In the United States, new medical research that suggests lethal injection, the execution method in all but one state, is an extremely painful way to die, has reopened the debate.

Around the world, capital punishment is losing ground. In 2005, Mexico and Liberia became the latest countries to abolish the death penalty, bringing the number of countries that have no death penalty to 86; in 1977 there were 16.

Although thousands are still executed every year, just four countries account for 94 per cent of all executions: China, the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia. China accounts for most executions, sentencing people to death not only for murder, but for crimes including tax fraud, minor drug offences and non-violent theft. It has dropped its practice of forcing the relatives of the executed to pay for the bullet with which they are killed.

In Iran and Saudi Arabia, executions are still public. Criminals are beheaded with the sword in Saudi Arabia, and hanged from cranes in Iran, where children under the age of 18 are still executed.

Other countries that still commit significant numbers of executions include Vietnam, where information on how many death sentences have been carried out is classified as a state secret, and Pakistan. Now Amnesty International is warning of growing concern over the number of people being executed in Iraq.

Saddam executed thousands of Iraqis during his time in power. But in the end, the video of his own brutal execution may be two and a half minutes that reopened the debate on capital punishment.

Capital punishment across the world

53 The number of executions in the United States in 2006

10 The number of states which have put executions on hold after the botched execution of Angel Nieves Diaz in Florida last month. He took 34 minutes to die from a lethal injection

31 The number of years that one US citizen has been on death row. The Texan prisoner is scheduled to be executed this year for murder

68 The number of crimes carrying the death penalty in China. They include non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drugs offences

86 The number of prisoners executed in Saudi Arabia last year - almost half of whom were foreign nationals

4 The number of people executed in Japan on Christmas Day

94 The percentage of all known executions which took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US

6 The number of methods of execution: beheading (in Saudi Arabia, Iraq); electrocution (US); hanging (Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore and others); lethal injection (China, Guatemala, Philippines, Thailand, US); shooting (Belarus, China, Somalia, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and others) and stoning (Iran and Afghanistan)

18 The minimum age for the application of the death penalty according to international treaty

8 The number of child offenders executed in Iran in 2005

2,148 The total number of people executed in 2005, in 22 countries

    After the YouTube execution, what now for death penalty?, I, 4.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2124251.ece

Martin Rowson        The Guardian        p. 27        4.1.2007

Rut is the wrong word

January 4, 2007 11:55 AM
The Guardian
Andrew Murray


Some rut. I wonder how long Gordon Brown's advisers had to burn the midnight oil before settling on the r-word as the one to leak to the media as defining the PM-in-waiting's view of the government's Iraq policy.

"Rut". Just enough to sound critical - who wants to be in one after all? But not really very critical. You can be in a rut and still be facing in the right direction. Ruts are bad luck, nothing more.

It's smart positioning. Except this is a 650,000-dead rut. A whoops-we've-let-a-civil-war-start rut. The sort of rut we could all end up in if we disregarded world opinion and international law, invaded a country under false pretences and then let it go to hell under our supervision.

No, Gordon. "Rut" suits the policy of getting the same few companies in to provide IT for the public sector, and then see the projects over-run on cost and under-perform in practice time and again, for example. That's a rut.

But it just won't serve for a policy which has spent three years or more saying "we will leave Iraq just as soon as we've trained up a police force" and then spends Christmas storming a police station in Basra to capture it from the Iraqi police.

Nor does it seem suitable to describe backing an Iraqi "government" which has managed to turn Saddam Hussein from a rightly-reviled despot into a martyr-in-the-making by organising a travesty of a trial followed by a sectarian TV-spectacular of an execution. John Prescott spoke for Britain on this occasion.

A government whose puppet premier - the third in a row - is now apparently desperate to leave office only a few months after his appointment. And there's certainly no one snapping at Maliki's heels anxious to take over as soon as possible.

This is a rut in the sense that Stalingrad was a skirmish. But "rut" thinking is dangerous thinking. How do you get out of a rut? That's right - "one last push".

Two, not incompatible, variants of the "one last push" are now in the offing. There is President Bush's likely plan to send more troops to Baghdad, if he can overcome the opposition of the Democratic-led Congress. And there is Tony Blair's plan to up the ante with Iran, a central feature of his protracted "legacy" tour, if he can overcome common sense and the opposition of just about everyone. Night fever indeed.

Neither of these will work. They will only prolong the agony, add to the fatalities and broaden conflict in the region.

Nor is Brown's purported plan to deal with the crisis much better. It seems to amount to glorified displacement activity - talking more about global warming in the hope that voters will stop noticing the inferno raging in Iraq. As a strategy, this is nonsensical. The British public - who clearly want out of Iraq as soon as possible - won't be fooled, and the rest of the world will be disinclined to listen to Britain about anything else while we remain a party to Bush's Iraq catastrophe.

Truth is - if you're in a rut, sense starts with stopping revving the engine. Start by following the advice of Max Hastings and end Britain's unqualified subordination to US foreign policy. Recognise that neo-colonialism is even more dated and even less attractive than the Bee Gees. Give the public what they want - a timetable for a speedy withdrawal of British troops - and the Iraqis what they deserve - their full sovereignty back and massive compensation for the calamity we have caused.

    Rut is the wrong word, G, 4.1.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_murray/2007/01/rut_is_the_wrong_word.html

Brown camp say Iraq policy is 'in a rut'

Chancellor reveals international goals

Thursday January 4, 2007
Guardian
Larry Elliott, economics editor


Gordon Brown will seek to rid the government of the political stain from the war in Iraq by making free universal education and combating climate change two pillars of Labour's foreign policy if he becomes prime minister this year, it emerged today.

Amid fears in the Brown camp that his time in No 10 may be blighted by Tony Blair's support for George Bush in toppling Saddam Hussein, the chancellor is eager to broaden Labour's international focus in 2007. Mr Brown used an article in today's Guardian - his first political intervention of the new year - to call for the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007 to be used to improve primary schooling in the poorest countries.

Insiders in the chancellor's camp stressed that Mr Brown had no plans for a "cut and run" strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Britain retains a sizeable military presence, and that peace and stability in the Middle East would remain a foreign policy objective. They added, however, that a global deal to tackle climate change and a £10bn campaign for free schooling in the world's poorest countries would be given equal billing.

The move comes amid speculation in Washington that Mr Bush intends to send more troops to Iraq in a final attempt to end the violence of the past four years, and amid growing concern in Labour's ranks at the political price paid for the government's support of the White House.

Mr Brown said in the article that if the international community acted in 2007, "education could be the greatest gift" the rich world could give to the poorest countries, and he said the alternative was a breeding ground for extremists, with "fundamentalist indoctrination" filling the void left by the west's failure to act.

He writes: "Today education for all makes not just moral and economic sense, but strategic sense too.

"So the best way to commemorate the end of the slave trade in 1807 is to end the slavery of ignorance in 2007. Our goal is to ensure free education for every child, building the foundation of a truly free life for every adult, and we will commit to every child being at school, and achieve it within 10 years."

The chancellor supported the war in Iraq in 2003, and has provided extra funds in the years since to pay for the troops stationed there and in Afghanistan. He believes a UK military presence should be retained for as long as it is needed.

Sources close to Mr Brown admit, however, that Labour had got itself "in a rut" over Iraq, with the government hampered in the pursuit of other foreign policy goals by its commitment to the occupation.

The chancellor's strategy, should he succeed Mr Blair later this year, will be to dilute the influence of Iraq by moving other issues up the policy agenda. Foreign policy is seen as one of the key areas for political renewal under a Brown leadership, and he is keen to sketch out his ideas in the months before Mr Blair's departure.

Sources said the chancellor wanted to use Britain's international political capital to make progress on the environment and education. He will use last year's Stern report on the economics of climate change to argue that action to cut greenhouse gases is a foreign policy rather than a domestic policy issue.

On education, Mr Brown said Britain had already pledged £8.5bn over 10 years to pay for 15m additional school places, but that rich countries still needed to do more. He writes: "In the last few months, 22 African countries have committed to developing plans to ensure all their children have the facilities and teachers to complete primary education by 2015.

    Brown camp say Iraq policy is 'in a rut', G, 4.1.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1982348,00.html

A near-to-death experience

January 4, 2007 02:25 PM
Guardian
John Naughton

OK, I admit it: I've seen the video. But I was only obeying (editorial) orders, as they say. "This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community," warned the blurb. "By clicking 'Confirm' you are agreeing that all videos flagged by the YouTube community will be viewable by this account."

So I clicked Confirm. It was not an edifying experience, but the poor quality of the cameraphone video mitigated its ghastliness. It is shot from the stairs below the gallows platform. There's a lot of jostling and shouting in Arabic. The various pre-execution procedures are shown - the black cloth being placed around Saddam's neck, then the noose with its (to the uninitiated eye, anyway) ludicrously large knot. The rope has a lot of slack. More shouting. Saddam appears to smile, but given the quality of the video, it's impossible to be sure. Then he is pushed forward. Nothing happens for a bit, except that the camerawork deteriorates further, sometimes focusing on the stairs. Whoever's doing this is having trouble keeping their lens on the action.

Then there's a loud crack, and Saddam disappears. Suddenly, one understands why the rope had so much slack. The shouting increases in volume and intensity. The camera focuses jerkily on the stairs for a time. The cameraman is obviously ascending them for a better view. Then there are a few surreal frames of the executed man's face, now horizontal, which reminded one, bizarrely, of one of those art-movie sequences of a drowned man under water. Then fade to black.

I was the 811,625th person to view it, according to the YouTube statistics box. (Twelve hours later, the number of views was up to 993, 421). When I last looked, the video had attracted 4,774 comments and been "favorited" 3,725 times - which presumably means that people wanted to bookmark it for subsequent revisiting. Truly, there's no accounting for taste.

A random sampling of the comments confirmed that spell-checkers and shift keys are things of the past: "i dont know how he was so calm knowing he was ready to die," writes jcapt70proof; "i got queezy watching this and i personally dont believe in the death penalty...he should have been put in a cell and tortued til his death..the death penalty is a easy way out, nevertheless, hes a fucking piece of shit." Most commenters were deeply hostile to Saddam, but here and there one found isolated encomia. "Siddam you will remain in our hearts as a hero..we'll never forget u! ila ljannah ya sayyedi!" wrote Got2becool. This was too much for sparky130986. "remain in ur hearts u stupid fucking twat," s/he responded. "how wood u feel if he killed one of ur familly u wood hate him and he deserved 2 b killed. so should you if u like him he is dead now thankgod so get ova it."

Nothing new there, then: the commenting culture on YouTube has never been exactly deliberative. As someone memorably observed, if you provide a boxing ring, then people will fight in it. But we've become so accustomed to bizarre stuff turning up on the web that we are in danger of missing the significance of the Saddam death-video. Imagine if a guard in the Nuremberg prison on October 15 1946 had pointed a 16-mm film camera through the observation flap of Hermann Goering's cell door and captured the death throes of the Nazi brute. And then passed the film to Pathe News for worldwide distribution.

One only has to describe it to dismiss it as implausible. Yet something analogous has happened, and people shrug their shoulders. It was inevitable, they say. It's impossible to keep secrets in a networked world. User-generated content slips nimbly past the editorial gatekeepers who once decided what was fit for human consumption. Compare the distribution of the death-video via YouTube with the censored TV footage of the execution, which ended with the placing of the noose over the dictator's head.

Some people have argued that Google - YouTube's new owner - could have pulled the video, just as it regularly pulls copyright-infringing stuff. And so indeed it could. But that would not have prevented its distribution on the net via sites such as Dailymotion and LiveLeak. It could have been stopped at source - if the execution had been managed more adroitly. Of course, Saddam's death had to be witnessed; but there was no need for the unregulated scrum that can be seen on the YouTube video. And mobile phones ought to have been checked in at the door of the chamber. After all, that's what happens when you visit 10 Downing Street!

    A near-to-death experience, G, 4.1.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_naughton/2007/01/post_866.html

Death and Dignity

Iraq’s Government should learn lessons

from Saddam’s tawdry execution


January 04, 2007
The Times 

Two more of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle were due to be hanged at dawn this morning: his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikrit and Awad Ahmad al-Bandar, the former chief judge of the revolutionary court that ordered the massacre of 148 Shia villagers in 1980. The Iraqi Government should take very good care that these executions, at least, are carried out with more dignity and discipline than the tawdry and chaotic hanging of Saddam. The video film of the taunting as the former dictator stepped on to the gallows has done obvious and unnecessary damage — to the Iraqi administration in particular.

Washington has been quick to see the harm that this episode has done. An American military spokesman was blunt in distancing the US forces as much as possible from the execution, asserting that, had they been in charge, things would have been done differently. He insisted however, that the Iraqi Government alone was responsible for security at the execution block and for the haste in dispatching the former dictator so soon after his failed appeal. “This is a sovereign nation. They make their own decisions. They’re going to learn from each thing they do.” His statement sums up the allied dilemma. Both Washington and London are committed to handing over swiftly as much responsibility as possible to the elected Iraqi administration. Should such rapid disengagement continue, however, if it becomes clear that in key areas — policing, internal security, preventing sectarian attacks — the Government is neither capable nor willing to stop abuse?

At least, thankfully, Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, appears to have grasped the fiasco that has dangerously endowed Saddam with a reputation for courage and dignity as he went to a “martyr’s” death. The events on Saturday morning are to be investigated and those responsible for the illegal mobile telephone video punished. Mr al-Maliki needs to go farther: he must redouble efforts to reach out to the embittered Sunnis and assure them that future trials of Saddam’s associates will not be kangaroo courts and that the lynch mob is not an arm of government.

Most moderate Shia leaders have been embarrassed by the affair, as have almost all Western leaders. This is unlikely to appease all Sunnis, some of whom are searching for reasons to be outraged. The stream of people arriving to honour Saddam’s grave will grow, as will the calls for revenge. The Government desperately needs to impose greater discipline on the Shia militias, who now seem ready to answer Sunni sectarian violence with arbitrary ferocity. Indeed, unless the downward spiral can be halted, the chances of any orderly allied withdrawal seem remote. This is clearly behind the thinking of President Bush, who is poised to announce next week a temporary “surge” in US troop levels in order to bolster security, especially in Baghdad, and thereby quicken the final exit of all US forces.

Outsiders should be wary of condemning Iraqi attitudes to Saddam’s execution: the horrors they suffered during his long tyranny are unimaginable to most people in the West, and the indignities his victims endured far outweigh the mockery of his execution. Nevertheless, Iraq will only rise above its terrible past if it turns its back on such patterns of behaviour. That would be the best lesson that the Iraqi Government could now learn from this macabre affair.

    Death and Dignity, Ts, 4.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2530223,00.html

1.30pm update

Iraqi PM rules out second term

· Maliki: I wish I could step down
· Man held over Saddam video
· Co-accused 'to be executed Thursday'

Wednesday January 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Staff and agencies

Nuri al-Maliki has said he wants to step down as prime minister of Iraq, as one of his advisers revealed that a man accused of recording Saddam Hussein's execution on his mobile phone has been arrested.

In a candid interview with an American newspaper, Mr Maliki said the most difficult decision he had ever made was taking the prime ministerial post.

"I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again," he told the Wall Street Journal.

If offered a second term, he would not take it, and wishes to end his first term prematurely: "I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term," he said, adding: "I would like to serve my people from outside the circle of senior officials, maybe through the parliament, or through working directly with the people."

Man held over Saddam video

An unnamed adviser to Mr Maliki said today that the person being held over the Saddam execution video was an official who supervised the hanging.

The execution of Saddam, which was filmed on mobile phones and showed the deposed leader being taunted by prison officials, has inflamed sectarian tensions. The manner of the hanging has come in for heavy criticism from both Iraqis and the international community.

An Iraqi prosecutor present at the execution told the Associated Press that he saw two government officials taking video of the execution.

"They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," Munqith al-Faroon said.

US: hanging would have been carried out differently

Following the controversy surrounding the execution of Saddam, a US military official in Baghdad has said that they would have carried it out "very differently".

Major General William Caldwell said Saddam Hussein was dignified and courteous to US guards as they left him at a prison shortly before his execution.

He said the US had made no decisions concerning Saddam's hanging.

"If you're asking me 'would we have done things differently', yes we would have," he said.

Downing Street has said that an inquiry into what "went wrong" with the execution has the backing of Tony Blair, and distanced the prime minister from earlier comments by the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, who described the manner of the hanging as "deplorable".

Meanwhile, two men convicted with Saddam for crimes against humanity are likely to be executed tomorrow.

There are reports that Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, could be hanged as early as Thursday morning. The pair were due to be executed alongside Saddam, but it was postponed due to the religious holiday.

However, the government insisted that no date had been set yet. "This is not accurate information," a government aide is quoted as saying. "Most probably they will be executed next week after the holiday."

The two men were found guilty, along with Saddam, of the killings of 148 Shia men from Dujail in the 1980s.

Saddam was hanged on Saturday, the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday, just four days after the failure of their appeal.

    Iraqi PM rules out second term, G, 3.1.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1982002,00.html

12.30pm

Blair backs Saddam execution inquiry

Wednesday January 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Press Association

An inquiry into what "went wrong" with the execution of Saddam Hussein has the backing of Tony Blair, Downing Street said today.

But his spokeswoman would not endorse the assessment of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, that the manner of the hanging was "deplorable".

Mr Prescott - in charge of the country while Mr Blair is on holiday in Miami - had been expressing "his own view", she said.

Number 10 also insisted that Mr Blair "fully supports" his Iraqi counterpart, Nuri al-Maliki

The spokeswoman said: "The Iraqi government is going to conduct an inquiry into the manner in which the execution was conducted. We fully support that decision and believe it is the right thing to do."

She added: "As they have said, there were obviously things that went wrong."

Mobile phone footage seen by millions worldwide on internet sites showed verbal exchanges between Saddam, witnesses and guards, including people chanting the name of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and telling Saddam to "go to hell".

Mr Prescott yesterday said the "manner was quite deplorable really.

"To get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves."

Mr Blair, who is staying at the home of former Bee Gee Robin Gibb, has been criticised by some Labour MPs for failing to make an official statement about the execution.

The decision to use capital punishment put the British government - which opposes its use - in a difficult position and was forced to say it was for the Iraqis to decide.

The spokeswoman again insisted that the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, had spoken on behalf of the whole government in saying the UK was against the death penalty, but that Saddam had been "held to account".

Mr Blair's support for the Iraqi PM came after Mr Maliki said he would not seek a second term in a job he wished he could give up before even the end of his first.

"I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term," he told the Wall Street Journal.

"I didn't want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again."

Mr Blair's spokeswoman said: "The prime minister fully supports the prime minister of Iraq.

"He recognises he has a very difficult job to do and fully supports him in that role."

Asked if Mr Prescott's reaction - in a radio interview yesterday - mirrored the prime minister's position, the spokeswoman said: "As John Prescott made clear, he was expressing his own view.

"We have said we fully support the Iraqi government to investigate the manner in which the execution took place."

The US military said today that they would have handled the execution of the former dictator "differently".

Mr Blair's failure to give a public response to Saddam's hanging has angered some Labour MPs.

Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate) branded his lack of public reaction "amazing", while her colleague Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool Walton) said it was "yet another error in a long catalogue" on Iraq.

    Blair backs Saddam execution inquiry, G, 3.1.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1981993,00.html

Prescott condemns

film of Saddam's execution

January 03, 2007
The Times
Anthony Browne

John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, described the circumstances of Saddam Hussein’s execution as “quite deplorable” and “totally unacceptable” yesterday.

Mobile phone footage showed Saddam being taunted moments before his death by people attending his hanging, while he mocks their “bravery”. The film has been an embarrassment for America and Britain, as well as the Iraqi Government, which has begun an inquiry because of it.

Mr Blair, on holiday in Florida, has stayed silent about the execution, but Mr Prescott told the Today programme: “I think the manner was quite deplorable, really. Frankly, to get this kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.”

Mr Blair’s silence about the execution has been criticised by Labour MPs opposed to the Iraq war. Glenda Jackson branded his lack of public reaction “amazing”, while Peter Kilfoyle said it was “yet another error in a long catalogue” on Iraq.

    Prescott condemns film of Saddam's execution, Ts, 3.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2528934,00.html

Three officials arrested for filming Saddam hanging

January 03, 2007
Times Online

Ned Parker of The Times in Baghdad and Devika Bhat

Three prison officials have now been arrested for mocking Saddam Hussein in his last minutes alive and then posting on the internet a grotesque video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, The Times has learnt.

"Three people have been detained. They were prison officials," a government official said, requesting anonymity. "Two of them were chanting and one was filming with a mobile."

The government investigation had questioned the 20 men, including the 14 witnesses, who were in the gallows chamber, the official said.

He ruled out the possibility that any senior officials were behind posting the grisly footage on the Internet after one witness, prosecutor Munqith Faroun, said he had watched two government members film Saddam’s hanging with their cellphone cameras.

"I’m guessing they probably did film, but they didn’t release it," the official said.

The arrested prison officials had goaded Saddam with a chant popular among the followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, which one of them ended by shouting the fundamentalist leader’s name. "They were from Sadr City, but they were not militia men," the official said, referring to the Shia slum of

2.5 million people in eastern Baghdad, which Sadr controls through his Mahdi Army militia.

Earlier, Sadiq al-Rikabi, political adviser to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, told The Times that a guard was arrested Tuesday night after an inquiry was launched into who captured the graphic footage.

"This mistake was investigated and now the person who took this video and released it has been identified and arrested last night," Mr Rikabi told The Times.

"Now we will try to find out whether he did this on purpose, whether anyone asked him to take the footage, or did he do this not recognising the consequences."

Mr Rikabi reiterated that the Prime Minister had wanted the execution of the former dictator to be a sombre affair and that all the witnesses had their phones and cameras removed from them beforehand. "The PM did not want revenge; he wanted to implement justice," he said, adding of the arrested guard: "He will pay the price".

Mr al-Maliki had previously vowed to track down and punish those responsible for the unauthorised recording, which revealed the former dictator being taunted seconds before his death, with someone shouting "Go to hell".

Some earlier reports had focused on the alleged role of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who as National Security Adviser was one of the most senior officials present at the execution. The New York Times reported that Mr Rubaie was seen by Faroon, his fellow witness, holding a mobile phone camera up to record the proceedings.

But this was adamantly denied today by Mr Faroon, who insisted that he had not named anyone to the newspaper.

"I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures," he said. "But I saw two of the government officials who were...present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution.

"They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," he told the Associated Press.

Mr Rikabi said he did not see how a senior official could have secretly recorded the execution. "All of their mobile phones had been taken when they were waiting for the helicopter to take them from the Green Zone to Saddam’s execution."

The recording, which has been widely distributed across the internet, has brought widespread condemnation of the manner of Saddam’s execution and has proved a major embarrassment for the Iraqi government.

The grainy but disturbing images have entirely overshadowed the official footage of the death, which do not show the moment of the execution and give the impression of a dignified exit for the former President.

In Iraq, the widely distributed images have inflamed already bitter sectarian tensions between Shias and the Sunni minority, with thousands of the latter flocking to Saddam’s home town of Tikrit to mourn the late leader.

The issue has also been an irritant for Downing Street, which has had to balance Britain’s long-standing opposition to the death penalty with an insistence that Saddam’s fate was a matter for the Iraqi authorities. Tony Blair, who is staying at the Florida home of the former Bee Gee Robin Gibb, has been criticised by some Labour MPs for failing to make an official statement about the execution.

Today, a spokeswoman for Mr Blair said that the inquiry into what "went wrong" had the backing of the Prime Minister, but she refused to endorse comments made yesterday by John Prescott, his deputy, who said that the manner of the hanging was "deplorable".

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the US military said that the execution would have been handled differently if under their control. "If you’re asking me if we would have done things differently, yes we would have," said Major General William Caldwell. "But that’s not our decision, that’s the Government of Iraq’s decision," he said.

The Iraqi Government has arrested a prison guard for filming and posting on the internet a video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, The Times has learnt.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, political adviser to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, said that a guard was arrested last night after an inquiry was launched into who captured the grisly footage, which included the actual moment of Saddam’s death and taunts made against him.

"This mistake was investigated and now the person who took this video and released it has been identified and arrested last night," Mr Rikabi told The Times.

"Now we will try to find out whether he did this on purpose, whether anyone asked him to take the footage, or did he do this not recognising the consequences."

Mr Rikabi said that only the guard recorded the execution, contradicting the claim by one witness, prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, that two officials had also filmed the hanging. "The inquiry said that it was only one person," Mr Rikabi said. "All of the witnesses have been investigated."

However, the allegations by Mr Faroon, the chief prosecutor in Saddam's second trial on charges of genocide for his 1988 military campaign against the Kurds, left open the possibility that the probe was covering up for higher officials.

Mr Rikabi reiterated that the Prime Minister had wanted the execution of the former dictator to be a sombre affair and that all the witnesses had their phones and cameras removed from them beforehand. "The PM did not want revenge; he wanted to implement justice," he said, adding of the arrested guard: "He will pay the price".

Mr al-Maliki had previously vowed to track down and punish those responsible for the unauthorised recording, which revealed the former dictator being taunted seconds before his death, with someone shouting "Go to hell".

Some earlier reports had focused on the alleged role of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who as National Security Adviser was one of the most senior officials present at the execution. The New York Times reported that Mr Rubaie was seen by Faroon, his fellow witness, holding a mobile phone camera up to record the proceedings.

But this was adamantly denied today by Mr Faroon, who insisted that he had not named anyone to the newspaper.

"I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures," he said. "But I saw two of the government officials who were...present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution.

"They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," he told the Associated Press.

Mr Rikabi said he did not see how a senior official could have secretly recorded the execution. "All of their mobile phones had been taken when they were waiting for the helicopter to take them from the Green Zone to Saddam’s execution."

The government had not been able to search the five prison guards, who were already at the execution building when the 14 official witnesses arrived, Mr Rikabi said.

Nonetheless, Mr Faroon said he thought some officials' bodyguards, who had traveled by car, smuggled the camera phones to the two officials he had seen taking the video pictures.

The recording, which has been widely distributed across the internet, has brought widespread condemnation of the manner of Saddam’s execution and has proved a major embarrassment for the Iraqi government.

It reveals people jeering at the ousted leader, and chanting the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia Muslim cleric, as the rope is slipped around his neck. The actual moment when the trapdoor is opened, complete with a close-up of Saddam's lifeless face still swinging from the rope, is also shown.

The grainy but disturbing images have entirely overshadowed the official footage of the death, which do not show the moment of the execution and give the impression of a dignified exit for the former President.

In Iraq, the widely distributed images have inflamed already bitter sectarian tensions between Shias and the Sunni minority, with thousands of the latter flocking to Saddam’s home town of Tikrit to mourn the late leader.

The issue has also been an irritant for Downing Street, which has had to balance Britain’s long-standing opposition to the death penalty with an insistence that Saddam’s fate was a matter for the Iraqi authorities. Tony Blair, who is staying at the Florida home of the former Bee Gee Robin Gibb, has been criticised by some Labour MPs for failing to make an official statement about the execution.

Today, a spokeswoman for Mr Blair said that the inquiry into what "went wrong" had the backing of the Prime Minister, but she refused to endorse comments made yesterday by John Prescott, his deputy, who said that the manner of the hanging was "deplorable".

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the US military said that the execution would have been handled differently if under their control. "If you’re asking me if we would have done things differently, yes we would have," said Major General William Caldwell. "But that’s not our decision, that’s the Government of Iraq’s decision," he said.

    Three officials arrested for filming Saddam hanging, Ts, 3.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2529472,00.html

Without that shaky video

we'd still be in the dark

January 03, 2007
The Times
Rosemary Behan

Why, one wonders, does the Iraqi Government need an “inquiry” into the taunting of Saddam Hussein in the moments before his death on Saturday? Having appointed specially selected victims of Saddam’s regime as executioners, one would have thought the reasons for the former dictator’s torment at the gallows were perfectly obvious. Nouri al-Maliki, the country’s Prime Minister, personally sifted through hundreds of e-mail applications for the post of hangman, each with a personal grudge.

Thus it was no surprise that, with the noose around his neck, Saddam was personally abused and forced to listen to chants of support for the radical Shia cleric, Moqtadr al-Sadr. This doesn’t take anything away from the nature of the execution, which anyone with an ounce of humanity will have found revolting. Some would have found it revolting even without the added verbal abuse.

It was indeed horrible to witness how yet another stab at “justice” for the Iraqi people simply degenerated into further fuel for the cycle of revenge. Surrounded by a vengeful, baying mob, Saddam ends up as the person in the room with the most dignity — a perverse reversal of everything the hanging was supposed to achieve. Yesterday Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, condemned the leaking of the mobile phone video footage as “extremely damaging on all fronts”.

Well, of course it’s damaging. But why is Mr al-Rubaie concerned not about what happened, but that we have all seen a video of what happened? It was no coincidence that at the same time that the Iraqi Government announced its investigation into the taunts, it also launched a “clampdown” on media coverage in Iraq of the execution.

It is, of course, too late for that now. But given that Mr al-Rubaie was present at the gallows on Saturday, couldn’t he have done something to stop the taunts, perhaps with a little prior planning of the event, instead of wanting to shoot the messenger? John Prescott, who commented on the matter on the Today programme, should also have been clearer. “Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages (that we have seen) coming out is totally unacceptable,” he said, “and I think whoever was involved or responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.” So was he attacking what happened, or the leaking of what happened? Worryingly, his words suggest the latter.

Even more chilling than the actions of Saddam’s guards is the thought that without the escape of this amateur video we would still be in the dark about what really happened, and about the true and apparently now official nature of the sectarian forces driving Iraq.

In that we must be thankful for the truth, however sordid it is.

    Without that shaky video we'd still be in the dark, Ts, 3.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-2528481,00.html

4pm

New high in Iraqi civilian deaths

Tuesday January 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Agencies


A record number of Iraqi civilians were killed last year, figures released by Iraq's interior ministry showed today.
The data said 12,320 Iraqi civilians had died in what officials described as "terrorist violence", Reuters reported.

Almost 2,000 of those were killed in December - more than three times the number of deaths in January - and the figures also showed that 1,231 policeman and 602 Iraqi soldiers died in 2006.

Sectarian violence between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslims increased dramatically after the bombing of the golden domed al-Askari shrine, in Samarra, by Sunni extremists last February.

The new year has already seen a number of violent killings. Yesterday, Iraqi police reported finding 40 handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad.

It was reported that 15 of the bodies were found in the mainly industrial Sheik Omar district in the north of the city.

The number of deaths is likely to be seen as an underestimate when compared with figures calculated by outside organisations.

The UN reported that, according to data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, 3,700 civilians had died in October alone - a figure Iraqi officials said was exaggerated. UN data shows that around 120 civilians are killed in Iraq every day.

Violence continued in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's execution on Saturday. Immediately after the execution, more than 70 people were killed in a series of car bombs in Shia neighbourhoods.

A US soldier died when a roadside bomb exploded south-west of Baghdad yesterday, injuring three others, while another roadside blast in the east of the capital killed three Iraqi civilians and wounded seven others.

However, relatively peaceful protests against the hanging of the former president have also been taking place in Sunni areas across the country.

Yesterday, hundreds of demonstrators mourned Saddam in a Sunni neighbourhood of northern Baghdad, while in Dor, 77 miles north of the capital, hundreds more marched to the dedication of a giant mosaic of him.

The US president, George Bush, is believed to be set to unveil a new strategy for the Iraq conflict, which is becoming increasingly unpopular in the US.

At least 112 US soldiers died in December - the deadliest month for American troops in more than two years - while the total number of US soldiers killed in Iraq stands at more than 3,000.

A new Washington strategy for Iraq could include an increase of between 15,000 and 30,000 combat troops.

    New high in Iraqi civilian deaths, G, 2.1.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1981434,00.html

3.30pm update

Iraq to investigate

filming of Saddam execution

Tuesday January 2, 2007
Agencies
Guardian Unlimited

The Iraqi government will investigate how the hanging of Saddam Hussein came to be filmed and images of his death broadcast around the world, it was announced today.

The showing of footage of Saddam's last moments has been widely condemned, and is feared likely to further inflame tensions in an already volatile situation.

Film of the former Iraqi president's execution on Saturday lasts for two and a half minutes and is thought to have been filmed on a mobile phone.

It shows him being taunted by prison officials, who tell him to "go to hell", and chant the name "Moqtada", a reference to Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric and leader of the Mahdi army militia. Saddam seems to respond by sarcastically repeating Mr Sadr's name.

An aide to the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said the government was investigating how Saddam had been filmed on the gallows, turning his execution into a televised spectacle.

Reuters reported that Khudayer al-Khuzai said it appeared some guards had violated instructions not to bring mobile phones or cameras.

"The Iraqi government is going to have an investigation into what happened," Mr Khuzai is quoted as saying.

"This operation should be done with the highest standards of discipline and with respect for the condemned man, both when he's alive and once he's dead. Anything that did not meet those standards should be accounted for."

A film released earlier to Iraqi television stopped short of showing Saddam's death, but the latest footage - which is on video-sharing websites such as YouTube - shows his death.

It reveals that the trapdoor beneath his feet was opened as he was in the middle of praying - likely to further enrage his supporters.

Sunni Muslims today gathered to show their anger and grief over Saddam's death.

Earlier today, John Prescott condemned the video during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable," he said. "I think whoever's involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves

    Iraq to investigate filming of Saddam execution, G, 2.1.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1981352,00.html

11.15am

Manner of Saddam's execution deplorable,

says Prescott

Tuesday January 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Paul Owen and agencies

John Prescott has condemned the mode of Saddam Hussein's execution as deplorable.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, the deputy prime minister said: "I think the manner was quite deplorable, really.

"I don't think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment."

Presumably referring to videos of the execution now circulating on websites, Mr Prescott added: "Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable.

"I think whoever's involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves."

Asked whether, by that, he meant the Iraqi government, the deputy prime minister - the government's most senior figure while Tony Blair is on holiday - said: "If they are responsible I'll pass my comments on and that's where I stand."

The interview with Mr Prescott follows the emergence of a full, graphic video - seemingly filmed on a mobile phone - of the former Iraqi dictator's execution, which took place on Saturday.

The two-and-a-half minute film, available to view on video-sharing websites such as YouTube, shows Saddam being taunted by hangmen and witnesses, who tell him to "Go to hell" and chant the name "Moqtada", presumably a reference to Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric and leader of the Mahdi army militia.

Saddam - whose reign favoured those of his own, minority Sunni faith - seems to respond by sarcastically repeating Mr Sadr's name.

In scenes which may further inflame restive Sunni Iraqis, the trapdoor beneath Saddam is released while he is in the middle of his prayers. It is not known who filmed the footage or whether its release was officially sanctioned. A previous video released to Iraqi television ends before the moment of Saddam's death.

Labour MPs have criticised Mr Blair for refusing to make an official statement about the execution.

Glenda Jackson branded his lack of public reaction "amazing" while Peter Kilfoyle said it was "yet another error in a long catalogue" on Iraq.

Mr Blair has previously underlined Britain's opposition to the death penalty but stressed it was for the Iraqis to decide the fate of their former president.

During his monthly press conference on November 6, Mr Blair said: "We are against the death penalty, whether it's Saddam or anybody else.

"However, what I think is important about this is to recognise that this trial of Saddam, which has been handled by the Iraqis themselves and they will take the decision about this, does give us a very clear reminder of the total and barbaric brutality of that regime.

"That does not alter our position on the death penalty at all, but it simply does give us a reminder of that."

Downing Street insisted that the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, "spoke on behalf of the whole government" when she said that Saddam had been "held to account" but added: "We do not support the use of the death penalty... We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime."

Mr Prescott - who began this morning's interview by emphasising "I'm very happy to put my name to whatever I say today" - said: "I'm just making the point that, in fact, those circumstances of the hanging of Saddam, without doubt, to have those kinds of comments is unacceptable and whoever was responsible should be condemned for it."

Asked if ministers had conveyed this to the authorities in Baghdad, Mr Prescott said: "I think we have made it clear what the government's position is on the death penalty and that has been communicated as Margaret Beckett has said."

In tense exchanges, Mr Prescott refused to discuss the matter further, insisting: "I couldn't have given you a clearer answer.

"I am sure it will be controversial but I have given you my view... I don't think we can say any more than that."

The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, said on Saturday that he "welcomed" the fact that Saddam had been "tried by the Iraqi courts for at least some of the crimes he committed".

He added: "The verdict and sentencing of Saddam is a matter for Iraqi law and for the Iraqi justice system."

The Liberal Democrats' leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, said: "Saddam Hussein's death does not vindicate in any way the ill-conceived and disastrous decision to invade Iraq.

"His execution does not make an illegal war legal any more than it will put an end to the violence and destruction."

    Manner of Saddam's execution deplorable, says Prescott, G, 2.1.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1981339,00.html

Saddam was model prisoner,

says nurse

· Captured tyrant fed birds and rarely complained

· Cigar smoking and poetry reading helped pass time

Tuesday January 2, 2007
Guardian
Brian Whitaker and agencies

Saddam Hussein was mostly an uncomplaining prisoner who saved crumbs to feed the birds, watered weeds in the jail compound and believed that cigars were good for his health, according to a military nurse who cared for him in US custody.

Master Sergeant Robert Ellis told an American newspaper he had checked Saddam's health twice a day, with orders to do whatever was needed to keep him alive. "That was my job: to keep him alive and healthy, so they could kill him at a later date," he said in an interview with the St Louis Post-Dispatch published on Sunday.

Saddam maintained that cigars and coffee kept his blood pressure down. The remedy seemed to work, Sgt Ellis said, and he insisted on the nurse smoking with him.

For security reasons, the ex-president was never referred to in jail by his real name, but his codename - "Victor".

He slept in a 1.8 metre by 2.4 metre (6ft by 8ft) cell with a small table, two plastic chairs, a prayer mat, two washbasins and some books, including the Qur'an.

In case his health took a sudden turn for the worse, an adjoining cell held basic medical supplies, a defibrillator, intravenous solutions and oxygen.

Sgt Ellis, who cared for the captured tyrant at Camp Cropper from January 2004 to August 2005, said Saddam never gave him trouble. "When he was with me, he was in a different environment. I posed no threat. In fact, I was there to help him, and he respected that."

He did not complain much, Mr Ellis said - "he had very good coping skills" - and if he did complain it was usually a reasonable grievance. At one point he went on hunger strike because the guards were sliding food to him though a slot in the door but he started eating again when they delivered it to him in person. "He refused to be fed like a lion," Sgt Ellis said.

When he was allowed short visits outdoors, Saddam would feed birds with bread saved from his meals and water a patch of weeds. "He said he was a farmer when he was young and he never forgot where he came from," Sgt Ellis said.

He also read poetry to the nurse and recalled telling bedtime stories to his children. He appeared to have no regrets about the way he had ruled Iraq. "He said everything he did was for Iraq. One day when I went to see him, he asked why we invaded. Well, he made gestures like shooting a machine gun and asked why soldiers came and shot up the place. He said the laws in Iraq were fair and the weapons inspectors didn't find anything.

"I said, 'That's politics. We soldiers don't get caught up in that sort of thing.'"

Protests over Saddam's hanging continued in parts of the Middle East yesterday, with his eldest daughter, Raghad, making a brief public appearance in the Jordanian capital, Amman, where hundreds of demonstrators had gathered.

    Saddam was model prisoner, says nurse, G, 2.1.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1981148,00.html

Saddam execution video is 'deplorable',

says Prescott

January 02, 2007
Times Online and PA News

John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, has described the manner of Saddam Hussein’s execution as "deplorable" and denounced leaked recordings of his final moments as "totally unacceptable".

Mr Prescott's comments were the first by a British minister since the release of mobile phone footage of the former Iraqi dictator being tormented and insulted by guards and witnesses seconds before his death on Saturday morning.

The images, which have been widely distributed across the internet, reveal Saddam being told to "go to hell" and include people chanting the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia Muslim cleric, as the rope is secured around the ex-President’s neck.

The actual moment of his execution, complete with a close-up of Saddam's lifeless face still swinging from the trapdoor, is also shown.

Asked about the execution on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Prescott said: "I think the manner was quite deplorable really. I don’t think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment."

He added: "Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves."

He refused to elaborate on whether the responsibility lay with the Iraqi Government, saying: "If they are responsible, I pass my comment and that’s where I stand.

"I am just making the point that, in fact, those circumstances of the hanging of Saddam... without doubt, to have those kinds of comments is unacceptable and whoever is responsible should be condemned for it."

Asked whether the British Government had conveyed the sentiment to the authorities in Baghdad, Mr Prescott said: "I think we have made it clear what the Government’s position is on the death penalty and that has been communicated as Margaret Beckett has said."

It is not known who filmed the amateur footage or whether its release was officially sanctioned. The Iraqi government has launched an investigation into the matter, describing the chanting and calling of slogans as "inappropriate". There are concerns that the images, which have caused outcry in the Arab world, will trigger further violence in Iraq.

Tony Blair has been criticised by some of his own MPs for refusing to make an official statement about the execution. Glenda Jackson branded his lack of public reaction "amazing" while Peter Kilfoyle said it was "yet another error in a long catalogue" on Iraq.

The Prime Minister has previously underlined Britain’s opposition to the death penalty but stressed it was for the Iraqis to decide the fate of their ousted leader.

Downing Street insisted that Ms Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, spoke on behalf of the whole Government in saying that Saddam had been "held to account", but adding: "We do not support the use of the death penalty ... we advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime."

Saddam execution video is 'deplorable', says Prescott, Ts, 2.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2527151,00.html

How Saddam died on the gallows

· Leaked film reveals chaotic end
· Taunts and insults hurled
· Sectarian backlash fear

Monday January 1, 2007
Guardian
Ewen MacAskill and Michael Howard

Camera footage of the final minutes of Saddam Hussein released yesterday shows him being taunted by Shia hangmen and witnesses, a scene that risks increasing sectarian tension in Iraq.

As he stood at the gallows, he was tormented by the hooded executioners or witnesses shouting at him to "Go to hell" and chanting the name "Moqtada", the radical Shia Muslim cleric and leader of the Mahdi army militia, Moqtada al-Sadr, and his family.

The grainy images, which appeared to have been taken on a mobile phone, disclose exchanges between Saddam and his tormentors, the moment when his body drops through the trapdoor, and his body swinging, eyes partly open and neck bent out of shape. In what Sunni Muslims will perceive as a further insult, the executioners released the trapdoor while the former dictator was in the middle of his prayers.

Sunni Muslims, who were dominant under Saddam, but are now the victims of sectarian death squads, will see the shambolic nature of the execution as further evidence of the bias of the Shia-led government. They have repeatedly claimed that the Iraqi government, helped by the US and British, conducted a show trial, based on revenge rather than justice.

Saddam's team of defence lawyers claimed that the hanging had been simply "victors' justice".

The unruly scenes will also dismay the US and British governments, that are also privately alarmed at the sectarian bias of the government, led by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. The US and Britain believe at least some members of the Iraqi government are complicit in sectarian killings, particularly by members of the police force.

The Iraqi government last night denied the execution had been sectarian or designed for revenge. Hiwa Osman, an adviser to the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, told the BBC: "This whole execution is about justice."

As Saddam was buried in this home village, Awja, outside Tikrit, yesterday morning, the leaked footage appeared on the internet and on Arabic television stations. While Saddam was professing Muhammad as God's prophet, he was interrupted by shouts. One of the people observing the execution chants "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada". Saddam dismissively repeats the name Moqtada. The noose around his neck, he appears to smile and shoots back: "Do you consider this bravery?"

Another voice shouts at him to "Go to hell". Saddam, seemingly accusing his enemies of destroying the country he once led, replies: "The hell that is Iraq?"

A Shia shouts "Long live Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr," a member of Moqtada's family thought to have been assassinated by Saddam's security services. Another onlooker pleads for dignity: "Please don't, the man is facing execution. Please don't. I beg you, no!"

As Saddam continues with his prayers, saying "I profess that there is no God but God and that Muhammad ...", the executioners release the trapdoor. There is a shout: "The tyrant has fallen."

Although many Sunni Muslims also suffered under him and were glad to see him go, the manner in which the execution was carried out will have created some sympathy for Saddam. The fact that the execution took place at the start of the main Muslim religious holiday will further inflame Sunni opinion.

The tit-for-tat killings between the majority Shias, who suffered badly under Saddam, and the previously dominant Sunnis, has created a de facto civil war that could break up the country. Sunni insurgents, particularly a branch of al-Qaida, have sought to fan the civil war by carrying out a series of devastating car bomb attacks on Shia population centres, particularly Sadr City in Baghdad and towns such as Hilla and Najaf.

The response among Sunnis to the hanging and the video was to swear revenge. A man from Mosul, a mixed city in the north, told Reuters: "The Persians have killed him. I can't believe it. By God, we will take revenge." He was referring to Iraq's new leaders' ties to Shia Iran, and the Shia in general.

Accusations that the government had mishandled the execution were not confined to Sunni regions. In the Kurdish region, there was also criticism. "This execution should have been for all of Saddam's victims, and instead they have hijacked it and turned it into a sectarian event," said Anwar Abdullah, a student at the technical institute of Sulaymaniyah.

Rebwar Suliman, 21, whose uncle and grandfather were killed by Saddam's secret police in Kurdistan in the 1980s, said: "It does a dishonour to the Kurds."

Saddam was buried in the dead of night, prompting an outpouring of grief and anger from fellow members of his tribe and other Sunni Arabs. His body was flown by US military helicopter to Tikrit and then taken to the village where he was born.

Hundreds of mourners visited his tomb inside a marble-floored hall built by Saddam. Others attended the Great Saddam Mosque in Tikrit.

The funeral came as it was reported that the US death toll in Iraq since the invasion had reached 3,000. The US military had disclosed yesterday that an American soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday, the 2,999th death since the invasion in 2003. But the website www.icasualties.org, yesterday also listed the death of Specialist Dustin Donica, 22, on December 28 as previously unreported, bringing the total to 3,000.

George Bush is expected to face renewed domestic political pressure following the latest milestone. Although the 3,000 figure is symbolically important for Americans, Iraqis suffer that rate of casualties on a monthly basis.

How Saddam died on the gallows, G, 1.1.2007,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980902,00.html