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Waking up to British abuses in Iraq

Ellie Keen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday’s landmark settlement between the MoD and the family of Baha Mousa and the nine other survivors of torture and abuse at the hands of British troops indicates that the British government may be starting to wake up to the awful truth of abuse by British personnel in Iraq.

The compensation of £2.83m, to be shared between the families, will go some way towards repairing the damage caused by the horrific ordeal Mousa, a hotel receptionist, and the nine other survivors, most of them also hotel employees, were subjected to in Basra in September 2003.

Mousa was found dead in a disused latrine, bleeding and swollen, the victim of a beating that inflicted 93 separate injuries. The others received lasting injuries, heavily traumatised by those 48 hours spent hooded and cuffed, their bodies contorted into officially sanctioned “stress positions” and beaten seemingly at will.

The apology the families received during the compensation mediation with the MoD was given on behalf of the British army, for the actions of British soldiers. It provides some comfort to the relatives, disillusioned as they are with the court martial in 2006/2007, at which they felt their voices stifled, and which failed in even its extremely limited aim of prosecuting only a handful of the soldiers involved in the abuse.

Only one soldier was convicted of only one charge, the charge he had admitted before the proceedings even began. Chain-of-command issues remained largely unaddressed.

For the orphaned children of Mousa, and the other nine families affected by what happened, yesterday’s result is another step towards reparation. This is a process that began long before the 2007 landmark House of Lords judgment in Al-Skeini, which confirmed that our rights as British citizens enshrined in the Human Rights Act also apply to individuals held by British troops in British detention centres in Iraq.

But we cannot allow these families, or indeed ourselves as British citizens, to be short-changed. The UN general assembly has confirmed, in its Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation, that compensation is one element of the right to reparation. It also involves rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.

These families have a right to have their voices heard, to learn the truth of what happened during those 48 hours, and to know how the army came to authorise the use of “advanced techniques” such as hooding, “stress positions” and deprivation of food and water, employed to such devastating effect in their cases.

Those same techniques, banned by the British government in 1972, reared their heads again after September 11 2001 – first at Guantánamo, then in Iraq. The physiological and psychological abuse that lies behind the use of these techniques needs to be examined alongside the physical abuse that is so evident in the Mousa case.

The issues are broad ones, and we all have an interest in learning the answers and making sure accountability is achieved and institutional lessons learned – lessons that are all the more pressing as stories continue to emanate from Iraq of detainee abuse and unlawful detentions.

The British government is obliged, both morally and legally (under the Human Rights Act and the UN convention against torture) to investigate these abuses fully, an investigation that must be allowed to take place at an unfettered and broadly commissioned public inquiry.

After the government’s announcement in May of the public inquiry into the case of Baha Mousa and the nine survivors, we keenly await the further announcement of the inquiry chairman so that these lessons can at last be learned.

UK uses lung-shredder

Ellie Keen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Britain’s defence ministry admits use of ‘brutal’ missile to London paper

BRITISH troops have used missiles in Afghanistan which suck the air out of human targets, shred their internal organs and crush their bodies, according to a leading British newspaper.

The Hellfire missiles, also known as vacuum bombs, are condemned by human rights groups as “brutal”.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted to the London Times newspaper that its soldiers had fired the controversial thermobaric weapons, used to kill fighters in buildings and caves, from Apache attack helicopters in Afghanistan.

The MoD said the Hellfire AGM-114N, which creates a human-crushing vacuum with a second explosion, had proved so successful that the missile will now be fired from unmanned predator drones.

The Soviet Union’s forces in Afghanistan were the first to test thermobaric weapons on the enemy.

The world condemned Russia’s use of the weapon during its fight against Chechnyan rebels in the 1980s.

“We no longer accept the term thermobaric [for the AGM-114N] as there is no internationally agreed definition,” said an MoD spokesman talking to the London Times. “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.”

Human Rights Watch says the weapons are “brutal” and that their blast “makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter”.

Britain’s Media Fashions its “Warrior Prince”

Ellie Keen — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:22:55 +0000

Rarely has the servility of the British media been given such free and full expression.

The dispatch of Prince Harry—third in line to the British throne after his father, Charles, and elder brother, William—to Afghanistan’s Helmand province was as naked a piece of political propaganda as could be imagined. Orchestrated by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), it was carried out with the compliance of every single newspaper and TV channel in the UK.

All the major news outlets throughout the world were also part of the conspiracy to deceive the public, with both CNN and Reuters publicly admitting their complicity. When the story finally broke, it did so only as a result of an article published in an Australian magazine, New Idea, whose editors said they were unaware of the worldwide media embargo. It was then the subject of a short article in the German daily tabloid Berliner Kurier and finally made known to a wider audience when it was picked up by the right-wing Internet news-aggregator site, the Drudge Report, on February 28.

The agreement to conceal Harry’s posting was brokered during three meetings of 30 to 40 media representatives and top brass in the army between September and December.

The media accepted a collective blackout until after Prince Harry’s tour of duty was due to end in April, in return for access to a pre-deployment interview and several “embeds” being placed with the Blues and Royals Household Cavalry regiment, who would pool interviews, video footage and photographs. The prince would even be brought home on a Friday for the convenience of daily and Sunday newspapers.

When the story broke, newspapers across the political spectrum published—without seeming embarrassment—a statement by Gen. Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, praising the British media for their “highly responsible attitude.” Only some news sources felt obliged to justify their actions in lying to their readers and viewers. Jon Williams, world news editor of Britain’s state broadcaster, the BBC, said that as “journalism is about telling people things they don’t know,” not doing so “was something we thought long and hard about.”

The BBC’s explanation for doing so was that “A news black-out is unusual, but not unique” and was carried out to “minimise the danger” to Harry and other troops fighting alongside of him and in return for being allowed to film “up close and personal with him” in Helmand. The same line was repeated by Britain’s two nominally liberal broadsheets. Feigning Olympian detachment, the Independent did not feature the story on its front page. Its deputy editor-in-chief, Ian Birre, told Reuters that “We don’t share our rivals’ incredible fascination with every aspect of the royal family’s lives,” adding that he did not see “a problem at all” with the news blackout.

The Guardian did not publish its own comment on February 29, running instead an opinion by Bob Satchwell, the executive director of the Society of Editors, who played a key role in arranging the deal alongside Neil Wallis of Rupert Murdoch’s “sex and sleaze” scandal sheet, the News of the World, and the right-wing Mail on Sunday editor, Peter Wright. This piece added to the justification for censoring the news, the claim that it merely facilitated the wishes of a prince “desperate to join his army colleagues in the front line,” army chiefs who “wanted him to go to war like any other young officer” and a family that “wanted him to fulfil his ambitions too.”

Only on March 1, amidst much criticism from its readers, did the Guardian explain that the danger to Prince Harry and “the luckless soldiers around him” had determined its actions, especially when there was “no overriding public interest” in reporting his posting. “If exposing his posting would have brought peace in Afghanistan even infinitesimally closer, the judgment would have been different,” it continued.

All such efforts to rationalise the media’s actions are hollow. If the issue was Harry’s safety and that of his fellow soldiers, how was this facilitated by having reporters and cameramen follow him around Helmand, supposedly only hundreds of metres away from the front line? And can anyone seriously believe that a royal heir is simply another young soldier who should be allowed to do his duty, just like “one of us”?

Everyone who participated in the effort to send Harry to Afghanistan was well aware that they were offering their publications up as a direct propaganda tool of the MOD.

In the first instance, there was the agreement to conceal what was happening.

Contrary to the claim by Jon Williams that “there are no other ‘voluntary agreements’ in place at the moment, there’s nothing else we’re not telling you,” cover-ups happen all the time. The elaborate arrangements over Harry were only made necessary because it was considered impossible to issue a Defence Advisory (DA) notice barring reporting, given that no serious claim could be made of a threat to national security.

DA Notices, more popularly known as D Notices, have been repeatedly issued to conceal Britain’s dirty war secrets—most recently against ex-SAS officer Ben Griffin who has alleged direct British collusion with rendition and who was silenced amidst the reporting of Harry’s exploits in Afghanistan. It should be noted that, while DA Notices are not legally enforceable, the media almost universally complies.

It is the exposure of how fully the media is at the beck and call of the armed forces, the government and the Royal Family that prompted one of the few genuine expressions of outrage from a major mainstream journalist, Jon Snow. The presenter of Channel 4 news wrote in his blog praising the Drudge Report for ending the “British media’s conspiracy of silence.”

“One wonders whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust media bosses again,” he continued, a statement for which he was savaged by sections of the press.

Secondly there is the willing participation in the actual propaganda campaign mounted by the MOD, in support of a war that most people in Britain do not believe should be fought and utilising the newly dubbed “warrior prince” to do so.

The efforts to get Harry to Afghanistan followed the decision in May last year not to send him to Iraq for fear of his being targeted for assassination. This was viewed by the military as a major setback. An insight into the reaction was provided by military historian Peter Caddick-Adams in a contemporary article for the BBC on “the long history of royal service in wars.”

“In some eyes this will be seen as caving-in to insurgent threats to kidnap or target the prince,” he wrote. “In a wider context this may be seen as a break with a long tradition of British royals serving in the military in war zones. Both Harry’s uncle, Prince Andrew, who served in the Falklands as a helicopter pilot, and his grandfather, Prince Philip, who was decorated during World War II for his service with the Royal Navy, faced very real danger in different combat zones.

“Prince Harry’s great uncle, King George VI’s brother, the Duke of Kent, joined the RAF and was killed while flying in 1942. A more distant ancestor, Prince Maurice of Battenberg, a grandson of Queen Victoria, was killed near Mons in 1914 as an officer in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

“Some scholars argue that it is the very proximity of the royal family to danger—sharing the suffering of their subjects and soldiers—that has won great respect for the institution of monarchy…. It is indeed a shame that politics has got in the way of this young man’s aspirations to serve his country and follow the tradition of military service that almost every generation of British royals has followed.”

The Army, the Brown government and House of Windsor were determined that, this time, politics would not “get in the way” of efforts to popularise and legitimise the Afghan war—using Prince Harry as a royal “Action Man.”

One can only give a sense of the torrent of bloodthirsty jingoism and patriotic drivel that has been heaped upon the British people by the media in the days since the Harry story broke: page after page of photos of Harry on patrol, in a tank, firing a machine gun, washing his socks in a camp sink and eating curry with the Ghurkhas.

The Daily Mirror’s coverage was fairly typical. “Prince Harry has been battling the Taliban on the front line by calling in air strikes using a surveillance system known as Kill TV…. [O]n New Year’s Eve Harry used it to oversee his first bomb strike.”

Under the headline, “Prince Harry in Afghanistan: Fearless Harry’s frontline battlecry,” another Mirror article read: “His hands expertly grip the machine gun, his face a mask of steely determination as he homes in on his target.”

“Prince Harry, 23, looks like a battle-hardened veteran as he sits surrounded by sandbags and with a box of ammo at his feet to fire on Taliban fighters 650 yards away. And with nerves of steel he declared: ‘It’s just no-man’s-land. They poke their heads up and that’s it.’ ”

Finally,” the Mirror opines, “we have a prince with a purpose. His mother would have been hugely proud of him—and so should we…. Not many members of the royal family can claim to be ‘one of us.’ Harry can.”

Taped interviews reveal a very limited man, someone previously known for a propensity for alcohol and cannabis and dressing in Nazi regalia, who is being used by others far savvier. “All my wishes have come true,” he says. “I haven’t really had a shower for four days. I haven’t washed my clothes for a week. It’s very nice to be sort of a normal person for once, I think it’s about as normal as I’m going to get.”

Speaking of the Queen, who made clear how anxious she was for Harry to see active service, he adds, “I have told my grandmother—she actually told me. She told me I’m off to Afghanistan so that was the way it was supposed to be.”

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the paper’s former editor and biographer of Margaret Thatcher, Charles Moore, had no compunction about admitting what was really at stake in sending Harry to Helmand. In his unabashed support for the operation, he provides a damning indictment of the role played by the British media in the sordid affair.

Noting that George Galloway MP “has accused the BBC of being part of the ‘war effort,’ ” he stated, “Would that this were more often so!... Leave it to the Taliban Broadcasting Corporation (if their fundamentalism permits such a thing to exist) to put their case.”

“Something important was at stake here. It was not the fulfilment of Prince Harry’s personal desire to fight…. [O]ne young man’s longing to be a good soldier is not a big enough reason for so much upheaval. What matters much more is the symbolism.”

That “symbolism” is regarding the Royal Family as the embodiment of Britain’s imperial ambitions and a mechanism for suppressing dissent through the whipping up of patriotism.

“The Royal Family should try to be with the nation for the difficult bits,” Moore continued. “The Queen understood this so strongly 25 years ago that she made sure her own son risked his life. By Prince Harry’s account this week, she did the same with her grandson…. Some may argue that this is a very controversial war, and therefore it is dangerous for the Royal Family to be associated with it…. But it is all the more important to stand by the Army when the politics are rough.”

The Guardian has tried to minimise the impact of its complicity in the media blackout, blandly stating, “The army may try to use Harry’s tour of duty to win popularity for the Afghan mission,” while “the royals may hope the war will lend legitimacy to the prince.” It then asserts, “While the prince was serving in Afghanistan, his role could not be safely debated. Now he is returning, it must be.”

By their actions, the Guardian’s editors and those of their counterparts stand hopelessly compromised. They have forfeited any right to posture as leaders of such a debate.

Study War No More: Military Involvement in UK Universities

JamieSW — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:17:56 +0000

Imperial College London sounds like the kind of place where you’d expect to find attitudes sympathetic to the military. London was, after all, once the capital of an empire of such size and scale – encompassing about a quarter of the world – that it required immense military might to enforce its rule. Looking at the level of military research that is being conducted by academics at Imperial and many other UK universities today, you could be excused for thinking that the empire never really went away – at least in the minds of those who seek to defend it.

In December last year, letters were sent to students, academics, staff and alumni at 26 UK universities drawing their attention to a recently published report entitled ‘Study War No More – Military Involvement in UK universities.’ The report, written by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) details the hundreds of military projects that UK universities conduct on behalf of arms companies and public bodies such as the Ministry of Defence. As one of the 26 UK universities covered by the report, letters were sent to representatives of Imperial highlighting how, between 2001 and 2006, the college conducted a minimum of 95 military projects – the 7th largest number in the UK – which netted the university at least £24 million.

The following response to this letter was received from Stephen Brown, Imperial College’s Union President:

“I am delighted that Imperial College has performed so well in yet another league table although given that we only finished 7th there is clearly still a lot of room for improvement. Several of our students are very proud of the excellent work that the College does with our industrial partners and the government to make sure that our armed forces have every possible technological advantage in what is unfortunately a dangerous world. The recent concerns raised in Parliament about the under funding of the UK Armed Forces reinforces the need for this important work to continue to make our service personnel less vulnerable as they bravely go about their jobs protecting UK subjects from those who would do us harm.”

Mr Brown needn’t worry about Imperial’s position in the league table, for the college is working hard to improve its ranking all the time. For example, in 2006, the Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence joined forces with Imperial to form the International Technology Alliance (ITA). According to Imperial’s website, the ITA will “undertake a research programme exploring advanced technology for secure wireless and sensor networks to support future coalition operations, over a potential 10 year period, with a value of up to $135.8 million”[1]. Other members of the consortium include Boeing and Honeywell – two of the largest arms companies in the world. Imperial’s department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering received a government grant of £1.4 million for its work on this project and there may well be more to come.

It is important to consider the actual practices of Imperial’s ‘industrial partners’ in order to appreciate the likely applications of the military projects conducted at Imperial. As noted above, Imperial works with some of the largest arms companies in the world. As well as Boeing and Honeywell, Imperial is involved in numerous projects with BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, QinetiQ and General Dynamics. As Stephen Brown points out, these companies produce equipment for the UK military, which will have been used in, amongst other places, Iraq and Afghanistan. Notably absent from Mr Brown’s account however, is a reference to the foreign markets that these companies supply through arms exports. For example, BAE Systems, the company that was British Aerospace before it became too ‘global’ for ‘British’, is the world’s fourth largest arms producer. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.

These arms are sold indiscriminately around the world and the company thrives on insecurity. Its 2005 Annual Report candidly states that “New threats and conflict arenas are placing unprecedented demands on military forces and presenting BAE Systems with new challenges and opportunities…”. The company claims to have military customers in “some 130 countries”, with its foremost markets being the repressive Saudi Arabian regime and the US, to which BAE Systems has steadily been moving its business. Other export deals to areas of conflict and widespread human rights abuse include sub-systems for Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft and Hawk light combat aircraft to Indonesia during its repression of East Timor.

One of the larger military projects involving Imperial and BAE Systems is FLAVIIR. This is a £6.2 million, public-private funded project, running between 2004 and 2009 and involving ten universities, predominantly in their Engineering departments. According to its website, FLAVIIR will “look at technologies for future unmanned air vehicles (UAV) funded jointly by BAE Systems and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.” A recent report in The Guardian outlined just how deadly the FLAVIIR research could one day be. It describes how the FLAVIIR research is intended to develop existing UAV technology used by UK and US forces. The RAF initially plans to use the unmanned drones for reconnaissance before arming them with Hellfire missiles for ground attacks. The CIA already used similar drones last year to “target a Pakistani village where it was thought Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of al-Qaida, was in hiding. Instead, more than 20 villagers, including five women and five children, were killed.” Unshaken by such tragedies, “British ministers and military chiefs think the drone will be the frontline attack plane in years to come.”

The military sector – both governmental and industrial – has been able to push its way into Imperial and other UK universities through funding a variety of projects, mainly involving research. By sub-contracting research to universities, which have world-class, publicly-funded staff and facilities, the military sector can keep overheads down and, in the case of military companies, profits up. The ease with which military organisations can influence university departments, through purchasing research and services and providing sponsorship, is indicative of the general trend towards commercialisation in higher education. Moreover, the hundreds of projects conducted at UK universities between 2001 and 2006 for the military sector indicate that the military has, in particular, built up strong levels of influence over science, engineering and technology departments.

Public money, mainly from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s collaborative research grants scheme, heavily subsidises many of these military projects, in particular those conducted by military companies, which contribute relatively small amounts of money. The public financing of military research makes these projects more attractive to universities, especially those suffering from funding shortfalls. Academics thus accept and actively seek out military money because they are under pressure to attract research funding to their department. Furthermore, because the university funding system has been used by the government to introduce policies which promote research with economic benefits to industry, science, engineering and technology departments’ funding options have narrowed. Academics may also be more willing to accept military funding if they do not perceive the work to be military. This may be because they don’t associate the research they are being paid to conduct with a direct military application. This is despite the fact that it is often possible to identify work which has been paid for by the military that either have very high military revenues or spend millions of pounds on military production and/ or procurement.

In spite of the Freedom of Information Act, accessing data regarding the funding of universities by the military sector (for example from university and research council websites in addition to FoI requests) is time consuming and only presents a partial picture of the actual economic relationships. Two reasons for this- apart from the fact that institutions are often not compelled to provide such information- are the need for commercial confidentiality between competing organisations (including universities) and the cloak of secrecy surrounding the military sector. Without full transparency in the future, including clear and easily accessible information concerning how public money is used to support projects conducted by the military sector, it will not be possible to accurately assess the extent of military involvement in UK universities or monitor developments and trends.

The first step towards challenging the dependence of UK universities on funding from military organisations is to ensure that information regarding this relationship is publicly available so that it may be freely discussed. Transparency can only be achieved through the use of the media, public debates, meetings and campaign groups to press for change within universities and government. Ultimately, the decision-making structures of universities and government must change if the military sector’s research agenda is to stop being pushed onto university departments and there is to be a reduction in the amount of military projects conducted at UK universities. Thankfully, there are encouraging signs that students and staff will not stand for their universities’ being turned over to the military. Campaigners have already taken part in meetings at several UK universities, including Warwick, Nottingham, UCL, LSE, Sheffield and Southampton and there are plans for many more events at other universities in the future. One would hope that Imperial College and its Union President will continue to take part in this debate, for it is clear that students and staff want to discuss current levels of university participation in military projects given the urgent challenges of climate change, resource conflict, nuclear proliferation and economic inequalities that the UK and the world are currently facing.

1. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummar…