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Britons should avoid "free" and "democratic" Iraq

Hasan Suroor

The Tony Blair Government has made plain that it does not want Britons to go to Iraq. This even as Mr. Blair insists that post-invasion Iraq is a better place.

— Photo: AP

IN THE CROSSFIRE: This is an image made from video broadcast by Al Jazeera on November 29 showing Briton Norman Kember and Canadian Harmeet Singh Sooden, two of four peace activists taken hostage in Iraq.

CAN THERE be a greater irony than that a country after being "liberated" amid such hype and supposedly on the road to democracy should be seen by its own "liberators" to have become so dangerous that they are forced to warn their citizens not to visit it?

Yet, this is what the British Government has done after a spate of kidnappings and killings of its nationals in Iraq. Short of imposing an outright ban on travel to Iraq, the Government has made plain that it does not want Britons to go there — with the unstated subtext that if they do they would be doing it at their own risk.

This even as Prime Minister Tony Blair continues to insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the post-invasion and post-Saddam Iraq is a better place than when British and American tanks rolled into Baghdad three years ago defying world opinion.

So, do Britons believe him or the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who was compelled again, this week, to warn that "UK citizens should not travel to Iraq" adding that the "only exceptions are where they are subject to proper security protection."

This followed the killing of two British Muslim pilgrims to Iraq, and the abduction of a Christian aid activist who had gone there to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by the current Iraqi regime. The two incidents — within a space of less than 24 hours — have caused nationwide outrage and sparked a fresh debate on the Government's Iraq policy.

The two pilgrims — Sefuddin Qutbi Makai, 42, and Hussain Mohammedali, 49, both from London — were gunned down on Sunday while on their way to Baghdad airport to catch a flight home. There is speculation that they were targeted because they belonged to the Bohra sect, which is abhorred by hardline Sunni Muslims. But what about the 74-year-old Norman Kember, a respected academic and pacifist who was kidnapped with three other Western nationals by a little-known militant group a day earlier? While his abductors have claimed that he was a spy, his family and friends describe him as an anti-war activist who publicly criticised the invasion of Iraq.

Critics say that whatever be the apparent motive, the reality is that all three have been victims of the British Government's actions in Iraq, and they accuse it of adding insult to injury by suggesting that people who go to Iraq, knowing the risks involved, are inviting trouble.

"Bohras from around the world routinely visit Najaf and Karbala which they regard as among the most holy sites, so why should only Britons be targeted except for the simple reason that they are seen by resistance groups as symbols of British occupation," asked one analyst adding that the abduction of Prof. Kember too had everything to do with his nationality.

They are only the latest victims of a cycle of lawlessness that experts warn will grow the longer the occupation lasts. In the case of army casualties, it could be argued that soldiers do get killed in war, but how does one explain the loss of innocent civilian lives except as a "collateral" cost of their Government's conduct in Iraq.

"The responsibility for every single civilian casualty lies on the door of the Prime Minister," an angry friend of one of the dead pilgrims said.

Even those who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein are calling for a review of British tactics and there is growing pressure on Mr. Blair to distance Britain — and distance it "visibly" — from America's Iraq agenda even if this might mean that the next time he visits Washington he might find the official reception a little less gushy; and there may be no special session of the congress for him to address.

The argument — put forward again and again by Mr. Blair — that the situation in Iraq is simply the work of a "handful" of "terrorists" sounds so hollow, given the scale of the militancy, that nobody even in the government takes it seriously any more. It is now widely believed that the resistance has significant support among ordinary Iraqis who, even though they may have been happy to see the back of Saddam, want the foreign occupation to end.

Mr. Blair's claim that the "vast majority" of Iraqis is happy with the current state of their country has shown to be a myth by independent surveys. By continuing to harp on it he has started to embarrass the dwindling band of his own apologists.

In relation to Iraq and the "war on terror," this has been a bad week for his government as — apart from the latest British casualties — it has struggled to defend itself against accusations that it has been allowing American planes to use British airspace for ferrying suspected terrorists to "torture" chambers in third countries.

The civil rights group Liberty has set a two-week deadline for the Government to investigate the allegations, failing which it has threatened to take the issue to court — a sorry state to be in for a government which never stops lecturing the Third World on human rights.

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