Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses

by Mark Curtis

  The evident illegality of the invasion is compounded by another myth: that the government's aim was not 'regime change' but simply forcing Iraq to comply with UN resolutions on disarmament. As soon as the invasion began, Blair stated repeatedly that 'regime change' was the goal. Indeed, he told the whole country this on 20 March 2003, in a televised address: 'Tonight British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea. Their mission: to remove Saddam Hussein from power and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction'. Five days later he told a press conference that 'our objective remains as it is, to remove Saddam's regime'.16 The government's change in position was defended only by the implication that the only way of disarming Iraq was to remove the regime; a nonsensical argument given the refusal to allow Iraq the further chances to cooperate with the weapons inspectors which Hans Blix requested.

  Mark Littman QC notes that, at the Nuremberg trials, the international tribunal stated 'that to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime'. It was for this crime that German Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop was tried and hanged. Littman notes that 'members of any government actively involved in bringing about an unlawful war against Iraq would be well advised to be cautious as to the countries they visit during the remainder of their lives'.17

  Various groups are lodging complaints to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Athens Bar Association, a group of Greek lawyers with a membership of 20,000, has accused Blair and other ministers of crimes against humanity. A panel of international lawyers and academics has also called on the ICC to investigate Britain for alleged war crimes, especially for the use by the British military of cluster bombs in civilian areas.18 There is certainly enough evidence for the British Prime Minister and other members of Cabinet to answer a case made against them as war criminals.

  The law of the jungle?

  The British government has in effect said that in future it will not be bound by international law. In its response to a House of Commons Defence Committee report, the government stated that:

  The government concurs with the importance the Committee attributes to operating within international law. We will always act in accordance with legal obligations but also effectively to defend the UK's people and interests and secure international peace and stability.19

  The key words are 'but also': they stipulate a willingness to act outside international law. This follows various violations of international law under Blair, such as the attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999 and on Iraq in 1998, both without UN authorisation.

  Then in March 2004, Blair announced the government's clearest intention yet to rewrite international law so as to make military intervention easier in future. Had Iran or even France expounded this, the British media may have found something to worry about; instead, it was received as a sign of the British Prime Minister's high morals. The only dissenters in the UK press were a few commentators who criticised the intentions, mildly, for being unrealistic.

  Blair stated that the world needed new rules for intervention on 'humanitarian grounds' beyond the current UN charter, since 'the only clear case in international relations for armed intervention' is 'self-defence, response to aggression'. "This may be the law, but should it be?', Blair asked. After September 11, he claimed, the need for intervention had risen to address the global terrorist threat and 'now is not the time to err on the side of caution'. 'Containment will not work in the face of the global threat that confronts us'. Blair added:

  I am not saying that every situation leads to military action . . . But surely we have a duty and a right to prevent the threat materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation's people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam's.20

  It is possible to take these assertions seriously only if we suspend all knowledge about Britain's place in the real world. For one thing, Britain is a major supporter of many regimes 'such as Saddam's'. With regard to Indonesia, Nigeria, Colombia or Russia it is not military intervention that may be required to address humanitarian needs but simply withdrawals of support. For another, the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq has created a breeding ground for terrorists which the government now claims to be serious about confronting. Blair mentioned in this same speech 'the terrorists pouring into Iraq'; in the following paragraph, he boasted that Saddam's removal had 'diminished' this threat.

  Countering the UN threat

  Britain's undermining of the UN in the invasion of Iraq is far from unusual. In the mainstream, the official view is that British governments provide enduring support to the UN. The opposite is true: it is clear from the historical record that the UN has traditionally been seen as a major threat.

  Britain's ambassador to the UN, Patrick Dean, lamented to the Foreign Secretary in 1963 about 'an international climate which makes unilateral protection of interests by military means increasingly complicated and difficult'. He was then complaining of the widespread opposition at the UN towards British policies on Rhodesia and British Guiana. Britain, he stated, had a 'diversity of interests of every kind all over the world' but these 'are less and less capable of protection by her own physical strength'.21

  In the last half of the cold war, 1965-1990, Britain cast more than twice as many vetoes in the UN Security Council as the Soviet Union – 27 to 13 – mainly to protect the racist regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa from full international sanctions (the US applied 69 vetoes over the same period). The last veto cast by the Soviet Union before it collapsed was in 1984; over the next six years Britain cast 10 Security Council vetoes (the US, 32). I have yet to see any mention of this consistent British obstruction of the UN in mainstream analysis, which prefers stories about the cold war, or simply the Soviet veto, hobbling the UN.

  In the 1950s, the UN was seen by British planners as 'an instrument which can be used to promote the United Kingdom's prestige and influence'. But a danger could arise given 'the possibility, under the system of "one state, one vote", for small nations to exert undue influence', which 'may endanger the ability of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth to preserve their essential interests from United Nations interference', the Foreign Office noted.22

  A Foreign Office paper of 1964 states that 'a specific British objective' towards the UN is:

  to use it as a channel of influence in the pursuit of British policies and for this purpose to maintain our existing privileged position as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.23

  The Foreign Secretary in the Heath government, Alec Douglas-Home, wrote in 1970 that Britain's position as a permanent member of the Security Council 'gives us special opportunities for using the United Nations as a forum to exert our influence'. He then considered three policy options: first, to make the UN the major element in British foreign policy; second, a policy of minimal contribution and involvement in the UN; and third, a policy based on recognising the 'practical limitations' of the UN but also 'its importance to the achievement of our foreign policy goals'. The first two options were rejected – the first since, according to Douglas-Home, other nations would not follow suit and the UN was unable anyway to become more effective. The third option was therefore the favoured one.

  This meant that the UN was not an organisation 'which we can hope to use across the board to promote our interests"; this will happen 'only occasionally and in certain fields'. It also meant that Britain should focus its efforts as part of the UN to achieving British objectives 'and not to the long term hope that it will develop into a more effective world force'. On matters where 'our essential national interests are affected', Britain should 'make clear in advance' that it would be ready to use its veto.24

  This policy continues today. For the past 50 years, the essence of British strategy has been to ensure the UN's failure to prevent or condemn Britain's, or its allies', acts of aggression. From 1980 to 1988, for example, Britain and the US vetoed 12 separate UN Security Council resolutions condemning apartheid South Africa –
Britain vetoing 11 of these, the US all 12. After its brutal invasion of Angola, South Africa was protected from full international pariah status when the US vetoed, and Britain abstained on, a resolution in 1981. Britain used its veto in May 1986 against a draft resolution condemning South Africa's attacks on Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and the following month Britain and the US vetoed a resolution condemning South Africa for further attacks on Angola.

  When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, leading to the deaths of around 200,000 people in one of the bloodiest operations in post-war history, Britain in effect supported Jakarta at the UN. Declassified files show that the British planned before the invasion not to condemn the Indonesians and that 'if there is a row in the United Nations . . . we should keep our heads down and avoid taking sides'.25 Between 1975 and 1982 there were two Security Council resolutions and eight General Assembly resolutions condemning the invasion and urging Indonesian withdrawal. Britain did vote in favour of the two Security Council resolutions, though these were weakly worded and simply 'called upon' Jakarta to withdraw. London abstained on, or voted against, all the General Assembly resolutions, while it provided arms to Indonesia and deepened aid, trade and diplomatic relations.

  When the US organised an invasion of Guatemala in 1954 to overthrow the reformist nationalist government of Jacobo Arbenz, the Guatemalans took their case to the UN. A Guatemalan request for the Security Council to consider its complaints about external aggression was rejected partly due to abstentions from Britain and France, acting in support of US policy.

  US aggression against Nicaragua in the 1980s resulted in condemnations from around the globe, while the US delivered seven UN vetoes between 1982 and 1986. On all of them, Britain declared its de facto support for Washington by abstaining. Thus Britain could not bring itself to condemn the mining of Nicaraguan ports by the US or support the ruling of the International Court of Justice which found the US aggression against Nicaragua to be illegal and which demanded the US comply with international law.

  Similarly, when the US invaded Panama in 1989 it was not only Washington but also London that vetoed a draft resolution calling on the US to withdraw.

  For the first decades of the post-war world, the British government fought tooth and nail to keep the UN out of its colonial affairs. In 1950, for example, the Colonial Office noted that such 'ignorant or prejudiced outside interference would do uncalculable harm'. It also explicitly stated its fear that the colonial powers would have to become 'accountable to the United Nations', something which necessarily had to be avoided.26

  In the early 1960s, Britain undertook a covert, 'dirty' war in Yemen to destabilise a new, popular republican government (see Chapter 16). A British ministerial meeting of December 1963 concluded that 'any proposal that the United Nations should be invited to find a solution for the problem should be resisted since it would be detrimental to our position' in neighbouring Aden. The UN, explained Sir Roger Allen, deputy undersecretary at the Foreign Office, consisted only of 'trouble makers' and would reflect only the position of the Egyptians, then Britain's rival in the region.27

  British policies have long been condemned at the UN and invariably ignored and deflected by Whitehall planners. After the British intervention in Oman in the 1960s to support the extremely repressive Sidtan's regime against a rebellion (also detailed in Chapter 16), the UN's ad hoc committee produced a report in January 1966 concluding that Oman was a 'serious international problem' arising from 'imperialistic policies and foreign intervention'. Afro-Asian delegates in the Fourth Committee, which dealt with colonial issues, tabled a motion stating that 'the colonial policies of the UK in its various forms prevents the people of the territory from exercising their rights to self-determination and independence', and calling on Britain to cease repressive activity and withdraw troops. This resolution was passed by large majorities in both the Fourth Committee and the General Assembly and was subsequently ignored by London, which got on with the business of backing its client.28

  When Britain invaded Egypt in October 1956, international condemnation provoked London's first Security Council vetoes. Britain refused any serious attempts to resolve the dispute with Egypt through the UN since 'neither the Security Council nor the General Assembly could give us what we wanted', Foreign Office minister Anthony Nutting later explained. According to Geoff Simons' study of the UN, Prime Minister at the time, Anthony Eden 'was prepared to have the crisis discussed in the Security Council but only as a prelude to independent British action'. He notes that UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, did his best to ensure the success of talks at the UN 'but there was a substantial British interest in their failure, and fail they did', thus paving the way for military aggression.29

  During the civil war in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, London backed the Lagos government's brutal repression of the secessionist region of Biafra (see Chapter 10). This support included the prevention of any significant UN involvement in the war. Britain was 'strongly opposed to any suggestion of taking the Nigerian question to the United Nations', the Commonwealth Secretary told US officials at the time.30

  The files also show that due to public opposition to Britain's policy of arming the Nigerian government during its aggression, British officials went through the motions at the UN of taking soundings on an arms embargo. The files make clear that this was done entirely for public relations, to demonstrate that an arms embargo was a 'non-starter' and so enable Britain to continue arming the regime. 'The Prime Minister's purpose in suggesting these soundings was presumably to strengthen our parliamentary position', a Foreign Office official noted.31

  Western policy at the UN well before Iraq was described by former adviser to the Secretary General, Erskine Childers. He noted that the Western powers have long used 'economic bribery and intimidation' to get their way at the World Bank and IMF but that this had now been extended to the UN:

  Whenever the Western powers are determined to get a given vote through either the Security Council. . . or the General Assembly . . . governments are warned. If they do not 'behave' they will not get debt relief, World Bank capital projects, easier IMF adjustment conditionalities or urgently needed hard currency IMF credit to pay oil bills. Reduction or cut-off in bilateral aid is an additional threat.32

  This general contempt for the UN throughout the post-war era, starkly illustrated in the invasion of Iraq, reveals a fundamental issue at the heart of Britain's foreign policy: that most of the world has traditionally been opposed to Britain's major policies. This is the opposite of what our mainstream political culture generally claims – that Britain and the West are the guardians of the highest universal ideals and that it is others who are the barbarians.

  3

  DECEIVING THE

  PUBLIC: THE IRAQ

  PROPAGANDA

  CAMPAIGN

  Politics has been described as many things but in Britain currently a good summary is that it is the art of deceiving the public. Clare Short, after resigning her position as International Development Secretary, told a parliamentary inquiry of'a series of half-truths, exaggerations and reassurances that were not the case to get us into conflict [with Iraq] by the spring' of 2003.1 This is, in my view, an understatement: all the evidence suggests that – at least over Iraq – the public has been subjected by the government to a campaign of managed deception.

  'Dark actors playing games'2

  In June 2003 it was revealed that the British government had for twelve years been promoting an operation designed to produce misleading intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Operation Rockingham had been established by the Defence Intelligence Staff in 1991 to provide information proving that Saddam had an ongoing WMD programme and quashing evidence that stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.3

  According to Scott Ritter, a former chief UN weapons inspector, Operation Rockingham and MI6:

  institutionalised a process of 'cherry picking' intelligence produced by the UN inspections in Iraq t
hat skewed UK intelligence about Iraqi WMD towards a predordained outcome that was more in line with British government policy than it was reflective of ground truth.

  He added that 'they had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when] Unscom [the UN weapons inspectors] was showing the opposite'.4 This 'intelligence' was supplied to the Joint Intelligence Committee, the body that drew up the September 2002 dossier alleging Iraq's ongoing WMD programmes.

  One of the tactics used in the operation, according to Ritter, was leaking false information on weapons to inspectors and then when the search for them proved fruitless, using that as 'proof of the weapons' existence. He cited an example from 1993 when information led to inspections of a suspected ballistic-missile site; when the inspectors found nothing 'our act of searching allowed the US and UK to say that the missiles existed', he said. The government revealed in January 2004 that Operation Rockingham continued into 2002/3 with a budget of £79,000.5