Mark Curtis | ukwatch.net

Fanning the Flames: the role of British mining companies in conflict and the violation of human rights

JamieSW — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:32:34 +0000

British mining companies are abusing human rights all over the world at the same time as making record profits and exploring new ‘frontiers’ in territories plagued by conflict. A report I’ve just authored for the NGO, Want on Want, documents the impacts of large-scale mining on communities in twenty countries. London is the centre of the world’s mining industry and many of the world’s largest mining companies are either UK-based or part-British, notably Anglo American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata.

The report shows that these largest four British companies made profits of around £14 billion in 2006. Much of this wealth is simply being extracted from poor countries, with the complicity of Southern governments, due to low tax rates and profit repatriation allowances; there is also evidence that some companies are using creative accounting techniques to avoid paying taxes.

The report includes analysis of the following cases:

Two junior British mining companies are working in joint ventures with Chinese companies in Chinese-occupied Tibet, almost certainly illegally extracting that country’s rich natural resources.

Some of the big British companies are fanning conflict by mining in countries such as Colombia and exploring on the Philippines island of Mindanao, where the military is eradicating opponents of mining to make way for the companies.

In Uzbekistan, the British government is backing a gold mining company’s joint venture with the Uzbek regime, one of the region’s most repressive states.

British mining operations have provoked massive local opposition in countries such as Bangladesh, Peru, South Africa and India, notably for forcing people off their land, while receiving virtually no media coverage in the UK.

Severe environmental destruction, notably water pollution, is being caused in various countries including Ghana, Argentina, Papua New Guinea and Zambia

All this is being done with the active support of the British government, which continues to press for ‘favourable investment climates’ in developing countries while involving mining company leaders in various ‘corporate social responsibility’ initiatives and rejecting calls for increased regulation of corporations. Whitehall has close personal connections to the big mining companies. A director of Rio Tinto, for example, sits on the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Management Board, which is responsible for ‘success in the military tasks we undertake at home and abroad’.

The full report can be seen at:
http://www.waronwant.org/Fanning%20the%20Flames%2015142.twl

Painful Extraction

Tim Holmes — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:42:16 +0000

It all has a depressingly familiar ring. The fingerprints of a British mining company are found to be all over abuses around the world. And again, there are high-level connections with the government. Enervated readers might be tempted to follow the lead of Gordon Brown, who is allowing it all to happen.

Anglo American, the world’s second-largest mining company, today announces its financial figures for 2007, on the back of record profits in 2006 of more than $6bn. Last year I visited Obuasi in Ghana, the site of Africa’s largest gold mine, run by AngloGold Ashanti (AGA), an Anglo American subsidiary. The mine had polluted local water systems, while many people told me how they live in fear of joint company/police “security” patrols. In the past year, the appalling poverty of villagers literally living on top of gold has not improved one jot.

Ghana is just the tip of the slag heap. A report I authored for War on Want, released today, notes that in Colombia’s Sur de Bolivar region, where AGA is exploring for new deposits, the army is engaged in a campaign of murder of trade union and community leaders. Although there is no evidence of AGA complicity, it is the beneficiary of this onslaught, designed to force people off their land to make way for mining.

Exploration by Anglo American is also being bitterly opposed in the Cordillera region of the Philippines, an area rich in gold and copper ore, where the local population fears a loss of farmland, forest and rivers. Political killings of anti-mining activists have occurred in the region, and are among the 700 extrajudicial killings reported in the country since 2001. The Philippines mining industry was recently described by the former international development secretary Clare Short as the most “systematically destructive” she has ever seen.

Anglo American’s chairman, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, has been courted by the government as a chief exponent of “corporate social responsibility”. He has signed the company up to Brown’s initiative supposedly designed to reinvigorate the world’s commitment to anti-poverty targets. While championing CSR as a voluntary mechanism for companies to improve their social impact, Moody-Stuart has been a staunch opponent of further mandatory regulation on companies.

In this he finds a soulmate in Brown, who in 10 years in government has never seriously criticised, let alone sought to regulate, British companies overseas. Virtually every speech he has given since 1997 has pledged his commitment to minimal company regulation while praising businesses as “partners” in overseas development.

The reality is that a more open investment climate in poor countries can sometimes be good and sometimes bad. In Obuasi, Sur de Bolivar and Cordillera, open investment translates as repression and exploitation. Yet Brown is a liberalisation evangelist who has failed to discriminate between good investment and bad. Britain has supported the World Bank-led rewriting of dozens of countries’ mining laws, resulting in foreign firms paying much lower corporation tax and royalties to host governments. In Ghana the government gets a minuscule 5% of the value of all minerals exported. No wonder Anglo American was able to make $6bn profits last year.

While the company is benefiting from high commodity prices, driven by China’s demand for minerals, I can’t but think of the people of Dokyiwa village near Obuasi, who can no longer use their local stream and whose water pumps regularly fail. This is just their everyday banality of life. It will continue until those feted as the “champions of Africa” stop the unfair extraction of its wealth.

The War on Want report is available at waronwant.org Mark Curtis is the author of Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses.

markcurtis.info

It's Thriving, but Lethal

Alex Doherty — Tue, 22 May 2007 12:16:57 +0000

Three months before his election in 1997, Tony Blair wrote in BAE Systems’ newsletter that his government would champion arms exports and a “strong defence industry”. That, despite the hoopla surrounding the idea of an “ethical” foreign policy, was always the prime minister’s ambition. A decade on, a new set of figures reveals the devastating extent to which he has succeeded.

Yesterday’s report by the NGO Saferworld documents the £45bn worth of arms delivered by Britain in the past 10 years, making us the world’s second-largest arms exporter. In the past three years, arms have been exported to 19 of the 20 countries identified in the Foreign Office’s annual human rights report as “countries of concern”. The Colombian military and its paramilitary allies have killed thousands of people in the country’s civil war. Yet last year Britain exported armoured all-wheel-drive vehicles, military communications equipment and heavy machine guns, alongside a military aid programme. Indonesia has received more than £400m worth of military equipment since 1997, while using British military equipment for internal repression on a dozen known occasions.

Britain has exported more than £110m worth of military equipment to Israel during its occupation of Palestinian territories and war with Lebanon. Exports doubled in 2001, as Israeli offensive military operations were stepped up on the West Bank. Another growth market is China. Despite an EU arms embargo, Britain has managed to export £500m worth of military and dual-use equipment – nominally “non-lethal” items. These include components for tanks, components for combat aircraft, and military communications equipment.

Over the past four years, 199 export licences have been approved to the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands – territories without armies. The equipment includes small arms and ammunition, anti-riot shields, CS hand grenades, crowd-control ammunition and even nuclear, biological, chemical filters and respirators (for the Cayman Islands). It is anybody’s guess where this equipment is destined. And this could be just the tip of the iceberg. Government statistics show the destination of only a quarter of all arms exports – the public are not told where the rest goes.

Government policies to tighten exports, such as banning the export of torture equipment and landmines, have been minor in comparison. The government trumpets an international arms trade treaty since it would require no further restrictions on its arms exports. Ministers have stressed that the treaty should not impinge on the “legitimate arms trade”, and even that it “could benefit the defence industry”.

Arms exports are thriving not because of any domestic economic benefits. Academic research shows that the public subsidises arms sales by between half a billion and a billion pounds annually – far outweighing any economic stimulus they provide. What drives the growth is that arms sales support foreign policy by strengthening relations with key allies, who are often repressive elites. But there is also a huge influence wielded by big arms corporations, as reflected in the “revolving door” between them and the Ministry of Defence. At least 19 senior MoD officials have taken jobs with arms companies since 1997, while 38 out of 79 personnel secondees to the MoD between 1997 and 2003 came from arms companies.

A truly ethical foreign policy would see the shutdown of Britain’s arms export industry. But, at the very least, it must be held up to public scrutiny and forced to halt exports to states abusing human rights.

Mark Curtis is the author of Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses.

www.markcurtis.info

Ten Years of New Labour’s Arms Exports

Alex Doherty — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:36:14 +0000

Reviewing British arms exports for the ten-year period under New Labour, the figures speak for themselves:

- The UK has exported £45 billion worth of arms around the world since 1997.

- Over £110m of military equipment has gone to Israel, throughout a period of offensive operations in the occupied territories and war with Lebanon

- Iraq has again become a large British arms market; over £130m have been exported since the invasion in 2003.

- Half a billion pounds worth of military and ‘other’ equipment has gone to China, which is under an EU arms embargo. Arms have also gone to Hong Kong, controlled by China.

- Indonesia has used UK equipment for repressive purposes on at least a dozen occasions in the Labour years.

- The UK continues to arm many of the world’s poorest countries. South Africa, for example, has received over £400m worth of UK military equipment in the Labour years. Nearly £150m of arms have gone to Nigeria under Labour, including armoured vehicles, rifles, shotguns and small arms ammunition.

Britain’s arms exports industry has been thriving under Labour, not because of the economic benefits to the country – the evidence is overwhelming that arms exports cost the taxpayer more than they generate, given the level of taxpayer subsidies. The major reason is that arms exports are a key part of UK foreign policy, especially in enhancing relationships with repressive regimes and elites, and because a small number of big corporations wiled major influence over government policy; in fact help set it.

The following review is based on an analysis I recently undertook for the NGO Saferworld.

Exporting arms to human rights abusers

The government has consistently armed states violating human rights. In the three years from 2004 to 2006, for example, arms exports were approved to 19 of the 20 countries identified by the Foreign Office in its annual human rights report as ‘countries of concern’. The government has consistently rejected calls by some groups to effect a blanket ban on exports to human rights abusers and claims to consider on a case by case basis whether certain exports ‘might’ be used for internal repression. Key human rights abusers receiving British arms include:

• Colombia: Thousands of people have been killed in Colombia’s civil war, mostly by right-wing paramilitary forces that are known to have strong support from government security forces. Yet last year (2006) alone, the UK government exported armoured all-wheel drive vehicles, military communications equipment and heavy machine guns. Previous exports have included components for combat aircraft, small arms ammunition, explosives, and technology for the use in combat helicopters, combat aircraft and combat helicopters

• Nepal: No UK military exports appear to have gone to Nepal since February 2005 when Nepalese King took direct power and imposed a state of emergency. But the UK provided around £11m in military exports until this date as Nepal pursued a brutal counter-insurgency war in which 12,000 people have been killed since 1996, most of them by Nepalese government forces. UK exports included: demolition devices and components for assault rifles (early 2005), the ‘gifting’ of two aircraft (in 2004) that could be used to assist in offensive operations (paid for from the Global Conflict Prevention pool which is supposed to help prevent violent conflict), 35 Land Rovers (2002) as well as combat shotguns and small arms ammunition (2003)

• Russia: Following its military intervention in Chechnya in September 1999, Russia has committed wide-ranging human rights violations in the province, amidst thousands of deaths and hundreds of ‘disappearances’ believed to be at the hands of Russian forces. Britain has provided over £137 million in arms exports to Russia since 1999, with the levels peaking in the years 2000-02. The equipment sold has been wide-ranging, including shotguns, technology for the use of combat helicopters, components for combat aircraft, air rifles, military cargo vehicles, military utility vehicles.

• Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war has involved thousands of deaths on both sides. The Labour government has exported military equipment worth over £35 million. Last year (2006) alone, the UK exported armoured all-wheel drive vehicles, components for combat helicopters, technology for the use of combat helicopters, components for combat aircraft, military aircraft communications equipment and semi-automatics pistols. Previous deliveries include two military transport aircraft (delivered in 2000), sub-machine guns, and components for heavy machine-guns and for armoured fighting vehicles.

Given the consistency with which this supposed case-by-case consideration is flouted, the logical deduction is that it is deliberate British policy to keep arming states abusing human rights and providing them with the equipment to maintain internal order and control dissent. Indeed, this is fully consistent with Britain’s wider policy of support to these states, and with planners’ concerns revealed in the declassified government documents that I have reviewed in my books Web of Deceit and Unpeople, a subject to which I return below.

Using British weapons for repression

The worst case of the use of British weapons for repression in the Labour years is probably Indonesia, to whom Britain has exported more than £400m worth of military equipment since 1997. The most serious hardware was delivered in the early years, following agreements made under the Conservative government, and included Hawk jets, armoured personnel carriers and tanks. Since then, the arms have continued to flow – more than £100m worth have been delivered in the past five years. Export licences have been granted for armoured all-wheel drive vehicles, components for tanks, technology for the production of combat aircraft, and components for combat aircraft and for combat helicopters.

Indonesia’s human rights abuses and military aggression, notably in West Papua and Aceh provinces against popular separatist movements, have been well-documented. There at least a dozen known occasions when British-supplied equipment has been used by Indonesian forces:

• May 1997: Tactica water cannon (supplied in the 1960s) were used against street protestors to break up an election march.

• 1998: Scorpion tanks exported from Britain were used in Jakarta in May and November 1998 in incidents killing 18 protestors. Throughout 1998, UK-supplied Scorpion tanks, armoured vehicles and water cannon were regularly photographed on the streets of Indonesia putting down peaceful protests against the rule of then President Suharto and his successor Habibie.

• February 1999: Tactica water cannon were used against demonstrating workers in Surabaya, east Java

• July 1999: UK-supplied Hawks flew sorties to intimidate the population in East Timor

• July and December 2000: Saladin armoured cars (exported by the UK in the 1960s) were used by the military in Ambon in clashes between Christians and Muslims
• 2000: Hawk jets flew sorties over towns in West Papua, intended to intimidate the population

• May 2003: In Indonesia’s military offensive in Aceh, Hawk aircraft, Scorpion tanks, Saracen armoured vehicles and military Land Rovers were used. Eyewitnesses said Hawks were used in bombing raids against villages. Land Rovers were used by special forces, the Kopassus, which have been widely accused of human rights abuses.

• Election day, 5 April 2004: The army used Stormer armoured vehicles (some of which were supplied in 1998) to patrol the streets.

• August and October 2005: Tactica armoured personnel carriers armed with water cannon were deployed during large demonstrations in West Papua in August and October 2005

The fundamental purpose and role of the Indonesian military is to maintain the country’s ‘territorial integrity’, meaning to brutally counter any separatist tendencies. This goal is supported in Whitehall and there is no doubt that ministers know exactly how weapons exported from Britain will be used.

Arming both sides in conflicts

The UK government’s public criteria for approving arms exports claim that licences will not be issued if they ‘might be used for international aggression’ or if they ‘would provoke or prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions’. This supposed policy is again routinely flouted.

India/Pakistan

It was revealed in June 2002 that the UK had issued dozens of arms export licences to India and Pakistan throughout the period of acute tension between the two countries, and at a time when Tony Blair and other leaders were urging both sides to pull back from the brink of military confrontation over the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 2002, Britain exported £15m in military equipment to Pakistan and £118m to India (including the delivery of two fighter/ground attack Harrier aircraft to India following a 1997 deal). British ministers continued to lobby to sell India 66 Hawk fighter jets and accompanying services, in a deal worth £1.1 billion, eventually concluded in 2004. Ministers claimed the deal did not contradict the government’s criteria as the Hawks were trainer aircraft. Yet they can be refitted as combat aircraft (including to carry tactical nuclear weapons) and, as the Head of the Indian Airforce Training Command, has said, the Hawk may be used as combat aircraft ‘should an operational scenario present itself’.

The UK has sold over £850m worth of arms to India and over £150m to Pakistan under the Labour government. The volume of arms exports to both sides significantly increased in the two years following tensions in 2002. Moreover, the UK has been providing similar military equipment to both sides that could aid combat operations. Since 2002, Britain has sold both India and Pakistan: components for combat aircraft, components for military combat helicopters, components for frigates and components for military communications equipment. Britain has also sold components for air-to-air missiles to Pakistan (in 2003) and air-to-air missiles launching equipment to India (in 2006). Many of these are under open licences.

China/Taiwan

Despite continuing tensions between the two countries, and an ever-present risk of hostilities breaking out – and an EU arms embargo against China – Britain has continued to deliver military-related equipment to both China and Taiwan, to the tune of nearly £500m each. As with India and Pakistan, both countries have received similar equipment from Britain that could aid offensive operations: last year (2006) both were granted exports of components for combat aircraft, military communications equipment and components for military transport aircraft. Taiwan was also provided with components for submarines and technology for the use of combat helicopters.

Zimbabwe/Central Africa

Britain sold military equipment to both sides in the war over the Democratic Republic of Congo. On the one hand, equipment went to Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola, while, on the other, it went to Uganda and Rwanda. Uganda and Angola – on opposing sides – were both invited to the annual arms exhibition in September 2001. Following Zimbabwe’s military intervention in the DRC war in August 1998, Britain announced it would not supply equipment that could be used for ‘aggressive ends’ but continued to grant export licences for Hawk aircraft, despite the fact that Zimbabwe had used them in the intervention. Export licences for components for Hawk and other aircraft continued to be granted in late 1998 and early 1999; the Foreign Affairs Committee noted that these ‘may well have been used to supply spares for military equipment used for intervention in the DRC, including aircraft spares’. In February 2000, further licences for Hawk spares were granted – a decision taken by Tony Blair against the advice of Foreign Secretary Robin Cook; only in May 2000 did the government finally announce an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, following government-sponsored violence in the country.

Arming Israel

The export of military equipment to Israel contravenes numerous of the government’s public arms exports criteria: the equipment can be used for repression, can exacerbate regional tensions and can, as the EU code states, enable Israel ‘to assert by force a territorial claim’. During Israel’s illegal occupation of the occupied territories, persistent human rights abuses there together with ongoing regional tensions – culminating in war with Lebanon in 2006 – Britain has sold more than £110m of military equipment to Israel under Labour.

Britain has staunchly defended and supported Israel and arms exports have been a feature of this. Arms exports to Israel doubled in 2001, as Israel stepped up offensive military operations in the occupied territories. In 2002, exports to Israel were reportedly being considered on a case by case basis, but the volume reached its highest point in 2005. Last year, Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells said that British policy since 2002 had been not to export weapons, equipment or components that could be ‘deployed aggressively’ in the occupied territories, but added that ‘almost any piece of equipment… could be used aggressively’. Yet since 2002 the UK has exported:

• components for combat aircraft and for combat helicopters, which have been used against civilians in the occupied territories. This includes the export of ‘head-up displays’ to the US for the F-16 fighter aircraft destined for Israel. This decision went ahead despite the Israeli government’s admission around the same time that Centurion tanks previously supplied by the UK had been used against Palestinians in breach of Israel’s own assurance to the UK government.

• A range of other equipment critical for offensive operations, such as components for tanks, components for military utility helicopters, armoured all-wheel drive vehicles, technology for the use of combat aircraft, components for airborne surveillance equipment and military communications equipment.

• Military Land Rovers exported from Britain have also been reported as being in use in Gaza.

Embargo? What embargo? The case of China

As noted above, China has received nearly half billion pounds worth of British military-related and dual-use equipment under the Labour government, even though it is the subject of an EU arms embargo. By 2005, China was the UK’s fourth largest export market for military equipment. Britain has become the EU’s biggest military exporter to China – accounting for nearly 40 per cent of all the EU’s military exports from 1997-2005.

The UK’s interpretation of the EU embargo restricts exports to what it claims are ‘non-lethal’ items. Yet the UK has exported components for tanks, components for combat aircraft, technology for the production of combat aircraft and for the production of military utility helicopters, military communications equipment – all of which equipment, while by itself technically non-lethal, can be critical for decidedly lethal arms. As four parliamentary committees commented in July last year, ‘we consider that allowing the export of components will enable the Chinese government to build up an offensive capability’.

Furthermore, Britain has exported arms worth over £30m to Hong Kong, which since the handover in 1997 has been controlled by China. In 2006, Britain exported to Hong Kong armoured all-wheel drive vehicles, anti-riot shields, components for machine guns, weapon sights, military navigation equipment and military communications equipment. Previous exports include CS hand grenades, stun grenades, demolition charges, machine guns, anti-riot guns and crowd control ammunition – all granted in 2003, for example, and all of which run the risk of being used for domestic repression.

Exporting cluster bombs

Largely unnoticed by the media, the British government is a major producer, user, exporter and stockpiler of cluster bombs, and has sold them to armed forces around the world. These are among the deadliest of modern weapons, taking a huge toll on civilians, and are packed into shells or bombs which scatter them over large areas. The UK is one of the nine exporters of cluster bombs in the world and the sole producer/exporter of the BL-755 and RBL-755 varieties. These bombs are in service with a number of militaries, including Iran, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998, Ethiopia dropped RBL-755 bombs in Gash-Barka province of western Eritrea, though it is not clear how Ethiopia procured them.

In November last year, at a five-year review conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with countries such as China, Russia and the United States in opposing a proposal to start negotiations on cluster munitions. But then in February this year, the UK changed tack and signed up to a declaration urging countries to conclude by 2008 a legally binding instrument to ban cluster bombs. A government statement indicates that the government is phasing out the BL and RBL-755 cluster bombs by 2010.

Iraq – a new arms market

As under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, Iraq has recently become a large British arms market again, with over £130m exported since 2003. Equipment has included assault rifles, machine guns, semi-automatic pistols (21,000 of them in 2004), small arms ammunition and armoured personnel carriers. There have also been reports that some equipment has ended up in the hands of militia forces. Many of the recommendations from the Scott report enquiry into arms to Iraq – for example on monitoring the end use of equipment exported and increasing transparency over the process – have still not been implemented by the Labour government.

Ongoing secrecy and lack of transparency

Incredibly, and basically unreported in the mainstream media, no one knows where the overwhelming majority of British arms exports go. Official figures show that in 2004, for example, arms worth over £5.2 billion were exported; but the volume identified by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) as going to specific countries was only £1,391 – a quarter of the total. The rest is a figure based on ‘estimates of additional aerospace equipment and services’ from data in surveys undertaken by the Society of British Aerospace Companies. These exports are of ‘dual-use’ aerospace items such as training, consultancy and project support related to exports and are not monitored by the HMRC. The government itself has admitted in a freedom of information act disclosure that it does not know the destination of these exports and that the figures ‘cannot be broken down at the country level’. This means that the actual arms exports to countries abusing human rights, for example, may well be much higher than given by the government, and in this report. This issue surely falls into a category of ‘total scandal’ – perhaps numbering in the hundreds – symptomatic of how the country is ruled.

Exporting arms to countries without armies!

Scrutiny of the recipients of British military exports reveals some surprising destinations, notably the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands. My research found that Britain has approved 199 export licences to these destinations from 2002 until September 2006. More worrying is the kind of equipment being ‘exported’:

• British Virgin islands: equipment for the use of military communications equipment (2006), military communications equipment (2003), semi-automatic pistols, small arms ammunition, components for submachine guns (2002)

• Cayman Islands: small arms ammunition, NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) filters and respirators (2006), anti-riot shields, components for submachine guns, submachine guns (2002)

• Channel Islands: shotguns, gun mountings (2006), semi-automatic pistols, small arms ammunition, submachine guns, military vehicle components, crowd control ammunition, teargas/irritant ammunition, CS hand grenades, demolition charges (2003), assault rifles, stun grenades (2002)

Assuming these ‘recipients’ have no use for teargas/irritant ammunition, for example, where this equipment is ending up, is anybody’s guess.

Continuing corruption

Tony Blair’s recent intervention to stop a Serious Fraud Office enquiry into corruption in British arms exports to Saudi Arabia is the tip of an iceberg. To name just some of the other more recent cases:

• BAE Systems secretly paid more than £1 million to Chile’s general Pinochet between 1997 and 2004, according to the Guardian.

• The Serious Fraud Office is currently investigating ‘substantial payments’ made by BAE Systems to a senior South African defence ministry official who had influence over a £1.5 billion multi-national contract won by the company to supply Hawk aircraft.

• BAE Systems secretly paid a $12 million commission into a Swiss bank account in the notorious deal that led Tanzania, one of the world’s poorest countries, to by a radar system (see further below).

Equipping Saudi Arabia

Britain’s arms exports to Saudi Arabia enables key contacts to be cemented with the world’s major oil producer as well as enabling Saudi royals to cream off millions for their personal bank accounts. They are not the normal bilateral deals between states but amount to a massive requipping of the Saudi military. The December 2005 deal known as Al-Yamamah 3 is worth an initial £8 billion to BAE systems for the supply of 72 Eurofighter aircraft, but follow-on contracts for training and spare parts could be worth an eventual £40 billion. The Al-Yamamah deals are likely to alter the strategic military balance in the Middle East, affecting procurement decisions of states rivaling Saudi Arabia, such as Israel and Iran. Exports are also clearly intended to help enable the Saudis to maintain internal control: Britain exports a range of equipment such as tear gas/riot control agents, semi-automatic pistols, submachine guns, armoured all-wheel drive vehicles and assault rifles. The exports are also, of course, mired in secrecy. No export licences are required under the Al-Yamamah deals, which means that the details of the equipment being exported, and the amount, is not known.

Undermining sustainable development

Britain continues to arm numerous of the world’s poorest countries, helping elites divert scarce resources to maintaining domestic control and reinforcing the power of the military in society. It was reported in 2005, for example, that British arms exports to Africa had risen to record levels over the past four years, surpassing the £1 billion mark. Small arms especially have flowed to states such as Angola, Malawi, Namibia and Eritrea while in 2003, for example, the UK sold arms to ten countries involved in conflicts in Africa, totaling £200m. Britain has sold South Africa over £400 million worth of arms under Labour, the biggest single deal being the $6 billion agreement in 1999 to supply arms to South Africa from a number of countries including the UK selling 24 Hawk fighter/trainer jets and 4 naval helicopters. Britain has also sold nearly £150m of arms to another key ally, Nigeria, under Labour, including armoured vehicles, rifles, shotguns and small arms ammunition.

Against this litany of terrible policies, the government policies such as the ban on the export of torture equipment and land mines, for example, are minor and barely worthy of mention. The government has received a lot of praise, also, for championing an international arms trade treaty (ATT), which was established in 2006. The reason is clear: it will involve no further restrictions on the UK’s arms exports, very clearly spelled out by Ministers. Foreign Minister Kim Howells has repeatedly stated that the ATT should not impinge on the ‘legitimate arms trade’ while Defence Minister Derek Twigg has said that it ‘could benefit the defence industry’ .

The advantages of arms exports

In its recent Defence Industrial Strategy white paper, the government argues that it promotes arms exports for five reasons. The first three are economic:

1. ‘Defence exports bring commercial benefit to UK companies and around 20% of UK defence employment is in export work’.

2. ‘Longer production runs also spread fixed overhead costs. The benefit thus accruing to industry may be shared by us in the form of lower prices on future purchases from the same supplier’

3. ‘Defence exports help to maintain key sovereign capabilities in both production capacity and systems engineering skills, which we might otherwise have had to intervene to maintain’.

Arms exports certainly bring profits to specific UK companies but there is by now overwhelming evidence that they do not bring major benefits the economy as a whole. For one thing, Government figures show that the number of people employed from arms exports has decreased from 100,000 when Labour took office to 65,000 in 2004/05 – a miniscule percentage of employment in the UK. A group of academic and Ministry of Defence economists concluded in a 2001 study by York University that the economic costs of a 50 per cent reduction in military exports would be ‘relatively small and one off…as a consequence the balance of arguments about defence exports should depend mainly on non-economic considerations’. The loss of jobs in arms exports would be offset by the creation of more jobs in the civilian sector. Indeed, the government appeared to endorse this conclusion in its Defence Industrial Strategy.

The government’s second and third arguments do not follow from accepting the conclusions in the York University report. While arms exports may currently spread fixed overhead costs and maintain industrial capabilities, this is because there are arms exports; but the point is that shifting to civilian production would provide much greater benefits to the UK economy. The argument in point 2 that arms exports reduce the costs of production is wrong in that it is premised on domestic sales preceding exports and on all customers being satisfied with the same finished product. The reality is more complicated in a world arms market that is very competitive and where exports are frequently sold near the marginal costs of production. Arms exports cost the taxpayer money – various studies show that government subsidies to arms exports (mainly export credits) are at least £453m and possibly up to £936m a year, meaning every job in the sector is subsidized to the tune of at least £7,000 a year.

4. ‘Defence exports support defence diplomacy and in some countries may act as a key enabling activity for a bilateral relationship’.

This is true as long as we decipher the language, and is very worrying. In reality, arms exports regularly prop up repressive regimes by currying favour with political elites and shoring up the military who are often the real power-brokers in a country. Or they help initiate or cement relationships with future power-brokers – an insurance policy if the military takes over. Britain’s arms exports can cement relations with, and directly support, states when they are engaged in conflict since recipient governments are aware that decisions in the exporting country are more controversial and higher risk – Israeli elites currently will be more than aware of how politically difficult it has been for Britain to continue to provide arms, for example. Arms exports can undermine democratic forces within countries by increasing the domestic power of the state and reinforcing undemocratic and repressive tendencies – Britain’s arms exports to countries such as Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt are all cases in point.

British arms exports can also help allies win wars and this is also often their intention – there can be doubt that British elites know exactly what they are doing by arming Indonesia, for example: they are giving them the weaponry to brutally suppress any dissent. Giving states arms to counter or destroy internal opposition is a constant feature of arms exports policy revealed in the declassified government planning files I reviewed in my books Unpeople and Web of deceit – for example, in arming the Gulf states to counter more liberal forces, arming Baghdad to destroy the Kurds in the 1960s, arming the Nigerian federal government to defeat the Biafran secessionists, providing arms to the US to defeat the Vietnamese etc etc. All these foreign policy factors in arms exports are far more important than commercial considerations and involve absolutely fundamental aspects of the UK’s foreign policy.

5. ‘Defence exports contribute to building local operational capability and therefore enhance interoperability with our own forces, especially during peacekeeping missions’.

This is a minor point and is surely not regarded as serious in elite circles. There is already considerable interoperability of military equipment within NATO, for example, whether Britain exports this equipment or not. Indeed, an argument could be made that interoperability would be enhanced if the UK withdrew from some arms exports and give the field totally to US equipment.

Another key reason for arms exports not mentioned by the government is an unwillingness to upset the US government by rejecting certain deals. The government’s 2002 guidelines on incorporation policy (ie, for components that will be incorporated into weapons systems in the recipient country for onward export), which allowed the export of spare parts for F-16s destined for Israel, was partly a sop to the US. In announcing these guidelines, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: ‘the government carefully takes into account the importance of maintaining a strong and dynamic defence relationship with the US. This relationship is fundamental to the UK’s national security as well as to our ability to play a strong and effective role in the world’. In addition, British arms companies now secure a large slice of their orders from the US Defence Department, while the US is among the largest markets for UK arms exports. The new militarization under the supposed ‘war on terror’ is a massive boost for British arms companies.

Left off the government’s list of reasons for providing arms exports is the influence and power wielded by Britain’s big arms companies, and the government’s closeness to, and support for them. The government provides a variety of direct help to the companies: a team of 600 civil servants dedicated to selling UK arms around the world; the provision of taxpayer-backed export credits and ministerial and royal family personal interventions to win key deals. There is also a large ‘revolving door’ of officials moving between the big arms companies, the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence, for example:

• between 1999 and 2004, 614 officers in the armed forces received approval to take up employment in arms companies

• at least 19 senior MoD officials have taken employment with arms companies since 1997.

• 38 out of 79 individuals seconded to the MoD between April 1997 and January 2003 came from arms companies (22 from BAE Systems)

Tony Blair has personally been the highest lobbyist for the arms corporations, intervening in several deals – the Tanzania radar and the Hawk spares to Zimbabwe, for example – to override other government departments, and undertaking personal visits to India and Saudi Arabia to promote large deals. Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote in his 2003 autobiography that ‘I never once knew number 10 come up with any decision that would be incommoding to British Aerospace’. The problem lies mainly in government for allowing the arms industry to become so influential.

For notes and sources, see the Saferworld report at: http://www.saferworld.org.uk/publications.php?id=264

The Future of British Foreign Policy

Alex Doherty — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:17:36 +0000

Exclusive to ukwatch.net, an interview with historian Mark Curtis, author of Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses and Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World. www.markcurtis.info

What do you expect from a Brown premiership? Is British foreign policy likely to change at all?

There have been no public signs that foreign policy is likely to change. Brown has been four-square behind Blair on foreign policy, including, of course, Iraq, which he has financed as Chancellor and publicly defended when required. The real news about Brown succeeding Blair is that it means nothing in policy terms, but a simple fact like this cannot be reported and we can expect endless nonsensical musings on the ‘changeover’ in the mainstream in the coming few weeks. Brown being an identikit to Blair is the only rational argument I can think of for not having a general election – any other argument is a total abuse of democracy, therefore to be expected from new Labour.

In terms of what we can expect from Gordon Brown’s premiership, the most extraordinary feature of Brown’s public positioning in the last ten years, to me, has been his total support and defence of big business. This really is quite extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented in the postwar years. Virtually every speech for the last ten years has been a reassurance to business that Labour is on its side and a defence of ‘free trade’ and ensuring climates around the world favourable for British foreign investment, along with ongoing commitments to low corporation taxes and cutting business regulation. Brown is the ultimate liberalisation theologist and every one of his policies has pushed in this direction. Brown (and indeed Blair) should be known for their (largely successful) imposition of neo-liberal economics on Africa – instead they are hailed in the mainstream as the champions of Africa. The government’s propaganda campaign on ‘development’ has been if anything deeper than over Iraq, yet the mainstream media have reported it uncritically, with hardly any deviation. In reality, debt relief, aid and trade policy have all been geared to further liberalizing and privatizing economies in Africa and elsewhere, with deepening poverty the (well-documented) result. One outcome has been an extraordinary deepening of abuses committed by British and other private corporations around the world, especially in Africa. It is amazingly to think this can go unnoticed, but it does.

Britain’s fundamental goal in foreign policy is to ensure favourable investment climates for corporations globally, which is no secret and regularly invoked by Ministers (and regularly unreported by journalists) – as in Margaret Beckett’s most recent comment on 18 April that the job of government is ‘to make sure that the rest of the world’ is ‘safe and well-disposed for our businesses’. This is the primary reason for the special relationship with the US, the power that can help Britain achieve this globally. This basic goal is more than safe in Brown’s hands, his commitment to which reaches quite hysterical heights at times, as with his imploring the CBI last November to be ‘evangelists for globalisation’ through which Britain will ‘find its destiny as a nation’. Incidentally, it is also interesting to read how Brown sees climate change as providing new ‘opportunities’ for British business – a major current theme of his speeches. One can expect therefore for this to remain the fundamental goal of UK foreign policy under Blair, with all this entails for the rest of the world.

What is Tony Blair’s legacy? How do you imagine he will be viewed in the future?

I’ve no doubt that Blair will be seen in the mainstream as a ‘liberal interventionist’ who started well (in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan) and then overstepped the mark with Iraq, to the extent that he ‘mislead’ the British public, but who was genuinely committed to the cause of Africa. This view is totally absurd and therefore can be expected to dominate discussions in the mainstream. It doesn’t matter how much evidence emerges as to the reality of Kosovo in 1999 and the bombing of Yugoslavia to counter the mainstream view that Kosovo was all about defending human rights; I dealt with more plausible explanations in Web of Deceit and there are various other analyses.

Remember, though, we are dealing here with a very primitive mainstream political culture: it doesn’t and cannot recognize obvious policies such as the extraordinary British support provided to the brutal regime in Colombia, the total backing of Russia bloody onslaught against Chechnya (including the flattening of its capital city in 1999/2000) and of support for Indonesia’s attacks on Aceh and West Papua (with British arms), to name but some, while it remains incapable of recognizing British support under Blair (fairly unequivocal, actually) for Israel. One day, you never know, the BBC might mention Britain’s extraordinary abuse of the legal system to prevent the Chagos islanders returning to even the outlying islands in the archipelago, let alone Diego Garcia – but this is admittedly very unlikely. Or perhaps mention might be made that while Blair and Brown profess their support for ‘democracy’ in the Middle East, their closest ally is Oman – whose despot was installed in a British coup 37 years ago! The official theology has it that Zimbabwe is the only repressive regime in Africa – since it is an official enemy, it is the subject of endless media articles while Mugabe is (correctly) seen as a total despot. Nigeria, on the other hand, is a key ally and oil-rich state which our companies benefit from – therefore it wouldn’t be right to mention obvious facts such as that the military in Nigeria is complicit in far more deaths in recent years than even Zimbabwe’s.

Blair should be remembered as a war criminal who has made the world a more dangerous place. I can think of no other British prime minister who has been so contemptuous of human rights as Blair, the one possible exception being Harold Wilson’s government of 1964-70, which covertly supported the bloodbath in Indonesia in 1965, removed the Chagos islanders, provided a mountain of weaponry to the Nigerian government to wipe out three million people in Biafra, armed Baghdad as began major operations against the Kurds and offered significant private support to the US attack on Vietnam.

I think it is very clear that the world has been made more dangerous as a direct result of British foreign policy, not only since Iraq but before. For example, it would be entirely rational for Iran to develop nuclear weapons – it has been repeatedly threatened with invasion. Indeed, there is a much stronger rational case for Iran to have these weapons than Britain. The UK faces no conceivable military threat and is not surrounded by enemies. It is simply a rational insurance policy for any regime to have nuclear weapons these days since you might end up on the receiving end of a cruise missile attack or carpet bombing on some flimsy pretext or other from the wackos in the White House and Number 10. We should also bear in mind why the UK has ‘decided’ to retain nuclear weapons (there never was a decision; having nuclear weapons is in the blood of Whitehall mandarins who crave a world role and could not conceivably give them up): again, it cannot be stated in the mainstream, but these weapons are useful in delivering threats to recalcitrant states (as over the Falklands and against Iraq) as well upholding British power, notably with the US.

I would also make mention of possibly the most extraordinary planning document of the Blair years – the December 2003 ‘Defence white paper’, which outlined a major new phase of British military intervention around the world – ‘expeditionary operations’ and ‘power projection’, complete with a new generation of cruise missiles and aircraft carriers. Geoff Hoon, the defence minister at the time, was talking of one operation a year. This document was deemed so important that I remember seeing one article in the Guardian. No doubt it would, though, have been noticed by various government’s ‘defence’ departments.

In other ways too, the world has become more dangerous. The constant flouting of international law by Bush and Blair (not only over the 2003 invasion but before) means it will be much more difficult to invoke international law in future crises – and China and Russia, along with the US and Britain, are worrying in this regard. One should also not underestimate the extent of British arms exports around the world under Blair – arming (modernizing) key states such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Israel – heaven knows how these might be used in the future. I’ve just done some research on UK arms exports – at least £45 billion worth has been sold by Britain over the past 10 years, an incredible legacy. In all this light, if it is possible to think of some positive features of foreign policy under Blair – they pale in comparison with the big picture.

How do you interpret the Iran “hostage” crisis? What are its implications in terms of the likelihood of an American assault on Iran?

I suppose it’s most important aspect, in the wider scheme of things, was the public humiliation of the UK by an independent nationalist regime. Something similar is currently happening in Venezuela, where Chavez has the weird idea of using national resources for the purposes of national development rather than international companies – for which he has incurred the wrath of the UK and US governments, and their media of course. (In the real world, one might judge the UK’s commitment to development by its stance towards Venezuela – ie, total opposition to a government which, while far from angelic, has an essentially pro-poor agenda).

But on Iran, I doubt the crisis has made much difference to the prospect of a US assault, or the possible British role in that, though if anything, it probably undermines the case for war by showing that the Iranians can be negotiated with. I am presuming that the British elite is opposed to, and extremely worried, by the prospect of a US attack on Iran. For one thing, the military is totally opposed – they already want to pull out of Iraq without getting bogged down against a much more powerful opponent. For another, the incoming Gordon Brown would barely survive politically a UK role in a US attack on Iran given that the British public is likely to be overwhelmingly opposed.

Whitehall has no doubt drawn up contingencies of its possible reactions to a US attack. I would imagine the only serious possibilities are some kind of UK logistical support for the US (eg, use of UK air bases) or, as a maximum, some kind of other military/intelligence support roles. An actual UK role in war-fighting is, I think, inconceivable at this time. I do think, though, that a US attack is less likely than likely, again at the current time – if it were simply a question of bombing Iran’s nuclear plants, this is doable militarily, but WMD is again the public pretext for action rather than the major concern and Iran presents a much bigger problem, not least in Iraq, and targeted strikes on the country without toppling the leadership are likely to strengthen the regime. Rationally, it would backfire – not, of course, that we can rely on the rationality of those in the White House. No doubt, the UK and US are using all their available assets to covertly incite unrest within Iran, as some reports suggest. This of course was a feature of the 1953 overthrow and is entirely to be expected now. UK planners must be extremely worried about the prospect of rising Iranian influence in southern Iraq, a majority Shia area, together with perennial ongoing concerns about the majority Shias areas in the other major oil state, Saudi Arabia.

What is the significance of Britain’s troop reduction in Iraq? Why is Britain reducing its presence in an area central to Anglo-American concern (Iraq) and increasing its presence in Afghanistan – a nation of peripheral importance to the imperial states?

Militarily, the reduction in Iraq has little significance. The major reason is probably to placate the military which is worried about overstretch and, more generally, the impossible mission the government has set for it, hence the interest in withdrawing. Of course, the reduction doesn’t go far enough for the military, and troops are, as you say, increasing in Afghanistan. The British elite is of course now faced with a massive dilemma in Iraq – faced with complete chaos and rising atrocities (which every Whitehall planner and minister is perfectly aware of, while they constantly lie in public about things improving) alongside massive public opposition, the UK cannot simply withdraw troops without (a) incurring the wrath of Washington, (b) being seen to fail abjectly, another humiliation akin to the invasion of Egypt in 1956 and© failing to establish in Iraq a government that can guarantee Western control over the country’s and region’s oil, the reason for intervening in the first place.

I think the 2003 invasion was intended to ensure that at least one of the three major oil producers – Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – was made a pure Western bastion and ‘stable’, given an enemy government in Iran and ongoing major uncertainty in Saudi Arabia. The government’s concerns about ‘energy security’ were clearly outlined in a February 2003 document, released just weeks before the invasion, which stated that the UK would soon become dependent on imported oil and gas and that key relations needed to be developed with the world’s leading energy suppliers. The document was again ignored in the mainstream press, who helped maintain the pretext that the invasion could not possibly have anything to do with oil. The point is that from an elite point of view, things are looking even shakier now than before. ‘Energy security’ has been a major theme of Blair’s speeches and recent government documents – another worrying trend and a further good argument for ending dependence on fossil fuels.

Why Afghanistan? I think first the official explanation of preventing the resurgence of terrorist bases has some truth. The major issue, though, is that the key base for global terrorist operations currently is not in Afghanistan but in the border areas in Pakistan, where Musharraf has long delayed acting against terrorist groups, in fact has de facto supported them, along with elements in Pakistan’s ISI. This is Pakistan our ally, to whom Britain has just doubled aid and signed various other cooperation agreements.

But I think the major reason now for the increased British presence in Afghanistan may well actually be the same as in Kosovo in 1999 – credibility. Most NATO countries have categorically refused to commit or increase their troop presence in Afghanistan, leaving Britain the choice of seeing the rise of the Taliban and/or the prospect of an independent government in Kabul, or else commit itself. Given the calamity in Iraq, a total failure in Afghanistan could have tremendous impacts on the Western ability to impose order around the world. If even a weak state with a reluctant army and hated dictator (Iraq) cannot be controlled, and neither can a failed state with no formal army (Afghanistan), what hope does the Anglo-American alliance have of continuing to shape the world in its interests? I think there is a lot at stake here for the UK/US elite, especially at a time of a rising China threatening the established world order and with energy resources far from under the full control of the US/UK alliance.

What is your view of the Iraq “surge”? What do you imagine the likely consequences of the surge will be?

The surge is surely an act of desperation, an acknowledgement that even with a massive number of troops, the country cannot be controlled and organized to White House demands. The outcome is likely to be more violence and deaths, which indeed, seems to have occurred if the recent figures are anything to go by. Given that the US and UK are responsible – either directly or indirectly – for much of the violence in the country, the surge should have been reported as a further criminal act; instead, it was quite invariably regarded as an attempt to bring ‘security’.

A Real Power Struggle

Alex Doherty — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:51:22 +0000

Addressing overseas development without discussing the regulation of big business is like talking about malaria without mentioning mosquitoes. Yet New Labour’s supposed commitment to eradicating global poverty does not even pretend to seek to rein in multinational corporations. A draft bill now before parliament that has been ignored by the media could potentially curb the worst activities of businesses abroad. This is far more important to Britain’s place in the world than whether an identikit Gordon Brown takes over from Tony Blair.

Brown and Blair have championed self-regulation to ensure the responsible behaviour of big businesses. They should speak to villagers near the Obuasi gold mine, 100 miles west of Ghana’s capital, Accra. On a recent visit to this extremely poor area, where people subsist on the equivalent of 50p a day, locals told me how their drinking water and lands have been poisoned by chemicals from mining company activities.

“There were 16 streams here. The company has destroyed them all. They’re contaminated with cyanide,” a local elected assemblyman told me. These claims are supported by research from the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra, which shows the presence of heavy metals in local water is more than 20 times higher than government limits. I saw unusable dead rivers of bright orange-coloured toxic sludge.

Obuasi, the largest gold mine in Africa, is run by AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) – a subsidiary of the British mining giant Anglo-American. It is a champion of “corporate social responsibility”. Much of the past devastation wrought on Obuasi comes from Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, which AGA took over in 2004. Yet pollution is ongoing. Heavy rain washes down from the mountains of mining waste dumped next to villages, enters streams and floods houses with chemical-laden water.

Last November a school in Abenpekrom village next to Obuasi was flooded with water believed to contain cyanide. Villagers say this was the result of AGA deliberately opening its pipes from a nearbywaste water “containment lake” after heavy rain. In another village I heard the same story – of the company pumping waste water into village streams. The company denies this is deliberate policy and claims it has provided compensation for the Abenpekrom flooding, yet no one with whom I spoke said they had been given compensation.

AGA is not a bad apple but a quite normal apple on a very large tree. British companies are accused of human rights abuses all over the world. In India the supreme court recently accused another British mining company, Vedanta Resources, of forcibly removing people from their villages to make way for an aluminium refinery. Villagers in the north of Peru are campaigning against a new copper mine run by a British company, Monterrico Metals, that they say will contaminate rivers. In Bangladesh, a campaign is mounting to stop the British company Asia Energy developing a coal mine at the town of Phulbari, which will “relocate” 40,000 people.

A recent UN report notes that “there are intuitive grounds for suspecting that the expansion of globalisation … has also increased the possible involvement of transnational firms in human rights violations”. Company abuses are increasing precisely when their commitment to “corporate social responsibility” has taken off. The parallel is with governments that always speak of peace at the time they have chosen to wage war.

British governments always prioritise corporate interests in their foreign policies, but this has reached new depths under New Labour. The government has even intervened in the US legal process to stop British companies being sued in the US for human rights violations committed overseas. And it has helped legitimise the role of corporations in international development, for example by championing the Business Action for Africa network, one of whose founding sponsors is none other than Anglo-American.

Laws to hold foreign firms to account in developing countries are notoriously weak and are rarely implemented in practice, so legislation is needed in rich countries such as the UK. The draft companies bill this week being finalised by MPs is one of the most important pieces of legislation never debated properly. Campaigning groups such as ActionAid are pressing for radical changes. All large and medium-sized companies should be required to report on their social and environmental impacts; currently they are only required to produce annual financial reports. Directors should be legally obliged to minimise any damage their company does to local communities, whereas current law requires directors to put profits first. And people overseas harmed by the activities of British companies should be able to take action against them in a British court.

Subjecting private companies to democratic control is one of the big challenges of our era. Yet neither Brown nor Blair is championing this agenda. If the media devoted less attention to their personal power struggle perhaps they would have more space to focus on issues that actually affect peoples’ lives.

Mark Curtis is the author of Goldrush, a report for Actionaid on business in the developing world, and Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses markcurtis.info

Voice of the Unpeople

Alex Doherty — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 17:08:23 +0000

Freedom Next Time by John Pilger 352pp, Bantam, £17.99

John Pilger is a very unusual journalist. He writes about people on the receiving end of grisly western policies – whether bombs or economic “advice” – and then exposes the motivations of those who are responsible. One might think Pilger is just doing his job. In fact, it is an indictment of western journalism that this way of working is rather unusual and Pilger unique. He opens by writing: “This book is about empire, its facades and the enduring struggle of people for their freedom. It offers an antidote to authorised versions of contemporary history that censor by omission and impose double standards.” Chagossians, Palestinians, Afghans, South Africans and Indians are the voiceless given a voice.

Chagossians? The media, especially TV, has largely failed to report Britain’s forced depopulation of the Chagos islands (including Diego Garcia, now a US military base), which must count as one of the great state propaganda triumphs in recent history. “What upsets you the most?” Pilger asks Olivier Bancoult, the Chagossians’ leader in exile. “The lie that we didn’t exist,” he replies. Why, with 24-hour news coverage and hundreds of channels, have these people been invisible for so long?

A secret document drawn up by British planners in 1968 was called “maintaining the fiction”, and argued (knowing it was untrue) that the islanders were not permanent inhabitants. The author, one Anthony Ivall Aust, then a legal adviser to the Foreign Office, was subsequently awarded a CMG in the Queen’s birthday honours. The story is a good indication of mainstream British political culture – buried in the mainstream media, the perpetrators of crimes against foreign unpeople shower honours on themselves while the US is appeased.

Yet “maintaining the fiction” also nicely describes Whitehall’s current stance in the Middle East, where the official story is that Britain is an “honest broker” between Israel and Palestine. The reality is that Britain has provided more than £70m in military equipment to Israel in the past five years, acts as Israel’s chief defender in the EU by resisting calls to rescind preferential trade arrangements and virtually never even calls for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territory. Pilger writes that Britain, and France, gave Israel a “green light” to attack the West Bank in 2001, having been shown a secret plan for an all-out reoccupation. He also counters the “absurd claim” – widely reported – that Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Barak previously offered to give up 90% of the West Bank.

Pilger’s interviews with Palestinians are among the most moving in the book, such as with Liana Badr, the director of the Palestinian Cultural Centre, just after it has been hideously destroyed by Israeli soldiers. “We have been raped; and all the while, the perpetrators are crying that they are the victims, demanding the world’s sorrow and perpetual silence about us while their powerful army demolishes our culture, our lives,” she says.

What about the “authorised version” of reality in South Africa since the end of apartheid? Pilger notes that while average household income has risen by 15%, average black household income has fallen by 19%. The World Bank in effect imposed a traditional “structural adjustment programme” after apartheid, but with the complicity of the African National Congress (ANC) government. Although the ANC certainly has its achievements, it has failed to reclaim sufficient land for the dispossessed and presides over a growing gap between rich and poor.

“The unspoken deal,” Pilger writes, “was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule.” Thus secret meetings were held in Britain before 1994 between the current president, Thabo Mbeki, members of the Afrikaner elite and companies with big commercial stakes in the country. Mandela told Pilger: “We do not want to challenge big business that can take fright and take away their money . . . You can call it Thatcherite but, for this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy.”

Pilger is virtually alone in daring to expose the “ambiguity of Mandela” himself. Though recognising Mandela’s role in alerting the world to the dangers of the Bush administration, Pilger writes that “as the first liberation president, he ordered a ridiculous and bloody invasion of tiny Lesotho. He allowed South African armaments to be sold to Algeria, Colombia and Peru, which have notorious human rights records. He invited the Indonesian mass murderer General Suharto to South Africa and gave him the country’s highest award . . . He recognised the brutal Burmese junta as a legitimate government.”

In some of Pilger’s other interviews, such as those with Bush administration officials John Bolton and Douglas Feith, the absurdity of modern imperialism stands out. Bolton was described by Senator Jesse Helms as “the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon”; Feith, meanwhile, after his fall from the Pentagon, was described by General Tommy Franks, the US commander in Iraq, as “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth”.

Pilger sees the low turnout in the 2005 election – when only a fifth of the adult population voted for Blair – as showing not apathy but “an undeclared strike that reflects a rising awareness, consciousness even, offering more than hope”.

Freedom Next Time allows us to hear the personal testimonies of those challenging power. The array of interviews with the voiceless and abused provides an indispensable corrective to the litany of disinformation we are fed by the media, and for this achievement Pilger is surely the most outstanding journalist in the world today.

Mark Curtis’s Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses is published by Vintage. Freedom Next Time is launched at the Hay festival tomorrow.

The 'Honest broker'? - Britain and Israel

Alex Doherty — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:19:47 +0000

Britains apparent complicity in Israels military assault on Jericho prison should finally demolish an enduring myth about Britains foreign policy. Iraqs supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction was not the only line peddled by the government to justify the invasion. Another was that Britain was an honest broker in the Middle East and would influence Washington to press Israel for peace with the Palestinians. Now that peace prospects look gloomier than ever following Israeli, US and EU reactions to Hamas success in Palestinian elections, the reality of Britains role needs to be exposed.

Since the government of Ariel Sharon came to power in 2001, Britain has exported around £70 million worth of military equipment to Israel. Last years supplies of combat aircraft technology and components for surface-to-surface missiles follow previous exports of armoured cars, machine guns, components for tanks and helicopters, leg irons, tear gas and categories covering mortars, rocket launchers and explosives.

Growing links between the British and Israeli militaries have just resulted in one Israeli company, Elbit systems, receiving a £317 million contract from the Ministry of Defence. The MoD has trialled an Israeli-built anti-tank missile despite its use against civilians in the occupied territories. It also purchased 26,000 cluster shells from Israel in 2003 and 2004, some of which were used in the invasion of Iraq.

The British government has no mechanisms to monitor whether British firms violate human rights in the occupied territories. The construction company, Caterpillar, a US firm with a large British subsidiary, sells military bulldozers to Israel used to demolish 4,000 houses and which killed the peace activist, Rachel Corrie. At the same time, there is evidence that British companies have exported equipment used in the construction of Israels security wall inside Palestinian territory.

Britains diplomatic stance towards Israel has also been striking. A major gain for the Sharon government has been Tony Blairs persistent line, shared with the US, that there is not going to be any successful negotiation or peace without an end to terrorism first. Palestinian suicide bombings are unjustifiable acts of mass murder but, as Uri Avnery of the Israeli peace movement, Gush Shalom, has noted, this Blair line means that until the armed opposition to occupation stops, there can be no talk about ending the occupation.

Blair’s personal statements rarely condemn Israel outright but assert that both sides are responsible for the violence. This ignores the fact that one of the actors is illegally occupying the territory of the other. British government statements, however, rarely even call for the occupation to end. At the same time, the British embassy in Tel Aviv describes Britain as a good friend of Israel and its natural partner, while our two prime ministers are in regular contact and have a good working and personal relationship.

London has also helped to maintain the fiction that Sharon’s government supports the shared goal of a viable Palestinian state, as Jack Straw recently told a Labour Friends of Israel event. Yet in a confidential document leaked to the Guardian last November, the British consulate in East Jerusalem wrote that Sharons illegal building of settlements in East Jerusalem was designed to prevent it becoming the capital of any Palestinian state. Privately, then, even some British officials refute the governments public line.

Jack Straws intense diplomacy to prevent Iran pursuing uranium enrichment compares to virtual silence on Israels possession of over 100 nuclear warheads. Whitehall exerted huge pressure on EU members to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe; yet in response to a recent parliamentary question, the government again rejected applying EU sanctions against Israel. Instead, London acts as Israels chief defender in Brussels by resisting calls to suspend the EUs trade and aid agreement, even though it requires ‘respect for human rights’. Whitehall even backs a proposed EU action plan that would deepen political cooperation and economic relations with Israel. By contrast, Britain was key in securing EU agreement to ban the political wing of Hamas and place its leaders on a terrorist blacklist.

Foreign Office minister Lord Triesman told Parliament in December that we do not believe that Israel complies rigorously with international law in continuing to build settlements and conducting targeting killings and house demolitions. The government has also provided (low-key) criticism of Israel’s construction of the security fence in Palestinian territory. Yet such occasional demarches are meaningless in light of other policies which help to protect Israel from greater international pressure to end the occupation.

Two formerly secret documents help explain British policy. A 1970 Foreign Office report called ‘Future British policy toward the Arab/Israel Dispute’ rejected both an openly pro-Israel and pro-Arab policy, the latter ‘because of the pressure which the United States government undoubtedly exert to keep us in line in any public pronouncements or negotiations on the dispute’. It also rejected ‘active neutrality’ since this would damage ‘our world-wide relationship with the US’. Therefore, the Foreign Office argued for a ‘low risk policy’, involving ‘private pressure upon the US to do all in their power to bring about a settlement’.

The second document, a Joint Intelligence Committee report from 1969, notes that ‘rapid industrialisation’ was occurring in Israel which was ‘already a valuable trading partner with a considerable future potential in the industrial areas where we want to develop Britain as a major world-wide manufacturer and supplier’. This contrasted to the Arab world where, despite oil, ‘recent developments appear to confirm that the prospects for profitable economic dealings with the Arab countries are at best static and could, over the long term, decline’.

Three decades later, Israel is Britains third largest trading partner in the Middle East while the government describes Israel as a remarkable success story for British exporters, especially in high-tech industry. Appeasing Washington and prioritising profits are Whitehalls entrenched interests that need challenging if Britain is ever to support human rights in the region.

__Mark Curtis is author of Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses (Vintage, London, 2004). He is an advisor to UKWatch. www.markcurtis.info. __

Britain and the Vietnam War

eddie — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 19:23:46 +0000

The myth has long been promoted that Britain refused to send troops to the Vietnam war and played little role in it. The declassified British government files on the war are therefore little short of a revelation, showing that Britain gave important private backing to the US at every stage of military escalation, and also revealing its own covert and military role. The reality is that Britain was complicit in the aggression against Vietnam and shares some responsibility for the massive human suffering that resulted.

Support for US intervention

The major British interest in backing the US was not only to support its major ally, but also the fear that the ‘fall’ of South Vietnam ‘would be disastrous to British interests and investments in South East Asia and seriously damaging to the prospects of the Free World containing the Communist threat’.

After the US intervened in November 1961 – when the Kennedy administration sent helicopters, light aircraft, intelligence equipment and additional advisers for the South Vietnamese army, soon after which the US air force began combat missions – Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas Home wrote that ‘the administration can count on our general support in the measures they are taking’. British planners clearly understood that this intervention was a complete violation of the 1954 Geneva Accords which put limits on the number of US military forces acceptable in Vietnam. Britain had a responsibility to uphold the accords as a co-chair of the Geneva Agreements, with the Soviet Union. But the British connived with the US by promising not to raise the issue. ‘As co-chairman, Her Majesty’s Government are prepared to turn a blind eye to American activities’, the Foreign Office secretly stated. Douglas Home suggested to Secretary of State Dean Rusk ‘to avoid any publicity for what is being done’.

Britain backed the military not the diplomatic option. ‘Surely we should aim to divert and not to focus international attention on our actions in Vietnam while we get on with the task of defeating the Viet Cong’, Douglas Home wrote at the time. (The use of ‘we’ here is interesting, showing the extent to which British ministers regarded the war as their struggle also). In May 1962 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sent a personal letter to South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem saying that ‘we have viewed with admiration the way in which your government and people have resisted’ North Vietnamese attempts to ‘overthrow the freely established regime in South Vietnam’, adding ‘we wish you every success in your struggle’.

British support for war is easily explained – throughout the first half of the 1960s, London thought the US could win. The effect on ordinary Vietnamese was an irrelevance. There are simply no concerns expressed in any of the hundreds of British planning files for the lives of the people on the receiving end of Anglo-American policy. British officials were perfectly aware of what was happening to ordinary Vietnamese. In December 1962, for example, Britain’s Ambassador in Saigon, Harry Hohler, noted the South Vietnamese forces’ ‘indiscriminate air activity’ and killing of innocent villagers. The only concern expressed was that this would have an adverse ‘psychological impact’ and is ‘grist to the mill of local communist propaganda’.

January 1962 is the first mention in the British files that I have seen of a ‘chemical substance used for clearing strips of jungle vegetation’. In March the following year, Foreign Office official Fred Warner wrote that ‘there is no doubt the Americans have used toxic chemicals’ and that ‘we believe that these chemicals are a legitimate weapon’ to destroy the insurgents’ cover. He noted that the Soviet government had requested that an investigation be mounted by the International Control Commission (ICC) of the Geneva Accords, but Warner said this was simply a matter for the ICC, not Britain. Again, British officials protected the US, with horrific consequences.

Britain’s support for Diem

Britain provided considerable direct support to the Diem regime and US military in support of the war. The British Advisory Administrative Mission (BRIAM) had begun work in Saigon in September 1961 with a small team of experts in ‘counter-subversion’, intelligence and ‘information’, intending to complement US advisers. BRIAM’s head, Robert Thompson, quickly became one of Diem’s leading foreign advisers.

The British government’s claim that BRIAM had a purely civilian and not military role, maintained in various parliamentary answers and debates, was a complete lie. The memo proposing the establishment of BRIAM stated that training was to be provided ‘over the whole counter-insurgency field’. Around 300 Vietnamese soldiers were trained in ‘counter-insurgency’ at British camps in Malaya in 1962/3 alone. By 1963 the Diem regime was described as ‘most appreciative of the type of training and of the assistance’ provided by Britain.

Britain’s major contribution to the war, however, was Thompson’s counter-insurgency programmes, based on (extremely brutal) measures in the British counter-insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. US military officials, it was reported, were much impressed by Thompson and ‘were most anxious’ that the ‘valuable experience we had gained in Malaya [be] put to the best possible use in South Vietnam’. In late 1961, Thompson produced a draft plan that became known as the Delta Plan whose aim, according to the Foreign Office, was ‘to dominate, control and win over the population, particularly in the rural areas, beginning in the delta’ region. The proposal involved establishing curfews and prohibited areas to control movement on all roads and waterways to ‘hamper the Communist courier system’, along with ‘limited food control’ in some areas. ‘If the system works successfully’, the Ambassador noted, ‘this provides the main opportunity for killing terrorists’. Thompson’s Delta Plan was also the basis for the US ‘strategic hamlets’ programme, soon to be devised by the US State Department.

Britain’s covert role

The British government has never admitted that British forces fought in Vietnam, yet the files confirm that they did, even though several remain censored. In August 1962, the Military Attache in Saigon, Colonel Lee, wrote to the War Office in London attaching a report by someone whose name is censored but who is described as an advisor to the Malayan government, then still a British colony. This advisor proposed that an SAS team be sent to Vietnam. Lee said that was unacceptable owing to Britain’s position as Co-Chair of the Geneva Agreement but then wrote:

‘However, this recommendation might be possible to implement if the personnel are detached and given temporary civilian status, or are attached to the American Special Forces in such a manner that their British military identity is lost in the US Unit. However the Americans are crying out for expert assistance in this field and are extremely enthusiastic that [one inch of text censored] should join them. He really is an expert, full of enthusiasm, drive and initiative in dealing with these primitive peoples and I hope that he will be given full support and assistance in this task’.

‘These primitive peoples’ is a reference to the Montagnards in the highlands of the central provinces of Vietnam. Lee continues:

‘It is clear that there is enormous scope for assistance of a practical nature on the lines of that already being undertaken by the Americans. Thus it is strongly recommended that such British contribution [sic] as may be feasible be grafted onto the American effort in the field, particularly in view of their shortage of certain types of personnel. The ideal solution might be to contribute a number of teams to operate in a particular area fully integrated into the overall American and Vietnamese plan. The civil side could be composed of carefully selected Europeans and Malayans with suitable experience, and the military element could be drawn from the SAS regiment which operated for many years amongst the Aborigines in Malaya. Suitable steps could doubtless be taken to give them temporary civilian status. Although we should have to rely on the Americans to a great degree for logistic support, it might still be possible to provide a positive contribution in this field such as specialised equipment. A less satisfactory solution might be to integrate certain specialists into existing or projected American Special Forces Teams, although the main disadvantage here, particularly on the Aborigine side would lie in the fact that many of the experienced Malayan personnel would not speak English and would have to rely on the British element as interpreters when dealing with the Americans.’

This team was sent, and was known as the ‘Noone mission’ under Richard Noone (the figure whose name is censored in these files) and which acted under cover of BRIAM. The covert operation began in summer 1962 and was still in operation until at least late 1963.

Other covert aid provided by Britain included secret British air flights from Hong Kong to deliver arms, especially napalm and five-hundred-pound bombs. Intelligence support included forwarding reports to the Americans from MI6 station heads in Hanoi while the British monitoring station in Hong Kong provided the US with intelligence until 1975, in an operation linked to the US National Security Agency, whose intercepts of North Vietnamese military traffic were used by the US military command to target bombing strikes over North Vietnam.

Military escalation, British backing

A May 1965 Foreign Office brief states that Britain’s ‘direct involvement in Vietnam is insignificant’ but ‘that our interests as a non-communist power would be impaired if the United States government were defeated in the field, or defaulted on its commitments’. US prestige was therefore in danger and defeat ‘would damage America’s standing all over the world’. Similarly, ‘American abandonment of South Vietnam would cause both friend and foe throughout the world to wonder whether the US might, in future be induced to abandon other allies when the going got tough’.

The period 1963-6 was marked above all by massive escalation in US aggression. The British files show the degree of secret support Prime Minister Harold Wilson gave President Johnson, at every stage of escalation, often kept private given major British public opposition to the war – a good example, as currently with Iraq, of how the public threat is dealt with by private understandings among elites on both sides of the Atlantic.

In February 1965, the US took the war into a devastating new phase by beginning the bombing of North Vietnam in its ‘Rolling Thunder’ campaign. Britain had already promised to give ‘unequivocable [sic] support to any action which the US government might take which was measured and related strictly to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong activity’. Two days after the attacks began, Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart told the Washington embassy of the ‘military necessity of the action’ and informed Wilson that ‘I was particularly anxious not to say anything in public that might appear critical of the US government’.

A Foreign Office brief in March 1965 stated that ‘although from time to time we have expressed cautionary views in response to notifications of US plans for attacks against the North, we have at no stage opposed them. Our comments have been mostly on the timing or public presentation of the attacksHMG have at no stage opposed the policy being followed by the US but rather by suggesting minor changes in timing or presentation from time to time, have acquiesced in it’.

When the US first used its own aircraft in South Vietnam in March 1965, this was also welcomed by the British ambassador, who said that it had ‘beneficial effects’ both on the Vietnamese government and the ‘morale of the American pilots’. On 8 March the US landed 3,500 marines in South Vietnam which the Foreign Office said in private was ‘in contravention of Article 16 and 17 of the 1954 [Geneva] agreement, but we have not yet received any protests on the subject’ – therefore, best keep quiet. Then, in June 1965, the US announced that US ground forces would now be going into combat on a routine basis. One Foreign Office official noted that ‘I feel sure we should try to help the US administration, who have now been landed in some difficulty in handling the president’s announcement, by implying that the commitment of ground troops is mostly a matter of degree’.

The British provision of arms to the US for use in Vietnam was done in the knowledge that it breached the Geneva Agreements. In September 1965 the Foreign Office agreed to export 300 bombs intended for the US Air Force ‘for use in Vietnam’, saying that ‘there must be no publicity’ and that ‘delivery should be in the UK’. The previous month the Foreign Secretary had agreed to provide the US with 200 armoured personnel carriers for use in Vietnam ‘providing that delivery took place in Europe’ and that there was ‘no unavoidable publicity’.

The way out and British interests

In contrast to the first half of the 1960s, from 1965 onwards British planners were concluding that the war could not be won militarily. A draft Foreign Office report of June 1968 concluded that ‘it is very much in our interests that the United States should as soon as possible find a means of escape from her present involvement’ in Vietnam. The reason was that the war was imposing ‘strains on the world monetary system’ which was due to a lack of confidence in the reserve currencies. One reason for this was the US balance of payments deficit caused by spending on the war. A US withdrawal ‘would have a stimulating confidence effect on the dollar and in [sic] world trade, which should both directly benefit the UK balance of payments’. Since the existing monetary system was dependent largely on the willingness of the European countries to hold an increasing number of dollars in their reserves, a danger was that this would not continue indefinitely. This ‘could result in a major monetary crisis which would cause us major damage whatever its outcome’.

But British ministers continued to publicly support the war, the only variation being concerns about whether bombing North Vietnam was ‘wise’ or likely to ‘succeed’. The US invasion of Cambodia in April 1970 was also firmly supported by British officials. Then British Ambassador John Moreton wrote that ‘leaving aside the political risks, I am now completely convinced of the soundness of the military arguments in favour of the decision’.

Edward Heath, remembered as the Prime Minister who took Britain into the European Community in 1973, should also be remembered for his extreme apologias for US violence in Vietnam. Heath wrote to Nixon in July 1970 that ‘I do not need to assure you that you have our fullest support in your search for peace in the area. We deeply admire the firmness and persistence which you have shown’. This was in reply to Nixon’s letter on US troop withdrawals from Cambodia, which the US had invaded three months previously.

In April 1972, Nixon inflicted massive bombing on Hanoi and Haiphong while other cities were targeted and systematically destroyed. The British government’s news department was instructed to say that the Nixon had all long ‘reserve[d] the right’ to bomb North Vietnam. On 17 April Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home defended the US bombing in Parliament which prompted US Secretary of State William Rodgers to phone him ‘to thank him very much’ and to say ‘it was very much appreciated in Washington’. Rodgers informed Douglas Home ‘how pleased the President was’.

Britain backed the US to the last while, throughout, there was not even the pretence of concern for the victims.

This is an edited extract from Mark Curtis’s most recent book, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, published by Vintage, London www.markcurtis.info. Email: mark@markcurtis.info

Mark Curtis is an adviser to UK Watch

Deepening Corporate Globalization

eddie — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:01:48 +0000

An onslaught against some of the worlds poorest people is about to enter its next phase in a remote Swiss ski resort. Unlike over Iraq, the world’s richest countries are united in this big push which would reorganize the global economy in more far-reaching ways than the US neo-cons designs on the Middle East. The upcoming mini-ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Davos threatens to become an economic Fallujah.

While world leaders were last year professing their commitment to ending poverty, their real goals were revealed in months of behind closed door discussions at the WTO in Geneva. There, rich countries have single-mindedly embarked on a grab for new markets around the world for their companies. The aim is to push developing countries to reduce their trade barriers on imports of manufactured goods and services companies from the rich world. At last months WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, this agenda was only edged forward, thanks to massive opposition from developing countries dismayed by the EUs failure to cut its massive farm subsidies. But the Davos meeting is the next step in this big push.

The European Commission’s aim is to create ‘new business opportunities’ for manufacturing exporters and ‘to improve market access for European services exporters in foreign markets’, especially for financial services and construction. Behind this lies a public relations campaign, led by the EUs trade commissioner and leading spin doctor, Peter Mandelson, whose attempt to colonise new markets is being dressed up in the grandest rhetoric about development.

The idea that trade liberalization is good for development is one of the grand delusions of our era. Rather, tariffs on industrial imports can play a crucial role in nurturing poor countries infant industries and creating jobs. If these countries are forced to give equal treatment to foreign as to domestic firms, a key tool in industrial policy will be removed. A recent analysis by the UN’s trade body, UNCTAD, showed that half of a sample of 40 countries experienced deindustrialization after trade liberalization. ‘Investment’ by foreign companies often means taking over local companies and privatising public services.

As the world’s poorest countries have opened up their economies in the past 20 years, with trade now providing half their national income, they have become poorer: 80 per cent of the least developed countries population now lives on $2 a day. An UNCTAD analysis of 108 countries shows that only 10 out of 35 countries with the most ‘open’ trade regimes have high economic growth whereas only 7 of 36 classified as most ‘restrictive’ have low economic growth. They conclude that ‘there is no basis for concluding that trade liberalization, in the short run, reduces poverty’.

Even this is a massive understatement. A recent report by ActionAid shows that Nigeria has suffered an ‘industrial tsunami’ by removing tariffs on textile imports which has devastated the local industry, cutting 16,000 jobs and destroying 100,000 peoples source of livelihood. In Gambia and Ghana the flooding of local markets with cheap milk and rice imports is depressing local prices and putting desperately poor farmers out of business. The UN has documented a massive 1,217 cases of such ‘import surges’ on just 8 commodities in 28 developing countries, meaning that the wiping out of poor communities by trade rules is even more regular than British ministers speeches praising the wonders of free trade.

The British government’s solution to this is to champion poor country exporters greater access into Northern markets. It is surely gross hypocrisy for the EU to keep its markets closed while forcing open others. Yet moving to global free trade does not offer a level playing to all, but mainly benefits rich country corporations able to capture markets. Rather, poor countries need the right to protect their economies, to keep out imports and to subsidise their agriculture and industry when in the development interest. Protection does not always work, but it must be available to poor countries as a policy option.

This is currently heresy to the liberalisation theologists in Whitehall and the WTO. Yet protection is not only what rich countries currently practice on a massive scale in agriculture; it is also what they did in past to build up their industries to become internationally competitive. Protection was also a key economic policy in successful East Asia countries like South Korea, which 50 years ago was as poor as Sudan.

Protection of other people’s markets, however, is not good business. So at the WTO negotiations, rich countries, led by the EU, are vociferously opposing poor country proposals to designate some products as ‘special’ and exempt them from tariff reductions. At the same time, G8 leaders have been displaying the grossest hypocrisy by claiming they champion the right of poor countries to decide their own development policies.

Trade negotiations may appear like a techy debate for anoraks only – but they go to the heart of what domestic economic policies will be permissible under global rules. The rich country project of recolonising the world in the interest of corporations will only be stopped by a combination of opposition from developing countries and public mobilization around the world.

__Mark Curtis is a writer and was until recently director of the World Development Movement. His most recent book is Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses. He is an adviser to UK Watch.__