Seumas Milne on Drones

I thought I’d get back into blogging with an easy post. It’s quite easy for me to find an article by Seumas Milne and quickly fisk it in my head – not because of any great skill that I have but simply because the man is a propagandist. His articles are misleading, filled with falsehoods and driven by an ideological zeal that means almost every single paragraph is filled with multiple lines of crap.

So, I thought I’d start with Milne’s latest article on drone strikes. For convenience, I’ve moved some of the paragraphs around where I can respond to them together. I’ve had to cut out some of the stuff because of space – but I’ve addressed all his substantive points. Milne writes: 

More than a decade after George W Bush launched it, the "war on terror" was supposed to be winding down. US military occupation of Iraq has ended and Nato is looking for a way out of Afghanistan, even as the carnage continues. But another war – the undeclared drone war that has already killed thousands – is now being relentlessly escalated. 

Except that nobody expected it to wind down. All the statements of the officials at the time and since point to a long, ideological drive against Al Qaeda and its allies. On September 17^th 2001, President Bush told Pentagon officials that “It's going to take a long time to win this war.” On September 20^th, the President said “this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion” but a “lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.” 

Donald Rumsfeld stated just 8 days later that Americans should “forget about 'exit strategies'; we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines." Robert Gates stated “many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity” referring to it as a “generational campaign” that Vice President Dick Cheney said the War “like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort.”

Milne refers to the “carnage continuing” in Afghanistan. This is arguably untrue: NATO figures show that there was a 9% reduction in violence throughout the country and in areas where the fighting increased, NATO had gone on the offensive. Civilian deaths in the last 4 months have dropped 21%. There was a 2011 UN report which suggested a significant rise but their figures included arrests, searches and “intimidation” as “security incidents.” This is not to suggest that everything is fine or the NATO figures are sacrosanct but that it’s not as one-sided as Milne always argues. 

Milne is also wrong by calling the drone campaign “undeclared.” John Brennan, an Obama official, clearly stated that “the United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qa’ida terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones.” The administration has not only acknowledged the policy, but defended it many times. 

From Pakistan to Somalia, CIA-controlled pilotless aircraft rain down Hellfire missiles on an ever-expanding hit list of terrorist suspects – they have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in the process. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian death toll much higher – plausibly, given the tendency to claim as "militants" victims later demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.

Yes, and the loss of civilian life is regrettable – but that does not make the campaign illegitimate. Al Qaeda operates in areas all over the world, they pose a threat not only to the regimes in which they live but to the West (more on the effectiveness of the strikes below). The official policy of the White House is that there must be a “near certainty” of no civilian deaths – or they must gain President Obama’s approval. Admittedly, I have a problem with the fact that the administration considers all men of military age combatants. 

However, even when we look to the independent figures for the civilians killed, the number is remarkably low (keeping in mind that when operating in Pakistan, the population is quite dense). At the low end, the Long War Journal has 138 civilians being killed from 2006-2012. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann who use “reliable press accounts” 80% of those killed have been militants and 2010 that figure rose to 95%. 

At least 15 drone strikes have been launched in Yemen this month, as many as in the whole of the past decade, killing dozens; while in Pakistan, a string of US attacks has been launched against supposed "militant" targets in the past week, incinerating up to 35 people and hitting a mosque and a bakery.

Yes – but killing who? In Yemen, the civilian death rate in 56 out of more 240 militants killed according to the Long War Journal. The example of the mosque does nothing to further Milne’s point either. As the report which he links to notes, “Uzbek insurgents made up the majority of the fatalities from the strike.” Meaning that like other terrorists around the world, they are using places of worship, civilian centres as a shield for their own military purpose. Milne’s unsurprising response is not to attack those individuals, but the United States. 

The US president insisted recently that the civilian death toll was not a "huge number". Not on the scale of Iraq, perhaps, where hundreds of thousands were killed; or Afghanistan, where tens of thousands have died. But they gruesomely include dozens killed in follow-up attacks after they had gone to help victims of earlier strikes – as well as teenagers like Tariq Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani boy decapitated in a strike last November after he had travelled to Islamabad to protest against drones. 

Yes – but who is killing in Iraq and Afghanistan? According to a study by King’s College London looking at civilian deaths from 2003-2008 concludes that of the 92,000 civilians deaths recorded by Iraq Body Count, 12% were attributable to coalition forces. 74% were carried out by “unknown perpertrators” described as “are those who target civilians (i.e., no identifiable military target is present), while appearing indistinguishable from civilians.” This classing encompasses “suicide bombers... sectarian combatants and Anti-Coalition combatants.” A further 11% were carried out by identifiable “anti-coalition forces.”

In Afghanistan, “tens of thousands” of civilians have not died. At the high end, the figure is 14,700 and the low end is 12,500. And again – every single report, every single statistic notes that almost all of these are killed by the Taliban or its allies. Civilian deaths caused by pro-government forces decreased by 24% from 2009-2010, making them responsible for 15% of civilian casualties. UN figures show that only 9% of the civilians killed in 2012 were attributable to coalition forces. 

By the way, Tariq Khan was killed by a drone strike but according to American officials, he was a militant. Is this true? I don’t know but I think I’d tell my readers about it – even if I was going to dismiss it. 

But, as the destabilisation of Pakistan and growth of al-Qaida in Yemen shows, the impact remains the same. The drone war is a predatory war on the Muslim world, which is feeding hatred of the US – and fuelling terror, not fighting it. 

Of course Milne provides no empirical evidence for such a claim. Johnston and Sarbahi (2012) in their analysis of the relevant data find that “drone strikes are associated with decreases in both the frequency and thelethality of militant attacks overall and in IED and suicide attacks specifically.” Jaeger and Siddique (2011) find "strong negative impacts of unsuccessful drone strikes on Taliban violence in Pakistan, showing thedeterrent effects are quite strong." 

If, like Milne, you like anecdotal evidence – then there is much of it. Tariq Azam (Taliban official) has publically told the press that meetings in Pakistan have been driven underground. The same report notes that the terrorists now suspect eachother of being spies. Pakistani General Mehmood Ghayur “acknowledged the effectiveness of the American drone strikes against foreign militants” 

The day after last Friday's Houla massacre in Syria, eight members of one family were killed at home by a Nato air attack in eastern Afghanistan – one of many such atrocities barely registered in the western media. 

It says so much about Milne that he believes the intentional murder of 92 civilians by cutting their throats for the simple act of protesting an authoritarian is more newsworthy than the unintentional killing of 8 civilians. Both are tragic and should not have happened – but to condemn the press for allegedly not covering it (they did) and suggesting an equivalence is flat out wrong. It goes without saying that these civilian deaths in Afghanistan have not been confirmed by a UN monitoring body (as in Houla) but an Afghan official (which NATO is taking seriously).

The US's decision to step up the drone war again in Pakistan, opposed by both government and parliament in Islamabad as illegal and a violation of sovereignty, reflects its fury at the jailing of a CIA agent involved in the Bin Laden hunt and Pakistan's refusal to reopen supply routes for Nato forces in Afghanistan. Those routes were closed in protest at the US killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, for which Washington still refuses to apologise.

But Pakistan’s consent has always been elusive. The Prime Minister was quoted as saying in 2008 that “I don't care if they do it, as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it." President Zardari has also said that “Kill the seniors. Collateral damages worries you Americans. It does not worry me." Milne’s own paper alleged a secret deal about “violations of sovereignty” last year.


It is true that there have been more vocal condemnations and demands to stop the strikes in the last year. However, as the Associated Press noted there are still “mixed signals.” The Pakistani government, for example, qualified their condemnation by saying it “should be seen in light of the presence of Islamist militants on Pakistani soil.” The AP goes on to say that “many analysts believe some in the government still support the program at some level.”


But lets assume all elements of the Pakistani government want the drone strikes stopped unequivocally – so what? The strikes are significant in decreasing the threat that Al Qaeda and it allies proposes. If Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then the United States and its allies should not have to justify themselves to anyone. 


Milne mentions the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers. Firstly, before the incident with the 24 deaths, there was a similar incident the previous year. In that situation, a joint investigation found NATO at fault – and NATO apologised and supply routes were re-opened. In this case, an American investigation found no fault. It might be that the investigation is wrong – but Milne doesn’t even discuss the possibility. Also, he refers to the “US killing” – but doesn’t mention the context: a joint US-Afghan contingent. According to an Afghan official – it was the Afghan personnel who requested the strike after being fired on. 

Lawyers representing victims' families are now preparing legal actionagainst the British government – which carries out its own drone attacks in Afghanistan – for taking part in war crimes by passing GCHQ intelligence to the CIA for its "targeted killings".

Of course Milne has to involve Britain in some way for these apparent “war crimes.” Yet, he provides no evidence whatsoever to support his claim. In fact if you click on his second link in this paragraph, the care the British military takes in avoiding casualties is shown. The link states the following of several different operations:

[1] Over a period of approximately 8 hours the Reaper crew maintained ‘eyes on’ before eventually seizing the opportunity to strike [a “high value insurgent”] when there was no risk of civilian casualties or collateral damage. 

[2] The crew spotted 2 civilians, one of whom was identified as a child… Realising the danger the crew diverted the missile towards an area of scrub land where it detonated harmlessly

[3] Reaper released weapon against fast-moving target, firing on friendly forces – however weapon diverted to avoid civilian casualties

This is Milne’s own link. There is one incident listed where 4 Afghan civilians were killed but that was in targeting “two insurgents” and “a significant quantity of explosives being carried on the trucks.” And so far as involvement with the Americans goes – there is no reason why we should shy away. These strikes are effective and have low civilian casualties.

Dogs of War

And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war

1. No, we’re not gearing up for war (yet)

I don’t really have time to be writing as much as I used to be but I thought I’d just write a post with an assortment of recent issues. Firstly, The Guardian has yet again managed to exaggerate and misrepresent British foreign policy. They start the article of their front page ‘UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears’ with

The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.

There are so many things wrong with the story, its hard to know where to start. Firstly, looking at the quotes of the officials, it is no big change in British government policy nor is it as apocalyptic as the Guardian is making it sound. One quote from the officials state

The British government believes that a dual track strategy of pressure and engagement is the best approach to address the threat from Iran's nuclear programme and avoid regional conflict. We want a negotiated solution – but all options should be kept on the table.

But what about the plans!? The Guardian admits ‘there are no hard and fast blueprints.’ But what about other preparations that Guardian mentions?! Well, here’s another quote:

I think that it is fair to say that the MoD is constantly making plans for all manner of international situations. Some areas are of more concern than others.

And just to really drive the point home, a MoD source told The Telegraph ‘We have contingency plans on everything... It doesn’t mean anything will come of it but at least someone is thinking about this sort of thing.’ And lets assume that there were full blown preparations for a military confrontation with Iran – it simply doesn’t mean anything. David Cameron would still have to lobby for support for the war. This isn’t a dictatorship where the UK can simply go into war without any recourse (people made the same misguided argument about Blair).

2. Neither is the U.S

I’m not denying that war with Iran won’t happen in the future, but the current apocalyptic vision seems to be misleading to me. Firstly, it should be kept in mind that the U.S has tried to downplay any suggestion that its seeking a military confrontation with Iran, ‘saying it would rather exercise and exhaust "tough diplomacy" first.’ Secondly according to various reports in American and Israeli media the ‘U.S. is "absolutely" concerned that Israel is preparing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.’ Thirdly, it looks like the U.S is going to use the upcoming IAEA report to ‘further isolate Iran’:

Over the longer term, several senior Obama administration officials said in interviews, they are mulling a ban on financial transactions with Iran’s central bank... Also being considered is an expansion of the ban on the purchase of petroleum products sold by companies controlled by the country’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The recent publicised links between Al Qaeda and Iran are only news to people who haven’t read the 9/11 Commission Report. (This is not to entertain the frankly ridiculous idea that Iran had any foreknowledge of 9/11 – as the commission itself said). So, to repeat, there may be a war but the signals that people are reading into are simply not there.

3. In defence of President Obama

I wanted to talk about this blogpost on a website called ‘British Neo-libertarian.’ I read it a lot and I find myself disagreeing with it all the time. It tries to argue that the U.S withdrawal from Iraq is misguided – and it fails terribly to provide any sound reasoning. The first false assumption is:

In 2006, when troop levels dropped in Iraq, there was an explosion of violence... [Then] President Bush decided to reinforce troops in Iraq to root out al-Qaeda through General Petraeus. It has been a large success (Study the US military troop level, and civilian fatalities). It is a simple fact that more US soldiers works in creating conditions for better results.

This simplistic view of the Surge simply withstand scrutiny. While it certainly played a role, as Douglas Ollivant has written, it was primarily the realisation of defeat for the Sunnis that allowed for a settlement:

By late 2006, it was becoming quickly apparent to the Sunni that they were losing, particularly in Baghdad, as entire sectors of the city, and virtually the entire East side, were systematically cleansed of Sunni residents.. The mounting casualty count fundamentally changed Sunni outlooks and caused them to begin to look for a way to reach a settlement

There are many factors in what led to the drop in violence – form concrete barriers to operations against Al Qaeda. It’s also worth noting that the U.S military found Al Qaeda documents and used them to convince Middle Eastern and North African nations to stop would-be suicide bombing leaving the country. General Petraeus credits this diplomatic initiative as being the primary reason for the 85% drop in suicide bombings. So this simplistic and quite frankly propagandistic account of the Surge quelling violence is wrong.

The rebutting of this assumption goes some way in showing how the remaining presence of U.S soldiers will not necessarily make things better or worse. Iraq’s security woes wont be fixed overnight – but as Ollivant wrote in Foreign Policy, ‘these technical gaps can easily be filled, and the market will respond quickly to Iraqi petrodollars.’ Surely someone with libertarian in their blog name will see the utility in this argument? The argument that Iran’s position should determine U.S presence is similarly misguided.

It’s based on the false notion that Iraq is or is going to be a Iranian client state. This is just nonsense; Iran’s staunchest ally won only 20 seats out of over 300 in the last election. Indeed, this was lower than they achieved in 2008 and Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi credits this to the fact that the party was seen as an Iranian client. And, as the New York Times reported in July 2011, ‘Iraqi security forces have unleashed a sweeping crackdown on Iranian-backed Shiite militants responsible for most of the lethal attacks.’ American withdrawal wont stop these operations and wont change Iraqi reluctance toward Iran. If anything, withdrawal will take the rug out from under Iran.

It just seems hard to deny: Iraq is not a puppet state of Iran or the United State. The very fact that a sovereign Iraq has stood by its guns and refused to support even a mild presence also shows, yet again, that this isn’t some pansy puppet government. The security situation may get worse, there may be a series of bombs going off as has happened in the last two months, but they do no justify U.S presence any longer. 

Wikisqueaks

Accused of being ‘irresponsible’ even by a fellow campaigner for transparency in public life, Assange mounts a freewheeling defence in his memoir: ‘It was never my intention to be responsible,’ he says, before proclaiming: ‘We will shine a light into any murky corner…

-          Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography, The Sunday Times

State secrecy is essential for any nation - certain things must be kept secret for the sake of national security, for the sake of lives, for a proper criminal process. Sure, essential information is vital for a functioning democracy but never at the expense of national security or human lives. Wikileaks does not take into account diplomacy let alone national security or people’s lives. It's not done in the name of transparent democracy, but spilling secrets because they are secrets. It doesn’t help that they release files to make a political point, not for the sake of openness or transparency. Julian Assange admitted as such when he went on the Colbert Report in the aftermath of releasing ‘Collateral Murder’:

Colbert: There are armed men in the group, they did find an RPG, the photographers who were regrettably killed, were not identified as photographers. You have edited this tape and given it a title 'collateral murder,' thats not leaking.. thats a pure editorial

Assange: So, the promise we make to our sources is not only that we defend them through every means we have available.. but we will try and get the maximum political impact..

Colbert: So collateral murder is to get political impact?

Assange: Yes, absolutely...

Colbert:  I admire someone who is willing to put collateral murder on the first thing people will see knowing they probably wont look at the rest of it..It's an emotional manipulation. This is "collateral murder" and now watch this objectively

Assange: That’s true, only one in ten watch the whole thing.

Assange has explicitly stated that his aim is to ‘end two wars’ – including the war in Afghanistan which liberated the Afghan people from the Taliban and brought a government that the Afghans want to power. Bill Keller has even written after meeting him that he ‘was openly contemptuous of the American government.’ Aside from leaking things for a political purpose, Wikileaks’ work leads to information being published that potentially and actually harms people. It doesn’t seem to bother Assange, that his information might lead to informants who aid the Afghan-supported American military force being killed. Declan Welsh, one of the Guardian’s writers recalls

We went out to a Moorish restaurant, Moro, with the two German reporters. David Leigh broached the problem [of redactions] again with Julian. The response floored me. 'Well, they're informants,' he said. 'So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.' There was, for a moment, silence around the table. I think everyone was struck by what a callous thing that was to say.

This is why Assange’s personal beliefs are important: it means he simply doesn’t care about innocents. The Afghan War Logs were released in coordination with several papers including the New York Times and the Guardian. The New York Times had a clear approach which took into account lives, intelligence and harm to personnel. Bill Keller, the executive editor, wrote

Guided by reporters with extensive experience in the field, we redacted the names of ordinary citizens, local officials, activists, academics and others who had spoken to American soldiers or diplomats. We edited out any details that might reveal ongoing intelligence-gathering operations, military tactics or locations of material that could be used to fashion terrorist weapons

Wikileaks, however, decided to release all the files without redacting people’s names. According to John Burns, another writer for the New York Times ‘several WikiLeaks colleagues say he alone decided to release the Afghan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for NATO troops.’  Like normal people, some Wikileaks workers disagreed with what Assange had done. It turned out that they were right to be. They outed hundreds of Afghan informants, including a Taliban defector putting their lives at risk. The Taliban even said they would trawl through the documents, ominously adding ‘we know how to punish them.’

This is a clear example of Assange putting his politics above the lives of individuals (who he says ‘deserve it’). He could have redacted them like the New York Times, The Guardian and Channel 4 – but he didn’t. According to an Afghan official, Assange ‘put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans.’

This chain of events isn’t unique; when it released the U.S diplomatic cables, the BBC noted that they published a document that had ‘long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security.’ The loss of any of these facilities ‘could critically affect US national security.’ Again, a Jihadist group set up a ‘workshop’ to try to ‘categorize and pinpoint all U.S. interests worldwide.’ Wikileaks even published a map of U.S military bases in Iraq.

And this isn’t limited to the Middle East. In Africa, Wikileaks released a document which showed that Morgan Tsvangirai spoke to U.S officials about the possibility of sanctions against the barbarous Mugabe regime. As a result, Tsvangiri is facing treason charges – a crime for which the punishment is death. More recently, two Zimbabwean generals will also face charges for talking to U.S officials. It’s no surprise that Trevor Ncube, a media mogul, has stated that ‘It hasn’t aided the agenda for democracy or accountability. In fact, it has taken the country back five years.’ In Ethiopia, a reporter has had to flee after a cable revealed that he had spoken to someone from the American embassy there.

In Eastern Europe, Wikileaks’ actions are equally deplorable. Assange passed documents to an anti-semite called Israel Shamir. According to Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian,

Subsequently, Shamir appeared in Moscow. According to a reporter on Russian paper Kommersant, he was offering to sell articles based on the cables for $10,000 (£6,300). He had already passed some to the state-backed publication Russian Reporter. He travelled on to Belarus, ruled by the Soviet-style dictator Alexander Lukashenko, where he met regime officials. The Russian Interfax news agency reported that Shamir was WikiLeaks’ “Russian representative”, and had “confirmed the existence of the Belarus dossier”.

This dossier alleged the Belarus opposition was working with the Americans. According to Jo Glanville of the Index of Censorship, ‘Israel Shamir is using his position to support a dictatorship.’ Shamir then went on to provide the authoritarian regime with cables. Shamir even assisted the autocrat Lukashkeno is setting up his own Wikileaks.  James Ball, a former Wikileaks worker, said in the aftermath of all this, ‘For an organisation supposedly devoted to human rights, the apparent lack of concern when faced with such a grave charge was overwhelming.’

In the name of openness, Wikileaks first denied that Shamir worked for them – a claim that has been proven false by an e-mail obtained by the BBC’s Panorama programme in which not only did Assange say that Shamir would continue working for Wikileaks under a different name but that Assange did not find his writings anti-Semitic but after reading a ‘brief sampling’ of his writings found them to be ‘strong and compassionate.’ This is a man who was convicted by a French court for publishing anti-Semitic material and his writings are clear enough.

And its not just government officials and innocent civilians in war zones who have been affected by Wikileaks’ reckless behaviour. Wikileaks published an investigation in Belgium into a child killer, but because they did not redact any files, they left names of witnesses in the case. The ‘dossier mentions names, telephone numbers, addresses and bank details of witnesses and people involved in the investigations.’ Asked if Wikileaks might remove some of the names of innocents and witnesses, a spokesman said ‘That has not been discussed.’

Nor was this the only case involving child abuse. Time Magazine notes that Wikileaks published a file that listed all the websites that the Australian government planned to block. This would have been okay – had Wikileaks minimised the harm caused and not published links to child abuse. I’m not going to link to the cables (as I haven’t throughout this post), but two documents published. Both documents have links to websites which judging by their URLs contain child abuse. 

Just a final word on Assange’s defences of his actions. The claim that Assange does enough is baloney: Amnesty International approached Wikileaks to redact names, Assange in response said he needed $700,000. Of course, Amnesty doesn’t have that money laying around – so the documents were published. Assange admitted that ‘if we were forced into a position of publishing all of the archives or none of the archives we would publish all of the archives because it's extremely important to the history of the war.’ According the New York Times, he has even ‘prepared a kind of doomsday option’ where ‘if he was arrested, he would disseminate the key to make the information public.’ Information is released for political or for personal reasons, it would seem.

His accusation against the American government being at fault are similarly dubious. When the New York Times released the diplomatic cables, as mentioned before, it redacted key information. In doing this, it gained a lot of help from American officials:

The administration’s concerns generally fell into three categories. First was the importance of protecting individuals who had spoken candidly to American diplomats in oppressive countries. We almost always agreed on those and were grateful to the government for pointing out some we overlooked... the Obama administration’s reaction was...for the most part, sober and professional.

Wikileaks has put people at risk and in some cases has led to their direct persecution. Assange has deliberately not listened to human rights groups who have asked him to redact names. His employees have aided authoritarian regimes – not brought them down. In the name of human rights. I don’t feel there is any other conclusion one can reach apart from that of James Ball – a writer who left Wikileaks because of its recklessness:

WikiLeaks has done the cause of internet freedom – and of whistleblowers – more harm than US government crackdowns ever could... These cables contain details of activists, opposition politicians, bloggers in autocratic regimes and their real identities, victims of crime and political coercion, and others driven by conscience to speak to the US government. They should never have had to fear being exposed by a self-proclaimed human rights organisation.

What is achieved by outing political dissidents working for freedom, witnesses to a child abuse case, publishing lists of child abuse sites, what government 'lie' is exposed by publish details of military bases, what is essential about lists of civilian sites essential to national security or credit card numbers of individuals - what is the use in all this? There isn't one. Wikileaks has made freedom fighters think twice about talking to nations which can help them. What more could you possibly expect from someone who never intended to be responsible?

Update (04/10/2011): I changed the quote and the top and I'm going to be updating whenever I think there is a story worthy of being shared. Here is one from The Globe and Mail: 

Some of China’s top academics and human rights activists are being attacked as “rats” and “spies” after their names were revealed as U.S. Embassy sources in the unredacted WikiLeaks cables that have now been posted online. The release of the previously protected names has sparked an online witch-hunt by Chinese nationalist groups, with some advocating violence against those now known to have met with U.S. Embassy staff. 

Also named are some of China’s most outspoken intellectuals, including some known for pushing reform of the country’s authoritarian political system. They may now see themselves painted as “American agents,” their arguments for change shoved further to the margins. 

The unredacted cables also give the real names of some prominent Chinese bloggers and Twitter users, who previously were known only by their screen names.

Her Majesty's Spooks: MI6 in the Middle East

This is just going to be a brief overview of a few operations undertaken by MI6 in the Middle East, again with sprinkled justifications and other relevant information. The operations that MI6 has carried out covers a wide area – hence why there is no unifying narrative except the involvement of MI6.

Gaddafi Negotiations (2003): In December 2003, Libya agreed to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction. After extensive negotiations with American and British officials, Libya was finally brought ‘out of the dark’, a remnant of the Lockerbie bombing and Gaddafi’s support of terrorism. According to The Telegraph it was MI6 who essentially worked through these negotiations: “there is no doubt that it was a coup for Britain's spies.” MI6 officers built up contacts, back channels and got through to the regime.

Inspections by British officials found that they had “more than ten sites where Libya was developing a fuel cycle to support nuclear weapons development and a uranium enrichment programme aimed at producing the core material for a nuclear weapon.” Libya had also gained a stash of chemical weapons and precursor material for biological weapons.

Of course, it was not only MI6: Gaddafi’s surrender was one of the positive effects of the Iraq war (or, the plans for the Iraq war): the change in the regional logic on WMD (this was anticipated by MI6 in one of its papers explaining the benefits of toppling Saddam). In a recently declassified interview with an MI6 officer (as part of the Iraq Inquiry), this is explicitly acknowledged:

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Do you think it came as a direct consequence of the imminent attack on Iraq?

SIS1: I have no doubt about that at all. [...] They [Libya] thought, "Shit, this is real"

There are some who would decry the role of MI6 and Tony Blair in bringing Libya back on to the world stage. But, Britain’s role in the world is no longer confined to shaping it how it wants it.  Meaning that we must make decisions on which course of action is the least worst. The Times rose to Blair defence and rightly stated in an editorial that

Mr Blair makes no apology for his efforts to persuade Gaddafi to give up his nuclear and chemical weapons programmes. Nor should he. Had the Libyan dictator still been armed with these weapons he might well, like Saddam Hussein, have gassed his opponents or threatened his enemies with whatever weapons his scientists developed.

Even without taking recent events into consideration, the dismantlement of Libya’s WMD programmes is good in itself and as crude as it is to have relations with authoritarian regimes, it is even worse to have a regime, backing terrorists, having WMD which we cannot influence.

Palestinian Authority Plan (2004): As part of the ‘Palestine Papers’ series run by Al Jazeera and The Guardian, documents were leaked which showed an MI6 ‘blue print’ for cracking down on Hamas in the West Bank in 2004. The plans was suppose to clamp down on rejectionist, embolden moderates and calm Israeli security fears which would in turn lead to an easier situation for the moderates.

The document was written during the Second Intifada and part of plan was ‘security drive to address Israeli and US preconditions for reengagement.’ The document speficially states that the security drive would be on ‘suicide bombers, illegal arms collection, Qassam rockets, terror finance and closing arms smuggling into Gaza.’ It would be carried out by the PA but it would its success would be independently verified. The part of the plan which The Guardian finds “controversial” is the following:

“Degrading the capabilities of the rejectionists – Hamas, PIJ, Al-Aqsa Brigades –through the disruption of their leaderships' communications and command and control capabilities; the detention of key middle-ranking officers; and the confiscation of their arsenals and financial resources.”

In 2011, I cannot see anything controversial about this: Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Brigades are terrorist organisations who have all carried out suicide bombings. In 2004, during the Intifada, I can still not see anything wrong with this policy. It would be absolutely mind boggling if nobody had proposed stomping on these groups – even in 2006, when Hamas took part and was successful in election.

In proposing this plan, MI6 tried to shape policy in a way that would drive down attacks (on both sides, in the long term), strike down on terrorist organisations, move toward Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and create an atmosphere where peace could prevail. Controversial indeed. Interestingly, the Guardian states that

The leaked intelligence plan can be seen in retrospect as a blueprint for PA security control of the West Bank... Hundreds of Hamas and other activists have been routinely detained without trial at a time in recent years and subjected to widely documented human rights abuses.

Not quite. The British policy stated that part of its policy was there to make sure that prisoners were “well treated.” Oh, if they had bothered to read the second document, it seems MI6 was weary about mass arrests: their plan assumes that Palestinians “will oppose attack security units that try and arrest suspects. A wide scale arrest campaign is therefore not achievable.” Meaning that mass arrests against “terrorists” would only go ahead with the support of the Palestinian population. The second document speaks only of arresting smugglers (which appears under the section about Qassams), terrorist handlers and financiers (which appears under the section about suicide bombing). The only link between the plan and the future arrest of Hamas members is the word "arrest."

Stuxnet (2010): Stuxnet is a computer worm which was used to “shut down the centrifuges that spin nuclear material at Iran’s enrichment facilities.” French intelligence sources told Le Canard that it was carried with the help of MI6 (along with the CIA and Mossad). The Institute for Science and International Security says that the virus may have shut down 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz – a 30% decrease in operation capacity. The Iranian government also conceded that because of the virus, “turning the Bushehr back ‘on’ could lead to a national electricity blackout.”

‘Operation Cupcake’ (2011): And just a final one which is probably a bit more hilarious than the aforementioned. Inspire magazine is a publication by Al Qaeda which seeks to inspire lone wolves in the West into attacking us. MI6 hacked into the publication so that when the instructions for a bomb were downloaded, they would be replaced by a recipe to make cupcakes. 

Spooked

When I opened up The Guardian this morning I saw an article about a document they had obtained on Britain's torture policy. I didn’t bother reading their article at first (since they have consistently butchered documents for their own political ends). After finishing the policy, I was quite surprised and happy at our policy. And then I read The Guardian article which made me want to write an actual overview of the document – sprinkled with justifications and showing how The Guardian has again misconstrued an important document.

The document present the policy with regards to ‘torture and mistreatment’ in 2006 (although the original policy stems from 2002). The policy states that MI5 and MI6

do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. The agencies will not carry out any action which it is known will result in inhuman or degrading treatment.

But of course, you won’t get to read this in The Guardian’s article until you get to the 20^th paragraph. The policy goes even further in stating that

It is an offence for an officer to incite the offence of torture committed by a foreign liaison service. An officer will be guilty of incitement where he intend to incite torture.. For this purpose, deliberately closing one's eyes to the consequence of one's action is deemed to be the same as knowing those consequences.

The same applies to aiding or abetting torture. The main part that interests The Guardian is not the policy of torture, which has a categorical ban but information which has been obtained by torture by foreign security services or could lead to torture if information is given to said foreign security services.

I oppose the use of torture because I believe that it is immoral, other methods are more (or at least as) effective, that torture yields unreliable information and its counter-productive. However, ex post facto, I would not refuse information which has life-saving intelligence. Meaning, I would oppose the torture of an Al Qaeda member but once information has been obtained, I will not risk further lives by not using it. I see no contradiction in this: it is a fact that torture can lead to accurate information. But that ignores that it is not the only, or even moral, way of doing so. It is this reasoning that the British policy broadly follows.

The policy described here will be divided into: (a) passing or seeking information and (b) receiving information. In the section on ‘passing or seeking information’, there are three different levels of knowledge that an officer have which will have different consequences:

[1] He does know that his actions will not result in torture or mistreatment... to proceed will be lawful.

[2] While he does not know, he foresees a real possibility that the consequences will include torture or mistreatment... he must refer the matter to his senior line management before proceeding further.

Line management may conclude that there is not a real possibility... but if [they] share the assessment of the officer, they should consider attaching a further caveat to the information or request [to the effect that information given should not be used for questioning of any individual or if it is to be used for question, such questioning should conform with the international legal standards and that information sought should not be obtained from any individual in detention or questioning should conform to international legal standards]

However a caveat is only of value of the officer believes that will be observed... If it is not considered possible to retain reliable assurances [or if there is any doubt] the matter should be referred to senior management before proceeding further... They will balance the risk of mistreatment and the risk that the officers actions could be judged to be unlawful against the need for the proposed action. All of the relevant circumstances will be taken to into account. These will include operational imperative for the proposed actions, such as if the action involved obtaining life-saving intelligence, the level of mistreatment anticipated and how likely those consequences are to happen.

Its worth stopping here just to see how The Guardian covered this part of the document. This was the part that they chose to lead with. They claim that the section in bold shows that the policy “instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer.”

Ur, not quite. The section this is under is ‘While he does not know, he foresees a real possibility that the consequences will include torture or mistreatment.’ Thus, the whole process must be weighed accordingly: “They will balance the risk of mistreatment” against “the need for the proposed action.”

Most important are the last words of the bold section: “how likely those consequences [torture] are to happen.” The whole point about this section is that MI5 and MI6 do not know but foresee a real possibility. Which is why they must balance the risk of it actually being obtained by or leading to torture against the need to obtain or give “life saving intelligence.” It’s misleading of The Guardian to say that they are balancing the pain of an individual and intelligence. No, they are balancing the risk of any torture against the necessity of vital information. If there is going to be torture as a result of his actions that is a completely different matter.

Which is why in the case where

[3] He knows what the consequence will be and those consequences include torture or mistreatment. The procedure is initially the same as for [2], with the matter being referred upwards. However, even with the use of caveats and/or assurances, [if] it is known that the consequences will include torture or mistreatment then the action will not be allowed to proceed. The Agencies will not authorise any action which it is known will result in the mistreatment of an individual.

This allows MI5 and MI6 to seek or share intelligence from foreign liaison services so long as they (i) do not know that it will lead to torture and (ii) the real possibility is balanced against the necessity. And in case there was any doubt, under the ‘receiving information’, the policy states that:

Where the Agency knows or has reason to believe that a particular liaison service uses torture or other mistreatment to obtain information, the Agency should consider obtaining assurances, before continuing to receive such information. If it is not considered possible to obtain reliable assurance [or if there is any doubt] senior management... must decide to continue to receive such information. As above, all relevant circumstances will be taken into account [i.e. whether its life-saving information]

It is also worth noting that The Guardian ran an article in 2009 about this very policy where it claimed that it said:

"Given that they are not within our ­custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this [torture],” the policy said.

This is nowhere to be found in the policy. In fact, it says the opposite:

The Agencies are committed to ensuring so far as possible the observance of human rights by [foreign] liaison services... it is clearly vital that the Agencies' relationships with liaison services are conducted in a way that eliminates or minimises [torture]

I’m sure The Guardian will issue an apology for libelling our security services who have done a great job of keeping us safe: between 2000-2009, 12 attacks were stopped by MI5 and MI6 in the UK. Just a final note, whether this policy was followed and the cases of other individuals is a completely different matter. This has just been about stating and justifying the official policy of the British government (while poking fun at the Guardian).

Sticks and Stones

There is no denying that there is high hostility toward Muslims in the West. However, this hostility is being misappropriated to make political points. This is the stuff that urban myths are made of. For example, in a recent article in Foreign Policy Watch:

The Western press is largely avoiding the term “terrorist”... The term “terrorist attack” is also absent from the headlines of our country’s major media outlets... In the American press and in mainstream political discourse, “terrorism” simply means “violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target.”

This is just absolute nonsense. I’m not talking about tabloids here (neither is FPW). I’m talking about mainstream media, the kind of reliable websites that will be used in history books. And just because I’m British and I’ve heard people over here making similar arguments, I’ll include the British press.

Firstly, to get the basics out of the way, FPW cites three examples: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The Washington Post article they link to refers to “Two coordinated terror attacks in Norway.” And the Washington Post has continued to describe these actions as “terrorist attacks” and “terror attacks.” The Wall Street Journal has also referred to “terror attacks” and refers to the supposed two other cells as the “two other terrorist cells.”

As for the New York Times, they also faced a similar accusation from the Daily Kos where JackinSTL quotes a paragraph from an NYT article which apparently shows “once we eliminated the Arabic terrorists and found our right-wing Christian perp, he's suddenly not a ‘terrorist.’” Except it doesn’t, the paragraph which the Daily Kos quotes says:

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda’s signature brutality and multiple attacks.

But if you go to the New York Times article itself, it says:

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.

Its possible that the New York Times amended their article after it was written but in the context of where that paragraph was, it should have been obvious they were talking about Islamist terrorism. Rather than showing how insensitive the New York Times is to the word terrorism, it shows the opposite. (Oh, in case you had spotted the pattern, the NYT also refers to the Oslo attacks as acts of domestic ‘terrorism’).

And the same goes for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, the Independent and the BBC. So as far as mainstream media outlets, even just the ones that FPW cited, they are not wary of using the term terrorist or terror to refer to these attacks. So what media outlets are FPW reading?!

And just a note and counter-example on using the word ‘terrorist’ in the British media: it is used in a limited way when talking about Palestinian terrorists. The official policy of the BBC on its 'Israel and the Palestinians' page states that:

The word "terrorist" itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution.

Which is why if you read an article on the BBC about Hamas doing something – even if its a suicide bombing against innocent civilians, even if its someone firing a rocket at a civilian town – the article will refer to them as “militants.” And the BBC is not alone in this: Reuters does the same thing (refusing even to call the 7/7 attacks ‘terrorist attacks’). Whether one agrees with this policy is another matter but what is clear is that terrorism is not just used for certain types of people and it is in fact not used when it is actually Islamists or brown people or whatever. Making simplistic statements doesn’t achieve anything. 

Problematic Intelligence

The Iraq Inquiry recently published declassified documents on its website; its expected that the media should report on these things and it should be called into account when it misleads. No paper or outlet is perfect or absolutely objective but that does not mean all sense of proportion is lost. The Guardian requires to be called to account (this is not new, this is not revolutionary) and this is a perfect case in point.

One of the documents released was a letter sent from Richard Dearlove (MI6 Head 1999-2004) to the then British Ambassador to the U.S, David Manning. In their article about some of the recent declassified documents, The Guardian writes about the document:

Despite its concerns, MI6 told ministers before the invasion that toppling Saddam Hussein "remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies".

That sounds very sinister. MI6 here is apparently saying that the removing Saddam is "prize" because of oil supplies. Very sinister, indeed. Except, the Guardian didn't quote the full paragraph which gives a much wider reason of why removing Saddam was a good goal. The full sentence reads (.pdf):

"The removal of Saddam remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies; engage a powerful and secular state in the fight against Sunni extremist terror, open political horizons in the GCC states, remove a threat to Jordan/Israel, undermine the regional logic on WMD."

The assessment goes on to say:

Working for regime change could be a dynamic processof alliance building which could effect climatic change in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So, not so sinister at all. This document is pretty interesting and it provides more documentation of MI6 belief about WMD.  Its a shame The Guardian decided to butcher a sentence which changed the context so radically.