The Rag Blog

GENEVA, April 17 (Reuters) – Jordan and Syria begged the international community on Tuesday to help them shoulder the burden of some 2 million Iraqi refugees straining their resources and economies.

Senior officials from the two states were addressing a meeting convened by the United Nations to tackle the problem of nearly 4 million Iraqis driven by the conflict to seek refuge either inside or outside Iraq.

“We, in the Syrian Arab Republic, are facing a huge mass of refugees … this lays great pressure on the economy and infrastructure of our country,” Vice Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad told the talks.

Syria is hosting an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis — a number equal to 12 percent of its own population — and needs another $256 million to continue providing them with aid, health care and education over the next two years, Mekdad said in a speech.

Mukhaimer Abu Jamous, secretary-general of Jordan’s Interior Ministry, said 750,000 Iraqi refugees were costing his government $1 billion a year, stretching to the limit the resources of a country of just 5.6 million.

“We hope that this important conference results in a clear and firm commitment by the international community to take part in shouldering the great burden,” he said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who is chairing the two-day talks, said host countries in the region had vowed to keep open their borders.

“Today it is clear that the countries of asylum have pledged that they would go on granting protection to Iraqis and that they consider to send Iraqis forcibly into the country against their will is not acceptable,” he told a news conference at the end of the first day.

Donor countries had pledged financial aid and to take in more of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees for resettlement, he said, without giving details.

International Conference on Addressing the Humanitarian Needs of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons inside Iraq and in Neighbouring Countries

Mr. Chairman,

Iraq is facing a humanitarian crisis with up to an estimated eight million people in need of immediate assistance and protection. The affected population faces escalating violence, ongoing military operations, human rights violations, and a crisis of protection. At the same time, the increase in violence has severely constrained humanitarian space and relief provisions have become very limited. The humanitarian situation is further exacerbated by the combination of degraded basic services, loss of livelihoods, and rampant inflation, which have increased the vulnerability of the people.

While horrific violence dominates the lives of millions of ordinary people inside Iraq, the displacement, malnutrition, chronic poverty, and illness that have been increasing over the last four years are crippling the lives of hundreds of thousands more. The protection vacuum that characterises much of Iraq has resulted in huge unmet needs and a denial of fundamental rights. The people of Iraq have a right to humanitarian assistance, but this right is being neglected.

Understanding the Crisis

The humanitarian crisis in Iraq has not yet been adequately acknowledged, fully assessed, or properly understood. While donors and the UN system have been pre-occupied with reconstruction, development, and political benchmarks, they, and the Iraqi government itself, are only just starting to acknowledge the existence of humanitarian needs. This conference is a welcome step.

As UNHCR has estimated, there are 1.9 million internally displaced persons in Iraq, a figure increasing by some 50,000 each month, in addition to the 40,000 to 50,000 fleeing from Iraq on a monthly basis. While the situation is particularly severe in the centre of the country and to a slightly lesser degree in the South, authorities and host populations also struggle to provide for displaced populations in the more stable and developed areas of the North.

The situation may be further evolving with the authorities in some districts or governorates reportedly denying permission to people to settle within their boundaries and even threatening to expel them. While the course of displacement in 2004-2005 was assessed as a short-term phenomenon, the new displacement reality is shaping up to be a long-term trend. The overwhelming volume of internal displacement has been concentrated in a short time period. The ensuing needs have been exacerbated by ongoing violence, dismal security conditions and declining living standards for IDPs and their host communities alike. These need to be addressed as a matter of urgency through a collaborative and coordinated response.

Certainly the refugee and IDP caseloads are in immediate need of humanitarian relief, as are the “hidden” affected people inside Iraq who suffer the impact of violence on their daily lives: shortfalls in basic services, inefficient functioning of the Public Distribution System (PDS), loss of livelihoods and uncontrolled inflation. As a major proportion of IDPs in Iraq are living with communities, families, and friends it is important that humanitarian assistance focus on the coping mechanisms of whole communities by improving water supplies, electricity, shelters, schools, and income generation activities and not focus on building camps and emergency latrines. The constant pressure faced by Iraqi citizens has steadily eroded their coping mechanisms and traditional forms of solidarity that are extended in times of crises, with the result that they require external sources of relief assistance.

Special Protection Needs

Many groups continue to suffer persecution in Iraq, particularly professionals; women; Iraqis employed by foreign contractors, the UN or other international organisations including NGOs; and ethnic and religious minorities. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are frequently victims of human rights violations originating from ethno-religious differences or of a political and criminal order. The security of third-country nationals, stateless persons, and particularly the Palestinian refugees and thousands of refugees from Turkey, Iran and Syria in Iraq has drastically deteriorated.

Based on 2005 figures, nearly 5.6 million Iraqis were living below the poverty line and over 4 million people are food insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance. Twenty-eight percent of Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition: the chronic malnutrition rate of children in food insecure households is 23%. One child in 10 suffers from chronic disease or illness. Children in Iraq have more chance of dying before the age of five than children in any other Middle Eastern country. Women are suffering because of unjust policies and from the militancy of intolerant groups. Special consideration should be given to single-headed households and youth, who are the most vulnerable.

Four years of daily violence and a high level of psychological trauma, following 20 years of wars and sanctions has inflicted enormous damage on the mental and physical health of tens of thousands of direct victims, including tortured people, as well as their families and society at large. Assistance to strengthen medical and psychological rehabilitation services is needed to enable victims to regain their capacity to effectively contribute to the development of their society.

The Challenges of Working in Iraq

International and national NGOs working in Iraq have become some of the very few key humanitarian implementers on the ground, yet they face multiple obstacles in responding to the numerous needs. NGOs have met with success and failures compounded by the problems faced by all stakeholders involved in delivering aid and assistance. However the main comparative advantages that NGOs, especially national NGOs, have are their flexible approaches and their ability to react quickly to develop strategies and responses. NGOs are able to adapt their structures and activities to the volatile context and newly emerging needs, build relative trust and acceptance in the communities in which they operate, adhere to an impartial and neutral approach in their service delivery within the limitations of keeping a low profile, and help correct some of the misperceptions the population may have about NGOs, their affiliations and objectives. NGOs delivering humanitarian aid distinguish themselves from other types of agencies, and especially from the military, by emphasising their neutrality and impartiality through their actions, and putting the humanitarian imperative as an absolute first.

Responding Better

These efforts have allowed INGOs to maintain their own capacities and to extend their services and assistance at a national level, particularly by building upon the capacity of national NGOs. Of critical importance, they are still able to access communities and represent one of the very few humanitarian actors and witnesses on the ground. However, the conflicts in Iraq are saturated with multiple stakeholders’ strategic interests and agendas, politicising the context and compromising humanitarian access conditions. The result is that NGOs often face obstacles in accessing the most vulnerable. There is a need to review access options and obstacles, make use of the comparative advantages and experiences that NGOs have, and to identify viable solutions and the supports needed for their implementation.

The clear implication is that more humanitarian assistance is needed in Iraq, both immediately and for the foreseeable future. Recognition of, and actions to assist, vulnerable communities are in place, but as conditions have worsened, assistance has not been able to keep pace. It is essential that humanitarian space is maintained and expanded for relief to be provided. The main constraints to increased assistance are determining how to get the job done in an adverse security environment, and having sufficient and adequately flexible financial and human resources in place to address the most serious unmet needs.

The ability to respond is often constrained by a lack of flexible funding that can adapt to the changing humanitarian needs. Furthermore, the withdrawal of some donors is limiting the amount of funding available for humanitarian programmes from countries that are not parties to the conflict. Some NGOs feel that taking funds from parties involved in the conflict jeopardises their neutrality and impartiality, in addition to increasing the risk taken by their teams in the field. This decrease in funds from other sources undermines the humanitarian response in the field, even as the needs have escalated.

An International Response to the Situation

Despite the current security challenges facing humanitarian work in Iraq, there are a number of areas where more can be done to address humanitarian needs. This conference is one way of acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, but in order to improve the ability of NGOs to respond in a neutral and impartial manner, donors and UN agencies need to provide greater, more readily accessible, long-term, flexible emergency humanitarian funds. The necessary mechanisms must be put in place to ensure that NGOs, including Iraqi NGOs, can receive funds in a timely manner, building on discussions underway to better operationalise remote programming mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation.

As stated earlier, the IDP situation in Iraq is going to be long-term and the numbers will likely grow the longer the crisis lasts. Therefore, emergency relief is not enough. International donors have to give more generously so that the needs of the IDP population for temporary housing that offers protection from cold and heat, water and sanitation, and temporary schools for IDP children can be adequately addressed. To meet these needs it will be essential to cooperate with Iraqi national and local NGOs. At the same time, involving Iraqi NGOs and building upon their capacities will contribute to a strong civil society in the future.

The primary responsibility to assist IDPs lies with the Iraqi authorities. There is a need to support the capacities of the Government of Iraq to enable them to make funds, goods, and facilities available to NGOs, facilitate the movement of aid workers, and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The UN, NGOs, and other humanitarian actors on the ground need to illustrate that despite the challenging situation, it is still possible to address humanitarian needs inside Iraq, if the necessary resources are made available, by increasing their communication and exchanges of information with other humanitarian actors. The UN particularly needs to revisit the way in which it is working in Iraq by overhauling its security procedures. NGOs are able to work with international staff in many parts of Iraq. It is time for the UN humanitarian agencies to find similar means of working in the country to respond to humanitarian needs. The UN needs to play a greater role in protection, coordination, and information-sharing through a significantly increased presence throughout Iraq.

There is a need to work better together to develop indicators and a verification mechanism to identify priority needs and an early warning mechanism, as well as to continue developing capacity building programmes with Iraqi aid workers and local communities so that they can better respond to humanitarian needs.

In today’s closely connected world it is not possible to turn a blind eye to a humanitarian crisis anywhere in the world, however great the challenges. To meet needs in Iraq, UN agencies, governments, international donors and international, national and local NGOs must cooperate to develop innovative approaches that make it possible to work even in the most adverse security environment.

Belgium’s Defense Minister said last week that he would act to extract payment from Israel for the removal of cluster bomb fragments that the Israel Defense Forces fired into Lebanese territory during the Second Lebanon War.

During a meeting with representatives of Medical Aid for the Third World (MATW), an international medical organization, Defense Minister Andre Flahaut said the weapon was “the resort of cowards and a violation of international law.”

The organization’s coordinator, Dr. Bert De Belder, told Haaretz that Flahaut was receptive to the idea that Israel should be regarded as a polluter, and be made to pay for the removal of the pollution so far estimated at $13 million.

According to De Belder, Flahaut said he will recommend to Prime Minister Verhofstadt to adopt the principle.

Flahaut, scheduled to visit Lebanon this week, informed De Belder that he intended to advise the Lebanese government to support making Israel financially accountable. De Belder and the other members of the MATW delegation presented Flahaut with a petition signed by 3,415 Belgian supporters, including 13 MPs from various political factions.

The MATW did not address the issue of how the funds would be collected from Israel.

“We left that up to the Belgian government, as the removal is performed at its expense by the Belgian contingent to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon,” De Belder said.

He acknowledged that his organization dealt mainly with humanitarian aid and not with international law, adding that it was also “dedicated to international justice.” He also said: “Our petition was reviewed by attorney Selma Ben Khelifa, who specializes in human rights”.

WASHINGTON (IPS) – Newly released documents have made public hundreds of claims for damages by Iraqi civilians requesting compensations for the death and injury of family members as a result of operations by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s a first glimpse at the claim process that’s used in Iraq and Afghanistan but it’s only a limited glimpse and is not indicative of the number of claims,” Jon Tracy, military and legal advisor at the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), told IPS. “There are a lot more claims out there that could be released and should be released.”

“Since U.S. troops first set foot in Afghanistan in 2001, the Defense Department has gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human costs of war,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and it is critical that the American people have access to full and accurate information about the prosecution of that war and the implications for innocent civilians,” he said in a statement.

The ACLU, which filed the Freedom of Information Act request for the documents, points out that the Defense Department has instituted numerous policies to limit the dissemination of information about casualties.

Photographers are banned from covering the arrival of caskets at U.S. military bases, Iraqi journalists have been paid to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort, “embedded” U.S. journalists are required to submit their stories for pre-publication review, journalists’ footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan has been erased and statistics on civilian casualties have been consistently withheld.

The newly released documents show that the families of more than 500 Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. soldiers have asked for compensation for their dead relatives but only a third have been granted it.

In one file, a civilian from Salah Ad Din province in eastern Iraq stated that U.S. soldiers fired more than 100 rounds on his sleeping families’ home, killing his mother, father and brother as well as 32 of the family’s sheep. The Defense Department admitted responsibility and issued a compensation payment of 11,200 dollars and a 2,500-dollar condolence payment.

In another case, in 2005, a U.S. soldier killed a boy whose book bag was mistaken for a bomb satchel. The boy’s uncle was paid 500 dollars.

“It is commendable that the U.S. pays compensation to the families of Iraqis killed by American soldiers, but the military should maintain clear and fair standards for making those payments,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“The U.S. government should also investigate shootings by civilian contractors, compensate for deaths by contractors and hold accountable all personnel who have acted in violation of their duty,” he said.

The documents revealed that out of the more than 500 cases of civilian deaths, 164 incidents resulted in cash payments to family members. In around half of those cases, the Defense Department acknowledged responsibility for the deaths under the Foreign Claims Act, which authorizes the armed forces to issue settlements of up to 100,000 dollars. In the other half, the U.S. government did not acknowledge fault but issued “condolence” payments — capped at 2,500 dollars — “as an expression of sympathy.”

“The 2,500-dollar cap has never made sense to anyone who looked at this program. It’s not fair and should be based on other calculations,” Sarah Holewinski, executive director of CIVIC, told IPS. “We need a claim act for civilians in combat that mirrors the Foreign Claims Act.”

In numerous cases where the Defense Department acknowledged responsibility, deaths of Iraqis were determined as being due to the “negligent” actions of U.S. soldiers. However, very few cases were forwarded for further investigation.

Contradictory interpretations of the rules of engagement appear to have resulted in a lack of uniformity in the system and inconsistent rulings on compensation.

One Iraqi was granted compensation for the death of a relative, shot by U.S. soldiers who fired to clear a road, a violation of the rules of engagement according to a judge-advocate-general (JAG) who ruled in the case.

But similar claims were denied by other JAGs, who ruled that firing to clear a road is a legitimate combat operation.

U.S. policy states that civilian deaths in “combat” are not eligible for compensation.

Civilian deaths or injury caused by U.S. government contractors were consistently denied on the grounds that the Defense Department only processes claims against U.S. government employees, and contractors “are not government employees.”

Checkpoints and convoy actions are the two areas most likely to lead to civilian deaths. The U.S. Army has improved checkpoint procedures but has not yet addressed the way soldiers can fire from moving convoys to clear roadways, says HRW.

04/16/07 “Harpers” 04/14/07 — — I want to give a bit of pre-constitutional history, and share with you the story of John Lilburne, an Englishman born in the early 1600s because his story—the story of an agitator who directly challenged the English legal system—has a great deal to tell us about the issues we’re facing today. Lilburne’s story explains why these matters—torture and secrecy—were not issues to the Founding Fathers, and it helps us understand the true nature of a government which, like the current administration, thrives in that matrix of torture and secrecy.

Secrecy was what the Roundheads found most odious about the Stuart monarchs’ justice. Certainly unjust practices accompanied some of our Puritan forefathers to this country; we can’t forget the Salem witch trials, for instance. But so too, did a healthy contempt for the abuses practiced by the Stuart monarchs, starting with the notions of torture and secret courts with secret evidence. The contempt was reciprocal of course—they say that King Charles’ lip would curl at the very mention of the word “Massachusetts,” and seven of the ten members of the first graduating class of Harvard—the class of 1642—returned to England to enlist in the Model Army and fight against the King. The practice of secret courts. The use of torture to secure confessions. The receipt of secret evidence. The exclusion of the public from proceedings. The offering of evidence in the form of summaries delivered to the judges, without the defendant being able to confront the evidence or conduct a cross-examination. These practices were the definition of tyrannical injustice to the Puritan fathers and the Founding Fathers. We thought them long-banished a hundred years and more before our own revolution. And now suddenly here they are again.

Secrecy has reemerged just as torture has made its comeback, being justified on the public stage, by government officials for the first time since the famous gathering at the Inns of Court in 1629 at which the judges declared “upon their and their nation’s honor” that torture was not permitted by the common law.

The two fit together, hand in glove: torture and secrecy. Torture and secrecy. Where one is used, the other is indispensable.

Torture is no longer a tool of statecraft. Today it is a tool of criminals, though sometimes of criminals purporting to conduct the affairs of state. Having resorted to these “dark arts,” to quote Dick Cheney, the torturers now have the dilemma faced so frequently by criminals. They seek to cover it up. And so the path flows from torture to secrecy, the twin dark stars of the tyrannical state.

If we look quickly at the proceedings that held the world’s attention down in Gitmo over the last two weeks, we see what the secrecy is all about.

For forty years, Seymour Hersh has been America’s leading investigative reporter. His latest scoop? The White House’s secret plan to bomb Iran

04/16/07 “Rolling Stone” 04/02/07 — — – On May 29th, 1975, an aide to then-White House chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld sat down with a yellow legal pad and in careful longhand sketched out a list of possible responses to a damaging investigative report in The New York Times. “Problem,” the aide wrote. “Unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information by Sy Hersh and the NYT.” He then laid out five options, ranging from the most ominous (an FBI investigation of the newspaper and a grand jury indictment) to the least offensive (“Discuss informally with NYT” and “Do nothing”). Number three on the list, however, read, “Search warrant: to go after Hersh papers in his apt.”

The note’s author? A viper-mean Beltway apparatchik named Dick Cheney, who was making his name doing damage control for the Republican White House after the Watergate disaster. Coming so soon after Nixon was burned at the public stake for similar targeting of political enemies, the Cheney memo was proof that the next generation of GOP leaders had emerged from the Watergate scandal regretting only one thing: getting caught.

This year, an almost identical note in Cheney’s same tight-looped, anal script appeared as a key piece of evidence in the trial of another powerful White House aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president’s handwritten ruminations on how best to dispose of an Iraq War critic named Joe Wilson are an eerie reminder of how little has changed in America in the past three decades. Then as now, we have been dragged into a bloody massacre in the Third World, paying the bill for the operation with the souls and bodies of the next generation of our young people. It is the same old story, and many of the same people are once again in charge.

But some of the same people are on the other side, too. In the same week that Libby was convicted in a Washington courthouse, Seymour Hersh outlined the White House’s secret plans for a possible invasion of Iran in The New Yorker. As amazing as it is that Cheney is still walking among us, a living link to our dark Nixonian past, it’s even more amazing that Hersh is still the biggest pain in his ass, publishing accounts of conversations that seemingly only a person hiding in the veep’s desk drawer would be privy to. “The access I have — I’m inside,” Hersh says proudly. “I’m there, even when he’s talking to people in confidence.”

America’s pre-eminent investigative reporter of the last half-century, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and was on hand, nearly four decades later, when we found ourselves staring back at the same sick face in the mirror after Abu Ghraib. At age seventy, he clearly still loves his job. During a wide-ranging interview at his cramped Washington office, Hersh could scarcely sit still, bouncing around the room like a kindergartner to dig up old articles, passages from obscure books and papers buried in his multitudinous boxes of files. A hopeless information junkie, he is permanently aroused by the idea that corruption and invisible power are always waiting to be uncovered by the next phone call. Somewhere out there, They are still hiding the story from Us — and that still pisses Hersh off.

During the Watergate years, you devoted a great deal of time to Henry Kissinger. If you were going to write a book about this administration, is Dick Cheney the figure you would focus on?
Absolutely. If there’s a Kissinger person today, it’s Cheney. But what I say about Kissinger is: Would that we had a Kissinger now! If we did, we’d know that the madness of going into Iraq would have been explained by something — maybe a clandestine deal for oil — that would make some kind of sense. Kissinger always had some back-channel agenda. But in the case of Bush and this war, what you see is what you get. We buy much of our fuel from the Middle East, and yet we’re at war with the Middle East. It doesn’t make sense.

Kissinger’s genius, if you will, was that he figured out a way to get out. His problem was that, like this president, he had a president who could only see victory ahead. With Kissinger, you have to give him credit: He had such difficulties with Nixon getting the whole peace package through, but he did it. Right now, a lot of people on the inside know it’s over in Iraq, but there are no plans for how to get out. You’re not even allowed to think that way. So what we have now is a government that’s in a terrible mess, with no idea of how to get out. Except, as one of my friends said, the “fail forward” idea of going into Iran. So we’re really in big trouble. Real big trouble here.

Is what’s gone on in the Bush administration comparable or worse than what went on in the Nixon administration?
Oh, my God. Much worse. Bush is a true radical. He believes very avidly in executive power. And he also believes that he’s doing the right thing. I think he’s a revolutionary, a Trotsky. He’s a believer in permanent revolution. So therefore he’s very dangerous, because he’s an unguided missile, he’s a rocket with no ability to be educated. You can’t change what he wants to do. He can’t deviate from his policy, and that’s frightening when somebody has as much power as he does, and is as much a radical as he is, and is as committed to democracy — whatever that means — as he is in the Mideast. I really do believe that’s what drives him. That doesn’t mean he’s not interested in oil. But I really think he thinks democracy is the answer.

A lot of people interpreted your last article in “The New Yorker” as a prediction that we’re going into Iran. But you also make clear that the Saudis have reasons to keep us from attacking Iran.
I’ve never said we’re going to go — just that the planning is under way. Planning is planning, of course. But in the last couple of weeks, it has become nonstop. They’re in a position right now where the president could wake up and scratch his, uh —

His what?
His nose, and say, “Let’s go.” And they’d go. That’s new. We’ve made it closer. We’ve got carrier groups there. It’s not about going in on the ground. Although if we went in we’d have to send Marines into the coastal areas of Iran to knock out their Silkworm missile sites.

So the notion that it would just be a bombing campaign isn’t true at all?
Oh, no. Don’t forget, you’d have to take out a very sophisticated radar system, and a guidance system for their missiles. You’d have to knock out the ability of the Iranians to get our ships.

After an absence of 30 years, the finest US detective finally returned to British television screens last summer. The decision of the BBC to rescreen several episodes of the classic 1970s whodunnit series Ellery Queen, with Jim Hutton as the deceptively absent minded sleuth was a cause for unmitigated celebration.

Ellery Queen was a great programme, not just on account of its ingenious plots and fine acting or for its glorious recreation of late-1940s New York but for the revolutionary way in which the audience was kept fully involved in proceedings.

Ten minutes from the end of each episode, Hutton would turn to the camera and ask us, the viewers, if we had worked out “whodunnit.” More often than not, we hadn’t.

Ellery Queen mysteries were always hard to solve, even if all the clues had been up there on the screen before our very eyes, but the point was that we were consulted. Unlike much of television today, Ellery Queen was a programme which didn’t treat us like idiots, but as reasoned, intelligent human beings. How different to our political masters in the so-called “democratic world.”

Rather than consulting us, the people, and acting in our interests as ought to happen in a democracy, our politicians treat us with contempt and pander only to the interests of global capital.

One opinion poll after another shows majority public support for the renationalisation of the railways, yet neither of our two main political parties went into the last election promising any change in the status quo.

A clear majority also want to see British troops withdrawn from Iraq, yet, again, both of our leading parties continue to support the occupation.

The reintroduction of a new top rate of income tax, caps on executive pay and the end to the creeping privatisation of the NHS are other popular policies which Britain’s political elite won’t even countenance. There are many others.

The type of democracy which the elite in Britain, the US and Brussels favour is not the dictionary definition of “rule of the people,” but a much more restricted form, which is best described as “Henry Ford democracy.”

The famous US automobile manufacturer said that his customers could have any colour car they liked so long as it was black. Henry Ford democrats tell us that we can elect any colour government we like, so long as it’s neoliberal and supports the new world order.

Woe betide the people if they vote for parties which Fordian democrats deem to be “off limits.” For having the temerity to elect Hamas, Palestinians were punished with suspension of aid. Fordian democracy was again illustrated in the peevish US and EU reaction to January’s elections in Serbia.

Despite the West’s exhortations, the Serbs voted “the wrong way” by making the anti-NATO, EU-sceptic Radicals the largest party in the new parliament. Straight away, Serbs were told that “the international community” would not accept a government in which the country’s most popular party played a role. Just how democratic is that?

Instead of allowing the disciples of Henry Ford to set the agenda, the left ought to be going on the offensive. Socialists have nothing to fear about the shift to a more direct, consultative democracy.

It’s the sham Fordian democrats who should be worried. The first step in building a genuine democracy, as opposed to the current mutation, is root and branch economic reform, a process which Hugo Chavez is currently undertaking in Venezuela.

Whoever holds economic power holds political power, so an extension of public ownership and measures to redistribute wealth are essential prerequisites.

Neoliberalism is inconsistent with democracy as it leads to power being transferred from the ballot box to the wallet, which is why Henry Ford democrats insist on countries running “market economies.”

Only when an unelected chairman of a multinational company has no greater influence in the political process than you or I can we even begin to label our country “democratic.”

Of course, democratising Britain doesn’t mean that we, the people, will always get decisions right, in the same way that we don’t always work out who the murderer is in Ellery Queen. But the main thing is that, in a country which calls itself a democracy, it’s the majority and not a tiny, unrepresentative, warmongering elite who should be making the calls.

By all indicators, America’s Iraqi expedition has failed miserably. One by one, American allies draw down their forces or resist increasing public pressure to do so. The central Iraqi government exercises little control–its main means of exercising power is negative–the use of Shiite death squads. A bloody civil war has created a feedback loop of ethnic violence that cannot be stopped. In the north, the Kurds lie in wait for the perfect opportunity to break away. And Iran is quietly grooming the Iraqi government to act as a client state.

Although President Bush’s handling of the war has become extremely unpopular and the majority of the public seeks a form of withdrawal or drawdown, the public does not want immediate withdrawal. This can be explained as a defensive psychological reaction: few want to admit that so many were sacrificed for so little. In addition, Americans fear for the lives of the U.S. troops currently engaged in battle with the various ethnic factions and terrorist groups in the Iraqi maelstrom. While the public generally accepts the necessity of withdrawal, they blanch at the instability that could result. Proposals for withdrawal focus on a year-long redeployment rather than the quick withdrawal many anti-war advocates like.

Iraq’s Sunni insurgency is not going to patiently wait for American will to collapse. They can sense that public support is fading and that the end of American involvement is near. They know that they can strike a fatal blow at public support for the war and possibly shorten the conflict, preserving their strength for the inevitable internecine feuding that will result after an American withdrawal. Such feuding has already begun, as Sunni insurgents have openly broken with Al Qaeda in Iraq.
While the public generally accepts the necessity of withdrawal, they blanch at the instability that could result. Proposals for withdrawal focus on a year-long redeployment rather than the quick withdrawal many anti-war advocates like.

To do so, however, they must go beyond merely bleeding the Americans to death, as such a war of attrition is inevitably slow and painful for them as well. They are looking for a shocking, media-worthy incident or series of incidents that will finally destroy American will. The recent attacks with chlorine bombs, though flashy, have failed to do the trick, as they are not lethal enough to inflict lasting damage. Thus, elements within the insurgency are trying two different approaches: overrunning an American unit and striking within the Green Zone.

Counter-terrorism consultant John Robb noted in a blog post that “As the [insurgency] continues to improve its methods and the US counter-insurgency effort becomes more of a police force to bolster street level security, the potential for successful assaults and overruns of small US outposts becomes a major threat.” General Petraeus’ strategy for the “surge” hinges on moving American troops from their fortress-like bases into small outposts within Iraqi cities, enabling them to police volatile insurgent strongholds in a manner reminiscent of big-city “community policing” in the continental United States.

These outposts are the urban equivalents of Vietnamese firebases, small islands of American power vulnerable to being overrun by “swarming” attacks. They also are dangerously dependent on Iraqi units infiltrated by factional fighters. Iraq’s insurgent factions are keen to exploit this vulnerability. In the last few months, insurgents have mounted a number of attacks against these bases, employing a mixture of car bombings, chlorine bombs, and small arms attacks.