Northern Ireland | ukwatch.net

Northern Ireland - a sexist's paradise

Alex Doherty — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:14:42 +0000

It’s normal to feel embarrassed when you come from Northern Ireland. Barely a week goes by without some new instance of our abject ignorance, our awful compulsion to behave like noisy, immature yokels, whether it’s rampant homophobia, crazed bible-bashing or sheer dumb political intransigence. But a new Amnesty International poll, which found that almost half (46%) of Northern Ireland students believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she flirts, is especially shaming, even by our usual standards. What’s more, it’s OK to hit your girlfriend if she nags, flirts with other men or refuses to have sex – according to one in 10 local students.

The fact that these are young people makes it even worse. They are supposed to be the ones skipping open-mindedly into the glad new post-conflict future, not shoring up benighted old rubbish like this.

So it’s shaming, yes – but not particularly surprising. Northern Ireland remains a sexist’s paradise. It is the land of the macho swagger, a defiantly unreconstructed outpost of bullish masculinity and aggressive heterosexualism, fuelled by a trenchantly politicised culture and – of course – the long years of violence. (It’s not a coincidence that there is a significantly higher proportion of adult women raped at gunpoint in Northern Ireland than in the Republic of Ireland or the UK, and rape crisis counsellors are familiar with the tactic where perpetrators claim that they belong to a paramilitary organisation, in an attempt to ensure their victim keeps quiet.) Add a dash of the local brand of thin-lipped social conservatism, and you have a recipe for the “blame culture” attitudes seen in the Amnesty survey – whose respondents presumably included young women as well as young men.

Women’s rights have long languished near the bottom of the political agenda in the North, constantly displaced by the constitutional tug-of-war. The situation is really dire. Earlier this year, government figures showed a 50% rise in reported rapes over the previous six years, yet Northern Ireland has the worst support services for the victims of sexual violence in the UK. Our one heroic rape crisis centre is woefully under-funded, constantly teetering on the verge of closure. Women here have no access to specialist domestic violence courts, and there are no support services for women seeking to escape prostitution, trafficking and sexual exploitation. As a society, we can’t even bring ourselves to have a proper debate about abortion – which remains effectively banned in Northern Ireland – and our (overwhelmingly) male representatives continue to piously kick the issue under the carpet.

The strangest thing is the deafening silence on these issues from Northern Ireland women themselves. Why do we seemingly accept the brutish attitudes, the lack of support services, the absence of basic rights? Perhaps it’s because we have no place to find a collective voice. Tribalism has successfully divided us from one another, thrown rigid barriers across potential areas of common ground. It’s as if women have internalised the old hush-hush, lie-low maxim of the Troubles – “whatever you say, say nothing”- and applied it to our whole lives. But saying nothing changes nothing. If shouting is what gets you heard in this place, maybe it’s time to find our voices.

Patience has its limits

tim — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:23:19 +0000

In the recent history of the Irish peace process, a process which is still working itself out, it has always been Sinn Fein which was prepared to go the extra mile in the cause of advancing the process.

At the same time, the unionists, of whatever denomination, have been tardy in their responses and tried to hold things back, relying on the sympathies of Westminster to back them up in their desperate efforts to retard progress.

So it was in 2007, when the Sinn Fein leadership held its special ard fheis on whether or not republicans should give their full support to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Prior to that meeting, Gerry Adams and his colleagues put the case for endorsement of the PSNI to their supporters in the face of harsh criticism from groups of republicans opposed to the policing policy.

The traditional republican position held that support for any police force in Northern Ireland would be unacceptable, with endorsement of the police seen to represent the ultimate recognition of the British state’s dominance.

But the Sinn Fein leadership challenged that position and, at considerable risk to its own organisation, fought for and won a commitment to police reform.

Even though the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill of May 2000 had fallen well short of fully implementing its preferred option, that of disbanding the Royal Ulster Constabulary, in favour of its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein pressed ahead in the cause of peace and national unity and carried its members, many with great reluctance, with it.

The St Andrews agreement of October 2006 had called on Sinn Fein to fully endorse the PSNI as a prerequisite for the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein delivered fully.

Which makes it all the more worrying that its leader in the Irish parliament Caoimhghin O Caolain has felt the need to warn supporters that his party’s patience should not be tested.

“If we are forced to conclude that change will not be forthcoming from the executive, we will have no option but to pull out our ministers and seek to put pressure where responsibility ultimately lies, which is on the British government in London,” he said.

“Our ministers are not in the executive to fill seats, to make careers or to be administrators.

Their mandate is to bring about lasting and fundamental change. That is why Sinn Fein put them there,” he continued.

Such a warning must be taken seriously, both in Westminster and in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In the context of Sinn Fein’s unquestioned commitment to the peace process, it rings alarm bells that Gordon Brown’s government is not managing to rein in the prevaricators and equivocators in the Ulster Unionist Party.

Mr Brown and his minions in new Labour have a poor record in exerting any pressure whatsoever on their allies, be they in the US over Iraq and Iran or in the CBI over the British economy.

Should they show as little determination with the Ulster Unionists over their continued intransigence, the signs are not good for devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein has shown great forbearance and a huge commitment to peace in the country.

But no-one should believe that patience to be inexhaustible and, certainly, no-one can take the commitment of the unionists to continuing progress as an established fact in the absence of continued pressure.

Belfast's walls have not come down yet, Senator

William Benzies — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:26:34 +0000

Senator Barack Obama made the inevitable reference to Northern Ireland during his speech in Berlin last week, saying that walls had “come down in Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics found a way to live together”.

These are delightful sentiments – but they do not tell the story. There are, in fact, more walls up separating communities in Belfast than at the time of the Agreement 10 years ago. In truth, it could better be argued, Protestants and Catholics have found away to live apart – and they have done so, primarily, for economic reasons.

Life is unmistakably better in Northern Ireland than it was 10 years ago. It is worth recalling that, even into the 1990s, people could not move freely without security check, unemployment was high, more people left than arrived, foreign visitors were almost unknown, holidays abroad were a luxury for the few, city and town centres were grim. Nowadays, free movement, low unemployment and immigration are taken for granted, with a range of holiday and retail options open to people in Northern Ireland to an extent that would be the envy of many other UK regions – the economic benefit of learning to live at least without violence.

However, society in Northern Ireland remains fundamentally divided. 95 per cent of people attend schools segregated by religious denomination, and leisure, sporting and political preferences often proceed along those same sectarian fault lines. On one occasion, Unionists and Nationalists in the Assembly even divided up on the issue of whether or not to wear jackets in the chamber on a hot day! Most obviously of all, peace walls are being constructed faster than they are being taken down – including one, within the past year, in the grounds of an integrated school.

This “secret sectarianism” does not just blight the communities where the walls are put up – separating them in many cases from their nearest health centre, job opportunity or leisure facility. It continues to hinder social progress, threaten the political settlement, and cost billions which could be better spent on frontline public services and reducing rates bills. Those “costs of division” alone are estimated to come to over £1 billion out of the Northern Ireland budget alone (for example, through maintenance required for extra leisure centres, additional capital and transport costs in the segregated education system, or higher policing costs to maintain the peace), before costs to local business.

It was welcome that Senator Obama mentioned Northern Ireland, and legitimate to mention the progress made. But he might have been better calling for “change we can believe in”. Indeed, given the economic benefit of peace but the ongoing costs of division, he might have used the last Democratic President’s famous line – “It’s the economy, stupid”.

Commons Apology Over 1971 Bomb Disinformation

Tim Holmes — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:08:32 +0000

The Government this week apologised for smearing the victims of one of the first major bombings of the Troubles.

McGurk’s Bar on North Queen Street in Belfast was blown up on 4 December 1971, killing 15 people including two women and three children. Allegations quick surfaced that the dead included IRA members who had accidentally detonated their own bomb.

Among those smeared was 73-year-old Philip Garry, the great-uncle of Linlithgow and East Falkirk MP Michael Connarty, who raised the case in a Commons adjournment debate on Monday.

Connarty highlighted documents uncovered in the National Archives which revealed the Army’s role in spreading the smears:

The Pat Finucane Centre submitted those reports, having found them, to the historical inquiries team. It is clear from the reports that there was a travesty involving the Army, which said in the report that the bomb was clearly inside the pub, because five men standing around it were blown to smithereens. The Army said that the bombing was clearly an IRA own goal—it said that the bomb was, in effect, in the pub in transit. That was then. The historical inquiries team report says that it was recommended that the Secretary of State answer a question in the House confirming that story.

That was never done, but, sadly, a former Member of the House, now Lord Kilclooney, said on television and in Stormont that the bomb was an IRA bomb. He said that there was no question that the bombing was a Protestant paramilitary operation.

The Army’s account was reflected in press reports at the time. The truth only began to emerge in 1977, when one of the bombers, UVF member Robert Campbell, was arrested on a separate matter.

For six years, the approach taken in all the police reports—this is clear from the historical inquiry team’s report of the police reports—was to keep trying to turn the evidence to suggest that the Army report was correct. The reports said things such as that the forensics showed there was no doubt that the bomb had been inside the pub. The forensic evidence did not come out until February, but Dr. Hall, who produced it, said that there was no doubt that the bomb had been placed outside the door or adjacent to it—not in the pub at all. However, the police reports still spread the same story, and every single inquiry in the report shows that the police tried to pin the bombing on the people in the bar to show that they had killed themselves and their fellow citizens from the community. That is unforgivable.

The debate was closed by Northern Ireland Minister Paul Goggins,who delivered an apology on behalf of the Government.

Although we cannot speak for the Ministers who made statements at the time, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are deeply sorry not just for the appalling suffering and loss of life that occurred at McGurk’s bar, but for the extraordinary additional pain caused to both the immediate families and the wider community by the erroneous suggestions made in the immediate aftermath of the explosion about who was responsible. Such perceptions and preconceived ideas should never have been allowed to cloud the actual evidence.

Goggins told the House that the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Historical Inquiries Team had found no evidence that the security forces had colluded in the bombings. However, some relatives question why the army was so quick to lay a false trail of suspicion.

Philip Garry’s grandson, Robert McLenaghan, has called for an investigation into allegations that the bombing was a false flag operation.

The claims surfaced last year, when a number of newspaper articles quoted a loyalist using the pseudonym ‘John Black.’ He claimed to have been working with the a secretive British Army unit called the MRF. Some of Blacks claims, such as the suggestion that MRF members were present in Derry on Bloody Sunday, are regarded as outlandish within the North’s human rights community. However, the MRF is known to have conducted plain-clothes patrols in Belfast in the early 1970s, and to have recruited paramilitaries from both sides.

On a visit to England last month, McLenaghan called on former British service personnel who may have knowledge of Black’s allegations to come forward. “We would like a public forum, which is international and independent of both the British and Irish Governments for him and others like him to be allowed to speak, he said.

British and American Black Ops in Iraq

Ellie Keen — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:16:07 +0000

Shining Light on the “Black World”

In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA Director George Tenet titled, “Worldwide Attack Matrix,” which was “outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world. What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history.” The plan entailed CIA and Special Forces “covert operations across the globe,” and at “the heart of the proposal was a recommendation that the president give the CIA what Tenet labeled “exceptional authorities” to attack and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the rest of the world.” Tenet cited the need for such authority “to allow the agency to operate without restraint — and he wanted encouragement from the president to take risks.” Among the many authorities recommended was the use of “deadly force.”

Further, “Another proposal was that the CIA increase liaison work with key foreign intelligence services,” as “Using such intelligence services as surrogates could triple or quadruple the CIA’s effectiveness.” The Worldwide Attack Matrix “described covert operations in 80 countries that were either underway or that he was now recommending. The actions ranged from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks,” as well as “In some countries, CIA teams would break into facilities to obtain information.”[1]

P2OG: “Commit terror, to incite terror… in order to react to terror”

In 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a “Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism,” portions of which were leaked to the Federation of American Scientists. According to the document, the “War on Terror” constitutes a “committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach,” which will require the US to engage in a “long, at times violent, and borderless war.” As the Asia Times described it, this document lays out a blueprint for the US to “fight fire with fire.” Many of the “proposals appear to push the military into territory that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed on CIA activities.” According to the Chairman of the DSB, “The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets.”

Specifically, the plan “recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception. For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities.” The purpose of P2OG would be in “‘stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces.”[2] In other words, commit terror to incite terror, in order to react to terror.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2002 that, “The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities. New organizations are being created. The missions of existing units are being revised,” and quoted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying, “Prevention and preemption are … the only defense against terrorism.”[3] Chris Floyd bluntly described P2OG in CounterPunch, saying, “the United States government is planning to use “cover and deception” and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let’s say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people—your family, your friends, your lovers, you—in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.”[4]

“The Troubles” with Iraq

On February 5, 2007, the Telegraph reported that, “Deep inside the heart of the “Green Zone” [in Iraq], the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG).” The members of the JSG “are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents.” They have been “[w]orking alongside the Special Air Service [SAS] and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black.”

It was reported that, “During the Troubles [in Northern Ireland], the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA. By targeting and then “turning” members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety of “inducements” ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA.” Further, “The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to work exclusively in Northern Ireland.”[5]

Considering that this group had been renamed after revelations of collusion with terrorists, perhaps it is important to take a look at what exactly this “collusion” consisted of. The Stevens Inquiry’s report “contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.” It was, “a state policy sanctioned at the highest level.” The Inquiry, “highlighted collusion, the willful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder,” and acknowledged “that innocent people had died because of the collusion.” These particular “charges relate to activities of a British Army intelligence outfit known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) and former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers.”[6]

In 2002, the Sunday Herald reported on the allegations made by a former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who stated that, “he was told by his military handlers that his collusion with paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself.” Fulton worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), and had infiltrated the IRA, always while on the pay roll of the military. Fulton tells of how in 1992, he told his FRU and MI5 intelligence handlers that his IRA superior was planning to launch a mortar attack on the police, yet his handlers did nothing and the attack went forward, killing a policewoman. Fulton stated, “I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it. If everything I touched turned to shit then I would have been dead. The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy.”[7]

In 1998, Northern Ireland experienced its “worst single terrorist atrocity,” as described by the BBC, in which a car bomb went off, killing 29 people and injuring 300.[8] According to a Sunday Herald piece in 2001, “Security forces didn’t intercept the Real IRA’s Omagh bombing team because one of the terrorists was a British double-agent whose cover would have been blown as an informer if the operation was uncovered.” Kevin Fulton had even “phoned a warning to his RUC handlers 48 hours before the Omagh bombing that the Real IRA was planning an attack and gave details of one of the bombing team and his car registration.” Further, “The man thought to be the agent is a senior member of the [IRA] organization.”[9]

In 2002, it was revealed that, “one of the most feared men inside the Provisional IRA,” John Joe Magee, head of the IRA’s “internal security unit,” commonly known as the IRA’s “torturer- in-chief,” was actually “one of the UK’s most elite soldiers,” who “was trained as a member of Britain’s special forces.” The Sunday Herald stated that, “Magee led the IRA’s internal security unit for more than a decade up to the mid-90s – most of those he investigated were usually executed,” and that, “Magee’s unit was tasked to hunt down, interrogate and execute suspected British agents within the IRA.”[10]

In 2006, the Guardian reported that, “two British agents were central to the bombings of three army border installations in 1990.” The claims included tactics known as the ‘human bomb’, which “involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints.” This tactic “was the brainchild of British intelligence.”[11]

In 2006, it was also revealed that, “A former British Army mole in the IRA has claimed that MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers,” and “British intelligence co-operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown.” Further, “the technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops.”[12]

Considering all these revelations of British collusion with IRA terrorists and complicity in terrorist acts in Northern Ireland through the FRU, what evidence is there that these same tactics are not being deployed in Iraq under the renamed Joint Support Group (JSG)? The recruits to the JSG in Iraq are trained extensively and those “who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan.”[13]

P2OG in Action

In September of 2003, months after the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraq’s most sacred Shiite mosque was blown up, killing between 80 and 120 people, including a popular Shiite cleric, and the event was blamed by Iraqis on the American forces.[14]

On April 20, 2004, American journalist in Iraq, Dahr Jamail, reported in the New Standard that, “The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them.” Jamail interviewed a doctor who stated that, “The U.S. induces aggression. If you don’t attack me, I will never attack you. The U.S. is stimulating the aggression of the Iraqi people!” This description goes very much in line with the aims outlined in the Pentagon’s P2OG document about “inciting terror,” or “preempting terror attacks.”[15]

Weeks after the initial incident involving the British SAS soldiers in Basra, in October of 2005, it was reported that Americans were “captured in the act of setting off a car bomb in Baghdad,” as, “A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday. … Residents of western Baghdad’s al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon. Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the … police.” However, “the Iraq police arrived at approximately the same time as allied military forces – and the two men were removed from Iraq custody and whisked away before any questioning could take place.”[16]

It was reported that in May of 2005, an Iraqi man was arrested after witnessing a car bombing that took place in front of his home, as it was said he shot an Iraqi National Guardsman. However, “People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.”

Further, another story was reported in the same month that took place in Baghdad when an Iraqi driver had his license and car confiscated at a checkpoint, after which he was instructed “to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license.” After being questioned for a short while, he was told to drive his car to an Iraqi police station, where his license had been forwarded, and that he should go quickly. “The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements.”[17]

On October 4, 2005, it was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that, “The FBI’s counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials.” Further, “The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a Falluja bomb factory last November and found a Texas-registered four-wheel-drive being prepared for a bombing mission. Investigators said there were several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the US wound up in Syria or other Middle Eastern countries and ultimately in the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq.”[18]

In 2006, the Al-Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra was bombed and destroyed. It was built in 944, was over 1,000 years old, and was one of the most important Shi’ite mosques in the world. The great golden dome that covered it, which was built in 1904, was destroyed in the 2006 bombing, which was set off by men dressed as Iraqi Special Forces.[19] Former 27-year CIA analyst who gave several presidents their daily CIA briefings, Ray McGovern, stated that he “does not rule out Western involvement in this week’s Askariya mosque bombing.” He was quoted as saying, “The main question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You don’t have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on.”[20]

Death Squads for “Freedom”

In January of 2005, Newsweek reported on a Pentagon program termed the “Salvador Option” being discussed to be deployed in Iraq. This strategy “dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported “nationalist” forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.” Updating the strategy to Iraq, “one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions.”[21]

The Times reported that, “the Pentagon is considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago. Under the so-called ‘El Salvador option’, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders.” It further stated, “Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret,” as “The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.” Further, “John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.”[22]

By June of 2005, mass executions were taking place in Iraq in the six months since January, and, “What is particularly striking is that many of those killings have taken place since the Police Commandos became operationally active and often correspond with areas where they have been deployed.”[23]

In May of 2007, an Iraqi who formerly collaborated with US forces in Iraq for two and a half years stated that, “I was a soldier in the Iraqi army in the war of 1991 and during the withdrawal from Kuwait I decided to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia along with dozens of others like me. That was how began the process whereby I was recruited into the American forces, for there were US military committees that chose a number of Iraqis who were willing to volunteer to join them and be transported to America. I was one of those.” He spoke out about how after the 2003 invasion, he was returned to Iraq to “carry out specific tasks assigned him by the US agencies.” Among those tasks, he was put “in charge of a group of a unit that carried out assassinations in the streets of Baghdad.”

He was quoted as saying, “Our task was to carry out assassinations of individuals. The US occupation army would supply us with their names, pictures, and maps of their daily movements to and from their place of residence and we were supposed to kill the Shi’i, for example, in the al-A’zamiyah, and kill the Sunni in the of ‘Madinat as-Sadr’, and so on.” Further, “Anyone in the unit who made a mistake was killed. Three members of my team were killed by US occupation forces after they failed to assassinate Sunni political figures in Baghdad.” He revealed that this “dirty jobs” unit of Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners, “doesn’t only carry out assassinations, but some of them specialize in planting bombs and car bombs in neighborhoods and markets.”

He elaborated in saying that “operations of planting car bombs and blowing up explosives in markets are carried out in various ways, the best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints. Another way is to put bombs in the cars during interrogations. After the desired person is summoned to one of the US bases, a bomb is place in his car and he is asked to drive to a police station or a market for some purpose and there his car blows up.”[24]

Divide and Conquer?

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in October of 2006, that, “The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling. Historically of course this is nothing new – divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago. However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London.”[25]

NOTES

[1] Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, At Camp David, Advise and Dissent. The Washington Post: January 31, 2002: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR200607…

[2] David Isenberg, ‘P2OG’ Allows the Pentagon to Fight Dirty. Asia Times Online: November 5, 2002: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK05Ak02.html

[3] William M. Arkin, The Secret War. The Los Angeles Times: October 27, 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/20021031092436/http://www.latimes.com/la-op-a…

[4] Chris Floyd, Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks. Counter Punch: November 1, 2002: http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html

[5] Sean Rayment, Top Secret Army Cell Breaks Terrorists. The Telegraph: February 5, 2007: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1541542/Top-secret-army-cell-brea…

[6] Michael S. Rose, Britain’s “Dirty War” with the IRA. Catholic World News: July 2003: http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=23828

[7] Home Affairs, The army asked me to make bombs for the IRA, told me I had the Prime Minister’s Blessing. The Sunday Herald: June 23, 2002: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20020623/ai_n12576952/pg…

[8] BBC, UK: Northern Ireland Bravery awards for bomb helpers. BBC News: November 17, 1999: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/524462.stm

[9] Neil Mackay, British double-agent was in Real IRA’s Omagh bomb team. The Sunday Herald: August 19, 2001: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20010819/ai_n13961517

[10] Neil Mackay, IRA torturer was in the Royal Marines; Top republican terrorist. The Sunday Herald: December 15, 2002: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20021215/ai_n12579493

[11] Henry McDonald, UK agents ‘did have role in IRA bomb atrocities’. The Guardian: September 10, 2006: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/sep/10/uk.northernireland1

[12] Enda Leahy, MI5 ‘helped IRA buy bomb parts in US’. Sunday Times: March 19, 2006: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article742783.ece

[13] Sean Rayment, Top Secret Army Cell Breaks Terrorists. The Telegraph: February 5, 2007: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1541542/Top-secret-army-cell-brea…

[14] AP, U.S. Blamed For Mosque Attack. CBS News: September 2, 2003: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/02/iraq/main571279.shtml

[15] Dahr Jamail, Dahr Jamail Blog From Baghdad. The New Standard: April 20, 2004: http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail200404.htm

[16] FMNN, UNITED STATES CAUGHT IN IRAQ CAR-BOMBING. Free Market News Network: October 14, 2005: http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1326

[17] Michael Keefer, Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? Global Research: September 25, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20050…

[18] Bryan Bender, Cars stolen in US used in suicide attacks. The Sydney Morning Herald: October 4, 2005: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cars-stolen-in-us-used-in-suicide-attac…

[19] Sam Knight, Bombing of Shia shrine sparks wave of retaliation. The Times Online: February 22, 2006: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article733559.ece

[20] Prison Planet, Former CIA Analyst: Western Intelligence May Be Behind Mosque Bombing. Prison Planet: February 26, 2006: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/260206mosquebombing.ht…

[21] Michael Hirsh and John Barry, “The Salvador Option”. Newsweek: January 14, 2005: http://www.pagecache.info/pagecache/page13480/cached.html

[22] Roland Watson, El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants. The Times Online: January 10, 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article410491.ece

[23] Max Fuller, For Iraq, “The Salvador Option” Becomes Reality. Global Research: June 2, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html

[24] AMSII, Ordered Assassinations, Sectarian Bomb Attacks Targeting Iraqi Civilians. Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq: May 12, 2007: http://heyetnet.org/en/content/view/490/27

[25] Craig Murray, Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK Policy. CraigMurray.org: October 18, 2006: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/10/civil_war_in_ir.html

Andrew G. Marshall is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Open Stormont? Lobbying Transparency for Northern Ireland

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:56:42 +0000

Lobbying in Northern Ireland has not developed as rapidly as in Scotland in part because of the suspension of the assembly between 2002 and 2007. But the lobbyists are certainly picking up the scent of lucrative contracts now the Assembly is back in action. Journalists too are beginning to see that lobbying is a potential news story as the Belfast Telegraph – not renowned for its anti establishment reportage – helped to claim the first ministerial scalp in the history of the Assembly when Ian Paisley Jr was forced to resign over a lobbying scandal.

As a result, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency (ALT) found a receptive audience at a busy debate in Belfast on the 3^rd of April. Organised as a fringe meeting at the Annual Delegate Meeting of the National Union of Journalists, the event was co-sponsored by the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group (NIGAG) is the lobbyists lobby group formed in 1999 following the Good Friday Agreement.

David Gordon of the Belfast Telegraph addressed the meeting by telling the story of the role of investigative journalism in the downfall of Ian Paisley Jr. In effect operating as a lobbyist for key business interests Paisley was forced out from his ministerial post in February 2008. This welcome reminder of the power of the press to unearth corruption and make it pay was followed by the Telegraph launching its 'Open Stormont' campaign – another welcome sign of democratic politics in the North. The five proposals of the campaign are:

A review of the Assembly's current approach to publishing MLA pay and expenses, focusing on the much more detailed disclosures issued by the Scottish Parliament.
That MLAs should publicly declare in the register of interests details of family members on their payrolls. This reform has been favoured by the Assembly's Standards and Privileges Committee, but there are concerns that it will not take effect until 2009.

The Belfast Telegraph sees no reason why it should not be introduced immediately on a voluntary basis by the parties, pending a formal rule change.

A review of constituency office rental arrangements, with independent rental valuations for offices that have been rented from family members and political parties.

This review should also focus on phasing out the practice of allowing MLAs to claim rental expenses for premises owned by relatives – bringing Stormont into line with the House of Commons.

A pledge from all the Stormont parties that the secrecy surrounding their donations will finally end in 2010, with no further slippage on the target date.
A commitment by all the Assembly parties that there will be no dilution of the Freedom of Information Act.[1]

All of these would help to open up Stormont, and the Telegraph and its investigation editor Gordon are to be applauded for helping to bring a little light and transparency to the Northern Ireland. Given the role of lobbying in the Paisley affair, it might also be wise to add a lobbying register to the list of demands.

Back at the fringe meeting, lobbyist Will Chambre was representing the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group, the lobbyists lobby group. Chambre was there to argue against transparency and in defence of the lobbying industry. He seemed a little nervous and somewhat hesitant making his case – subverting the traditional image of the lobbyist as smooth talking fixer. Chambre undermined his case further by his nerve wracked delivery of the view that it was the ‘quality of the message’ and not the ‘size of the back hander’ which was important in lobbying.

In the debate that followed, the ALT suggestion that lobbyists should be regulated was challenged from the floor by one of the prime movers behind NIGAG Glyn Roberts (Vice chair of NIGAG, formerly of the Federation of Small Business and now lobbyist for the NI Independent Retail Trade Association). Roberts revealed that NIGAG had investigated such an idea when it set up and it was informed by counsel that a body like NIGAG would meet too many legal challenges to have a legally binding system of penalties. Roberts in effect made the point for campaigners for transparency since, as I pointed out in my response, this is exactly why binding regulation needs to be introduced by a law making body such as the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Open Stormont campaign is a sign that Northern Ireland is currently leading the charge on transparency in these islands. The experience in Dublin. London, Cardiff and Edinburgh is that there is little appetite for transparency amongst the political class and it takes a scandal of the kind that has engulfed Ian Paisley Jr. (and latterly his father the outgoing First Minister of Northern Ireland) to move opinion in favour of effective action.[2]

Chambre learned his lobbying at the knee of one of the key fixers of the Westminster lobby scene – Doug Smith the conservative party member who runs All Party Parliamentary Groups and a string of lobby firms. Smith once famously defended lobbyist payments to MPs by saying ‘MPs can't be expected to give us the detail as a labour of love, can they?’ Chambre runs Chambre Public Affairs a lobby company that does disclose its clients in the register of the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC). But they don’t disclose how much they are paid by GlaxoSmithkline for example. Nor do they tell us the techniques they use. Do they for example use the third party technique in which respectable sounding organisations – such as patient groups for example – are used as a ventriloquist’s dummy to mouth the policy positions preferred by the corporation that funds them?

Or do they get involved in setting up fake front groups with names suggesting a disinterested approach such as institute of this or foundation for that? We simply don’t know the answer to either question, but it is noticeable that along with the big pharma clients Chambre also works for a number of patient groups. Chambre do not disclose which pharma companies fund their patient group clients. However, according to company disclosures, we can tell that Chambre works for

Sanofi Pasteur MSD who fund the British Heart Foundation and Jo’s Trust, both clients of Chambre PA[3]
Lilly (part of Eli Lilly) which fund Rethink also a client of Chambre.[4]
GlaxoSmithkline who fund the British Heart Foundation and Jo’s Trust both also clients.[5]
Boehringer Ingelheim who fund the British Heart Foundation also a client.[6]

We have no means of knowing what the relationship is here or whether there is a conflict of interest – another reason why transparency is necessary. There is a further point which is that Chambre also work for Northern Health & Social Services Board which is responsible for both health and social care in the north of Northern Ireland. This leads to potential conflict of interest as both the patient groups and the pharma companies which pay Chambre have a vested interest in influencing the behaviour of the Board in relation to say Autism or mental health, both areas where Chambre clients have interests.

Notes

[1] David Gordon ‘Belfast Telegraph to push for transparency in the Assembly Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3532658.ece

[2] See David Gordon ‘Paisley Jnr must reveal full extent of lobbying for developer: SDLP’, Belfast Telegraph , September 20, 2007; David Gordon Civil service concerns at Paisley jnr lobbying Belfast Telegraph, Friday, January 18, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3348975.ece ; David Gordon Few tears as Paisley Jnr finally falls on his sword But resignation is not end of the matter, vow enemies of the fallen Junior Minister Belfast Telegraph, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3445125.ece; ‘Role of FOI legislation in Minister’s downfall’ Investigations correspondent David Gordon argues that the Freedom of Information Act played a key role in bringing down the junior minister Belfast Telegraph, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3445136.ece; David Gordon ‘Paisley is facing Commons inquiry: First Minister's payments to son to be investigated’ Belfast Telegraph Thursday, February 21, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3452962.ece; David Gordon ‘Paisley linked to son's lobbying’ Belfast Telegraph, 17/4/2008

[3] http://www.spmsd.co.uk/doc.asp?catid=380&docid=705

[4] http://www.lilly.co.uk/Nitro/newTemplates/general/Content_IT_LBCT.jsp?page=1471

[5] http://www.gsk.com/responsibility/cr_issues/patient-groups/uk-patient-organisations.htm

[6] http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.co.uk/medicines/patient_group_support.html

Brown may rue leaving Northern Ireland out of Britain

tim — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:52:44 +0000

After 28 years as deputy, Peter Robinson is poised to take over the leadership of the Democratic Unionist Party and assume the First Ministership of Northern Ireland. He will emerge fully from the shadow of Ian Paisley to lead Unionism, and the fourth part of the Union, in June.

The Paisley- Robinson relationship has been central to the DUP. Paisley with his oratorical skills and emotional intelligence of Ulster’s Unionist community was the standard bearer, but it was Robinson that honed the DUP machine. Robinson’s importance came into sharp focus as the DUP overhauled the Ulster Unionist Party and negotiated the St Andrews Agreement.

Post devolution, he used his powerful position as Finance minister to full effect, driving forward an agreed budget and programme for government. However, the relationship between Paisley and McGuinness, nicknamed the ‘Chuckle Brothers,’ caused unease among Unionists and finally accelerated Robinson’s accession.

The expectation is now that the bonhomie will decline – it’s not Robinson’s style anyway. But the devolution will continue. Its path may be bumpier than in the past year, but this is because of genuine disputes rather than personalities. Robinson has already met with the leader-in-waiting of the Republic of Ireland, Brian Cowen, in a co-announcement of an investment package that could bring 5,000 jobs to Northern Ireland. The clear message was that when business can be done it will be done.

In terms of Unionism locally, a post-Paisley DUP creates new dynamics which can only be guessed at – but a scenario that gives the UUP much comfort is hard to find. Nationally, the relationship with Gordon Brown is probably the coolest of all, mostly at his own behest. Brown was indifferent to Blair’s peace project, gave short shrift to proposals for a better financial package and the DUP has been angered by the in-out (usually out) attitude to Northern Ireland in Brown’s Britishness project.

Beyond devolution, Unionism is eyeing the possibility of a hung parliament. If it does occur, Robinson will do business – but for a much higher price than the UUP in the Callaghan and Major eras. In that scenario Brown may rue his present approach.

Paisley’s Resignation and Adams’s Regret

Ellie Keen — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:28:42 +0000

Ian Paisley’s decision to resign in May this year from his office as First Minister of Northern Ireland has been greeted with great regret by those he has spent his entire political career denouncing.

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, described Paisley as a “fascinating, gracious man.” Paisley, according to Adams, was motivated by “genuine endeavour to make things better for the people who live here.” Adams was looking forward to getting to know Paisley better when he retires to the back benches.

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister, was just as effusive: “I think that [Paisley] will be fondly remembered by the people of Ireland—north and south—for the very courageous leadership that he showed.”

In contrast, when Paisley steps down next month, his own party, whose leadership he is resigning, will be glad to see the back of him. He will likely be replaced by his longstanding deputy and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) hard man, Peter Robinson.

Paisley has been steadily undermined since he took over the First Minister position. He has faced increasing criticism from Unionists within and outside the DUP, which he founded, for his amiable working relations with McGuinness.

A property scandal involving his son, Ian Paisley junior, who himself resigned as a junior minister, removed his last prop of support within the DUP.

Yet, Paisley has never renounced or expressed the slightest regret for his decades spent in anti-Catholic and anti-Republican incitement.

More so perhaps than any other one individual, he is associated with the sectarian hatred and killing in Northern Ireland that characterised much of the “Troubles.” For almost a half century, he functioned as the loudest ideologue and agitator. Many of those recruited into loyalist terror gangs cited Paisley’s incendiary demagogy as central to their political development.

In 1986, at the head of a loyalist demonstration, he famously insisted that Ulster would “never, never, never” surrender.

The kind words from Adams and McGuinness express the degree to which Sinn Fein has been integrated into the apparatus of British rule in Northern Ireland, over which Ulster Unionists have less influence than hitherto. This, in turn, can only be understood as the product of the impact of globalised capitalist production on all political and social relations and which gave rise to the “peace process,” the Good Friday Agreement, the 2006 St. Andrews Agreement between Adams and Paisley, and the revival of the Stormont Assembly with Sinn Fein in power alongside the DUP.

When Northern Ireland was partitioned off from the rest of Ireland in 1921 following the Anglo-Irish war, the six-county state dominated by the rich and powerful Protestant bourgeoisie was an important and highly integrated part of British imperialism’s industrial and political power. Belfast was a major industrial location, with the vast majority of its considerable production exported to Britain and its imperial holdings. The continual threat from a powerful working class was countered by state-organised religious sectarianism, Orange mobs, and systematic anti-Catholic discrimination and hysteria.

By the 1960s, however, the industrial importance of the north was in rapid decline. The military spending of World War II had propped up the economy, but this came to a sudden end. Considerable industry remained, but this was no longer cutting edge. Northern Ireland was increasingly dependent on Britain. At the same time, the Catholic minority population’s determined demands for civil rights were gaining a hearing amongst Protestant workers.

The response from the Unionist bourgeoisie was brutal repression, enflamed by Paisley’s incessant religious ranting. British troops were sent in large numbers in 1969 to stabilise a political situation, which the British government saw as a threat not only to Protestant Ulster but to the stability of capitalist rule across Ireland and in Britain itself.

Over the course of the decades of “the Troubles” and the dirty war against the IRA, British imperialism expanded a vast amount of effort in maintaining its rule over Northern Ireland, which became one of the most militarised areas on the planet. For the Unionist bourgeoisie, the large military and related high levels of social spending, maintained for decades, became a new source of wealth and privilege, while the large military apparatus provided work for significant numbers of Protestants.

This regime of perpetual crisis obscured the underlying loss of competitiveness and increasingly isolation and backwardness of Northern Ireland industry. At the same time, the Irish republic, long an economic backwater, emerged rather suddenly through low tax policies and European funding as one of the most favourable investment locations in the world. American companies poured in, finding cheap labour and access to European markets. By the 1990s, the “Celtic Tiger” economy was among the fastest expanding in the world, while Ireland had one of highest per capita standards of living, and was eyed enviously from across the border.

Northern Ireland, by contrast, was still in a war that, by their own admission, neither side could win. Civil conflict, politically and economically, was increasingly an obstacle to economic development. Who would invest in divided Belfast, trapped behind a militarised border, when Dublin was a safer, more fashionable and lower tax option—one, moreover, with better transport links to the UK and Europe? In the end, British imperialism concluded that the high levels of military and social spending in Northern Ireland could not be sustained and an agreement had to be reached with Sinn Fein and the IRA.

As for Sinn Fein, with its traditional American links, the investment wave drew it closer to the orbit of US imperialism from whence most of the investment originated.

These circumstances formed the underpinning of the IRA ceasefire in 1994 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Sinn Fein, in return for accepting British rule, was allowed into a power-sharing arrangement with the Unionists. Sectarian division would remain an essential instrument of rule because every level of government, including ministerial positions, would be allocated based on a “community” designation.

The Irish republic also agreed to remove any constitutional claim on the North.

In return for the removal of the IRA, the British military effort would be drastically scaled down, releasing forces for more pressing foreign wars. Sinn Fein would cease its paramilitary policing of nationalist areas and support, oversee, and encourage Catholics to join a reformed Royal Ulster Constabulary—the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Cross-border links and institutions would be developed specifically to allow greater collaboration at all levels of government. In this way, Sinn Fein, and the aspiring layer of increasingly wealthy Catholics for whom it speaks, would become integrated into, and responsible for, capitalist rule in the North. Its members would take up comfortable positions in the state apparatus and develop their own business interests alongside their Unionist counterparts.

For the Unionists, the terms meant that Ulster would indefinitely remain part of the UK, while the IRA would be neutralised. Without the war, the investment and tourism opportunities available to the Celtic Tiger would be available to the North. One “strand” of the Good Friday Agreement offered a British-Irish council to deepen Unionist ties to the rest of Britain.

This is to a large extent what has happened, with the initial establishment of the Assembly, with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) led by David Trimble as the major party and Sinn Fein playing second republican fiddle to the then larger Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP).

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s former chief-of-staff Jonathan Powell’s recently published book on the background to the Agreement, Great Hatred Little Room, makes clear how important it was for Sinn Fein that any deal was presented in terms that would appear to be a move towards a united Ireland. Adams was desperate to avoid a split within the republican movement, such as gave rise to the Provisional IRA when it split from the Official IRA.

However, in 2003, Adams announced that “The IRA is never going to disband in response to ultimatums from the British government or David Trimble [then leader of the UUP]. But I do believe the logic of the peace process puts us in a different place. So if you ask me do I envisage a future without an IRA? The answer is obvious. The answer is yes.”

These words were in fact penned by Powell himself in his role as adviser and Northern Ireland fixer for the Blair government between 1998 and 2007. [1]

For the more hard-line Unionists, however, it was politically necessary to appear to have conceded nothing at all. Historically, privileges offered exclusively to Protestants generated mass support for Unionism amongst Protestants, and were justified in the rantings of a succession of religious demagogues, epitomised by Paisley himself. Concessions to Dublin, dilution of Protestant hegemony, or undermining its security apparatus were all presented as an attack on the rights and heritage of the “Protestant people.”

At every point over the extended decay of Northern Ireland’s economic influence, hard-line Unionism attempted to mobilise on the streets and politically to block any and all threats to rule from Britain. This accounts for the continual tensions within Ulster Unionism, caught between those attempting to open the way for the expansion of corporate profit in Northern Ireland, and those whose interests lie in maintaining the traditional apparatus and British subsidies.

Trimble, the former deputy-leader of the far-right Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party whose loyalist strike brought down a previous power-sharing agreement in 1973, was elected as leader of the UUP in 1995. He came to public prominence in Portadown during a succession of loyalist protests outside Drumcree Church, when he did a jig in front of TV cameras with Paisley.

But it was under Trimble that the UUP was finally cajoled into the Good Friday Agreement by the British and US governments. Paisley’s DUP and some hardliners within the UUP opposed signing the agreement and furiously denounced the disbandment of the Protestant-dominated Ulster Defence Regiment, and the reform of the RUC.

After 1998, the DUP denounced every move towards implementing the Agreement as a concession to terrorism and insisted that IRA disarmament and weapons decommissioning was speeded up and independently confirmed.

The Northern Ireland assembly was repeatedly suspended to prevent First Minister Trimble from losing support to the DUP. Nevertheless, the polarisation of political opinion was expressed by Sinn Fein becoming the largest Republican Party and the DUP finally replacing the UUP in 2005 as the largest Unionist party.

Once he came to office, however, “Dr. No” also ended up agreeing to power sharing with Sinn Fein.

He was assisted in this by the effective disbandment of the IRA. US support for the IRA all but dissipated since the September 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers. Under intense pressure from Washington and London, and after a complicated process of arms destruction, monitoring and international verification, the IRA agreed to end its military campaign and Sinn Fein have joined the PSNI policing boards and accepted MI5 being in charge of national security.

Underpinning the final agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP, and the revival of Stormont in 2007, was also a growing unease that the protracted delays in reviving the Assembly were impacting on economic prospects.

In the end, the DUP and Paisley were presented with a “Plan B,” under which more influence over affairs in the North would be transferred to Dublin with the weakened Unionists further excluded. Faced with this, and a healthy short-term subsidy from Britain, the DUP signed up to power sharing.

Sharing office with the arch-Unionist villain Paisley was in many ways a political coup for Sinn Fein. His acquiescence was proof that the fruits of office were now secure. However, while the DUP leadership around Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds are every bit as concerned as Sinn Fein to draw in new investment and prepare the way for privatisations, the longstanding conflicts remain and have increasingly focused on the 81-year-old Paisley.

Paisley and McGuinness became known disparagingly in hard-line Unionist circles as the “Chuckle brothers.” Shortly after taking office in 2007, Paisley was removed from his position at the head of the Free Presbyterian Church he formed in 1951 for consorting with the “monstrous and ungodly” Sinn Fein. Free Presbyterians took out adverts protesting “power-sharing with murderers.”

The DUP has also seen a string of resignations. In March 2007, Jim Allister, who replaced Paisley as the DUP’s member of the European Parliament (MEP), resigned. Allister, a former lawyer, established a new group, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), which opposes the Good Friday and St. Andrew’s Agreements, calls for direct rule in a simple majority Assembly, which would be controlled by Unionists, and describes Sinn Fein as “unrepentant terrorists.” TUV equates Paisley with Trimble and describes his attitude to the IRA as “hopelessly naïve.”

A TUV candidate in a recent council by-election at Dromore, a commuter village near Belfast, polled 739 first preference votes, against 1069 for the DUP and 912 for the UUP. The Protestant-dominated seat was finally won by the UUP through second preference allocations.

Paisley’s fate was sealed following the revelation that Ian Paisley junior had utilised the St. Andrew’s negotiations, at which he served as the closest adviser to his father, to extract concessions for a tourist project at the Giant’s Causeway, in which a DUP supporter and personal ally of Paisley junior had interests.

Deprived of his closest ally, Paisley quietly retired. This leaves the Sinn Fein leadership facing an increasingly fractious and disunited DUP, prompting Adams to state, “My only concern…is that those within the DUP who are against power-sharing, and there are some, would use any instability in the leadership or any question around the leadership to set back the progress we have made thus far.”

Notes:

1. Jonathan Powell. Great Hatred Little Room, Making Peace in Northern Ireland. Bodley Head, 2008 (p. 213).

The Godson Approach to Political Warfare (3)

Tim Holmes — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:28:11 +0000

The IRD in Northern Ireland

In his June 2006 obituary for Fr Dennis Faul, Dean Godson suggested that the life of the Irish human rights campaigner ‘offers profound lessons for democracies on how to fight, and not to fight, terrorism.’

Godson may well be right, but for reasons other than those he intended. As he acknowledges, Faul was labelled a ‘Provo priest’ by his critics. The irony is that this smear originated in precisely the kind of ‘political warfare’ that Godson advocates.

“During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals,” Godson wrote in an earlier Times article from April 2006. “For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence. At the moment, the extremists largely have the field to themselves.”

The Information Research Department (IRD) was founded in the early days of the Cold War by Christopher Mayhew, a junior Labour Minister and veteran of the wartime Special Operations Executive.

One of the first people Mayhew hired for the new organization was the KGB spy Guy Burgess. The Soviets were therefore aware of the IRD’s activities from the beginning, although the British public were to remain in the dark for many years.

In his history of MI6, Stephen Dorril concludes that disinformation was a routine part of the IRD’s activities: “Although IRD apologists have always denied it, ‘black’ material such as forgeries, lies and fabrications was disseminated for use by its own outlets and by MI6-funded radio stations and news agencies. By the organisation’s engagement in these ‘cowboy’ operations, however, the more worthwhile task became tainted.”

This pattern was replicated when Edward Heath’s government brought the IRD into the propaganda war against the IRA in the early 1970s. The first IRD officer to arrive in Northern Ireland was Hugh Mooney in June 1971. He was followed a month later by Clifford Hill, who compiled a report on information requirements that was circulated in September 1971.

Hill called for the appointment of a press liason officer, who would “ensure close liaison between the information agencies in Northern Ireland, London and overseas, to plan a systematic campaign of propaganda, and to cultivate visiting journalists. He will be concerned with all information activities.”

Hill’s report noted that “a senior Army officer is joining the HQ staff (temporarily) and will be made available for contact work ‘downtown’ in close contact with the Press Liason Office” This was Col Maurice Tugwell who was seconded to the IRD by the Chief of the General Staff, Lord Carver.

The report were accepted by the Prime Minister and Hill himself was appointed to the press liason post. On 15 October, Downing Street Press Secretary Sir Donald Maitland invited the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence to join a liason committee to oversee Hill’s work .

In a 2002 statement to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Sir Donald claimed he had little involvement with the IRD. However, in a letter to the Prime Minister on 4 November 1971, he stated: “The liaison group, consisting of representatives of No. 10, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, met under my chairmanship with Clifford Hill this morning. We agreed on Hill’s tasks and objectives.”

“Parallel with this committee, Sir Dick White, Norman Reddaway and I have decided on the machinery for placing anti I.R.A. propaganda in the British press and media. This machinery is already in operation. Its first major task will be to produce articles which will counteract the effect of the Compton Report.”

It is interesting that the notion of countering IRA propaganda should have extended to countering a report on internment by a British civil servant which found that the sensory deprivation techniques used on internees did not amount to torture.

The targets of the British state’s information operations machinery in Belfast would later be extended far beyond the IRA and even Ireland. The tasks set out for Clifford Hill presaged the way this would be justified. The brief sent to the Prime Minister by Maitland concluded: “The IRA’s connections with other urban guerrilla organizations should be emphasised in order to show that the hard core Provisionals have ambitions quite unconnected with the status of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland or indeed with partition.”

This is an absurd statement given that only two years before, the Provisionals had split from the Official IRA precisely because the latter’s Marxist priorities had led it to take a relatively passive stance at the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969.

The same apparent lack of understanding was evident in an appraisal of IRA propaganda produced by Col Tugwell on 9 November:

IRA Propaganda Organisation
7. IRA propaganda has its base in Dublin where both factions run their own information centres, both with the title “Irish Republican Publicity Bureau.” Each has a full time staff and has subordinate directors in Belfast, Londonderry and elsewhere. The campaign is pushed by numerous front organisations and by Republican sympathisers who, having themselves been taken in by the propaganda, are willing to spread the word. These organisations include:
a. The Association for Legal Justice (which has been the principal agency for co-ordinating the campaign alleging brutality during internment and interrogation).
b. Republican Clubs (which have always been fronts for the Sinn Fein political party and which now help to disseminate the propaganda of whichever faction they have chosen to support).
c. The Belfast Central Citizens Defence Committee (once given a cloak of respectability as representative of the Catholic population of the city, but now heavily involved in promoting IRA interests).
d. The Irish News (a newspaper that has long represented Republican opinion in Ulster and is now an organ for printing IRA propaganda).
e. Catholic Ex-Servicemans Association (is becoming increasingly involved with the IRA as a front organisation).
f. NICRA (Directed by Kevin McCorry)
g. Various Relief and Action Committees in Catholic Areas.
h. Minority Rights Association.
j. Various regional Citizens Defence Committees working to the CCDC.
k. SDLP.
l. PD and other “New Left” organisations.
m. Vigilante or street committees, who organise allegations and fake damage, etc.
n. University groups and teachers.
o. RTE and newspapers in the Republic to varying degrees, with the Irish Press particularly active.
p. Committee for Truth (Fr Denis Faul – brutality allegations vehicle).
q. Association of Irish Priests (Ulster Branch) (Secretary Terrance O’Keefe, Coleraine University)).
r. A number of RC priests, but Frs Brady, Faul and Egan are prominent.

This remarkable document reads as if it were written on the assumption that any organisation criticizing British policy in Ireland must be an IRA front. This definition was wide enough to draw in not only human rights activists like Fr Faul, but the Irish state broadcaster, establishment newspapers and the main constitutional nationalist party in the North.

Col Tugwell’s view of ordinary nationalists was equally jaundiced:

So long as it appears to the majority of Catholics that the British Army is a threat to their community by acting as an “instrument of Stormont” and is believed by many as being an obstacle to their political aspirations they can be expected to believe most of IRA statements; and as long as they believe they repeat. The indigenous Irish, once convinced that their cause is just, possess a breath-taking ability to lie with absolute conviction, not just in support of something they believe to be true, but to put across a story they know very well is untrue. In this way, convincing witnesses can invariably be produced at a moment’s notice to sell whatever line the IRA consider to be to their advantage. Members of the IRA and their supporting propaganda agencies have good contacts in high places in the various media newspapers, radio and television, who can guide them over publicity at short notice. The Irish are also remarkably adept at picking up and repeating propaganda points they hear being expounded by their leaders, both political and IRA, on the radio and television.

Even though it was intended for internal consumption, it is difficult to know whether this document was the product of calculated disinformation, genuine paranoia or a confused mixture of the two.

Col Tugwell told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that his staff branch, Information Policy, did not engage in psychological warfare. However, his evidence was contradicted by Colin Wallace, an army press officer who worked with the unit.
“The Psy Ops or Information Policy Unit as it was known, comprised (in addition to myself) one Colonel, one Lieutenant Colonel, plus representatives of the Foreign Office Information Research Department (IRD), support by a team of Army NCO’s who handled the unit’s archives and photographic facilities,” Wallace told the Inquiry.

“Senior Intelligence officers from London came to Northern Ireland and ‘saw’ communist figures involved in various civil rights and protest groups. This in turn gave credence to the theory of a world-wide terrorist conspiracy. There were a number of organisations in Britain that were sympathetic to the IRA without really understanding what the IRA was about. The paranoia took on a level of importance which it did not merit, but nonetheless, it existed.”

Wallace presumably did not know that playing up this theory was part of the IRD’s brief from the Whitehall Liason Committee chaired by Sir Donald Maitland. Ironically, the focus of Information Policy’s propaganda would eventually be turned back on Downing Street itself with the Clockwork Orange operation, which Wallace described in his second statement to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.

“Clockwork Orange was designed to target sectarian assassination groups by psychological means to reduce their effectiveness,” Wallace testified. “After the first general election in 1974 the targets changed to focus more on left wing groups and Labour politicians. “
An example of this black propaganda is attached to Wallace’s statement as appendix five.

Supposedly written by an IRA defector, it includes a reference to Wilson’s meeting with the IRA in March 1972.

“I believe that the pieces relating to Harold Wilson were included by the Security Service to demonstrate that the Labour Government’s policies in Northern Ireland were helpful to or approved by the IRA,” Wallace testified.

In late 1974, Wallace refused to have anything further to do with Clockwork Orange. He was suspended a few months later, ostensibly for passing documents to the journalist Robert Fisk.

Although the Security Service, MI5, denies it to this day, there is ample evidence that some of its officers were plotting against Wilson. As well as the accounts of Wallace and of Peter Wright, there is the testimony of Wilson himself. In August 1975, Wilson called in the head of MI6, Maurice Oldfield, who admitted that elements of MI5 were unreliable. Oldfield was the source for accounts of this meeting by former MI6 agent Anthony Cavendish and journalist Chapman Pincher. Wilson recounted his version to BBC journalists Barry Penrose and Roger Courtiour.

Wilson told both Pincher and Penrose that he had then called in the head of MI5, Michael Hanley, who also admitted the existence of the plot.

Last year, a BBC documentary broadcast a recording of Wilson asking Penrose and Courtiour to investigate the affair. One of his suggestions was that they interview Colin Wallace.

Wallace’s knowledge of Clockwork Orange may have had fateful consequences for him. When an acquaintance of his, Jonathan Lewis, was found dead in 1980, Wallace was convicted of his manslaughter and served six years in prison. His case was taken up the investigative journalist Paul Foot, who suggested he had been framed by the secret state.

In 1990, the British Government admitted for the first time to the existence of Clockwork Orange and Wallace’s role in it, although it continued to deny the operation had targeted British politicians. His murder conviction was not overturned until 1996.

By this time the IRD had long since ceased to exist. It was abolished by Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977, amid concerns about its relationship to right-wing journalists.

It is clear from the IRD’s record in Northern Ireland what a revival of its methods would mean.

It would signify a resort to disinformation, ostensibly for enemy consumption, that would soon find its way into intelligence analyses and the domestic media. It would mean the paranoid condemnation of all opponents as the dupes of a monolithic terrorist conspiracy. Above all it would mean the exploitation of national security concerns to justify domestic political manipulation by unaccountable elites.

Perhaps it is not surprising that this example commends itself to today’s neoconservatives.