Expert perspective: the anti-war campaigner
Lindsey German, one of the founders of the Stop the War Coalition – a British anti-war movement established in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11 – assesses the legacy of the last five years.
In 2001, faced with the threat of war against Afghanistan, 80,000 people took to the streets of Britain. In the intervening six years there have been more than 20 national demonstrations against the War on Terror, calling for the troops to be brought home from Iraq and Afghanistan. That this campaign has been sustained over such a long period is a tribute to many thousands of hardworking activists who have canvassed and petitioned on high streets up and down the country. It is also a tribute to the many millions of supporters of the campaign who have felt strongly enough to protest again and again at the war-mongering policies of our government.
Together we have helped unite the people of the world for peace. February 15, 2003 saw more than 30 million people across the world take to the streets against Bush and Blair’s wars, including two million in Britain; the biggest protest in British history.
Political isolation
This historic campaign is far from over. Key supporters of the war have been driven from office. Tony Blair has been forced out of Downing Street; the final straw his support for Israel’s war in Lebanon in 2006. Such was the revulsion at this, even within his own party, that he was forced to announce that he would go within a year. In the USA neo-conservative architects of the war, Donald Rumsfield and John Bolton, have resigned. Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, Italian president Silvio Berlusconi, and more recently Australian prime minister John Howard all lost office as a result of their support for the Iraq war. Only Bush remains, an isolated figure with historically low poll ratings: a lame-duck president, but still dangerous and itching for another war – a war with Iran.
We are now five years on from the invasion of Iraq, which has lasted longer than the Second World War. For the US, daily military operations have already cost more than 12 years in Vietnam and the United States is spending $16bn a month on running costs alone in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then there is the missing cash: the $8.8bn Development Fund for Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority, for example; and the unaudited millions that flows through the Department of Defence.
For the UK, the combined cost of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 12 months is more than £3bn. The total cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 now totals about £10bn. “This is the politics of Mad Hatter priorities,” said Alan Simpson, a Labour opponent of the war. “The government is throwing money into unwinnable war zones at the same time as withholding money that creates a war zone in our hospitals.”
Dubious gains
The achievement in Iraq? In excess of a million deaths and a further million displaced peoples; the destruction of towns and cities; the pollution of the countryside with cluster bomb munitions and depleted uranium; and the total collapse of the country’s social infrastructure. Last word goes to Hans Blix, the former United Nations arms inspector who has claimed that the war was “clearly illegal.” “There were question marks [over the evidence of WMD], but they changed them to exclamation marks,” he said.
He has also accused America of a “witch-hunt” to justify the war. The achievement in Afghanistan? Three years after then defence secretary John Reid talked of completing the British military deployment there “without a shot being fired” and eliminating the opium harvest, the majority of the country is under Taliban control and prime minister Hamid Karzai is known as the Mayor of Kabul. Since last year, 81 British troops have died and untold numbers been maimed for life. The United Nations calculates that violent incidents have risen by 20-30% since the British took over NATO command, with at least 5,000 local deaths. Meanwhile, the opium harvest is at record levels.
Leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, CND and BMI will deliver a letter to the prime minister at 10 Downing Street at midday on Thursday 20 March calling for UK troops to be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. There will also be a protest in Whitehall and a minute's silence to mark the death of all those killed as a result of the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Lindsey German, convenor, Stop the War Coalition
March 2008
