Paul Rogers

Baghdad spin, Tehran war

Paul Rogers — 2007-09-07T05:22:00Z

A war of position in Washington is well underway in advance of the status report on the United States military "surge" in Iraq being prepared by the military commander in the country, General David Petraeus. The general's hint on 4 September 2007 that progress in achieving key objectives might allow modest troop withdrawals from Iraq early in 2008 is being used as one gambit in this power-game; the bleak report of the US government's accountability office - stating that the Iraqi government had passed only three of the eighteen "benchmarks" set for it by the US Congress - is another. (...)

The west's Afghan blues

Paul Rogers — 2007-03-02T23:43:03Z

The tensions among Nato member-states over military strategy in Afghanistan complicate the struggle against a reviving Taliban.

The suicide-bomb attack at Bagram air base on 27 February 2007 during United States vice-president Dick Cheney's brief visit, made headline news across the world. Its impact within the US in particular is a powerful reminder to the American domestic audience that the country is still engaged in a major conflict in Afghanistan, more than five years after the Taliban regime was terminated.

The enduring conflict there is routinely described in terms of a Taliban comeback. The necessary caution here is that the very term "Taliban" is more accurately used in a generic sense to signify a range of quite loosely allied groups, even if these exhibit a higher degree of coordination than in 2004-05 (see Matthias Gebauer, "The Star of Afghanistan's Jihad", SpiegelOnline, 1 March 2007). (...)

- / openDemocracy

Iraq: the beginning of the end

Paul Rogers — 2007-02-23T06:57:00Z

Britain's withdrawal from Basra prefigures the entire US-led project's failure, says Paul Rogers

The Bush administration's additional deployment of troops to try and bring Baghdad under United States military control is still in its early days. Already, however, three developments throw light both on the likely outcome of the "surge" policy and the longer-term prospects for US troops in Iraq:

* the recent experience of those troops while in the process of expanding their operations

* the loss of helicopters to new insurgent tactics

* the British decision, announced on 21 February 2007, to withdraw from the city of Basra.

As the US and its putative Iraqi allies launched more intensive operations in Baghdad, many analysts expected the insurgents (as so often before) to melt away, waiting for the concentrated searches and clearances to subside before restarting their activities. There is some evidence that Shi'a militia have done just this, including reports of a retreat across the border to Iran by some of the militia's political leaders. For Sunni insurgents, though, temporary retreat has been far from the uniform reaction. One astonishing example is a direct assault on 19 February on a heavily protected American military position in the town of Tarmiya, north of Baghdad. (...)

- / openDemocracy

London's intelligence failure

Paul Rogers — 2006-05-19T09:25:00Z

On 7 July 2005, four suicide-bombers attacked the London transport system, killing fifty-two people and wounding 700 in a series of coordinated bomb blasts - three on underground trains and one on a bus. The attacks were not on the scale of Madrid, Bali, the Mombasa and Dar es Salaam embassy bombings or New York, but they had a considerable effect on public opinion in Britain. At the time the British government denied strongly that there was any connection between the motivation of the bombers and the war in Iraq, and it has maintained this view rigorously ever since.

In the past week, three reports about the attacks have been published. The most substantial was from the intelligence and security committee (ISC), a semi-independent cross-party select committee drawn from both houses of parliament. This was followed almost immediately by a document from the home office on the sequence of events before and after the attacks, coupled with some analysis of the background and motivations of the bombers. Finally, the government published a brief response to the ISC's report. (...)

- / openDemocracy

A parallel universe

Paul Rogers — 2006-05-11T17:55:00Z

As the Iraq war becomes increasingly unpopular within the United States and President George W Bush records exceptionally low approval ratings, the administration needs to redouble its efforts to present the situation in Iraq as one of steady improvement. It can point to the fact that a new prime minister has at last been agreed, while the Pentagon holds back on replacing several thousand troops due to return home from Iraq. The political and media line follows: the trend of events in Iraq is positive, and this will allow plenty of troop withdrawals by the time of the congressional mid-term elections on 7 November 2006. (...)

- / openDemocracy

Iran: war by October?

Paul Rogers — 2006-04-20T13:45:00Z

Washington's political timetable may turn harsh rhetoric into military escalation, unless voices of restraint in both the United States and Iran can prevail.

Seymour Hersh's recent New Yorker article on the risk of war between the United States and Iran contained many insights into the current thinking of US political and military leaders. The one that has attracted most attention was the desire of figures on the political side to keep the "nuclear option" on the table, even in the face of reported opposition from some military planners (see "The Iran plans", New Yorker, 17 April 2006).

The idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may seem almost unbelievable, but it is not too far removed from the "war-fighting" ideas that have been around the nuclear-weapons establishment ever since Hiroshima (see "The nuclear-weapons gambit", 13 April 2006). Meanwhile, there have been repeated press reports that the Iranians are attempting to protect their key facilities by placing them so far underground as to be beyond the limits of conventional munitions. (...)

- / openDemocracy

The nuclear-weapons gambit

Paul Rogers — 2006-04-15T06:59:00Z

The announcement of Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 11 April (closely following a comment by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani) that the country had successfully completed a process of uranium enrichment was hardly a great surprise. After all, Iranian nuclear specialists had already succeeded in achieving laboratory-scale enrichment some months ago, and the latest developments are mainly of political rather than technological significance in that they represent Tehran's direct response to what is seen there as Washington's deliberate attempt to interfere in Iran's pursuit of civil nuclear power.

In the context of the existing controversy over Iran's nuclear-research programmes, however, Ahmadinejad's statement has stimulated a wide-ranging reaction. The indications that the United States is making serious preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - reinforced by the findings of the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker - add an element of real-world urgency to the rhetorical grandstanding (see "The Iran plans," New Yorker, 17 April 2006). (...)

- / openDemocracy

Signals of war

Paul Rogers — 2006-04-07T00:10:00Z

The timing and nature of a United States attack on Iran can be gauged by a close look at air traffic and base security in western England.

In the months before the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, most commentators expected that the developing crisis would end in some kind of diplomatic settlement, and that war would be averted. But not everyone took this view, and a few specialists attempted to assess the likely outcome of the United States's infliction of "regime termination" on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Among them were some experienced analysts at the US army war college, who pointed to the difficulties of any post-war occupation and the probability of an insurgency developing against occupying troops.

The views of such dissidents (a term appropriate in the context of the overwhelming balance of opinion at the time) were ignored, and the Iraq war went ahead with the results now evident in the daily stories of shattered lives and polarised communities.

Today's equivalents of the more sober and far-sighted analysts of Iraq in 2002-03 are equally clear about the consequences of a war with Iran. Indeed, several studies suggest that Iran's military capability to create problems for the United States and any coalition partners might make the outcome there even more violent (see "Iran, the real focus", 16 February 2006). (...)

- / openDemocracy

There are alternatives

Paul Rogers — 2006-03-30T21:28:00Z

In dismissing peace activists in conflict zones as naive and misguided, military and media alike ignore the power of non-violent action, argues Paul Rogers

A new compendium of global "people power" initiatives shows that non-violence and peace activism can be a more effective instrument of social change than military force.

The release of Norman Kember and two Canadian fellow-members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams group (James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden) from kidnappers in Baghdad after 119 days in captivity was followed by a mixed public reaction. There was widespread welcome and relief; renewed sadness at the murder of their American colleague Tom Fox, who had been seized with them on 26 November 2005; yet also (in Britain at least) instant criticism of Kember in many sectors of the media. (...)

- / openDemocracy

Abqaiq's warning

Paul Rogers — 2006-03-03T02:07:00Z

An abortive al-Qaida attack on Saudi Arabia's largest oil facility is ominous for the wider region as well as the kingdom.

The western media's coverage of the middle east in the past week has been dominated by Iraq and Iran. A week of violence in Iraq has followed the bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra, with around 450 people killed. The discussion of Iran's nuclear programme has focused on the Vienna meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on 3 March. It may be, however, that a rather neglected incident in Saudi Arabia with indirect connections to both countries will prove just as important a marker for the future. (...)

- / openDemocracy

Iran: Consequences of a War

Paul Rogers — 2006-02-14T02:26:00Z

Paul Rogers would like to thank Dr. Frank Barnaby, Paul Ingram, Nick Ritchie and Chris Abbott for advice, suggestions and information, other members of staff at Oxford Research Group for discussions and support, and Gabrielle Rifkind for hosting meetings in London on this issue. Paul visited Iran during the preparation of this briefing paper and he is particularly grateful to a number of Iranian academics and policy makers in Tehran for valuable insights.

As the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme deepens, Oxford Research Group has published Iran: Consequences of a War by Professor Paul Rogers. This briefing paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the likely nature of US or Israeli military action that would be intended to disable Iran's nuclear capabilities. It outlines both the immediate consequences in terms of loss of human life, facilities and infrastructure, and also the likely Iranian responses.

An air attack on Iran by Israeli or US forces would be aimed at setting back Iran's nuclear

programme by at least five years. A ground offensive by the United States to terminate the regime

is not feasible given other commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and would not be attempted.

An air attack would involve the systematic destruction of research, development, support and

training centres for nuclear and missile programmes and the killing of as many technically

competent people as possible. A US attack, which would be larger than anything Israel could

mount, would also involve comprehensive destruction of Iranian air defence capabilities and

attacks designed to pre-empt Iranian retaliation. This would require destruction of Iranian

Revolutionary Guard facilities close to Iraq and of regular or irregular naval forces that could

disrupt Gulf oil transit routes.

Although US or Israeli attacks would severely damage Iranian nuclear and missile programmes,

Iran would have many methods of responding in the months and years that followed.

These would include disruption of Gulf oil production and exports, in spite of US attempts at

pre-emption, systematic support for insurgents in Iraq, and encouragement to associates in

Southern Lebanon to stage attacks on Israel. There would be considerable national unity in Iran in

the face of military action by the United States or Israel, including a revitalised Revolutionary Guard.

One key response from Iran would be a determination to reconstruct a nuclear programme

and develop it rapidly into a nuclear weapons capability, with this accompanied by withdrawal

from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would require further attacks. A military operation against

Iran would not, therefore, be a short-term matter but would set in motion a complex and long-lasting

confrontation. It follows that military action should be firmly ruled out and alternative strategies

developed.

[February 2006]

Victory in Iraq

Paul Rogers — 2005-12-16T01:27:00Z

The Washington neo-conservatives' new mantra for counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq - “clear, hold, build” - ignores the facts on the ground.

A clash of views about what to do in Iraq has exploded in Washington in the past month. The advocates of withdrawal are making the running, but there remains a powerful body of opinion that believes victory is possible. Its proponents are well represented in the neo-conservative wing of Washington politics and particularly in the neocon house journal, the Weekly Standard. The views expressed in such circles deserve serious analysis, both for their own sake and because they shed an interesting light on arguments about whether a US withdrawal from Iraq is indeed likely.

The neocons are facing unlikely as well as familiar opponents. The former include the veteran Pennsylvania congressman Jack Murtha who served as a marine in Vietnam and has a long track record as a defence “hawk”; this made his 17 November speech calling for the administration to timetable a withdrawal from Iraq particularly compelling and difficult to counter (see “ The Iraq illusion”, 1 December 2005). (...)

- / openDemocracy

The Iraq illusion

Paul Rogers — 2005-12-01T20:06:00Z

The mass insurgent assault in Ramadi, one day after George W Bush predicted "victory in Iraq", exposes the gap between Washington fantasies and Iraqi facts

George W Bush's speech at the United States naval academy at Annapolis on 30 November - the first of a series of speeches from the president and other senior administration figures over the next few days - reaffirmed his determination to stay the course in Iraq. It coincides with the publication of a National Strategy for Victory which both echoes Bush's assertion that the US will not “cut and run” from Iraq while implying that troop withdrawals will start in 2006. (...)

- / openDemocracy

Jordan catches Iraq's fire

Paul Rogers — 2005-11-11T05:14:00Z

In Amman, Jordan, three coordinated hotel bombings on the evening of 9 November killed at least fifty-seven people and injured scores more. In London, on the eve of a government defeat over terrorist legislation, the head of the city's police force, Ian Blair, talked of "chilling" evidence of new terrorist plots. In Australia, police arrested seventeen people in Sydney and Melbourne in their efforts to foil the "final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". Three events this week that cross the globe, forming part of a pattern that hardly George W Bush's boasts that the “war on terror” is succeeding.

These three high-profile events are not themselves definitive evidence of trends in this wider war - we know nothing yet of the nature of the "chilling" evidence, and most of the Australian detainees have yet to be charged. But the Jordan attack, alongside little-reported accounts of a fast-developing link between the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, do offer a clearer idea of the evolving character of the conflict. (...)

- / openDemocracy

Iraq's burning month

Paul Rogers — 2005-09-09T03:35:00Z

A Katyusha rocket attack on United States warships in Aqaba, Jordan, is a telling indicator of the evolving al-Qaida menace.

An inevitable effect of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans and along the Gulf coast has been to push the issue of Iraq off the establishment media in the United States and much of western Europe. Yet the events are connected in at least two ways: the deployment of around a third of Louisiana's national guard to Iraq when they are needed so badly in their home state, and the contrast between the US military's rapid deployment capabilities when fighting distant wars and the failure of federal politicians to invest these resources for social and civic needs in the homeland. (...)

- / openDemocracy