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.

Bush Is Trying To Impose A Classic Colonial Status on Iraq

tim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:59:19 +0000

Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn’t about oil. Tony Blair called the idea a “conspiracy theory”. It was about democracy and dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction and human rights, anything but oil. Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, insisted the conflict had “literally nothing to do with oil”. When Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, wrote last autumn, “Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he was treated as if he were some senile old gent who’d embarrassingly lost the plot.

That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world’s largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq’s vast reserves. Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq’s largest oilfields. But not only did the four energy giants — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total — write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover. Big Oil is back with a vengeance.

It’s a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself. The last thing on anyone’s mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq. This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom. But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state.

In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this “strategic framework agreement”, intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian — including indefinite authorisation for the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security”. Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying “status of forces agreement” the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.

This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status. Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty.

But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country’s nominal independence. Just as in George Bush’s version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces — though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.

To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal. The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958.

The 50th anniversary of the 1958 revolution appropriately falls next month. But Bush and Cheney seem increasingly determined to force through both their security agreement and the stalled law for the privatisation of Iraq’s oil industry before the US election. The signs are that, despite intense Iraqi opposition, a combination of strong-arm tactics, bribery and some watering down of the most extreme US demands may yet secure the full imperial package.

When Bush contradicted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month on the occupation deal and predicted: “If I were a betting man, we’ll reach an agreement with the Iraqis,” he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about — rather as he did when he explained a couple of weeks ago that he was “confident” Gordon Brown would not after all be cutting British troop numbers in Basra according to any fixed timetable. Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is suddenly sounding similarly confident about “progress” on the oil law because “the Americans are very keen”.

Perhaps they are all coming to believe the Bush administration propaganda that the surge has succeeded and Iraq is starting to “fix itself” in time for the US election, as the Economist’s cover story put it last week. Much is still being made of the decline in US casualties and resistance attacks to 2004 levels, even though the factors behind that drop are widely acknowledged to be contingent and precarious. Given the carnage of the past few days alone — including seven US soldiers killed since the weekend and a Baghdad car bomb that butchered 65 people — as well as this week’s withering US Government Accountability Office report on the administration’s claims of “progress” in Iraq, any other view would seem perverse.

What is certain is that, if Bush’s blueprint for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, resistance and bloodshed will increase. Of course, it’s true that the US and Britain didn’t invade Iraq only for its oil. It was a projection of American power in the world’s most strategically sensitive region, with oil at its heart, which has brought catastrophe to Iraq and great danger to the Middle East and the wider world. That’s why the struggle to restore Iraq’s independence matters far beyond its borders — it is a global necessity.

Republicans | ukwatch.net

Patience has its limits

Bush Is Trying To Impose A Classic Colonial Status on Iraq