The Daily Star
Tuesday 23 February 2010
By Michael Glackin
In diplomatic circles, Israel increasingly resembles a distant relative who drunkenly turns up at family functions, does something embarrassing, and leaves the rest of the family wringing its hands in bewilderment.
Whether or not firm evidence emerges linking Mossad to the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on January 19 (and as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was at pains to point out last week, there is currently no proof of Israeli involvement), it is clear there are few better suspects if you follow the old adage of “Who benefits?”
It is equally clear that Ireland, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, whose passports and citizens’ names were used by the 11-member hit squad, do not want to make a fuss about the affair. While various politicians were busy feigning concern last week, there is a tacit acceptance among Western governments that events like the murder of Mabhouh are merely things Israel is liable to do from time to time, and that these are best ignored or forgotten as quickly as possible.
The laughably fruitless 15-minute meeting in London on Thursday between the Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, and Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary who heads Britain’s diplomatic service, underlined this point. Prosor told reporters after the meeting that he “was unable to add any information and could not shed new light” on the affair. Meanwhile, despite its concern over the circumstances surrounding the assassination, the Foreign Office was unable to say whether Israel was even cooperating with the British Serious Organised Crimes Agency (SOCA) investigation into how British passports in the name of six British nationals living in Israel were used by the hit squad.
In the mid-1980s, Mossad was forced to promise never to use British passports to help its agents carry out covert operations. The intelligence agency did so when the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, effectively closed down its British operation after the discovery of a bag of forged British passports lost by a Mossad agent. And five years ago Israeli agents were arrested in New Zealand trying to acquire a passport in the name of a quadriplegic. Again, Israel had to promise not to repeat the exercise.
There are a lot of reasons why the UK wants the Mabhouh assassination to quietly fade away. British diplomatic relations with Israel are already strained. Aside from the perennial complaints from Israel about the “Arab bias” of the British Broadcasting Corporation in its reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is also the matter of a British court issuing an arrest warrant last year for Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. Livni was forced to cancel a visit to the UK after pro-Palestinian groups applied to the courts to issue the warrant because of her role in war crimes allegedly committed during the Gaza war.
Amid the political bickering, intelligence-sharing over terror groups between the British and Israeli secret services has also been threatened, without so far being terminated. Indeed, despite official denials, it is clear that the Brown government knew some time ago that British passports had been used by Mabhouh’s killers. An Irish Foreign Office spokesperson confirmed that Irish officials first looked into reports of Irish passports being used by the assassins as far back as February 5.
In fact, speculation is rife that MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an “overseas operation” using fake British passports. The British Daily Mail even had a member of the Mossad saying that the Foreign Office was told about the assassination a few hours before it took place, although the identity of the victim was not disclosed.
All this comes at a time when pressure is mounting on the government to hold a public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the war on terrorism after British judges ruled that the country’s intelligence personnel had been complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects. Fears persist that the British failure to take a firm stand on the Mabhouh case, such as the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, will play into the hands of Islamist terrorist groups seeking to recruit members within the UK’s borders.
The rather subdued hue and cry shifted to Brussels yesterday, where Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, met the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, along with the ministers of the other European Union member states whose passports were used in the assassination. Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow of Chatham House’s Middle East program in London, believes all four governments are keen to bury the issue. “By dealing with it at the European level, within the council of ministers, they are signaling they want the issue to die quietly. It’s quite obvious no one really wants to do anything.”
Perhaps this best explains why Israel seems to be enjoying all the publicity. On the day Prosor met with Ricketts, the Israeli Embassy’s official Twitter feed posted a joking reference to the killing, and the fact that two of the assassins were dressed in tennis gear: “You heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on Dubai target.” The headline linked to a report on the victory by the Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer, who had reached the finals of the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships. Peer is probably more upset about the crass joke than any Western government is about the assassination.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Monday, 22 February 2010
Monday, 1 February 2010
Blair regretted nothing; learned nothing
The Daily Star
Tuesday, February 2 2010
By Michael Glackin
Quite why anyone should be surprised by Tony Blair’s “Je ne regrette rien” performance at the British government’s Iraq inquiry in London last week is a mystery. Did anyone really expect him to express regret?
His failure to express remorse for the deaths of 179 British servicemen he ordered into Iraq while sitting in a room surrounded by their bereaved families – let alone the 100,000 plus Iraqis who died during the invasion and its aftermath – was crass in the extreme, but it is simply another illustration of the cocoon of self-belief the former prime minister has wrapped around himself.
“We didn’t end up with a humanitarian disaster,” he told the inquiry, ignoring all the thousands of dead, the 4 million or so refugees and the utter destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. “If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are,” he insisted, oblivious to the spate of terror attacks perpetuated by Islamist extremists that have occurred in Europe since 2003 and continue to wreak havoc on an almost daily basis in Iraq.
Not only would Blair invade Iraq all over again, but he spent much of his six hours in front of the inquiry urging the West to take military action against Iran, and citing the same arguments used to justify overthrowing Saddam.
Except of course, Blair’s self-belief and conviction did not always tally with the facts and it is to the inquiry panel’s shame that it failed to press him on the glaring contradictions in the reasons he gave for going to war, and the reasons he gave Parliament and the public in 2003.
Indeed the inquiry panel, chaired by former civil servant Sir John Chilcot and including another former civil servant, Baroness Usha Prashar, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to Russia Roderic Lyne and historians Lawrence Freedman and Martin Gilbert, seemed cowed by Blair. Despite his nervous start, Blair gave a defiant performance batting away the panel’s long-winded, largely unchallenging questions and reminding everyone of his skills as a communicator.
The inquiry was never going to tell us anything new about the reasons why Blair supported US President George W. Bush in his desire to oust Saddam Hussein. What it did reveal is how much Blair has shifted his position from his original cheerleading for war based on the threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Blair’s bizarre insistence in his testimony that his “tolerance” of Saddam’s regime changed after the 9/11 attacks was nonsense. Not even the most imaginative conspiracy theorists believe Iraq was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Blair certainly doesn’t, but he still managed to hint at a possible link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, telling the inquiry that “[Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi [late leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq] did go to Iraq prior to the invasion.”
Conceding there was no solid link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, Blair insisted instead that “suppressed and failing states,” such as Iraq under Saddam, become “porous” and thus easier for terror groups to infiltrate. He also talked vaguely about the “calculus of risk” and Saddam’s ability to “reconstitute” his [presumably old or decommissioned] weapons of mass destruction and pose a risk in future. All that’s a far cry from telling Parliament before the invasion that Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction program is active, detailed and growing.”
Moving on to the occupation, Blair told the inquiry that no one could have predicted that Al-Qaeda and Iran would try to destabilize the coalition’s efforts in creating a government once Saddam was toppled. Really? If, as Blair insisted, Iraq was “porous” surely it was obvious that insurgents such as Al-Qaeda and other Iranian-backed terror groups would quickly move to fill the void left by Saddam’s ousting.
Yet the inquiry panel failed to bring Blair to account on any of these contradictions in his reasons for going to war and failures to provide security in its aftermath.
Why? Perhaps because one of the other things the Iraq inquiry has revealed is the chumminess of the British establishment. Several of the panel members are hardly people likely to press the former prime minister. Freedman wrote significant portions of Blair’s famous Chicago Speech in 1999 in which the prime minister, in the wake of the West’s intervention in Kosovo, argued for international military intervention to prevent humanitarian disasters and achieve regime change. In suggestions for the Chicago speech Freedman had written: “Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men – Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic.” His suggestions included a justification that intervention without a United Nations mandate can be necessary because the UN is often constrained by the Security Council’s unwillingness to support military action.
Meanwhile, Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, claimed in 2004 that Blair and Bush were a modern day Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Chilcot and Prashar, in turn, received honors during Blair’s premiership: a knighthood in the case of Chilcot and for Prashar a seat in the House of Lords.
In short, Blair wasn’t exactly facing the Spanish Inquisition.
Ultimately, Blair’s testimony, and that of earlier witnesses, reinforces the view that he arranged the intelligence on Iraq weapons of mass destruction to suit his political desire to back Bush. Why he was so keen to do so remains a mystery for now, but his testimony also confirms that Bush-Blair was a lopsided partnership. Blair admitted his relationship with Bush was not one of quid pro quo, where the United States would reciprocate British support. Thus Blair was unable to get Bush to advance the paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “You could describe me as a broken record in that period” he told the panel describing his many unsuccessful pleas to Bush that movement on the Palestinian issue would help to solve their problems in Iraq.
Broken record? Lap dog might be a more appropriate description, and whatever Blair’s confident but twisted view of the war and its aftermath, that is how he is likely to be remembered in the world outside his cocoon.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star
Tuesday, February 2 2010
By Michael Glackin
Quite why anyone should be surprised by Tony Blair’s “Je ne regrette rien” performance at the British government’s Iraq inquiry in London last week is a mystery. Did anyone really expect him to express regret?
His failure to express remorse for the deaths of 179 British servicemen he ordered into Iraq while sitting in a room surrounded by their bereaved families – let alone the 100,000 plus Iraqis who died during the invasion and its aftermath – was crass in the extreme, but it is simply another illustration of the cocoon of self-belief the former prime minister has wrapped around himself.
“We didn’t end up with a humanitarian disaster,” he told the inquiry, ignoring all the thousands of dead, the 4 million or so refugees and the utter destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. “If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are,” he insisted, oblivious to the spate of terror attacks perpetuated by Islamist extremists that have occurred in Europe since 2003 and continue to wreak havoc on an almost daily basis in Iraq.
Not only would Blair invade Iraq all over again, but he spent much of his six hours in front of the inquiry urging the West to take military action against Iran, and citing the same arguments used to justify overthrowing Saddam.
Except of course, Blair’s self-belief and conviction did not always tally with the facts and it is to the inquiry panel’s shame that it failed to press him on the glaring contradictions in the reasons he gave for going to war, and the reasons he gave Parliament and the public in 2003.
Indeed the inquiry panel, chaired by former civil servant Sir John Chilcot and including another former civil servant, Baroness Usha Prashar, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to Russia Roderic Lyne and historians Lawrence Freedman and Martin Gilbert, seemed cowed by Blair. Despite his nervous start, Blair gave a defiant performance batting away the panel’s long-winded, largely unchallenging questions and reminding everyone of his skills as a communicator.
The inquiry was never going to tell us anything new about the reasons why Blair supported US President George W. Bush in his desire to oust Saddam Hussein. What it did reveal is how much Blair has shifted his position from his original cheerleading for war based on the threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Blair’s bizarre insistence in his testimony that his “tolerance” of Saddam’s regime changed after the 9/11 attacks was nonsense. Not even the most imaginative conspiracy theorists believe Iraq was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Blair certainly doesn’t, but he still managed to hint at a possible link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, telling the inquiry that “[Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi [late leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq] did go to Iraq prior to the invasion.”
Conceding there was no solid link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, Blair insisted instead that “suppressed and failing states,” such as Iraq under Saddam, become “porous” and thus easier for terror groups to infiltrate. He also talked vaguely about the “calculus of risk” and Saddam’s ability to “reconstitute” his [presumably old or decommissioned] weapons of mass destruction and pose a risk in future. All that’s a far cry from telling Parliament before the invasion that Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction program is active, detailed and growing.”
Moving on to the occupation, Blair told the inquiry that no one could have predicted that Al-Qaeda and Iran would try to destabilize the coalition’s efforts in creating a government once Saddam was toppled. Really? If, as Blair insisted, Iraq was “porous” surely it was obvious that insurgents such as Al-Qaeda and other Iranian-backed terror groups would quickly move to fill the void left by Saddam’s ousting.
Yet the inquiry panel failed to bring Blair to account on any of these contradictions in his reasons for going to war and failures to provide security in its aftermath.
Why? Perhaps because one of the other things the Iraq inquiry has revealed is the chumminess of the British establishment. Several of the panel members are hardly people likely to press the former prime minister. Freedman wrote significant portions of Blair’s famous Chicago Speech in 1999 in which the prime minister, in the wake of the West’s intervention in Kosovo, argued for international military intervention to prevent humanitarian disasters and achieve regime change. In suggestions for the Chicago speech Freedman had written: “Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men – Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic.” His suggestions included a justification that intervention without a United Nations mandate can be necessary because the UN is often constrained by the Security Council’s unwillingness to support military action.
Meanwhile, Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, claimed in 2004 that Blair and Bush were a modern day Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Chilcot and Prashar, in turn, received honors during Blair’s premiership: a knighthood in the case of Chilcot and for Prashar a seat in the House of Lords.
In short, Blair wasn’t exactly facing the Spanish Inquisition.
Ultimately, Blair’s testimony, and that of earlier witnesses, reinforces the view that he arranged the intelligence on Iraq weapons of mass destruction to suit his political desire to back Bush. Why he was so keen to do so remains a mystery for now, but his testimony also confirms that Bush-Blair was a lopsided partnership. Blair admitted his relationship with Bush was not one of quid pro quo, where the United States would reciprocate British support. Thus Blair was unable to get Bush to advance the paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “You could describe me as a broken record in that period” he told the panel describing his many unsuccessful pleas to Bush that movement on the Palestinian issue would help to solve their problems in Iraq.
Broken record? Lap dog might be a more appropriate description, and whatever Blair’s confident but twisted view of the war and its aftermath, that is how he is likely to be remembered in the world outside his cocoon.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Gordon Brown's small Afghan games
The Daily Star
Friday 27 November 2009
By Michael Glackin
Winston Churchill famously described Russia as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He could just as easily have been talking about current Western policy in Afghanistan.
Last week, British Premier Gordon Brown announced plans to host a conference in London next January involving NATO and the Afghan government. The gathering would set out an Afghan exit strategy and establish “a timetable for transfer [of power] starting in 2010.”
But just days after Brown floated his timetable for the United Kingdom’s military exit from Afghanistan, his foreign secretary, David Miliband, warned that “artificial timetables just give succor to your enemy.” Miliband insisted the UK was in Afghanistan for the long haul, because the government in Kabul would collapse within weeks if NATO troops left. Oddly enough, last month the newly installed head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, warned that British troop numbers in Afghanistan couldn’t be reduced until 2014 at the earliest, a date with which Afghan President Hamid Karzai hastily concurred last week.
So, is the UK cutting and running – remember Basra – or digging in? Last week, I spoke to the Foreign Office in a forlorn attempt to clarify British policy. An official insisted that the prime minister was not talking about withdrawal, and bizarrely he added that “no one is putting a timetable” on an exit. The official added that the UK’s strategy remained centered on building up Afghan institutions, the army, police and political system, so that Afghans could run everything themselves “at some point.”
I admit I was still confused, but a later inquiry to the Defense Ministry about how many coalition and Afghan troops were currently in Helmand Province alongside British forces turned confusion to farce. Astonishingly, the Defense Ministry didn’t know, and referred me to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. I duly contacted a very helpful chap at ISAF who informed me there were 15,000 coalition troops in total in Helmand, but that he had no idea how many Afghan soldiers were in the field. Let’s hope someone figures it out before Brown’s 2010 transfer. It’s one hell of a way to run an eight-year-long war.
Karzai has said that he will send 5,000 Afghan trainee troops to help in Helmand, but the Defense Ministry in London confirmed it had no idea when these troops would be dispatched. Based on all this, the chances of Helmand being handed over even in five years are slim to say the least, even if ISAF and the DefenseMinistry finally work out how many Afghan soldiers there are in the province to transfer security to.
Meanwhile, the government of the “re-elected” Karzai was last week declared by Transparency International the second most corrupt in the world, second only to Somalia’s. Brown has warned Karzai that he is not prepared to put the lives of British soldiers “in harm’s way” if the Afghan president fails to stamp out corruption. But as Miliband’s comments made clear, the threat is an empty one. It’s true that Brown has still not made good on his much-touted announcement to boost British troop numbers to 9,500, but that is because he is waiting for US President Barack Obama to decide how many soldiers he will commit to the Afghan conflict, with the announcement expected early next week in Washington.
Therefore, in place of anything resembling a firm policy, the prime minister dangled an ill-conceived and entirely unrealistic prospect of a military withdrawal before the British electorate, in order to fill the void. While Brown studiously avoided using the word withdrawal, his inference was as clear as it was cynical. It was a desperate attempt to shore up crumbling public support for the Afghan war, and for his government, ahead of next year’s elections, which must take place by June at the latest.
Brown wants to be able to tell voters that the process of withdrawing British troops is under way on his watch, even if no troops actually leave Afghanistan before the UK goes to the polls. Weekend leaks from the armed forces suggested the government was putting them under pressure to send a small number of troops home before the end of next year. Thus, British strategy is now subordinated to getting Brown re-elected.
The impression that British policy in Afghanistan now owes more to the Marx Brothers than Churchill was further underlined following a recent military briefing in London.
Those interested in financial markets will have noticed that the price of gold has soared this year. This is good news for the Taliban, who, following an alleged change in tactics by the British Army, are poised to receive “bags of gold” from soldiers in a bid to tempt them to lay down their arms. This “bags of gold policy,” outlined in a Defense Ministry briefing last week, is already being pursued, albeit with cash, not gold, by French and Italian forces in Afghanistan. Such payments could provide the Western powers with enough breathing space to allow international development programs to take root and provide real benefits to Afghans.
Except that according to the Defense Ministry the story is not true. It appears that “bags of gold” is merely a metaphor for stepping up development programs to provide work and benefits enabling “moderate insurgents” to see that there are alternatives to the $10 a day they are paid to take up arms with the Taliban. It appears that the British government believes bribing insurgents is something best left to the continentals.
That’s a shame. The handing of British gold to Afghan insurgents actually has a long and successful history. During the Great Game era of the late 19th century, the emir of Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman, received large supplies of gold and guns from Lord Dufferin, then viceroy of India, to maintain order in Afghanistan and keep Tsarist Russia at bay.
Mind you, Lord Dufferin probably knew how many Afghan troops he was paying for.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Friday 27 November 2009
By Michael Glackin
Winston Churchill famously described Russia as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He could just as easily have been talking about current Western policy in Afghanistan.
Last week, British Premier Gordon Brown announced plans to host a conference in London next January involving NATO and the Afghan government. The gathering would set out an Afghan exit strategy and establish “a timetable for transfer [of power] starting in 2010.”
But just days after Brown floated his timetable for the United Kingdom’s military exit from Afghanistan, his foreign secretary, David Miliband, warned that “artificial timetables just give succor to your enemy.” Miliband insisted the UK was in Afghanistan for the long haul, because the government in Kabul would collapse within weeks if NATO troops left. Oddly enough, last month the newly installed head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, warned that British troop numbers in Afghanistan couldn’t be reduced until 2014 at the earliest, a date with which Afghan President Hamid Karzai hastily concurred last week.
So, is the UK cutting and running – remember Basra – or digging in? Last week, I spoke to the Foreign Office in a forlorn attempt to clarify British policy. An official insisted that the prime minister was not talking about withdrawal, and bizarrely he added that “no one is putting a timetable” on an exit. The official added that the UK’s strategy remained centered on building up Afghan institutions, the army, police and political system, so that Afghans could run everything themselves “at some point.”
I admit I was still confused, but a later inquiry to the Defense Ministry about how many coalition and Afghan troops were currently in Helmand Province alongside British forces turned confusion to farce. Astonishingly, the Defense Ministry didn’t know, and referred me to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. I duly contacted a very helpful chap at ISAF who informed me there were 15,000 coalition troops in total in Helmand, but that he had no idea how many Afghan soldiers were in the field. Let’s hope someone figures it out before Brown’s 2010 transfer. It’s one hell of a way to run an eight-year-long war.
Karzai has said that he will send 5,000 Afghan trainee troops to help in Helmand, but the Defense Ministry in London confirmed it had no idea when these troops would be dispatched. Based on all this, the chances of Helmand being handed over even in five years are slim to say the least, even if ISAF and the DefenseMinistry finally work out how many Afghan soldiers there are in the province to transfer security to.
Meanwhile, the government of the “re-elected” Karzai was last week declared by Transparency International the second most corrupt in the world, second only to Somalia’s. Brown has warned Karzai that he is not prepared to put the lives of British soldiers “in harm’s way” if the Afghan president fails to stamp out corruption. But as Miliband’s comments made clear, the threat is an empty one. It’s true that Brown has still not made good on his much-touted announcement to boost British troop numbers to 9,500, but that is because he is waiting for US President Barack Obama to decide how many soldiers he will commit to the Afghan conflict, with the announcement expected early next week in Washington.
Therefore, in place of anything resembling a firm policy, the prime minister dangled an ill-conceived and entirely unrealistic prospect of a military withdrawal before the British electorate, in order to fill the void. While Brown studiously avoided using the word withdrawal, his inference was as clear as it was cynical. It was a desperate attempt to shore up crumbling public support for the Afghan war, and for his government, ahead of next year’s elections, which must take place by June at the latest.
Brown wants to be able to tell voters that the process of withdrawing British troops is under way on his watch, even if no troops actually leave Afghanistan before the UK goes to the polls. Weekend leaks from the armed forces suggested the government was putting them under pressure to send a small number of troops home before the end of next year. Thus, British strategy is now subordinated to getting Brown re-elected.
The impression that British policy in Afghanistan now owes more to the Marx Brothers than Churchill was further underlined following a recent military briefing in London.
Those interested in financial markets will have noticed that the price of gold has soared this year. This is good news for the Taliban, who, following an alleged change in tactics by the British Army, are poised to receive “bags of gold” from soldiers in a bid to tempt them to lay down their arms. This “bags of gold policy,” outlined in a Defense Ministry briefing last week, is already being pursued, albeit with cash, not gold, by French and Italian forces in Afghanistan. Such payments could provide the Western powers with enough breathing space to allow international development programs to take root and provide real benefits to Afghans.
Except that according to the Defense Ministry the story is not true. It appears that “bags of gold” is merely a metaphor for stepping up development programs to provide work and benefits enabling “moderate insurgents” to see that there are alternatives to the $10 a day they are paid to take up arms with the Taliban. It appears that the British government believes bribing insurgents is something best left to the continentals.
That’s a shame. The handing of British gold to Afghan insurgents actually has a long and successful history. During the Great Game era of the late 19th century, the emir of Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman, received large supplies of gold and guns from Lord Dufferin, then viceroy of India, to maintain order in Afghanistan and keep Tsarist Russia at bay.
Mind you, Lord Dufferin probably knew how many Afghan troops he was paying for.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Friday, 6 November 2009
Tony Blair's record as 'Quartet' envoy displays distinct lack of substance
The Daily Star
Friday November 6 2009
By Michael Glackin
During a trip to Nablus earlier this year, Tony Blair insisted that improving conditions for Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank was proof that a Palestinian state can be “built from the bottom up while it’s being negotiated from the top down.” Blair was referring to the removal of three Israeli checkpoints around the city.
It was a typical snappy, political sound-bite of the kind Blair, special envoy for the Middle East “Quartet” – the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations – excels in. Remember the one about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction “which could be activated within 45 minutes?”
Unfortunately, like the sound-bite he used to win support for the invasion of Iraq, Blair’s comments in Nablus were untrue.
Firstly there are currently no meaningful “top down” negotiations between the governments of the Palestinian Authority and Israel, nor indeed anyone else it seems. Secondly, the “bottom up” improvements that Blair was extolling, the easing of restrictions at Israeli checkpoints, only exist in a handful of places and are seen by many Palestinians as a sop for the lack of meaningful political progress to improve their plight.
These small improvements in the everyday lives of people shouldn’t be overlooked of course, but in reality they are not much to show for more than two years in his role as Quartet envoy and hardly evidence that Blair is slowly laying the economic foundations of a viable Palestinian state. This year Israel has removed 11 checkpoints, but according to the UN there are still more than 600 checkpoints and unmanned barriers choking the free movement of goods and people throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
So what exactly has Blair achieved during his two years as Quartet envoy?
Well for one thing, he has succeeded in rapidly turning himself into a multi-millionaire. It is estimated Blair has made around $24 million since he stepped down as prime minister in 2007. He is of course unpaid in his role as part-time Quartet envoy – although his expenses are picked up by taxpayers – but he appears to have found his Middle East role a useful way to generate cash for himself.
Last weekend it was reported that Blair had held talks with UK supermarket giant Tesco about helping the superstore establish itself in the Middle East for a fee of $1.6 million. The talks, which ended without agreement, have increased accusations that Blair is utilizing his unpaid role in the Middle East to feather his own nest by promoting his private political and economic consultancy, Tony Blair Associates (TBA).
TBA, which Blair runs with his former Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell, was established shortly after he was forced out of government by current UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Earlier this year, Blair was in Saudi Arabia in his peace-envoy role to hold talks with King Abdullah on the situation in the Gaza Strip. He was accompanied by Powell, although Powell has no role in the peace process. After the meeting the pair also met Prince Al-Waleed, King Abdullah’s nephew, who has no political role but is widely recognized as the wealthiest and smartest businessman in the Middle East. TBA’s clients are understood to include members of the royal families of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, countries Blair has visited in his role as Quartet envoy.
Last month a friend of Blair’s told the Sunday Times newspaper that TBA “had been set up to make money from foreign governments and companies. There’s a focus on the Middle East, because that is where the money is.”
On top of all that, Blair also represents US investment bank JP Morgan in the region in return for an estimated annual fee of $3 million. Beyond the Middle East there’s also the $800,000 Blair earns for representing Zurich Financial Services and a $7 million advance on his memoirs he received from publisher Random House in 2007. He is also reputed to earn up to $300,000 for each talk he gives on the global lecture circuit.
But what has been good for Blair’s finances has not been so good for Palestinians who remain burdened by Israeli restrictions, with movement into and through the West Bank strangled by checkpoints.
This week the Israel relaxed its blockade on Gaza to allow in tea and coffee. Both had been on a long list of items prohibited by the Israelis for security reasons along with cooking oil, dairy products, flour and frozen meat.
Another successful example of Blair’s “bottom up” theory? Hardly.
The blockade, imposed following the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007 continues and still includes the closure of Karni, one of the largest and best-equipped commercial crossings, continuing restrictions on the import of industrial, agricultural and construction materials, the suspension of almost all exports and a general ban on the movement of Palestinians through Erez, the only passenger crossing to the West Bank.
The bizarre ban on pens and pencils also appears to remain in place. The World Bank warned this year that the impact of the blockade on Gaza has been so severe, that it is unlikely many of the area’s fledgling businesses will be able to recover if and when the blockade is eventually lifted.
Other areas where Blair has become directly involved, such as his commendable attempts to persuade Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu to allot the promised bandwidth for a second Palestinian mobile-phone company, operated by Wataniya Palestine, and which Blair said was “an important indicator of whether Palestinians are going to be allowed to run an economy properly” have also failed. Wataniya finally launched this week but not on the promised bandwidth it needs for the business to be viable.
In fairness to Blair the political process, under the aegis of US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has also failed to deliver and US President Barack Obama’s demand for a one-year freeze on settlement construction has been ignored. But given Blair’s narrow economic remit he has achieved next to nothing. Based on results, Blair’s role has been revealed as a non-job, save for providing him with a political calling card to present when selling his other wares.
Blair’s burning ambition to become the first president of the European Union appears to have been scuppered by European leaders over his support for former US President George W Bush’s war on Saddam Hussein. But they didn’t have to go that far back to find his flaws.
Blair is an extremely accomplished communicator, a skill not to be overlooked in modern politics, but one that should compliment political acumen and leadership, not serve as a substitute for it.
There must be substance behind the sound-bite, and frankly, Blair’s record as Quartet envoy displays a distinct lack of that particular commodity.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Friday November 6 2009
By Michael Glackin
During a trip to Nablus earlier this year, Tony Blair insisted that improving conditions for Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank was proof that a Palestinian state can be “built from the bottom up while it’s being negotiated from the top down.” Blair was referring to the removal of three Israeli checkpoints around the city.
It was a typical snappy, political sound-bite of the kind Blair, special envoy for the Middle East “Quartet” – the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations – excels in. Remember the one about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction “which could be activated within 45 minutes?”
Unfortunately, like the sound-bite he used to win support for the invasion of Iraq, Blair’s comments in Nablus were untrue.
Firstly there are currently no meaningful “top down” negotiations between the governments of the Palestinian Authority and Israel, nor indeed anyone else it seems. Secondly, the “bottom up” improvements that Blair was extolling, the easing of restrictions at Israeli checkpoints, only exist in a handful of places and are seen by many Palestinians as a sop for the lack of meaningful political progress to improve their plight.
These small improvements in the everyday lives of people shouldn’t be overlooked of course, but in reality they are not much to show for more than two years in his role as Quartet envoy and hardly evidence that Blair is slowly laying the economic foundations of a viable Palestinian state. This year Israel has removed 11 checkpoints, but according to the UN there are still more than 600 checkpoints and unmanned barriers choking the free movement of goods and people throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
So what exactly has Blair achieved during his two years as Quartet envoy?
Well for one thing, he has succeeded in rapidly turning himself into a multi-millionaire. It is estimated Blair has made around $24 million since he stepped down as prime minister in 2007. He is of course unpaid in his role as part-time Quartet envoy – although his expenses are picked up by taxpayers – but he appears to have found his Middle East role a useful way to generate cash for himself.
Last weekend it was reported that Blair had held talks with UK supermarket giant Tesco about helping the superstore establish itself in the Middle East for a fee of $1.6 million. The talks, which ended without agreement, have increased accusations that Blair is utilizing his unpaid role in the Middle East to feather his own nest by promoting his private political and economic consultancy, Tony Blair Associates (TBA).
TBA, which Blair runs with his former Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell, was established shortly after he was forced out of government by current UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Earlier this year, Blair was in Saudi Arabia in his peace-envoy role to hold talks with King Abdullah on the situation in the Gaza Strip. He was accompanied by Powell, although Powell has no role in the peace process. After the meeting the pair also met Prince Al-Waleed, King Abdullah’s nephew, who has no political role but is widely recognized as the wealthiest and smartest businessman in the Middle East. TBA’s clients are understood to include members of the royal families of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, countries Blair has visited in his role as Quartet envoy.
Last month a friend of Blair’s told the Sunday Times newspaper that TBA “had been set up to make money from foreign governments and companies. There’s a focus on the Middle East, because that is where the money is.”
On top of all that, Blair also represents US investment bank JP Morgan in the region in return for an estimated annual fee of $3 million. Beyond the Middle East there’s also the $800,000 Blair earns for representing Zurich Financial Services and a $7 million advance on his memoirs he received from publisher Random House in 2007. He is also reputed to earn up to $300,000 for each talk he gives on the global lecture circuit.
But what has been good for Blair’s finances has not been so good for Palestinians who remain burdened by Israeli restrictions, with movement into and through the West Bank strangled by checkpoints.
This week the Israel relaxed its blockade on Gaza to allow in tea and coffee. Both had been on a long list of items prohibited by the Israelis for security reasons along with cooking oil, dairy products, flour and frozen meat.
Another successful example of Blair’s “bottom up” theory? Hardly.
The blockade, imposed following the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007 continues and still includes the closure of Karni, one of the largest and best-equipped commercial crossings, continuing restrictions on the import of industrial, agricultural and construction materials, the suspension of almost all exports and a general ban on the movement of Palestinians through Erez, the only passenger crossing to the West Bank.
The bizarre ban on pens and pencils also appears to remain in place. The World Bank warned this year that the impact of the blockade on Gaza has been so severe, that it is unlikely many of the area’s fledgling businesses will be able to recover if and when the blockade is eventually lifted.
Other areas where Blair has become directly involved, such as his commendable attempts to persuade Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu to allot the promised bandwidth for a second Palestinian mobile-phone company, operated by Wataniya Palestine, and which Blair said was “an important indicator of whether Palestinians are going to be allowed to run an economy properly” have also failed. Wataniya finally launched this week but not on the promised bandwidth it needs for the business to be viable.
In fairness to Blair the political process, under the aegis of US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has also failed to deliver and US President Barack Obama’s demand for a one-year freeze on settlement construction has been ignored. But given Blair’s narrow economic remit he has achieved next to nothing. Based on results, Blair’s role has been revealed as a non-job, save for providing him with a political calling card to present when selling his other wares.
Blair’s burning ambition to become the first president of the European Union appears to have been scuppered by European leaders over his support for former US President George W Bush’s war on Saddam Hussein. But they didn’t have to go that far back to find his flaws.
Blair is an extremely accomplished communicator, a skill not to be overlooked in modern politics, but one that should compliment political acumen and leadership, not serve as a substitute for it.
There must be substance behind the sound-bite, and frankly, Blair’s record as Quartet envoy displays a distinct lack of that particular commodity.
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Strings attached to a shaky policy
The Daily Star
October 15 2009
By Michael Glackin
Am I alone in being confused by the UK’s commitment to increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan?
On Wednesday UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced to Parliament that he was sending an additional 500 troops to Helmand Province. But rather bizarrely Brown said the increase was conditional on the Afghan government supplying more of its own troops for frontline action, and other NATO countries making an increased contribution – a barely concealed swipe aimed at Germany, France, Spain and Canada to shoulder a bigger share of the fighting as Britain and the US suffer increasing casualties. Brown also said the increase was conditional on the right equipment being available to ensure all additional troops were properly equipped, something that his own government is responsible for.
Does this mean that if none of the above happens the additional troops won’t be sent? The Defense Ministry told me that was “a fair assumption,” but expressed optimism that all the prime minister’s conditions would be met.
Really? While the Afghans are capable of putting more of their own troops in the line of fire and London will ensure, following criticism that it has failed to in the past, that its troops are equipped for the job they are given on the battle field, the odds on Britain and America’s NATO allies answering Brown’s call are slim.
Of the largest troop contributors outside of the US and Britain, only France is likely to offer to send a small number of troops. German leader Angela Merkel is under pressure to set a timetable for a withdrawal, while Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to pull his country’s troops out by 2011. Meanwhile Spain agreed last month to send an additional 200 soldiers bringing its total force in Afghanistan to around 1,000 and is unlikely to go beyond that number.
When Brown calls for further commitments from NATO he means the US. But there is a degree of uncertainty over the current policy of US President Barack Obama, who is considering a proposal by the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, to send in an additional 40,000 troops.
NATO meets next week in Bratislava. It is unclear whether Obama will announce a decision on troop numbers there, but it is extremely doubtful Brown would have chosen to increase UK troops if he wasn’t certain that Obama was going to do the same thing. Though whether Obama commits as many as 40,000 US soldiers remains a moot point.
The decision to deploy more troops comes just days after General Sir Richard Dannatt, who stood down as head of the army in August, accused Brown of overruling his advice to send an additional 2,000 troops to Helmand Province – which would have brought the total number of UK troops to around 9,500 – because it would cost too much money.
When yesterday’s increase is added to the 700 or so troops Brown sent as a temporary force in the run up to the Afghan elections, which has since become a permanent force, British troop forces will be at roughly the level Dannatt wanted.
So why the change? Well, Brown made the announcement just minutes after he read out the names of the 37 British soldiers killed in Helmand over the summer, and less than a week after Dannatt’s exposure of his refusal to send more troops on the grounds of cost. He can now say he is at least doing something.
But the additional troops, and indeed the announcement last week that Dannatt had been appointed by the opposition Conservative Party to be their adviser for defense policy, merely serves to underline the lack of policy and leadership from all political parties in the UK on the Afghan war.
In place of a policy, the Conservatives have come up with a gimmick appointment of a general whose criticism of the government now looks politically motivated rather than out of concern for his soldiers. Meanwhile Brown, who told Parliament that it has been a “particularly difficult summer for our armed forces” once again failed to offer a coherent outline of what the UK’s aspirations and role is in Afghanistan, let alone provide a strategy for winning what is increasingly looking like an unwinnable war.
The great problem with British, and indeed Western, policy in Afghanistan is that it still doesn’t appear to understand what can and cannot be achieved by military power. The army cannot defeat the Taliban and its fellow travelers alone. Defeating the militants and establishing stability in Afghanistan requires a political solution. But the West has had eight years to set about the task of nation-building and so far has failed to create anything resembling a functional and stable state.
The deeply embarrassing debacle of Afghanistan’s presidential election has left what passes for the political process in Kabul in turmoil. While the UN probe into ballot rigging continues there remains the distinct possibility that there may have to be a further round of elections. Indeed it was noticeable during his statement to Parliament that Brown was careful to stress he had received assurances from both the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, that the Afghans would deploy more troops to fight alongside the British in Helmand.
The row over election fraud places more pressure on Brown to justify the British presence in Afghanistan as the death toll rises without any military or political end in sight. This is why Brown was reluctant for so long to commit more troops. He fears putting more soldiers in the line of fire merely gives the Taliban more British troops to shoot at and kill. This is the same dilemma facing Obama and hence his reluctance to immediately accede to General McChrystal’s demands.
While the military insist the war will be lost unless more troops are sent, Both Brown and Obama have belatedly come to realize that the military solution won’t work regardless of how many troops they deploy. How long before a Vietnam-type blame game between politicians and soldiers over who lost the war?
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
October 15 2009
By Michael Glackin
Am I alone in being confused by the UK’s commitment to increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan?
On Wednesday UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced to Parliament that he was sending an additional 500 troops to Helmand Province. But rather bizarrely Brown said the increase was conditional on the Afghan government supplying more of its own troops for frontline action, and other NATO countries making an increased contribution – a barely concealed swipe aimed at Germany, France, Spain and Canada to shoulder a bigger share of the fighting as Britain and the US suffer increasing casualties. Brown also said the increase was conditional on the right equipment being available to ensure all additional troops were properly equipped, something that his own government is responsible for.
Does this mean that if none of the above happens the additional troops won’t be sent? The Defense Ministry told me that was “a fair assumption,” but expressed optimism that all the prime minister’s conditions would be met.
Really? While the Afghans are capable of putting more of their own troops in the line of fire and London will ensure, following criticism that it has failed to in the past, that its troops are equipped for the job they are given on the battle field, the odds on Britain and America’s NATO allies answering Brown’s call are slim.
Of the largest troop contributors outside of the US and Britain, only France is likely to offer to send a small number of troops. German leader Angela Merkel is under pressure to set a timetable for a withdrawal, while Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to pull his country’s troops out by 2011. Meanwhile Spain agreed last month to send an additional 200 soldiers bringing its total force in Afghanistan to around 1,000 and is unlikely to go beyond that number.
When Brown calls for further commitments from NATO he means the US. But there is a degree of uncertainty over the current policy of US President Barack Obama, who is considering a proposal by the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, to send in an additional 40,000 troops.
NATO meets next week in Bratislava. It is unclear whether Obama will announce a decision on troop numbers there, but it is extremely doubtful Brown would have chosen to increase UK troops if he wasn’t certain that Obama was going to do the same thing. Though whether Obama commits as many as 40,000 US soldiers remains a moot point.
The decision to deploy more troops comes just days after General Sir Richard Dannatt, who stood down as head of the army in August, accused Brown of overruling his advice to send an additional 2,000 troops to Helmand Province – which would have brought the total number of UK troops to around 9,500 – because it would cost too much money.
When yesterday’s increase is added to the 700 or so troops Brown sent as a temporary force in the run up to the Afghan elections, which has since become a permanent force, British troop forces will be at roughly the level Dannatt wanted.
So why the change? Well, Brown made the announcement just minutes after he read out the names of the 37 British soldiers killed in Helmand over the summer, and less than a week after Dannatt’s exposure of his refusal to send more troops on the grounds of cost. He can now say he is at least doing something.
But the additional troops, and indeed the announcement last week that Dannatt had been appointed by the opposition Conservative Party to be their adviser for defense policy, merely serves to underline the lack of policy and leadership from all political parties in the UK on the Afghan war.
In place of a policy, the Conservatives have come up with a gimmick appointment of a general whose criticism of the government now looks politically motivated rather than out of concern for his soldiers. Meanwhile Brown, who told Parliament that it has been a “particularly difficult summer for our armed forces” once again failed to offer a coherent outline of what the UK’s aspirations and role is in Afghanistan, let alone provide a strategy for winning what is increasingly looking like an unwinnable war.
The great problem with British, and indeed Western, policy in Afghanistan is that it still doesn’t appear to understand what can and cannot be achieved by military power. The army cannot defeat the Taliban and its fellow travelers alone. Defeating the militants and establishing stability in Afghanistan requires a political solution. But the West has had eight years to set about the task of nation-building and so far has failed to create anything resembling a functional and stable state.
The deeply embarrassing debacle of Afghanistan’s presidential election has left what passes for the political process in Kabul in turmoil. While the UN probe into ballot rigging continues there remains the distinct possibility that there may have to be a further round of elections. Indeed it was noticeable during his statement to Parliament that Brown was careful to stress he had received assurances from both the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, that the Afghans would deploy more troops to fight alongside the British in Helmand.
The row over election fraud places more pressure on Brown to justify the British presence in Afghanistan as the death toll rises without any military or political end in sight. This is why Brown was reluctant for so long to commit more troops. He fears putting more soldiers in the line of fire merely gives the Taliban more British troops to shoot at and kill. This is the same dilemma facing Obama and hence his reluctance to immediately accede to General McChrystal’s demands.
While the military insist the war will be lost unless more troops are sent, Both Brown and Obama have belatedly come to realize that the military solution won’t work regardless of how many troops they deploy. How long before a Vietnam-type blame game between politicians and soldiers over who lost the war?
Michael Glackin is former managing editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Pan Am Flight 103: the mystery continues
The Daily Star
August 19 2009
By Michael Glackin
By the end of this week, Abdulbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted in the December 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which killed 270 people, may be released from a Scottish prison and return to Libya. Megrahi, a former Libyan secret service agent, is unlikely to enjoy his newfound freedom for long. His release, or transfer to a prison in Libya, is due to the fact he has terminal cancer, with a life expectancy measured in weeks rather than months.
The New York-bound Pan Am flight blew up as it flew over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. So when Megrahi eventually came to trial, a dozen years after the event, he was tried by a specially convened Scottish Court that sat in The Netherlands. Megrahi was given a life sentence by three Scottish judges who found him responsible for putting a suitcase containing a bomb aboard a flight from Malta to Frankfurt. From there the suitcase went on to London and was transferred to the New York flight that exploded less than 40 minutes after take-off.
Megrahi was positively identified by a witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claimed he had sold clothes to Megrahi which were later found scattered over the crash site and had been in the suitcase containing the explosive device. However, it is now alleged that Gauci was offered a $2 million reward for his evidence by the CIA and a place in a witness protection program. It also emerged during Megrahi’s failed appeal in 2002 that the bomb may have been planted in London, not Malta.
Megrahi’s defense team was also denied access to official government papers that were made available to Scottish police. After conducting an exhaustive three-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission reported in June 2007 that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s case.
Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, is considering taking legal action against the Scottish Court because he believes it deliberately suppressed crucial evidence from Ray Manly, a retired security guard at Heathrow Airport, who revealed in 2002 that Pan Am’s baggage area at Heathrow was broken into 17 hours before Flight 103 took off for New York. Swire believes this was probably when the bomb was planted, and he is convinced of Megrahi’s innocence.
But if Megrahi didn’t do it, who did?
In October 1988, two months before the bombing, German police raided an apartment in Frankfurt and arrested several Palestinians. The raid unearthed explosives, weapons and, crucially, a number of radio cassette recorders similar to the one used to detonate the Pan Am 103 bomb. Most of the Palestinians arrested were members of the Syrian-controlled Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), headed by Palestinian born former Syrian Army officer Ahmad Jibril.
The three judges at Megrahi’s trial rejected the argument that Jibril and the PFLP-GC had carried out the bombing on behalf of Iran and Syria to avenge the July 1988 accidental downing of an Iranian commercial airliner by an American warship, which killed 290 people.
However, a number of intelligence documents indicating PFLP-GC involvement were not made available at the trial. Chief among these was evidence from the US Defense Intelligence Agency showing that the PFLP-GC was paid $1 million to carry out the bombing. The DIA also claimed that Jibril was given a down payment of $100,000 in Damascus by Iran’s then ambassador to Syria, Mohammad Hussan. Megrahi’s lawyers had planned to introduce this evidence – also seen by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – in a fresh appeal against his conviction this year, which was abandoned to facilitate his release.
The conspiracy view is that after Syrian President Hafez Assad supported the US-led alliance to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, Syria’s role in the bombing was swept under the carpet. Megrahi was not formally indicted by the United States and the United Kingdom until November 1991.
The PFLP-GC is not the only suspect. When German police raided the Frankfurt apartment in the weeks before the bombing, they also arrested members of the Palestine People’s Struggle Front. It emerged that the group’s former leader, Muhammad Abu Talib – who is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden – was in Malta two months before the bombing. He was cleared of involvement during Megrahi’s trial, despite the fact he had circled the date of the bombing in a calendar found at his apartment.
The final part of the jigsaw is the Libyan angle. The PFLP-GC was subcontracted dirty deeds for Iran and Syria, but also Libya when the African state was at the top of the West’s list of terrorist states. Libya’s intelligence service worked closely with a range of terrorist groups. It is possible, even likely, that Megrahi had contact with the PFLP-GC, but not credible that he masterminded and executed the entire Pan Am bombing.
Megrahi’s abandonment was perhaps facilitated by Libyan reasons of state. In 2003, after the US-led occupation of Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair took the lead in persuading the Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi, to give up on Libya’s nuclear program, the first step in his international rehabilitation. That same year, the Libyan government paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of those killed – around $10 million per victim. In 2004 international sanctions imposed on Libya were eased and a raft of Western oil companies signed multi-million dollar contracts to explore and develop oil and natural gas in the country.
You don’t have to be a cynic to see that Libyan compensation payments and the continued incarceration of Megrahi were a small price for Gadhafi to pay to repair his reputation and open the floodgates of Western investment. In 2005 Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem denied Libyan involvement and said the compensation payments were simply to “buy peace and move forward.”
The full truth about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 may never be known. But what we do know now strongly indicates that the guilty remain unpunished.
Michael Glackin is former Managing Editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star
August 19 2009
By Michael Glackin
By the end of this week, Abdulbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted in the December 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which killed 270 people, may be released from a Scottish prison and return to Libya. Megrahi, a former Libyan secret service agent, is unlikely to enjoy his newfound freedom for long. His release, or transfer to a prison in Libya, is due to the fact he has terminal cancer, with a life expectancy measured in weeks rather than months.
The New York-bound Pan Am flight blew up as it flew over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. So when Megrahi eventually came to trial, a dozen years after the event, he was tried by a specially convened Scottish Court that sat in The Netherlands. Megrahi was given a life sentence by three Scottish judges who found him responsible for putting a suitcase containing a bomb aboard a flight from Malta to Frankfurt. From there the suitcase went on to London and was transferred to the New York flight that exploded less than 40 minutes after take-off.
Megrahi was positively identified by a witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claimed he had sold clothes to Megrahi which were later found scattered over the crash site and had been in the suitcase containing the explosive device. However, it is now alleged that Gauci was offered a $2 million reward for his evidence by the CIA and a place in a witness protection program. It also emerged during Megrahi’s failed appeal in 2002 that the bomb may have been planted in London, not Malta.
Megrahi’s defense team was also denied access to official government papers that were made available to Scottish police. After conducting an exhaustive three-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission reported in June 2007 that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s case.
Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, is considering taking legal action against the Scottish Court because he believes it deliberately suppressed crucial evidence from Ray Manly, a retired security guard at Heathrow Airport, who revealed in 2002 that Pan Am’s baggage area at Heathrow was broken into 17 hours before Flight 103 took off for New York. Swire believes this was probably when the bomb was planted, and he is convinced of Megrahi’s innocence.
But if Megrahi didn’t do it, who did?
In October 1988, two months before the bombing, German police raided an apartment in Frankfurt and arrested several Palestinians. The raid unearthed explosives, weapons and, crucially, a number of radio cassette recorders similar to the one used to detonate the Pan Am 103 bomb. Most of the Palestinians arrested were members of the Syrian-controlled Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), headed by Palestinian born former Syrian Army officer Ahmad Jibril.
The three judges at Megrahi’s trial rejected the argument that Jibril and the PFLP-GC had carried out the bombing on behalf of Iran and Syria to avenge the July 1988 accidental downing of an Iranian commercial airliner by an American warship, which killed 290 people.
However, a number of intelligence documents indicating PFLP-GC involvement were not made available at the trial. Chief among these was evidence from the US Defense Intelligence Agency showing that the PFLP-GC was paid $1 million to carry out the bombing. The DIA also claimed that Jibril was given a down payment of $100,000 in Damascus by Iran’s then ambassador to Syria, Mohammad Hussan. Megrahi’s lawyers had planned to introduce this evidence – also seen by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – in a fresh appeal against his conviction this year, which was abandoned to facilitate his release.
The conspiracy view is that after Syrian President Hafez Assad supported the US-led alliance to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, Syria’s role in the bombing was swept under the carpet. Megrahi was not formally indicted by the United States and the United Kingdom until November 1991.
The PFLP-GC is not the only suspect. When German police raided the Frankfurt apartment in the weeks before the bombing, they also arrested members of the Palestine People’s Struggle Front. It emerged that the group’s former leader, Muhammad Abu Talib – who is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden – was in Malta two months before the bombing. He was cleared of involvement during Megrahi’s trial, despite the fact he had circled the date of the bombing in a calendar found at his apartment.
The final part of the jigsaw is the Libyan angle. The PFLP-GC was subcontracted dirty deeds for Iran and Syria, but also Libya when the African state was at the top of the West’s list of terrorist states. Libya’s intelligence service worked closely with a range of terrorist groups. It is possible, even likely, that Megrahi had contact with the PFLP-GC, but not credible that he masterminded and executed the entire Pan Am bombing.
Megrahi’s abandonment was perhaps facilitated by Libyan reasons of state. In 2003, after the US-led occupation of Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair took the lead in persuading the Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi, to give up on Libya’s nuclear program, the first step in his international rehabilitation. That same year, the Libyan government paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of those killed – around $10 million per victim. In 2004 international sanctions imposed on Libya were eased and a raft of Western oil companies signed multi-million dollar contracts to explore and develop oil and natural gas in the country.
You don’t have to be a cynic to see that Libyan compensation payments and the continued incarceration of Megrahi were a small price for Gadhafi to pay to repair his reputation and open the floodgates of Western investment. In 2005 Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem denied Libyan involvement and said the compensation payments were simply to “buy peace and move forward.”
The full truth about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 may never be known. But what we do know now strongly indicates that the guilty remain unpunished.
Michael Glackin is former Managing Editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star
Monday, 20 July 2009
British patience wanes for the Afghan war
The Daily Star
20 July 2009
By Michael Glackin
Last week, on a sunny afternoon in the sleepy English market town of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, around 4,000 people gathered and stood and watched as eight coffins carrying the remains of eight British servicemen were driven through the streets. It is a ritual that people in the town, which is close to RAF Lyneham, where the bodies of fallen servicemen are regularly flown into, are becoming numbingly used to.
But last week’s procession was different. The eight soldiers were killed in a bloody 24 hours of violence in Afghanistan, on what was the United Kingdom’s darkest day of combat. And their homecoming came at a time when the British public is becoming disillusioned and angry with the UK’s involvement in the eight-year Afghan war, an attitude that a raft of opinion polls in the last month has only confirmed.
As the death toll mounts, no victory over the Taliban is in sight. No political solution is on offer, save another term for the inept administration of President Hamid Karzai, who heads, according to Transparency International, the fourth most corrupt government in the world. The number of British troops killed in Afghanistan is now larger than British losses in Iraq. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now regularly accused of being complicit in many of those deaths for sending troops into battle without adequate equipment.
The accusation is not new. It was made last year by the Oxfordshire coroner Andrew Walker during numerous inquests into the deaths of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is now being made by senior military chiefs, both former and current commanders. And last week, Parliament’s Defense Select Committee said a lack of helicopters was undermining operations and troop protection in Afghanistan.
Brown has faced a barrage of criticism over his government’s failure to supply front-line troops with the helicopters they need to take the fight to the Taliban. Official figures show that just 43 percent of combat helicopters were ready for action in June, even as commanders on the ground complained of a shortage. It even emerged last week that the head of the armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt, was traveling around Helmand province in an American Black Hawk helicopter because there wasn’t a British one available.
Despite the sharp increase in casualties Brown has insisted the shortage of helicopters has not cost lives. But when he faced Parliament’s powerful Liaison Committee last Thursday he sidestepped the issue, saying he could not discuss the numbers of helicopters in Afghanistan for security reasons. In a series of terse exchanges with the committee, Brown also refused to answer claims that earlier this year he rejected pleas from the military to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan by 2,000 men.
As public anger grows over both the rationale for the war and its prosecution, the government has accused Dannatt, who also called on the government to reconsider the resources and troop numbers it had committed to Afghanistan, of playing politics. However, Dannatt’s views are also representative of most Britons and, increasingly, many politicians. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said last week that lives were being “thrown away” in Afghanistan.
In contrast, last week Brown called the war a “patriotic duty.” Perhaps. But it was Samuel Johnson who famously declared that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. Frankly, when it comes to Afghanistan, that is what Brown looks like. As prime minister, he has been keen on photo opportunities with soldiers. He has even inaugurated a British version of America’s Veteran’s Day. Yet while he was finance minister he steadfastly refused to properly fund the military. One of Dannatt’s predecessors, General Lord Guthrie, in charge during the early stages of the Afghan war, has stated that Brown had caused the deaths of servicemen because he was “unsympathetic” to military appeals for funds as finance minister. As the general put it: “[Prime Minister Tony] Blair found it difficult to deliver Brown in the Treasury.”
Brown’s contempt for the military stemmed from his acrimonious relationship with Blair. Brown felt that Blair had cheated him out of becoming prime minister. When Blair wanted to use the military to pursue his political agenda, Brown did what he could to avoid paying for this. Blair was too spineless to stand up to Brown.
It is of course a brutal reality of war that soldiers die in combat zones. Combat deaths are, as the Duke of Wellington observed, “the butcher’s bill.” And it is hardly unusual for the military to demand more funding. However, the current row has left the public questioning whether the government still believes in the war.
What Brown needed to do during his testimony to the committee last week was to make plain to everyone what exactly British war aims are in Afghanistan, and whether there is anything like a realistic chance that they can be achieved. He failed to do that, and his failure will further convince the public that British troops are dying in a faraway land for no good reason at all.
If Brown still believes that the war is necessary to combat terrorism and build something akin to a stable government in Afghanistan, then he has to “deliver” and put his full weight behind achieving this. If he doesn’t, he should have the moral courage to withdraw British troops now.
Sadly, the importance the government places on the war can perhaps best be seen in the fact that while 4,000 people turned up in Wootton Bassett to greet the arrival of eight dead soldiers, there was not a senior member of government among them.
Michael Glackin is former Managing Editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
20 July 2009
By Michael Glackin
Last week, on a sunny afternoon in the sleepy English market town of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, around 4,000 people gathered and stood and watched as eight coffins carrying the remains of eight British servicemen were driven through the streets. It is a ritual that people in the town, which is close to RAF Lyneham, where the bodies of fallen servicemen are regularly flown into, are becoming numbingly used to.
But last week’s procession was different. The eight soldiers were killed in a bloody 24 hours of violence in Afghanistan, on what was the United Kingdom’s darkest day of combat. And their homecoming came at a time when the British public is becoming disillusioned and angry with the UK’s involvement in the eight-year Afghan war, an attitude that a raft of opinion polls in the last month has only confirmed.
As the death toll mounts, no victory over the Taliban is in sight. No political solution is on offer, save another term for the inept administration of President Hamid Karzai, who heads, according to Transparency International, the fourth most corrupt government in the world. The number of British troops killed in Afghanistan is now larger than British losses in Iraq. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now regularly accused of being complicit in many of those deaths for sending troops into battle without adequate equipment.
The accusation is not new. It was made last year by the Oxfordshire coroner Andrew Walker during numerous inquests into the deaths of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is now being made by senior military chiefs, both former and current commanders. And last week, Parliament’s Defense Select Committee said a lack of helicopters was undermining operations and troop protection in Afghanistan.
Brown has faced a barrage of criticism over his government’s failure to supply front-line troops with the helicopters they need to take the fight to the Taliban. Official figures show that just 43 percent of combat helicopters were ready for action in June, even as commanders on the ground complained of a shortage. It even emerged last week that the head of the armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt, was traveling around Helmand province in an American Black Hawk helicopter because there wasn’t a British one available.
Despite the sharp increase in casualties Brown has insisted the shortage of helicopters has not cost lives. But when he faced Parliament’s powerful Liaison Committee last Thursday he sidestepped the issue, saying he could not discuss the numbers of helicopters in Afghanistan for security reasons. In a series of terse exchanges with the committee, Brown also refused to answer claims that earlier this year he rejected pleas from the military to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan by 2,000 men.
As public anger grows over both the rationale for the war and its prosecution, the government has accused Dannatt, who also called on the government to reconsider the resources and troop numbers it had committed to Afghanistan, of playing politics. However, Dannatt’s views are also representative of most Britons and, increasingly, many politicians. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said last week that lives were being “thrown away” in Afghanistan.
In contrast, last week Brown called the war a “patriotic duty.” Perhaps. But it was Samuel Johnson who famously declared that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. Frankly, when it comes to Afghanistan, that is what Brown looks like. As prime minister, he has been keen on photo opportunities with soldiers. He has even inaugurated a British version of America’s Veteran’s Day. Yet while he was finance minister he steadfastly refused to properly fund the military. One of Dannatt’s predecessors, General Lord Guthrie, in charge during the early stages of the Afghan war, has stated that Brown had caused the deaths of servicemen because he was “unsympathetic” to military appeals for funds as finance minister. As the general put it: “[Prime Minister Tony] Blair found it difficult to deliver Brown in the Treasury.”
Brown’s contempt for the military stemmed from his acrimonious relationship with Blair. Brown felt that Blair had cheated him out of becoming prime minister. When Blair wanted to use the military to pursue his political agenda, Brown did what he could to avoid paying for this. Blair was too spineless to stand up to Brown.
It is of course a brutal reality of war that soldiers die in combat zones. Combat deaths are, as the Duke of Wellington observed, “the butcher’s bill.” And it is hardly unusual for the military to demand more funding. However, the current row has left the public questioning whether the government still believes in the war.
What Brown needed to do during his testimony to the committee last week was to make plain to everyone what exactly British war aims are in Afghanistan, and whether there is anything like a realistic chance that they can be achieved. He failed to do that, and his failure will further convince the public that British troops are dying in a faraway land for no good reason at all.
If Brown still believes that the war is necessary to combat terrorism and build something akin to a stable government in Afghanistan, then he has to “deliver” and put his full weight behind achieving this. If he doesn’t, he should have the moral courage to withdraw British troops now.
Sadly, the importance the government places on the war can perhaps best be seen in the fact that while 4,000 people turned up in Wootton Bassett to greet the arrival of eight dead soldiers, there was not a senior member of government among them.
Michael Glackin is former Managing Editor of Beirut newspaper The Daily Star.
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