Iraq policy 'spawned new terror'

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Oxford Research Group - building bridges for global security
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The British and US policy towards Iraq has "spawned new terror in the region", a think tank report has said.

The countries had tried to "keep the lid on" problems by military force and had failed to address the root causes, the Oxford Research Group warned.

It said Iran, Syria and North Korea had become "emboldened", while the Taleban was on the rise in Afghanistan.

The UK government said the past decade of foreign policy had been effective and action in Iraq was "justified".

Global instability

It comes as a separate report from Oxfam said the Iraq invasion had "seriously undermined" Britain's reputation.

However, the charity warns Britain must not be reluctant to send in troops to deal with future humanitarian crises.

We are looking at a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century unless urgent action is taken now Chris Abbott Oxford Research Group

In a report a year ago, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) highlighted four areas that it said were contributing to world instability.

Climate change, competition for increasingly scarce resources, marginalisation of the majority of the world's population as socio-economic divisions widen, and the increasing use of military force and the further spread of military technologies were all threats.

Its latest report said these issues were still the greatest threats, but added that the ongoing war on terror and the war in Iraq were increasing the risk of future terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11.

"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror... created a combat training zone for jihadists," it says.

Lead study author Chris Abbott said: "There is a clear and present danger - an increasingly marginalised majority living in an environmentally constrained world, where military force is more likely to be used to control the consequences of these dangerous divisions.

"Add to this the disastrous effects of climate change, and we are looking at a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century unless urgent action is taken now."

Iran's nuclear plan

The report, Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World, said any military intervention in Iran would be "disastrous". However, it warned that Iran should not be allowed to develop civil nuclear power.

"This would involve the development of facilities that are potential terrorist targets, as well as encourage the spread of technology and materials that could be used in the development of nuclear weapons," the report said.

It also added that the British government's decision to replace its nuclear submarine system Trident could "substantially encourage" other states to develop nuclear weapons.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the past decade of foreign policy had been effective and that the military action in Iraq was "justified".

"We have rightly focused on 'hard' security issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone as well as 'softer' issues such as climate change and poverty eradication," he added.

Tiny terrors in the name of homeland security

January 24, 2007

BY JENNIFER HUNTER

My friend phoned me long distance sounding really ticked off. "They took away my Lancome Bienfait Multi-Vital moisturizer," she said with a disgusted clip in her voice.

I began to visualize the wrinkles already popping out on her skin, the age spots browning her cheeks, the crows' feet deepening around her eyes. The horror.

The shakedown artists who grabbed my friend's moisturizer were none other than the Homeland Security agents at the X-ray machine in O'Hare Airport. They have been instructed by their august superiors in Washington to nab all suspicious-looking liquid or gel items, including, apparently, Bienfait Multi-Vital moisturizer, a cream generally used by women of a certain age. These were their orders after men were arrested in London trying to carry liquid explosives aboard a plane last summer.

Darn thing is my friend had the moisturizer in her carry-on when she came to visit me, and the guards at Toronto International Airport, where she boarded, kept their paws off her moisturizer.

"What was the difference," she asked impatiently. "They told me at O'Hare that if I'd had the moisturizer in a Ziploc bag that would have been fine. But what difference does it make if it's in my cosmetic case or a see-through bag? Can't they zip open my cosmetics case and look through everything?"

She tried making that argument to the guards, but logic has never been their strong suit. They have a job to do. They have power over you. They can humiliate you if you don't obey.

Recently I was going to Pittsburgh, flying from O'Hare. I stepped up to the X-ray machine, dutifully took off my shoes, coat, hat and scarf and loaded them into the requisite plastic containers. I had made sure I wasn't wearing any chunky metal jewelry or belts to set off the alarm.

"Take off your coat," a woman security official demanded. "I have taken it off," I replied, pointing to a gray lump on the X-ray conveyer belt. "Take off your coat," she repeated, more assertively. By then I realized she really meant my suit jacket, and as I began to doff it, she commanded me to go to the side where she could frisk me and go through my luggage. I lost half a tube of toothpaste that morning, but they left my wrinkle cream. Crow's feet trump bad breath.

Former NBC war correspondent Ashleigh Banfield recently talked to the New York Times about traveling with her infant son from New York City to Fort Myers, Fla. She was loaded down with baby paraphernalia, including a stroller, a diaper bag and a car seat, and the security agent asked her to dismantle the stroller. She asked the agent to hold her son.

"I can't break the stroller down without your help," she explained. He said he couldn't help her, and she replied, "It's either that or we put my son through the X-ray machine." After a moment's hesitation, he took her son.

There is no doubt that we need strong security measures at our airports, but some of the rules are making the war on terrorism seem more like the theater of the absurd. Look at the results: Women are aging more rapidly, babies are being handed to total strangers and toothpaste is being confiscated.

It certainly doesn't do much to make me feel safer. It only makes my skin dry.

• • •

DEAR READERS: This is my final Scribble column. I have enjoyed writing about life's foibles, my daughter's tight blue jeans and other parental worries over the past couple of years. I am starting a new assignment at the Sun-Times so my byline won't disappear, and I look forward to still receiving your letters.

All my best,

Jennifer

IRAQ: Terrified Soldiers Terrifying People

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

FALLUJAH, Jan. 8 (IPS) - Ten-year-old Yassir aimed a plastic gun at a passing U.S. armoured patrol in Fallujah, and shouted "Bang! Bang!"

Yassir did not know what was coming. "I yelled for everyone to run, because the Americans were turning back," 12-year-old Ahmed who was with Yassir told IPS.

The soldiers followed Yassir to his house and smashed almost everything in it. "They did this after beating Yassir and his uncle hard, and they spoke the nastiest words," Ahmed said.

It is not just the children, or the people of Fallujah who are frightened.

"Those soldiers are terrified here," Dr. Salim al-Dyni, a psychotherapist visiting Fallujah told IPS. Dr Dyni said he had seen professional reports of psychologically disturbed soldiers "while serving in hot areas, and Fallujah is the hottest and most terrifying for them."

Dr. Dyni said disturbed soldiers were behind the worst atrocities. "Most murders committed by U.S. soldiers resulted from the soldiers' fears."

Local Iraqi police estimate that at least five attacks are being carried out against U.S. troops in Fallujah each day, and about as many against Iraqi government security forces. The city in the restive al-Anabar province to the west of Baghdad has been under some form of siege since April 2004.

That has meant punishment for the people. "American officers asked me a hundred times how the fighters obtain weapons," a 35-year-old resident who was detained together with dozens of others during a U.S. military raid at their houses in the Muallimin Quarter last month told IPS.

"They (American soldiers) called me the worst of names that I could understand, and many that I could not. I heard younger detainees screaming under torture repeating 'I do not know, I do not know', apparently replying to the same question I was asked."

U.S. soldiers have been reacting wildly to attacks on them.

Several areas of Fallujah recently went without electricity for two weeks after U.S. soldiers attacked the power station following a sniper attack.

Thubbat, Muhandiseen, Muallimeen, Jughaifi and most western parts of the city were affected. "They are punishing civilians for their failure to protect themselves," a resident of Thubbat quarter told IPS. "I defy them to capture a single sniper who kills their soldiers."

Many of those killed in the ongoing violence are civilians. The biggest local complaint is that U.S. forces attack civilians at random in revenge for colleagues killed in attacks by the resistance.

More than 5,000 civilians killed by U.S. soldiers have been buried in Fallujah cemeteries and mass graves dug on the outskirts of the city, according to the Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a non-governmental organisation based in Fallujah.

"At least half the deceased are women, children and elderly people," group co-director Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji told IPS.

Overstretched U.S. soldiers appear to be punishing civilians while suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. IPS reported Jan. 3 that new guidelines released by the Pentagon last month allow commanders now to re-deploy soldiers suffering from such disorders.

According to the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes, service members with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.

Steve Robinson, director of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America told IPS correspondent Aaron Glantz that "as a layman and a former soldier I think that's ridiculous."

"If I've got a soldier who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and Qanapin and all kinds of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to have a weapon in their hand and to be part of my team because they're a risk to themselves and to others," he said. "But apparently, the military has its own view of how well a soldier can function under those conditions, and is gambling that they can be successful."

(Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside Iraq and has been covering the Middle East for several years.)