Death, lies and profits for some

THE Afghan government has accused NATO forces of carrying out a rocket attack killing Afghan villagers who were trying hide from the firing line between NATO and Taliban. The report of the incident in Helmand province comes as a collection of 92,000 classified documents obtained by the Wikileaks internet site has embarrassed politicians, military top-brass and intelligence services by revealing aspects of the Afghan war that they have tried to hide.

These include:
* Attacks by NATO forces on civilians
* Much higher civilian casualties from both Taliban and NATO attacks than were officially admitted.
* The operation of a US-led special unit charged with tracking down and killing individuals on a hit list.
* Alleged continuing support to Taliban from Pakistan intelligence services.
* Taliban has successfully used surface to air missiles to bring down military aircraft.

Much of the material on killing of civilians will come as little surprise to those who have been opposing the war in Afghanistan. But what it shows up sharply is the difference between the realities of this war and the picture given by official sources, of "our boys and girls", along with our gallant allies, protecting the Afghan people and helping them achieve a new life.

One of the incidents described took place on March 4, 2007 involving a convoy of US marines, who had arrived in Afghanistan three weeks earlier. Hit by an explosives-rigged minivan outside the city of Jalalabad, the marines made off in a panic, down a six mile stretch of highway, firing with automatic weapons at almost anyone they saw – teenage girls in fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded.

The marines' own account claims that, simultaneous to the suicide explosion, "the patrol received small arms fire from three directions". The rampage as they drove away is captured in five words: "The patrol returned to JAF [Jalalabad air field]." Forty-nine minutes after the initial bombing, they requested a "routine medevac" for a private with "shrapnel wounds to the arm". Their only casualty. He was evacuated to safety.

Journalists who tried to report what actually happened had their cameras snatched by angry marines. Rahmat Gul, a freelance photographer working for the Associated Press, said two soldiers and a translator came up to him and asked: "Why are you taking pictures? You don't have permission." Then they deleted his photographs. Later, Gul said, one of the soldiers came up to him and raised his arm, as if to hit him. Taqiullah Taqi, a reporter for the private Tolo TV channel, said the Americans told him through a translator: "Delete them, or we will delete you."

Nine hours after the shooting, the governor of Nangarhar province appealed to the marines to stay at home. "He did not want more CF [coalition forces] in the area due to public hostility." At about the same time the Americans stopped issuing internal reports. "Event closed at 1349Z" it read. But that was not the end of the affair.

Demonstrations ran through the streets of Jalalabad over the following days, the logs report, in which protesters broke windows and blocked roads. A month later, in April 2007, the Afghan Human Rights Commission published a report into the shooting which said the victims included a 16-year-old newlywed girl carrying a bundle of grass and a 75-year-old man walking back from the shops. The report said the marines may have come under fire from one source straight after the suicide bomb but challenged the assertion they suffered a "complex ambush from several directions".

By then a US army colonel had admitted to the Afghans that the shootings were a "terrible, terrible mistake" and "a stain on our honour". He paid $2,000 to the families of each victim. The special forces commander in Afghanistan, Major General Francis Kearney, ordered the marines to pull the 120-man company out of the country. But there would be no punishment. The marines, angered by the criticism of their unit by an army commander, held their own inquiry into the shootings and issued their findings a year later. It exonerated the marines. The troops "acted appropriately and in accordance with the rules of engagement … in response to a complex attack," said Major General Samuel Helland, the commander of marine forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

In other incidents described, Polish troops took "revenge" for a Taliban attack by mortaring an Afghan wedding party. German planes attacked two fuel tankers, in what was supposed to be an attack on guerrillas, but actually killed over 100 civilians who were queuing for for fuel.

The Obama administration would like to argue that the Wikileaks documents only go up to the end of last year, and the issues can be laid at the door of the Bush administration. There are supposed to be new rules of engagement to reduce civilian casualties. But the latest incident reported by the Afghan government only happened on Friday, at Regey village. £The investigation shows that the rocket was fired by Nato and 45 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed," Siyamak Herawi told Reuters. Some reports said the toll was as high as 52, including 17 women and seven children.

He did not say what nationality the troops were. But the incident happened in Sangin, the district where British forces have come under attack and are soon to withdraw. The British forces are coming under US command.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/26/nato-afghanistan-rocket-attack

What is most sickening is that the response of those in authority both sides of the Atlantic is to express outrage - not at the crimes committed against the Afghan people but at the "crime" of revealing the truth. White House national security adviser General Jim Jones claimed the documents "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk." He attempted to absolve the Obama administration of any guilt, pointing out that the documents described a period from January 2004 to December 2009, mostly during President George W Bush's administration.

On BBC news this morning David Cameron's Security minister, Baroness Pauline Neville -Jones said the documents could have come from leaks or been obtained by hacking, but either way revealing secret information like this could endanger "your sons and mine".

This is a woman who has done well out of wars. A former chair of the joint intelligence committee she served Tory Douglas (now Lord) Hurd when he was Foreign Secretary, and met Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at the Dayton talks ending the war in Bosnia. Later she went to Belgrade together with Hurd, on behalf of Nat West Markets, to help Milosevic in the sale of Serbian telecomms. The deal they brokered was later undone, by which time Milosevic was to die in his cell at the Hague, but NatWest had made £10 million, and Hurd and Neville-Jones were well remunerated for their part in this.

Neville-Jones next became a governor of the BBC, and director Greg Dyke blamed her for bringing about his resignation over the David Kelly affair, concerned with what the Blair government really knew when it went to war with Iraq. Evidently she saw no conflict of interest between her duties at the BBC and being paid £133,000 a year as chair of the defence research and equipment contractor Qinetiq. Taking advantage of share options she made a further £400,000 as Qinetiq was taken over by the US-based Carlyle Group.

So what kind of secrets are people like Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones or the generals concerned with guarding? Do they really fear the leaks will endanger British troops, or is it something else they fear?

As today's Morning Star asked:

'Do they think that Afghans have been unaware of misdirected "precision bombs," of wedding parties being wiped out as Taliban gatherings, of civilian buses, lorries and cars being riddled with bullets by jittery troops or of Nato assassination units causing a high level of "collateral damage?"

Is it plausible that Afghan opponents of the US occupation know nothing of the sophisticated, shoulder-mounted surface-to-air rockets deployed by Taliban forces against coalition helicopters?

The Afghan people are well aware of the ongoing slaughter and, even though civilian deaths have been caused by both Nato and Taliban actions, they blame the invaders for the conflict and for their losses.

While up-to-date casualty figures for each national contingent of Washington's coalition of the complicit are readily available, we shall probably never know the true extent of Afghan civilian deaths. Afghans are as expendable as Iraqis, for, as US General Tommy Franks noted when asked about the civilian death toll as a result of the 2002 invasion "We don't do body counts."

The point about inadequate news and deliberate disinformation fed to the media by Nato military spokespeople is that their role is not to mislead Afghans - whether civilians or military resistance - but to bamboozle domestic audiences.'

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/93270

Whereas the BP explosion and oil spill killed workers, destroyed innocent wildlife and ruined the livelihoods of hard-working fisher folk and others, the Wikileak explosion threatens the guilty politicians and others who have lied to us, and could ruin the careers of some warmongers.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/secret+files+wikileaks+exposes+aposunseen+afghan+warapos/3723387

Profiting from Proxy War in Africa

From a war in which British forces are all too involved, to a proxy war, in which other people do the fighting and get killed, while governments like ours pretend to disapprove and have no interest. A charity says the British government has been covering up.

Global Witness is taking HM government to court, alleging that a number of British companies known to have been trading in minerals sourced from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should have been put forward to the UN Sanctions Committee.

UN security council resolution 1857, passed in 2008, calls for a travel ban and asset freeze to be imposed on all individuals and entities supporting illegal armed groups in the eastern DRC through the illicit trade of natural resources. It was backed up and strengthened by resolution 1896, passed in 2009.

Global Witness campaigns director Gavin Hayman said: "It is a sad day when we have to sue the UK government, but we hope that this case will mark a turning point. The issues at stake have global significance for how wars are financed.

"These companies have profited from a brutal conflict, and should face UN sanctions - but sanctions are useless without a fair and clear government procedure for considering whether individuals or entities should be listed."

Global Witness and the UN group of experts have obtained evidence to show that British companies have supported armed groups by purchasing minerals from areas under their control in the DRC.

http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/1032/en/global_witness_takes_uk_government_to_court_for_fa

Iraq and the Country House Party

DITCHLEY PARK, quiet setting for conferences on a stormy world.

THE British government's official inquiry into the Iraq war is due to start hearing from witnesses later this year. Could be the public has grown blase, what with many of the facts - and chiefly that Tony Blair and chums lied - being known, plus the army commander to be telling us the troops could be in Afghanistan for forty years. But while the corporate media are getting us ready for that, my fellow blogger Kevin Blowe has taken a look at just who is on the Iraq war inquiry, and what confidence can be placed upon it - not by us but by those in power.

" One of the pursuits that three of the five Inquiry members share is involvement in the Ditchley Foundation, an organisation that promotes Anglo-American relations and whose Director is Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations in the approach to the Iraq war and a likely witness at the Inquiry.

"According to his biography on the Iraq Inquiry website, former ambassador to Russia Sir Roderic Lyne is a governor of the Ditchley Foundation, as well as Deputy Chairman of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). This places him right at the heart of the transatlantic defence establishment, a position he shares with Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King's College London and Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign.

"Freedman has spoken at events organised by the likes of the Royal United Services Institute and Chatham House (which he was a Council member of between 1984 and 1992) and at the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Affairs Council in Washington DC (see footage of an address to the WAC here). He was a participant at a Ditchley Foundation event in early May 2009, organised in conjunction with the RAND Corporation, on the “military’s role and function in the 21st century”, which was attended by a variety of Ministry of Defence and NATO officials".

And Kevin points out: "Crucially, Freedman was a regular government advisor and a key architect of the ‘Blair doctrine’ on the use of military action for ‘humanitarian’ intervention. He told the BBC’s Michael Crick that in 1999, a memo he wrote for Downing Street formed the basis of Blair's famous Chicago speech , which relied almost entirely on his proposals. John Kampfner’s book 'Blair’s Wars' confirms this, saying that Freedman was asked to provide "a philosophy that Blair could call his own", complete with benchmarks defining when countries should intervene in the affairs of other nations.

"Baroness Prashar is another Ditchley Foundation governor, along with Lyne and intriguingly, Peter Mandelson, David Miliband, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and… hang on a second, how did Liberty’s Shami Chakrabarti end up on this list?!

"However, there is little to tell from the Baroness’ record as a cross bench peer what her views are on issues other than human rights and equalities, as she seldom votes or speaks in the Lords.

"Which leaves the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, who appears to have no connection to the Ditchley Foundation but is controversial for different reasons, notably claiming that TE Lawrence (‘of Arabia’) was a Zionist and importantly in the context of the Inquiry, his suggestion that Bush and Blair “may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill.” We can only look forward with exasperation to the quality of his questions to Blair!

"Finally, the chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, has his own baggage. He is a career diplomat who has close links to the intelligence community and was a former Staff Counsellor to the Security and Intelligence Agencies and the National Criminal Intelligence Service. More importantly, he was a member of the Butler Inquiry that exonerated the government on the intelligence about on Weapons of Mass Destruction, effectively said that everyone seemed to be innocent and suggested that the ludicrous claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger was "credible".
http://www.blowe.org.uk/2009/08/iraq-inquirys-ditchley-foundation.html

For those who don't know, Ditchley may sound dull, but what many people don't realise is the part played in oBritain's political life not by mere Labour, Tory and Lib Dems, but by the small, but more select, Country House Party.

Ditchley is a fine and distinguished house and park near Charlbury in Oxfordshire, and not far from Chipping Norton Before the Second World War it was the country home of Ronald Tree, an American-born Tory MP, who cultivated good relations with Winston Churchill, and fomed a small group of Tory MPs opposed to the Chamberlain government's Appeasement of Nazi Germany. During the war Tree met ex-MI5 man and Chamberlain's dirty trickster Major Sir Joseeph Ball, who boasted that he had bugged Tree's London home and meetings.

It was also during the war that Ditchley acquired importance. Concerned that Churchill's country house at Chartwell in Kent was too easily in reach of German bombers, officials also feared that the Prime Minister's official residence at Chequers, with its long straight drive standing out in the moonlight like a pointer, could also prove a tempting target. Ronald Tree offered Ditchley Park, less well-known, and tucked away among the trees, and since Churchill already knew the house and its owner he accepted. Special phone lines with a scrambler were installed, accomodation made for staff, and billets for a company of the Oxdord and Bucks Light Infantry.Churchill could use Ditchley both for family weekends and top-level meetings, as with Roosevelt's emissary Harry Hopkins.

In 1953 Sir David Wills, an heir of the famous tobacco company, acquired Ditchley Park, and in 1958 he set up the Ditchley Foundation, which describes itself as "an Anglo-American educational trust which seeks to further transatlantic understanding through a programme of conferences and seminars". There are linked foundations in the United States and Canada.
http://www.ditchley.co.uk/

The first chairman of the Ditchley Foundation council was Lord Sherfield, who as Roger Makins had assisted Harold Macmillan in North Africa during the War, and met with Eisenhower. Post-war he was British ambassador in Washington. His successor was Lord Caccia, whom Macmillan sent as envoy to Washington in the difficult period after Suez. Several of the original Foundation members from either side of the Atlantic had similar background ties. Big companies with Transatlantic interests also figured.

About a dozen or more conferences are held at Ditchley each year, on aspects of international affairs and US and British foreign policy. At each conference there are around forty invitees drawn from politics, business, the armed forces, media, and academia, with roughly a third of guests being American, a further third being British, with the remainder being of other nationalities. The director of the Foundation is usually a retired ambassador - the current director is Jeremy Greenstock

Discussion begins with all members present, before participants divide into three sub-groups, each having its own chairman and rapporteur to summarise proceedings. Proceedings end with one more conference-wide session. As with the Foreign Office's Chatham House, or, so we are told, the Bilderburg conferences that figure in conspiracy theory, and no doubt, real conspiracies, discussions are private and non-attributable. The American Ditchley Foundation helps to shape the conference program as well as select American participants.

The Chairman of American Ditchley is former US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Although a country house informality may be encouraged at Ditchley gatherings it is to assist, not detract from, the serious purpose. Sir Harry Hodson, when he was director, thought the conferences might do something to improve understanding with France. De Gaulle, opposed to US hegemony, gave the thumbs down to British entry to the Common Market, suspecting it would be a trojan horse for US interests. Hodson's proposals were rebuffed by the Ditchley Council, under Foreign Office influence, and when he tried to use his own contacts to sseek De Gaulle's approval of French delegates coming to Ditchley, he was hauled over the coals for sidestepping the Foreign Office.

http://www.athelstane.co.uk/hvhodson/hvhbiogr/biogr14.htm

I see that recent members of the Ditchley Foundation have included my own favourite 'pin-up' from the Foreign Office, Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and now David Cameron's shadow Security minister. After sterling service for Nat West markets in Belograde, Dame Pauline was made a governor of the BBC, and was blamed by Greg Dyke for leading the Board of Governors against BBC's senior management following the David Kelly/Andrew Gilligan affair, concerning government lies and secrets behind the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile as chairman of QinetiQ, the privatised Defence research and procurement establishment which besides its Iraq war interests had enriched its directors as it passed into largely US hands, Neville-Jones was qualified to join the US lecture circuit and be a Ditchley council director.

But let's not leave out Labour. Among the other Ditchley names to note these days are Neil Kinnock, Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw. Considering the way Labour Party conferences have gone, Labour Party members will be pleased to hear their leaders are doing something to promote discussion and help determioe international policy.

Hasn't this Dame done well?

THERE she was on our telly again tonight, Dame Pauline Neville -Jones, in her new job as David Cameron's shadow Security Minister, saying the government ought to come clean about what it intends to do about Guantanamo Bay prisoners returning here.

The Guantanamo prisoners have never faced trial. Whereas the man who Dame Pauline and her old boss Lord Hurd did business with , Slobodan Milosevic, did not live to see the end of his trial. And neither of the Tory duo was called as a witness for him.

But I mustn't keep raking up the past.

The current Private Eye(no.1199) wonders "Why are the Conservatives so reluctant to make political capital out of the QinetiQ scandal?"

It is referring to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) saying that the public got a raw deal out of the sale of what used to be the government's Defence Evaluation Research Agency(DERA). A third of it went to the US-based Carlyle Group, nicknamed the President's club, in which the Bin Laden family used to be involved, for £42 million. The deal cost the taxpayer more than that in legal fees and consultancies. Then QinetiQ, as the DERA had become, sold off land and assets.

Privatisation was lubricated by fat salaries and juicy share options for top management. Former civil servant Graham Love, now chief executive of QinetiQ, saw his £110,000 invested in the firm soar up to nearly £22 million when QinetiQ was floated on the share markets last year.

Taxpayers were short changed, according to Tory MP Edward Leigh, while senior managers had "won the jackpot".

But while Tories have been making hay with Labour embarrassment over missing files and mystery donors, David Cameron has been muted over this one. You'd think he might have said something about Gordon Brown as Treasury head and then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon failing to ensure the deal bolstered the Defence budget. Defence chiefs have been saying Labour is not spending enough.

The Eye says Dame Pauline, the former Foreign and Commonwealth Office political director who took a second career with NatWest Markets, advising Milosevic on how to privatise Serbian telecomms, - a task in which she was joined by her former boss Lord Hurd - and did well for herself then, has been "one of the jackpot winners".

From 2001 to 2005, on top of her little position at the BBC, Pauline Neville-Jones was part-time non-executive director at QinetiQ. Given the chance to invest in the company she made more than £350,000 from a £60,000 investment.

Good money. I guess you have got to be there. And it probably helps to have the right friends, whether for sound advice or that ring of confidence when talking to the media.