case studies in the treatment of friends

Compare:

The Danish military has secretly airlifted out of the country about 200 Iraqis who were helping its troops.

The Iraqi civilians, mostly those working as aides and translators in the southern region of Basra, will now be offered asylum in Denmark.

A military spokesman said the operation was carried out because of fears the Iraqis might be targeted by militants after the Danish troops pulled out…

…Military spokesman Lt-Cdr Nils Markussen said the initiative had come from Danish soldiers serving in Iraq.
"The signal we want to send is that we of course take care of our employees if the business they have been doing for us is putting them into danger," Cdr Markussen said.

Via.According to this CIF article, the Danes moved on the issue after it was revealed that an interpreter working for them had been murdered last November. Now contrast:

For years they risked their lives working alongside British forces on the front line in Iraq. Now in exile after fleeing their home country in terror, they have been cold-shouldered by the government which previously relied so heavily upon them.

Three Iraqi former army interpreters, who were forced to flee to Syria after receiving death threats, have not even been allowed to set foot in the British embassy to plead their case for asylum…

…Mr Tahar has been in Damascus for two months, but his attempts to argue for asylum, or even for emergency financial help, have been fruitless.

"They wouldn't let me in to the embassy they obviously have been told not to let in any Iraqis," he said. "I showed the guards all my documents, but it didn't work. I had letters from the Army saying my life would be in danger."

I note in both cases that the respective armies have tried to help, but in Britain’s case it apparently takes a bit more than that. Amnesty have taken up the interpreters cases but I guess they just count as the usual suspects as far as the government is concerned. Perhaps another eruption from Mount Dannatt or another such credibly crusty cove would be helpful here.

Comments

[Dan Hardie]

That's really disgusting. I do think that- whether the British Army stays in Iraq waiting for the glorious victory, or gets the hell out- we have got to offer asylum to all working-class and middle-class Iraqis who have put themselves at risk working for the British- and their extended families. That will of course mean thousands of people, some of whom will not like us very much. Gosh, it's almost as if fighting a war for the hell of it has consequences.

I say 'working class and middle class Iraqis' because obviously politicians and profiteers of the Chalabi stamp should be denied residency in the UK, or even access on tourist visas. If Ahmed Chalabi turns up at Heathrow again, I volunteer for the job of loading him onto the deportation plane, and if he gets lynched on arrival at Baghdad I will be stricken with guilt for all of fifteen seconds.

[Dan Hardie]

What do people think of this as a letter to send to MPs? I know we've talked about 'starting a blogswarm' on the subject but nothing's happened yet. Let's agree on a draft, then all post the letter on our blogs and get people to send them to their MPs. Could we get MySociety involved?

Dear (MP's name)

As your constituent, I am writing to discover your views on the treatment of Iraqi citizens who have put themselves at risk by working for the British Army. In particular, I would like to know if you support the right of these people to indefinite asylum in the United Kingdom. They have, by definition, put their lives at risk by the work they have done for British soldiers who were sent to war by a vote of the House of Commons. There is thus an obvious risk that if they have to remain in Iraq they will be murdered by one of the many armed groups who detest British soldiers and seek to kill them, and the Iraqis who help them.

Whether you- or I- support or oppose the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq is, I am sure you will agree, immaterial here. We can all agree that a British soldier wounded in Basra suffered his injuries serving his country, and is thus entitled to be properly treated on his return to the UK. The risk run by Iraqis working for British troops is even greater than that run by the soldiers themselves. British soldiers are now suffering very high casualties in Iraq, and are continuing to serve bravely- but they are not obliged to live among neighbours who will, in many cases, be sympathetic to or even belong to the armed groups fighting the British army. Iraqis working for us in Basra do live among people who may decide to kill them, and their families, as 'collaborators'. We owe these people a clear moral debt. We cannot allow them to be murdered for the 'crime' of helping our service men and women.

The most effective way of helping these brave Iraqis is to offer them indefinite right to remain in the United Kingdom. There is plentiful evidence that armed groups in Iraqmake a practice of murdering not only their 'enemies' but their families too: and for this reason we must extend the right of asylum to the families of those who have worked with our troops. This policy should be pursued whether our forces stay in Iraq or are soon withdrawn. Applications for asylum cannot be 'processed' in a lengthy fashion: the situation in Basra is deteriorating, the ability of British soldiers to protect those that work for them is seriously compromised and any delay is likely to lead to the murder of Iraqis who have worked for the British military.

I would appreciate your views on this matter.

Yours sincerely
NAME

[dan]

DH

Chalabi already has legal residency in the UK, and an extremely plush home in Knightsbridge to go with it. Given his knowledge of the locations of numerous skeletons, it's unlikely that his residency privileges will be revoked any time soon.

Likewise, Iyad Allawi, the poor relation, was resident in the SW London area until very recently - AFAIK his daughter is still at school here.

FWIW, whilst the MoD retains a presence in Basra, there isn't going to be much in the way of publicly and overtly moving Iraqi staff and their families over to the UK - the messaging is just plain wrong from a number of standpoints, and it creates some serious force protection/hostile penetration issues.

Likewise, I doubt that we'll hear rumblings from Dannat or the "army honourable brigade" about this, as I suspect that they have already secured a "quiet" agreement from the political masters about this; the problem will be that there is a good chance of being overtaken by "events" as the casualty rates continue to climb. I would hope that they've planned for this.

The Italians, Spanish, and now the Danes, all moved their local staffs covertly in the run-up to their publicised military decampments.

The MoD isn't going to leave in the same way - in the best case scenario, it will resemble the IDF's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

[Dan Hardie]

' the problem will be that there is a good chance of being overtaken by "events" as the casualty rates continue to climb. I would hope that they've planned for this.'

I entirely agree, which is why democratic pressure on MPs to force a policy change seems like a good idea.

[Dan Hardie]

'it creates some serious force protection/hostile penetration issues.'

Force protection: I guess you mean that this signals to the Iraqi armed groups'we want out and so you lose nothing, and probably gain status, by attacking us'. Well fine, if we weren't already sending those signals already - but since we are, we'll have to live with it. I do say that there is an 'excluded middle' re British deployment in Basra; we either have a force there strong enough and large enough to protect itself and to overawe any single local militia, or we start evacuating immediately.

'Hostile penetration': if that means that some of the Iraqis who come to the UK are either secret jihadis or are so embittered by British behaviour that they subsequently become jihadis- again, we're going to have to wear it. It is less disgusting than leaving people who helped us to be murdered, and less strategically perilous than getting a reputation as a country that does such things. We cannot invade other countries on a whim and then sob and blub when that turns out to have consequences.

[dsquared]

[I say 'working class and middle class Iraqis' because obviously politicians and profiteers of the Chalabi stamp should be denied residency in the UK, or even access on tourist visas. ]

no, even Chalabi. He's a liar and an (alleged) crook (what's the profiteer thing relate to? my memory fails me here), but is a bona fide democrat with good credentials in the Iraqi opposition in the 1980s, and to his credit he went out there and stayed in Iraqi politics at risk to his own life, which is more than Kanan bloody Makiya did. In any case, I don't think it's on to start picking and choosing - everyone in democratic Iraqi politics is fundamentally risking their life because of what we did and in support of our foreign policy, and so they all deserve a seat on the plane even if they are objectively horrible people (even the actual war criminals among them ought to be tried as such, properly).

I note with grim irony that the failure of the Americans to provide any way out for their Vietnamese staff was known as the "Decent Interval".

[jamie]

I think politically the problem is that if the government admit that people who've helped us are at risk that it's tantamount to an admission that the war has been effectively lost so its going to be very difficult to winkle any kind of commitment out of them. Billal Abdullah's nationality is not going to help with this either

Ta for the letter. I might send it to my local MP (amended, so if more start going out it doesn't look like a form letter) and see what he says. There's also that No 10 petitions site, which might be a good way of getting the issue out. There's also the Labour Friends of Iraq group.

Dan: the problem is that they don't seem to be moving privately either: Radio 4 says that there was a hundred or so ex staffers with the Brits stranded in Jordan and Syria.

[Dan Hardie]

Yes, that was just sick humour really, and probably unfunny. I retract the Chalabi remark.

Re Dan's remark above: All very true but actually reinforces my belief that we should extend asylum to all Iraqis who have worked for us. This is one of those things that people don't want to plan for because a) 'it's so horrible' and b) 'announcing it would make a bad outcome more likely', whereupon they find that not planning for it at all leads to the full 'Saigon Embassy in 1975' routine.

[dan]

DH

If we aren't offering to look after the families of our Iraqi employees, then there's going to be an awful lot of pressure on them to do intelligence/information deals with outside-the-fence groups to leave their families alone - this is the hostile penetration that I was referring to, and it "bleeds" into force protection issues; this would still be a germane issue even if we had a much larger presence in Basra.

FWIW, I doubt that in evacuating a couple of thousand Iraqis after we pull out that we're going to be importing a sinister Jihadi sleeper menace.

[ejh]

an (alleged) crook

(convicted) surely? In his absence, to be fair.

[dsquared]

yeh, convicted of bank fraud in Jordan (and his bank had its license pulled in Switzerland). I think I must have been channelling Hitchens there for a minute.

In general, I think it would be salutory to remind people how absolutely awful the fall of Saigon was - the big success the Decents have had is keeping Vietnam comparisons out of the media. I know I keep plugging Frank Snepp's book but it is excellent.

[Martin Wisse]

Could always sent Chabali back to Jordan to sit out his sentence then...

He's no more a democrat than Blair is.

[dsquared]

Oh he *is* a democrat - he was a senior figure in the Iraqi opposition in exile when to be so was neither popular nor profitable, back in the days when Saddam was our mate - possibly even back in the days when Christopher Hitchens was tipping him as the modern Nasser. Chalabi *is* the authentic face of the Iraqi democratic movement, which is why I personally think it's scandalous that so many of his onetime supporters have dropped him simply because he lied us into a war, while emphatic refusing to drop any of the other buggers who lied us into that war (and even putting it in their manifesto that they weren't going to).

[dan]

Dsquared

AFAICT Chalabi had no role in any coherent Iraqi opposition movement until the Iraq Freedom Support act, which mandated monies to Iraqi exile groups, was passed in 1992; the INC was formed pursuant to this as a vehicle to capture rents, er, US funds.

I'd certainly be interested if you could provide some details as to what exactly Chalabi was doing in the anti-Baath opposition back in the 1980's, when he was a dodgy banker in Saddam-friendly Jordan.

[dsquared]

I'm taking it from the Petrabank website

http://www.petrabank.com/pre/table.php?background

which is admittedly basically a site run by the Chalabi family, but it's mainly about the Petra Bank court case and I'd be surprised if it has totally invented historical facts (also, it becomes clearer and clearer as time goes on that Chalabi was involved with Iranian intelligence, which is probably the source of a lot of his anti-Saddam activities). Chalabi was indeed a banker in Saddam-friendly Jordan, but it's not like he was popular with the Jordanians. As I say, he's not my favourite person - he's a liar and a crook - but I don't accept that he's much much worse than people like Kanan Makiya who retain their status as prominent Decent icons.

[dan]

Kanan Makiya is/was a useful idiot - I doubt that he was interested in personally exercising power though, or finding ways to profit from political position. The worst that I can say about Makiya is that he was a foolish romantic idealist who utterly misunderstood is native country, was blind to the political ruthlessness of his "liberal" neocon friends, and was deluded about the nature of power. I don't doubt that his motivations were sincere and decent.

There's no evidence that Makiya ever betrayed his political rivals to certain death during botched coup attempts back in the 1990's either; Chalabi got "burned" by the CIA over these types of shenanigans.

Chalabi is orders of magnitude worse - an utterly insincere opportunist with a trail of bodies and scams to prove it.

I'd still like to know what anti-Saddam activities Chalabi was up to before it became profitable in the 1990's.

[dsquared]

[I'd still like to know what anti-Saddam activities Chalabi was up to before it became profitable in the 1990's.]

check out the link above - it has Chalabi carrying out a lot of whistleblowing on the abuse of US agricultural credits for sanctions-busting during the Iran/Iraq war.