Iraq - what a mess we left behind us

Just days after former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan castigated Tony Blair for failing to prevent the Iraq War, another dreadful reminder of its disastrous consequences, as a series of explosions ripped through the country, killing at least 9 people.

Worst hit was the town of Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, where 8 people died and more than 20 were injured by 3 car bombs.   According to some reports, the bombs were placed near Shia Muslim homes in the mainly Sunni town.

On September 9, at least 58 people were killed in a wave of attacks in 10 cities.   Then the bloodiest were in Amara, 185 miles south of Baghdad, where two car bombs exploded outside a Shia shrine and market place.

Just over a week later, at least 7 people lost their lives in a suicide car bomb near the heavily guarded International Zone in Baghdad, while June saw the deadliest day since American troops withdrew, with 84 people killed and nearly 300 injured.

London - 7.7 inquest

The inquest into the 7.7 tube and bus bombings in London – the worst terrorist outrage on British soil – heard yesterday from one of the most seriously injured survivors. Thirty-one year old Daniel Biddle lost both legs and an eye.

Mr Biddle’s presence on the train was down to a chapter of accidents. When he was waiting on the platform at Liverpool Street, he let the first train go because it was so crowded. Then he boarded the ill-fated service, meaning to get off at Baker Street, but missed his stop because he was texting, and so was still on the train when Mohammad Sidique Khan detonated his bomb at Edgware Road.

Mr Biddle said Khan was sitting about eight feet away from him. The bomber took a quick look up and down the carriage, then there was a rapid movement of his arm, and a “big, white flash”. The carriage expanded quickly, and then contracted just as fast, and Mr Biddle was blown off his feet and through the carriage doors into the tunnel. Adrian Heili, a trained first aider, clambered under the train to reach him, and freed him from under a carriage door.

Mr Biddle spent weeks in a coma. Seven people, including the bomber, died on the train. Another 50 people, including 3 more bombers, were killed in the 2005 attacks, and more than 700 were injured.

Iraq - a deafening silence

Iraq has mainly been noticeable for its absence in the UK election campaign. In the leaders’ second debate last week, supposedly concentrating on international affairs, there was one innocuous question about the Pope that let everyone agree twice, but none concerning Britain’s biggest foreign policy disaster in at least half a century, though Nick Clegg made it clear that, unlike Gordon Brown’s Labour party and David Cameron’s Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats had always opposed the war.

From Iraq itself the very next day came a reminder of the continuing murderous chaos that the US-UK invasion has unleashed. A wave of bombings killed at least 58 people, most of them blown up near Shia mosques during Friday prayers.

The authorities blamed al-Qaeda. Yes, that is the same al-Qaeda that had been a nonentity in the country before the invasion. They also said they expected more attacks.

More than six weeks after Iraq’s own elections, there are still no officially certified results. Last year more than 4,640 Iraqi civilians met violent deaths. (See also my blogs of July 30, Sept 29, Dec 14, 2009 and Jan 28, 2010.)

Financial disasters

Apologies for the silence over the last few days. I have been updating The Disastrous History of London which will appear, with a new title, later in the year.

The main update covers the London bombings of July 7, 2005, which happened after the book was written. I have also added a fresh chapter on financial disasters, which includes the South Sea Bubble of 1720, the stock market crashes of the early 1970’s and of 1987 (“Black Monday”) and the banking crisis of the last couple of years.

The South Sea Bubble is great fun to write about – a story full of fascinating characters like the wonderfully named Sir John Blunt of the Sword Blade Company, who played a key role in ramping the share price through misinformation and bribery. Then, among those who made a mint were two mistresses of King George I – one enormously fat, the other spectacularly thin.

As with house prices in the banking crisis, so long as the South Sea Company share price kept climbing, the powers that be never noticed there was a problem. And, in spite of the havoc that its collapse wrought, the company carried on happily for another 130 years. Who would bet against the same thing happening with the banks today?

Afghanistan and Iraq - continuing carnage

As the sabre-rattling directed at Iran grows louder and louder, reminders arrive from both Iraq and Afghanistan about how big a mess we still have to clear up in those places.

A series of bombs across Iraq in the last two days have killed at least 13 people, including seven near a police station in the northern city of Ramadi. Last month saw 393 civilian deaths in the country – the highest total for more than a year.

Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan, at least 30 people lost their lives when a bus hit a landmine as it travelled from Nimroz to Kandahar City. A UN report said that last month was the worst of the year for civilian deaths in Afghanistan too. Up to the end of August, 1,500 had been killed so far this year – an increase of more than 350 on the same period in 2008.

See also my blog of Sept 2.

The trial goes on

The trial of the main surviving suspect for last November’s terror attacks in Mumbai, that killed more than 160 people, will continue in spite of his confession. 21 year old Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab's defence team had called for proceedings to end and judgment to be given.

The accused had originally denied all the 86 charges he faces, then this week he suddenly changed his plea, dismissing suggestions that it was an attempt to secure more lenient treatment. Qasab’s nine accomplices, who had arrived with him by boat from Pakistan, were all shot dead by Indian police during the attack.

In his confession, Qasab said he had been disappointed by the small amounts of money he was earning as a decorator and had been planning to turn to armed robbery. Instead he decided to become a "Mujahideen". He could face the death penalty if convicted.

Mumbai, noted for its racial and religious diversity, has faced a number of attacks from Muslim extremists, like those of March 1993 that killed 257, and the train bombings of 2006 that accounted for 209. Hundreds of Muslims had been killed in riots in the city during the winter of 1992-3.

Carry on covering up + a great fire of London

As Labour continues to try to hide the truth about Iraq (see my blog of June 16), in that unhappy country itself, the bombs go on exploding. The death toll from the latest – a huge truck bomb in Kirkuk – has now risen to at least 72. It went off as worshippers were leaving a Shia mosque, and there is speculation that it could be the work of al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile it’s been revealed that Tony Blair has been lobbying Gordon Brown to keep the Iraq inquiry secret. Apparently, he wasn’t very keen on being questioned in public and under oath about the decision to bomb, invade and occupy. I’ll bet he wasn’t. Not sure how much persuading was required, though. Do you think Mr Brown himself, not to mention Messrs Straw and Hoon would have been queuing up to tell us all?

On this day….148 years ago, what was then London’s worst fire since the Great Fire of 1666 broke out in the great line of warehouses that stretched between Tooley Street and the south bank of the Thames. The buildings were packed with inflammable goods – cotton, sugar, oil, tallow – and once they had got going, the flames spread mercilessly. The river itself caught fire as burning rum floated on its surface.

The Tooley Street inferno claimed the life of London’s first ever fire chief, James Braidwood – killed when a wall collapsed on him. The flames raged out of control for two days, and it was a whole month before they were put out completely. For more details, see The Disastrous History of London.

Bye-bye Iraq

As Britain’s role in the occupation of Iraq is declared officially over to the frenetic whizzing of the Labour spin machine, a reminder of the reality we leave behind us. At least 41 people killed by car bombs this week, another 150 the week before. That is nearly four times as many as were killed in London’s 7/7 bombings.

Of course, we did not bomb and invade Iraq to liberate its people. That was another hurried Labour invention following the exposure that Tony Blair’s claims about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction were false. Indeed, before launching his aggressive war Mr Blair made it clear that if Saddam was prepared to give up his non-existent weapons, Labour would be perfectly happy to leave him in power. We do not know how many Iraqi civilians were killed as a result of our actions as Labour and its American allies were not sufficiently interested to keep count, but independent studies suggest it could be as high as a million.

Apart from those most slavishly loyal to Messrs Blair and Brown, few now seriously dispute that this was the greatest British foreign policy disaster in at least half a century, possibly longer. Labour’s excuse for denying us a proper inquiry was that it could not happen, for some mysterious reason, while British troops were still in Iraq. So now they’re leaving, when does it kick off, Gordon? Usual advice applies – d.h.y.b. (I note, incidentally, that 400 British troops will be staying after the “withdrawal”. Is their key strategic role to delay any inquiry until after the next general election?)

See also my blogs of February 25 and 28, and March 1, 11, 20 and 28.

Bloody connected anniversaries

This day, 16 years ago, saw the Waco siege end after 51 days. The stand-off at the Branch Davidian Church’s ranch in Texas had begun on February 28, 1993 when agents from the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to search the property, resulting in a gun battle in which four agents were killed.

The cult’s leader, David Koresh, had taken a number of its female members as “wives”, some of whom were teenagers. This brought allegations of child abuse, while Koresh’s launch of a business selling guns added to the disquiet. On April 19, FBI agents tried to force their way in to the compound, and up to 80 members of the group including 20 children and Koresh himself, were killed as fire engulfed it.

Exactly two years after the siege ended, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a huge truck bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people – the United States’ biggest ever terrorist outrage before 9/11. McVeigh had spent a brief time in the army, and was decorated for bravery, but he began to fear the government was planning to abolish Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms. He went to Waco to watch the siege, and took the view that the FBI’s actions were illegal.

Soon after, he began planning the Oklahoma attack, which targeted a Federal building in the city. An hour after the explosion, McVeigh was stopped for a driving offence, and was found to be illegally carrying a concealed hand gun. He was executed in 2001, and an accomplice was sent to prison for life.

Suicide bombs

It is now feared that up to 70 people may have been killed by yesterday’s suicide bomb at a mosque in Pakistan’s Khyber region about 20 miles from the Afghan border. The blast went off just as Friday prayers were beginning and completely destroyed the building. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and some believe it may be part of a power struggle between rival tribal militias. Similar enmities may have been behind another suicide bombing on Thursday that killed at least ten people in a restaurant in South Waziristan.

Last year Pakistan overtook Iraq as the world’s worst country for suicide bombings. In the first eight months of 2008, more than 471 people were killed in 28 suicide attacks, compared with 463 people in Iraq and 436 in Afghanistan.

We tend to think of suicide bombings as a new tactic, and certainly the US-British attack on Iraq gave them an enormous boost, but actually they go back at least as far as the 17th century when Dutch soldiers trying to conquer Taiwan would use gunpowder to blow up themselves and the enemy.

If you count fuel-filled aeroplanes as bombs, then the deadliest ever suicide attack remains 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Of attacks using more conventional explosives, the deadliest happened on August 14, 2007 when four suicide bombers killed up to 800 members of the obscure pre-Islamic Yazidi sect in Iraq.

Iraq - continuing disaster

Reminders over the last few days of how dangerous Iraq remains. The latest attack targeted a national reconciliation conference close to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Delegates had just set off on a walking tour when the suicide bomber struck, killing 33 people including a local army chief, tribal leaders, and soldiers.

On Sunday, more than 30 people died in a suicide attack on people queuing outside a police recruitment centre in Baghdad, while on Thursday a car bomb killed ten at a cattle market in Babel province. A US spokesman trotted out the standard line that the attacks show how desperate the insurgents are becoming.

The disaster of Iraq has been well chronicled (see my blogs of Feb 25, Feb 28, March 1 etc), but Labour still deny us the right to know how on earth they got us in this mess. Funny old place, Britain. We can’t be shown the official account of the crucial cabinet meetings that rubber-stamped Tony Blair’s disastrous decision, but it’s perfectly o.k. for ministers like David Blunkett and government servants, or should that be masters, like Alastair Campbell to produce partial and self-serving accounts of the same events for their own further enrichment. Time we got a constitution.

It's only money (4) + Dresden

A curious episode at the House of Commons yesterday when Gordon Brown excused his appointment of now-discredited banker Sir James Crosby to the financial watchdog, the FSA, on the grounds that he had been recommended by an independent committee. Since when have Brown and his Labour apparatchiks regarded the recommendations of expert committees as binding?

A couple of days before, they had seen nothing wrong with disregarding the conclusion of their expert committee on drug misuse that Ecstasy should be downgraded from Class A, nor with vilifying the committee’s chair for good measure. Come on, Gordon, you’ll have to do better than this!

On this day....64 years ago, 750 British bombers attacked the railway marshalling yards at Dresden in an attempt to disrupt Hitler’s plans to move more men to the Eastern Front, but they also started a ferocious firestorm that destroyed 11 square miles of the city. The next day, 450 USAF bombers attacked. Some fires burned for a week, and although the death toll was never established, it was almost certainly more than 40,000.

“Bomber” Harris had learned well from the Luftwaffe’s tactics earlier in the war. They had sowed the wind, he said, and now they were reaping the whirlwind.

An aftermath and an anniversary

January 10, 2009
Sources in the United States and Pakistan are claiming that two men America says were involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have been killed. Kenyans Usama al-Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan were said to have been hit by a missile from a US drone in Pakistan’s South Waziristan, close to the Afghan border. The bombing in Nairobi killed 257 people, only 12 of them Americans, while the one in Dar es Salaam claimed a total of 11 victims. More details on the bombings are available in A Disastrous History of the World.

On this day....in 1838, London’s Royal Exchange was burned down for the second time. The weather was bitterly cold and firemen were hampered as their hoses froze. A large crowd gathered to watch, and the biggest cheer came when porters flung a bag of sovereigns out of the window and some of the onlookers helped themselves. You can find the full story in The Disastrous History of London.