John Mackay

Scott Horton over at Harpers in his article DOD Claim of Capture of “Senior Al-Qaeda Figure” Draws Questions raises some ummm… important questions.

As I read though my list of daily news feeds what I found surprising was the sheer number of stories in the last 24hrs relating to the capture of this al-Qaeda figure or that al-Qaeda group which I thought interesting and no doubt Scott at Harpers thought so too.

As Scott points out, the story regarding the apprehension of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi,“one of al-Qaeda’s highest-ranking and experienced senior operatives” happened five months ago?!

These and other related al-Qaeda stories smacks of the Whitehouse attempting to spin the perception of success in an otherwise sea of failure stories circling around it’s beseiged administration.

Rupert Murdoch feels that he and the Washington Post are the embattled ones in the quest to deliver us from the propaganda of lies and hate.

In a speech yesterday at the Milken event he complained about the monolithic attacks on George Bush every day of the year claiming that “the atmosphere is absolutely toxic.”

He went on to say that “alleged climate changes” and other problems are far more manageable than is the threat of Islamic terror, which will worsen significantly if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

The mantra “Iran must not get nuclear weapons” has been repeated so often now that most people have come to believe that Iran has them, or is getting them. This implication is completely unproven. The tragedy would be that in the end the Bush Administration may goad Iran into a real nuclear-weapons program ably assisted by modern day media Goebels like Murdoch et al.

Rupert also “lamented the difficulties he has had in doing business with China, where, “the fact is, media is pretty much closed.” I imagine the Chinese have similar concerns that Chavez had in Venezuela where he canceled Radio Caracas Television’s license because of their failure to report accurately on the events of the two-day coup in 2002.

Perhaps the lesson for Rupert is that wearing your politics on your sleeve is not always good for business.

A lot of people take photos. No, seriously. A lot of people. But the number of people who actually do something with their photographs are an absolute minority. I decided to catch up with a friend of mine -- Jason -- to see how he turned his hobby into a multi-million, global sales success. Okay, [...]

Both General Pettraus in his closed session address to congress today and former Iraq interim Prime Minister has said in Doha this week that the solution in Iraq is a political solution.

The keys to this political solution according to Iyad Allawi and many who follow the Iraq issue lies in national reconciliation but it is the very lack of a withdrawal time line that has seen every effort to gain real consensus and commitment to National Reconciliation fail. More pointedly the lack of a withdrawal time line was the primary cause for the departure of the Sadrist block from government and a still looming threat of Sunni members to abandon government also.

It’s time for George and Cheney to abandon the tired message discipline of “stay the course” and demonstrate they have a genuine interest in the welfare of their own troops and that of Iraqi’s in general and announce a withdrawal time line.

I think if we want a crystal ball into US/Iraq troubles we should be looking a the Soviet/Afghanistan experience before, during and after the Soviet invasion--the parallels are disturbing.

Svetlana Savranskaya detailed the Soviet experience in Afghanistan over at the National Security Archives in 2001. In the following quotations you can just swap the words ‘Afghanistan’ for ‘Iraq’ and ‘Soviet’ for ‘U.S.’ and strangely you feel you’re reading about the U.S. troubles in Iraq. She noted:

“Afghanistan did not fit into the mental maps and ideological constructs of the Soviet leaders. Their analysis of internal social processes in Afghanistan was done through the conceptual lens of [of their own political doctrine], which blinded the leadership to the realities of traditional tribal society. Believing that there was no single country in the world, which was not ripe for socialism”

In much the same way that Wolfowitz et al believed that the Iraqi’s were ripe for democracy and discounting the “realities of traditional tribal society” lying below the surface just waiting to be unleashed under the right conditions.

She goes on to describe how the Afghan communist government was never a unified party and that

“…it was split along ethnic and tribal lines. The infighting between the ‘Khalq’ and the ‘Parcham’ factions made the tasks of controlling the situation much more challenging for Moscow… [including] …underestimation of ethnic tensions within Afghan society was one of the reasons of the unsuccessful policy of national reconciliation.”

As we have seen over recent weeks the crumbling of National Reconciliation in Iraq with the departure of the Sadrist’s from government and the threat of of the Sunni block to also leave due to their long term concerns about the absence of a withdrawal time line.

Svetlana goes on to say:

“The Soviet Army also quickly realized the inadequacy of its preparation and planning for the mission in Afghanistan. The initial mission—to guard cities and installations—was soon expanded to combat, and kept growing over time. [and] While the formal mission of the troops was to protect the civilians from the anti-government forces, in reality, Soviet soldiers often found themselves fighting against the civilians they intended to protect, which sometimes led to indiscriminate killing of local people. …while the regular Afghan army was often unreliable because of the desertions and lack of discipline.”

Again one of the things noted is the constantly evolving mission creep for troops who I imagine have no clear understanding of what the mission is from one month to the next as well as the same complaints regarding Iraqi army unreliability due to desertions and lack of discipline .

What is more telling is that the Soviets knew there was no military solution six years before they pulled out of Afghanistan. Some thirty years after the Soviet invasion Afghanistan is still racked by symptoms of a civil war and is considered by many to be a failed state. More pointedly the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan is seen as playing a central role in the rapid rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Central Asian republics and the delegitimization of Communist Party rule ultimately leading to its collapse.

What is that saying? Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it

I won’t pretend to say that I understand the reasons why Donald Rumsfeld failed to provide sufficient troop numbers to secure and stabilize Iraq. I won’t pretend that I understand why his office made sure that Iraq Command requests for more troops during the early stages of Phase IV (stabilization and recovery) of the invasion never arrived at Rumsfeld’s desk. Media Matters reported

As we all know Rumsfeld resigned in the face of mounting criticism but to date the required number of troops to secure and maintain order have never been provided.

America doesn’t need 20,000 extra troops on the ground, they need 100,000 extra troops which in combination with Iraqi military and police would bring total peace-keeping forces to 450,000 which is the number identified as required in order to maintain order.

I don’t suppose anyone ever expected the likes of Paul Bremmer or John Bolton to be Iraq Invasion apologists but it is telling to hear their views when questioned on some of the crucial failures surrounding America’s involvement in Iraq.

When Paul Bremer, former U.S. Administrator of Iraq was asked at the close of a paid speech at Clark University in 2005 on his opinion of the $9 billion missing from the funds to rebuild Iraq he replied:

“I suggest you not worry, as that $9 billion was Iraqi money, not US money.”

Disturbingly, this cavalier indifference reflects the callousness and contempt of one of the principle architects and catalysts or Iraq’s ongoing failure.

More recently former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was interviewed by the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman in Iraq 4 years on where John Bolton said:

“I don’t think there is an American interest in what kind of Iraq emerges from the present circumstances. I think the American strategic interest is that no part of Iraq be used as a terrorist base against us.”

Jeremy Paxman then details the contradiction in this by quoting a statement previously made by former U.N. Ambassador Bolton:

“So when you said the United States remained committed to a democratic, unified and prosperous Iraq you were just spouting the party line were you?”

Incredibly, a red faced Bolton admits to Paxman that he was simply following White House policy when he made that statement. A somewhat exasperated Paxman continued:

“What do you say to people who say Ok, Saddam Hussein was a Dictator but [Iraq] wasn’t then a failed state and it wasn’t a haven for terrorists and that’s precisely what you’ve created in Iraq”

John Bolton then proceeds to tell Paxman about how he would rather live in a failed state than a dictatorship.

John Bolton should be careful what he wishes for. The problem with human indifference is that it makes everything it touches meaningless.

I have noticed the recent attempts by the UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR) to get camps going again for refugees. This is a very bad sign as it indicates a worsening situation. Additionally, as previous history has shown both in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan these refugee warehouses act like fast breeder reactors for terrorists.

Saudi Arabia has already committed 7 billion dollars to building a containment fence along its entire border with Iraq to keep refugees out. One member of Saudi government has intimated that they will intervene massively to prevent a Sunni bloodshed.

Kurdistan is already talking about annexing Kirkuk and a refugee crisis for them is likely to spark tensions and more calls for independence. This will upset the Turks and the Iranians both of whom have been running limited military forays into Iraq in recent months with Turkey threatening a hardened military response against the PKK.

Jordan and Syria have seen their populations increase by 10-12% respectively through the influx of refugees. For perspective imagine Australia taking on 2 million refugees in one hit and imagine how we’d cope. It has nearly doubled their inflation. These refugees have been largely middle class and have paid their way but it still has a significant affect on religious and economic demographics which in itself can give birth to domestic militancy.

European countries are having their own problems with Sweden taking some 2000 Iraqis and Germany expelling many political refugees from Saddam’s era.

Troop numbers alone to administer the camps are estimated at 70,000. Without appropriate security the spillover affects are almost guaranteed to create further conflict as insurgents use the camps as bases, training areas etc. to run cross border raids which ultimately promotes a state response which can anger another country which gets involved as today’s media reports below illustrate.

Turkey Turns up the Heat in Northern Iraq threatening air strikes against PKK terrorist camps located in Iraq which it says the U.S has done nothing to clean out since it’s invasion of Iraq 3 years ago.

In response Iraq president Talabani warns Turkey and Iran “expressed his anger over neighbors Iran and Turkey for interfering in Iraq’s domestic affairs, warning Baghdad could reciprocate.”

All the ingredients for a regional conflict are now on the table.

In an artful display of political sleight of hand, both the Republican Administration of the United States and The Government of Australia have ingeniously decided to “resettle up to 200 refugees processed in the other country every year.”

The Mutual Assistance Arrangement reported by news.com.au quoting Australian Minister for Immigration Kevin Andrews states:

“Under this arrangement, the US will consider people who arrive in excised offshore places and have been taken to Nauru for further processing…”

Methinks someone’s too clever for their own good.

To explain from the U.S perspective, there has been a record of complaints levied by some South American refugee groups including Haiti that the United states was employing a two tiered refugee process that was biased in favour of Cubans. In response to this, the then Clinton Administration implemented a policy of repatriating Cuban refugees who had not landed on U.S. soil back to Cuba.

Whilst this policy has gone some way to ameliorating concerns by other ethnic refugee groups it angered the large Cuban ex-pat constituency based in Florida as exampled during the 2004 U.S. elections and discussed in The CarpetBagger Report: Republicans, the 2004 Election, and the Cuban-American vote

“Cuban Americans have always opposed the policy and hoped Bush would back them on refusing to return these 12 would-be immigrants to Castro for punishment. At a minimum, they argued, the 12 should be sent to a third country.“

I can only assume that in response to this Cuban constituency backlash that the U.S has artfully come upon the idea of simply sending these Cuban refugees to Australia as a means of meeting the concerns of all refugee groups--Cubans included.

Am I being cynical? I think not. To explain if it was not about this then why isolate just Cubans for the exchange program with Australia?

For the second time since the 2003 Iraq invasion, United Nations refugee agencies are preparing for the worst. An ABC News poll conducted in February and March 2007 found that:

“More than half of Iraqis, 53 percent, have a close friend or relative who’s been hurt or killed in the current violence. Eighty-six percent worry about a loved one being hurt… [and] 70 percent report multiple signs of traumatic stress.”

More worrying is that the number of Iraqi’s who hold expectation of things getting better have fallen to as low as 30 percent.

With the spillover effects of nearly 1 million mainly middle class refugees already rumored to be impacting the Jordanian economy, impacting heir population by 10 percent and increasing interest rates, refugee backlash is likely to follow and sooner rather than later.

As with recent history refugee crises have proven a ready catalyst for regional conflicts to emerge as insurgents and militias use he convenience and safety of refugee camps as in Lebanon, Pakistan and Burma as recruiting grounds and base camps to launch operations.

with recent reports circulating such as the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy’s Things fall apart: containing the Spillover from and Iraq Civil War and the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ report titled Iraq’s Troubled Future: The Uncertain Way Ahead both detail that the road ahead is going to get worse--lots worse.

Not just for Iraq either. THe Saban Report mnakes it clear that the effects as currently unfolding are just the tip of the iceberg and how teh U.S. chooses to handle matters from here on in may spell the difference between

humanitarian and regional stability spillover effects of Iraq civil war

affects of spill-over into Iran.

American domestic politics.

Earlier this year the UNHCR Commission met to detail teh way foraward