Industrial fishing is carried out mainly by multinational companies, who benefit from concessions given by the Ecuadorian government, and by national investment groups. However, there is a large price to pay for this progress. Fishermen work hard in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions, all year round. The immigrant workforce has driven down the cost of labour and increased working hours;  as in every rapidly developing community, this has made the cost of basic living rise dramatically.

The majority of fishermen still work on small fibreglass or wooden boats, leave at 4 pm, rarely return before 7 am, and earn an average of around $20 a day. However, most families now have enough money for basic healthcare and school books, and, although no statistics have been compiled, most people agree that children begin to start to work notably later – at 15-16 rather than 10-11 years old.

This burgeoning development could not be further from the reality of life in any of several hundred undeveloped subsistence fishing communities stretching down the southern coast of the country. More than 12,000 families are dependent on the micro-fishing industry, still using traditional onshore netting and trapping techniques, and fishing from small motorboats and canoes. In the tiny settlement of Estero de Platano, only a few hours north of Manta, life has changed little in the last 50 years. Geographical and economic isolation has presented a barrier to the development witnessed in other parts of the country.

The men of the village fish for pipas del mar from 5 am until 9 am; the fish make $3 to $5 each when sold. The fishermen’s lives are slow and quiet, and the rest of the day is spent netting food, cultivating fruit and cocoa in the forest, talking, playing cards and staring out to sea, waiting for the tide to change. Estero de Platano has not fallen victim to any social difficulties, like alcoholism, which have had such a damaging effect on similar communities.

However, the future holds an increasingly bleak prospect for the younger generation. The inevitable northwards creep of tourist-related development from Manta, coupled with the increase in passing traffic, is bringing young people into contact with an ever increasing number of things they cannot afford, yet desperately want – from mobile phones and CDs to antibiotics and shampoo. Efforts to ease the path of development and boost the local economy by national NGOs have been largely unsuccessful; all have now left, disheartened by lack of enthusiasm and progress.

That’s not surprising. In the short term, all the development efforts have meant a great deal of work for less money, and no guarantee of success. Add to this the fact that many of the inhabitants, particularly the women, have rarely, if ever, journeyed even as far as 30 km down the coast to the nearest town, and do not really understand what the NGOs intended to achieve. They live as their parents and grandparents lived, and have no real engagement with or exposure to the process of social change. Change, indeed, has usually meant for the worse – more noisy and messy traffic, more pollution in the sea, more poaching. It seems likely that most of the older generation will be able to live out their lives without any alteration to traditional existence. What the future holds for the youngest is anybody’s guess.

The strike, which ended this month, came in the wake of a series of difficult periods in the Chinese-Zambian relationship. Two years ago, more than 40 miners were killed in a blast in a Chinese-owned explosives factory at Chambishi, blamed on lax regulations. A year later, the giant 30 year-old Mulungushi textile mill, originally funded by Beijing, was forced to close after a flood of cheaper Chinese goods effectively strangled its business.

Many are calling for ‘equilibrilisation’. The most prominent case of African ‘push-back’, as the phenomenon is known among Africa and China experts, is in South Africa. Although a vocal advocate of a Sino-African partnership, partly as a counterbalance to the US-dominated global architecture, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has delivered the most poignant warning yet of the potential dangers of the new relationship. In late 2006, he told the South African Students Congress that African states ran the risk of getting stuck “in an unequal relationship” with Beijing, such as had developed between Africa and the former colonial powers.

This warning came as the South African government put the finishing touches to a deal on quotas for Chinese textiles, aimed at propping up the struggling local garment industry. Analysts do not believe the quotas have had much effect, but symbolically they represented South Africa drawing a line in the sand, sending a powerful signal of assertiveness.

China was recently hailed by The Economist as the ‘New Colonialist’, a title and a sentiment certain Chinese Officials clearly resent, given the rebuttal found in the People’s Daily, which, like all other Chinese media, is State controlled. According to the People’s Daily, “some Western media have attempted to discredit Sino-African relations by propagating their African version of the ‘China threat theory’.” There is a saying in Namibia that, as the sun rises in the east, so do all good things come from the east. On a recent trip to Namibia, I was surprised to find just how far China’s influence had extended.

Namibia is a vast country, the size of France and Germany put together; with a tiny population of 1.4 million. Although you are unlikely to see many clear signs of Chinese culture, the indirect impact of Chinese investment is evident. China has undeniably boosted the Namibian economy, with its demand for raw materials; it has also created an abundance of well paid jobs. For better or worse, many Namibians are leaving behind their traditional lives and values to work in the mines and factories that have sprung up to meet China’s demand for natural resources. In most of Africa, the structure of employment is such that, in industry, the demand is mostly for male workers. Consequently, men tend to migrate alone, leaving their wives and families behind, at least initially.

This has shaped the perception of the sex roles, which tend to associate women almost exclusively with the task of housekeeper and mother. There is a lack of data about the involvement of women in the migratory process, owing to the numerical preponderance of males in the migratory streams and the ‘invisibility’ of women who, as wives, merely accompany or join migrant males.

The propensity to migrate correlates closely with educational attainment. Migrants are generally younger and better educated than the rest of the population in their place of origin. Migration itself is linked to the pursuit of formal and informal education in the cities, where most post-primary institutions and apprenticeship opportunities are concentrated. Since most wage employment is found in cities, rural youths who invest heavily in education must, out of necessity, invest also in migration, if their education is to pay off.

China repays its debt with large injections of investment into Namibia’s infrastructure and her people. The Chinese Embassy in Windhoek offers numerous scholarships for further education. On a visit to the Namib-Rand reserve, I met a guide who was about to begin training as a pilot on a scholarship from the Chinese Embassy. He told me that they were offering a large number of scholarships like his to pursue higher education.

Over the last 30 years, China itself has witnessed one of the largest cases of rural-urban migration in history, and the situation is still escalating. There are 103 million urban migrants in Chinese cities but, by 2025, there will be 243 million; the total urban population of China will be nearly a billion. More than 40% of China’s urban population will be migrant within two decades, putting huge pressures on the ability of local governments to provide adequate services for their urban dwellers, according to a study by the Mckinsey Global Institute. It seems plausible that this process may, to a certain extent, be due to China’s labour shortage which is feeding greater import dependence. Likewise, Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest rate of rural-urban migration. This is driven, in part, by greater employment opportunities instigated by the building of new factories – most of which are Chinese investments. People are moving to the cities and often there is nowhere for them to live; townships continue to expand and for a large proportion of the poor in urban Africa living condition are deteriorating, as the strain on resources increases. Furthermore, the improvements in infrastructure cannot keep up with the pace of population growth in urban areas.

But China also has its supporters. Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal’s president, recently defended China’s growing economic role in Africa in an article in the Financial Times, writing that “China’s approach is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronising post-colonial approach of European investors, donor organisations and non-governmental organisations.” He observed that the Chinese model for stimulating rapid economic development has much to teach, not only Africa, but also Europe. Through direct aid, credit lines and reasonable contracts, China has helped African nations complete infrastructure projects in record time- bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, dams, legislative buildings, stadiums and airports. The President concluded that “In many nations, including Senegal, improvements in infrastructure have played important roles in stimulating economic growth.”

China has also been a much needed friend to Robert Mugabe. With the possibility of change in the air, Chinese companies have been actively exploring opportunities in Zimbabwe, which boasts rich deposits of gold, uranium, platinum and diamonds. Chinese Deputy Commerce Minister, Gao Hucheng, who was in Harare last month on a trade mission, said Beijing had invested $1.6 billion in Zimbabwe in 2007, although analysts say Chinese investment has yet to take off. The Chinese Government seemed to ignore the possible moral objections to supporting Mugabe. China’s role in Darfur has also been heavily criticised.

China may appear as confident and ambitious as ever. However, in the current economic climate even the Chinese government admitted its outlook for 2008 is grim. The financial crisis which has brought several banks in the West to the brink of bankruptcy- Bear-Stearns, Northern Rock, and several of the state owned banks in Germany- have led some commentators to view this as a seismic shift in the global economy. If they are right, who will be the winner and the losers in the new order?

In October 2007, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China took a stake of approximately 20% in Standard Bank, a South African bank with total assets of US$119 billion, for just US$5.5 billion. China is investing throughout the developing world, but most notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, not only mining its resources, but also taking strategic stakes in its businesses. When the world economy emerges from the present downturn, China will be propelled further forward; that is, if its government doesn’t make too many mistakes. But will the African nations, with which China is forming such strong ties, move forward with China?

According to Open Democracy, an internet-based forum for democratic debate, Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China, has said he is the most worried man in the world. Consumer spending in China is low, representing only 36% of the country’s GDP, yet inflation is higher than ever. There is a labour shortage in the manufacturing sector, and market forces are causing wages to rise. Although a large middle class has been emerging, many workers still suffer from poor living conditions, and there is a serious power shortage. Then there is Tibet.

The Beijing Olympics have been orchestrated by the Chinese government to mark China’s emergence as a superpower. As China tries to deal with the major economic, environmental, social and cultural issues that confront it at home, the cultural impact of its investment in Sub-Saharan Africa may not be high on its list of priorities. But for Africa, the stakes are high: undoubtedly, Chinese investment has brought significant economic benefits, but the loss of traditional values and social disintegration are a high price to pay.

The desperate search for the next and best story has led to countless violations of privacy, as well as scores of incidents, where unconfirmed suspicions have been blown‐up into stories that are taken to be as good as factual. Relatively insignificant issues have been irresponsibly exaggerated into massive front‐page controversies. Truly significant global issues have been abandoned for news stories designed to shock shamelessly. Quentin Peel, International Affairs Editor at the Financial Times, feels strongly that “sometimes we get obsessed by very small and irrelevant stories, when there are really big international stories that I think people would be interested in if they [the media] showed how relevant it is to us.”

Not one to understate the importance of his profession, Peel shares politicians’ concerns regarding the government’s relationship with the media: “I think we do have a responsibility way beyond what we think we recognise, and I feel that the danger in this country is that the Parliamentary debate has moved into the media… no one’s turning‐up for Parliamentary debates, but they’re debating everything on Newsnight, or the Today Programme.”

As Peel puts it, “We as journalists have allowed ourselves to be used and the spin doctors to use us, and we despise ourselves for allowing ourselves to be used.” He notes an often‐used trick that guarantees that the media play the government’s tune. “It’s become a very sophisticated exercise of the ‘selective leak,’ giving to only a favoured few journalists… and then what happens is you think ‘well, I must write something about it because nobody else has got it,’ and the fact that it’s totally anodyne rubbish or a rather bad idea… you’re unlikely to be as critical of it if you’ve got it before everybody else.” As he acknowledges, this covert action is not isolated to the British government. I asked Mr Peel whether he had been subject to this trickery from anyone else: “Take the European Commission, they might do the same, you know… ‘Here’s an exclusive speech by the President of the Commission, you know’ … it’s quite a long time since I’ve been had by that. I was probably had when I was reporting on Brussels in the 1980s, but the whole spin machine was not quite as aggressive then as it is now. But I do think there’s fault on both sides.” For time‐pressed journalists who need their big scoop quickly, spin doctors can provide perfect front‐page fodder that, thanks to the direction of the spin they put on a story, will emphasise good news and inevitably suppress the bad.
The buzz of the frantic 24‐hour media, with many networks vying for punters’ precious time, has also led much of journalism to pursue ever more scintillating stories – not because they are important, but because of how controversial or frightening they may be. Take the intense press coverage of the McCann family’s ordeal. “The Obsession with the McCanns is completely insane and has become, I would have thought, incredibly boring for the readers and viewers… Undoubtedly it was a subject of conversation, but to the extent that the media covered it? – I just feel that part of the problem is that people invested in sending their journalists to Portugal, then they had to justify the expense by using their copy.”

Murdoch and the Media: “Poisonous”

No look at the state of the world media would be complete without considering the greatest and arguably the most infamous of media moguls, Rupert Murdoch. With over 53,000 employees worldwide, his News International Corporation spans divisions of TV, newspapers, radio, websites as well as books and other media. Mr Murdoch has such influence that it is widely believed that he uses it to support his own interests. Mr Murdoch can slant the political coverage of his news media – using The Sun, the News of the World and The Times newspapers, as well as Sky News TV in the UK, and The New York Post and Fox News, together with his recent acquisition, The Wall Street Journal in the US – in the direction of a particular political party or candidate. Consider the run‐up to the Iraq War in 2003; all of his more than 175 newspapers were in favour of the war. Now, Murdoch’s acquisition of The Wall Street Journal will mean that he will have yet more influence in the 2008 US Presidential race.

Mr Peel regards Murdoch as “Poisonous… I think that the Murdoch Empire is far too dominant in certain markets – it’s far too dominant in the British market – and I’m very worried about Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal, which depends fundamentally on being above any hint of commercial profit from any of its reporting. Now one of the most insidious aspects of the Murdoch Empire is the way he uses his Newspapers to promote his television and his television to promote his newspapers. If the Wall Street Journal were dragged down that path, it would be devastating for its reputation as an objective newspaper.”
In a world where it is considered wrong for a government to control the media, it is arguably even worse to allow a third party to have such a significant influence on the ‘news’ that people read. It is no surprise, then, that Simon Wilson, the BBC Middle East Bureau editor until just recently, has noted in his blog that some Americans now prefer to consult the BBC for news. That said, despite his opinion regarding the Murdoch Empire, Peel argues the entire US media is at fault, “[in the period before the past 18 months] The US media was cowed by 9/11 into an absurdly patriotic silence. Then, I think, the BBC was very important in being a voice that Americans tuned to to find out what was really happening, because their own media wasn’t giving it to them.”

The BBC: “Scared of its Own Shadow?”

“The BBC is an extraordinary invention which has been successful, and I think it would be an absolute tragedy if it were destroyed. At the same time, I do think the BBC has become a rather monstrous bureaucracy… if you work inside it you find it is desperately bureaucratic.”

It is natural that we consider the BBC separately, given that it does not rely primarily on ratings to survive, and that it is a non‐profit, government‐sponsored but not government‐controlled organisation. But, like the rest of the media, there have been major shortcomings in the BBC’s editorial standards. Last year, the Corporation was to broadcast a full day of programming, themed Planet Relief, intended to highlight issues of climate change; only at late notice was it abandoned due to editorial concern that it was trying to influence opinion on the issue. Veteran anchor Anna Ford resigned from the BBC out of concern that the organisation was becoming increasingly bureaucratic; given their 228‐page “editorial guidelines”, set out in 2005, this ‘protest resignation’ seems justified. Peel agrees: “The problem with the BBC is that it’s an insane bureaucracy, and they do everything over the top, I mean that [228‐pages of ‘editorial guidelines’] is just bloody silly.” He likes the idea of a ‘journalist’s rule book’, though – “I think we should have a book of rules, but not 228‐pages – perhaps 20 pages, maximum.”

But things are not as bleak as they may seem; the BBC is politically neutral and, particularly since the Gilligan‐Kelly affair in 2003, has gone to extraordinary lengths to verify its sources. Moreover, anyone who has seen or heard a politician being interviewed by the likes of Jeremy Paxman or John Humphreys will agree that the BBC goes beyond simply accepting the announcements of politicians; they delve into the details. Moreover, in his 15th January speech, BBC Director‐General Mark Thompson put forward his plans for the BBC to develop the bonds of trust and confidence between it, public authorities and the general public of Britain. The measures he aims to implement intend to “make output which explores ideas about policy and policy choices, rather than simply react to what’s been said, and also try harder to expose serious spin.” If this happens, then moving the Parliamentary debate from the House of Commons and into the news studios may actually be a good thing. It may, at least, save us from having to endure the childish and self‐demeaning political bickering of Prime Minister’s Questions, if ever we want to hear from the government about what they are really doing.

Given the problems we have seen escalate in today’s journalism – a lack of time and attention to important issues, ridiculous exaggeration of smaller ones, disproportionate focus on “personal interest” issues, political bias – Mr Thompson’s pronouncements are long overdue. His measures put the BBC forward as a way of dealing with these problems. The BBC has no private shareholders to satisfy, and so does not need to participate in senseless sensationalism in order to bump‐up ratings and profits. Instead, as a public service, it can, should, and often does look thoroughly at much of the government’s rhetoric. It is good that the plans intend to broaden the scope of this and try to repair some of the problems present. As Thompson put it himself: “… I believe it’s important that someone makes the first move, and that no one is better placed to do that than the BBC.” His support of the “aggressive” nature of some of the BBC’s political interviews is all the more reassuring.

Mr Peel is concerned that regulation of some shape or form may be unavoidable, however: “If we don’t put our house in order, I think we will inevitably face regulation.” He regards the issues of violations of privacy as pivotal, particularly in terms of the recent case of Prince Harry going to fight in Afghanistan. “… we are trampling over questions of privacy, which is why I think the Prince Harry issue is very interesting and, in a way, very important. The papers recognised that they had made his life, and national security, actually impossible.” He discusses the media‐blackout agreement that was made regarding Prince Harry’s deployment. “It is a precedent, and I think it’s a precedent that we may see more of. But it’s one the newspapers will have to take very difficult decisions about…”.

Peel suggests a “Hippocratic oath for journalists, you know… ‘thou shalt not invent things’.” Continuing the analogy, I ask whether a GMC‐esque institution for journalists is not out of the question. “We’ve got the Press Complaints Commission, it’s getting a bit more serious, but I think we have to go further… I think we have to have some basic rules… and if they don’t want to abide by those rules, then they don’t sign‐up, and run the Daily Star, or whatever it may be.” So, it seems Mr Peel is all for internal regulation, but certainly not external. Mark Thompson also rejects tougher outside regulation of the press – it is obvious why this is. A look at the effects of media censorship in other countries is ample evidence to show that government‐imposed restraint of the press would open the doors to manipulation.

In its current state of maturity, the British media faces a grave threat – that of itself. One might even say that the free media is at risk of destroying itself, but that might be a tad sensational.

“Regardless if Osama is killed or survives, the awakening has started, praise be to God, ” Bin Laden declared less than 3 months after 9/11. Sadly, he was right.

But the Stop the War agenda, lamenting blood on our hands for the sake of oil, is too simplistic.  It conceals more than it reveals.  “Setting the record straight” means re-examining the unheard case for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, in terms of the War on Terror, and looking hard at Afghanistan and the wider conflict. Crucially, understanding the history means we can make a serious attempt to make sense of where we are now.

We need to examine that past- of the Bush administration’s moral vision, and of initial failure in Iraq tempered by recent success.  If you rub your eyes, blink, and look at the political and military realities at the start of 2008, there is reason for cautious optimism both in Iraq and, in a wider context, in the War on Terror. However, we must be realistic about the enemy we face, the tools at our disposal, and the length of the road ahead.

The rise of radical Islamism is the key starting point. Fundamentally, this is not a fight that we have courted. Instead, it is one forced upon us by a movement which has successfully combined theology with the anger of excluded young men.

It was the 1960s and 70s that saw violence first justified in theological terms that were distinctively modern, crucially by Sayyid Qutb, in his manifesto for jihad, Milestones, born out of the ferment of post-Nasser Egypt. The 1980s provided the catalyst, as the mujahideen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. During this, the tribal badlands of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province became a recruiting ground and a staging post for foreign fighters.
Islamabad colluded by allowing the indoctrination of scores of poor young men in the free ‘education’ offered in the madrassas, as long as their anger was directed away from Pakistan, in Kashmir and in Afghanistan. Hands-on support was offered not-so-covertly by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and indirectly by CIA dollars, spent under the logic of the Cold War.

The 1990s saw the incubation of the Islamist networks, as a jihadist diaspora copied habits of violence learnt in Afghanistan in various local conflicts, in Chechnya, the Balkans, Algeria, Indonesia, Somalia and a host of other murderous smaller-scale insurgencies.
The 1990s also saw the establishment of training camps, crucially in the sanctuary provided by the Taliban, to teach aspiring young mujahideen basic military skills. ‘Fly to Pakistan, make your way to Peshawar, and there someone will take you across the border,’ recruits learnt in the radical mosques that still serve as recruiting centres in major cities across the world.
The warning signs were there, in the abortive 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, the East African embassy bombings of 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, all orchestrated by the now trademark suicide bombers. But these went largely unnoticed, until Al-Qaeda burst into global consciousness with its decisive act of provocation: 9/11.

The accusation is often made that Bush should have recognised 9/11 for just that, a provocation of no long-term significance.  Following the successful campaign in Afghanistan in late 2001 he should have left the war on terror to the intelligence community. Discrete police work, in alliance with host nations, would have been sufficient to roll up the Islamist networks. Invading Iraq was,  by this argument, doing exactly what Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had planned, and served only to spread chaos, making growing conditions perfect for Al-Qaeda.

This accusation fails to do justice to the real case for war in Iraq. There is, sadly, no question that the urgency of the need for war against Iraq was, in public pronouncements by both US and UK politicians, based on the imminent threat posed by WMDs. Sadly, again, it is also clear that the intelligence professionals were pressured into asserting knowledge of WMDs that went beyond what the evidence actually showed.
However, the public pronouncements by the neo-cons in Washington in 2002 and 2003 repeatedly made a far-reaching, profoundly moral and pragmatic justification for regime change in Baghdad.  The aim was “to advance liberty and peace in that regime” (Bush), or to give “the freedom loving peoples of the region a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace” (Cheney).
Pious rhetoric, perhaps, but the policy documents of the Project for the New American Century, the leading neo-con think-tank, give the contours of a substantial iceberg below the waterline of Bush’s national addresses.

By creating a stable, democratic regime in the heart of the Middle East, the conditions could be set for organic change across the region, as ‘the-man-in-the-souk’ would realise that liberty is an accessible reality.  As individuals looked across the border and realised that the Arab world had a free, prosperous, democratic regime in its midst, so the pressure would grow for the monarchies and dictatorships to reform, and govern in the interests of the people and not the princes. This would not happen overnight, but given success in Iraq in 5 or 10 years, then change could be seen in 20 or 30 years more widely.
The swamps of economic, social, political and sexual repression and exclusion, so prevalent across the corrupt states of the Middle East, would thereby be drained, as the heady mix of democracy and prosperity took effect. In this way, the conditions under which the poisonous Islamist extremist ideology prospers would be denied. This would be real victory in the War on Terror.
‘And after all, America is particularly successful at nation-building’, said the neo-cons – ‘just look at Germany and Japan. So now that, in 9/11, we have a new Pearl Harbour, we should seize the casus belli and set about remaking the Middle East in our liberal image. Iraq is particularly eligible for regime change, because it is governed by a dictator universally acknowledged as despicable, has a tradition of secularism, and has oil to pay for its rebuilding,’ was the prevailing sentiment.

Whether you agree or not, the neo-con vision is long-term, and is based on the moral superiority of a pluralist, open society. It accepts short-term pain, to address the root problem of the conditions that cause Islamism to flourish, rather than merely pursuing the people who are trying to blow us up.

The claim that Saddam harboured Al-Qaeda was always spurious.  But by being so obviously false, it obscured the long-term connection between Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and the War on Terror. OIF is concerned with addressing the repressive conditions so prevalent in the Middle East that has made the War on Terror necessary in the first place.

The claim that Saddam harboured Al-Qaeda was always spurious.  But by being so obviously false, it obscured the long-term connection between Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror.

The tragedy of Iraq has not been the immorality of the invasion in March 2003, but the failure to plan for ‘Phase IV’ and the appointment of incompetent leaders to Baghdad in 2003 and 2004. Key among these were Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, the first two heads of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the first senior US commander.
Three disastrous decisions had a major effect in generating an insurgency in late 2003.  ‘De-Baathification’ stripped out the middle management who make society work. However tenuously, in Saddam’s Iraq, there was electricity and rubbish collection. Secondly, the instruction that all Iraqi soldiers and policemen should leave their uniform and go home instantly created 100,000 men with no salary, hungry families, a gun, and lingering resentment.
Thirdly, the US State Department was addicted to Friedman over Keynes, regardless of the unique post-invasion economic situation. This meant that large capital sums were not spent on cash-for-work type projects capable of giving unemployed Iraqis something to do, and thereby dignity and money. Instead, large contracts with American firms were favoured, taking months to be signed, and even longer to translate into change on the ground.

But where are we now? The key event since 9/11 was another Al-Qaeda provocation: the ‘Golden Mosque’ bombing in Samarra, in February 2006. A Shia shrine, it was this that ignited the always volatile Sunni/Shia sectarian divide over the summer of 2006. Imagine the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral scattered over London for comparison.
Civilian casualty levels rose inexorably, peaking at over 3,000 in February 2007. The vast majority of these were a result of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, particularly the feared death squads ‘cleaning out’ mixed Baghdad neighbourhoods.

The troop surge was Washington’s last throw of the dice, bringing total US troops in the country up from 132,000 to 168,000.  This has undoubtedly had a calming effect in Baghdad, and casualty levels have now dropped to those not seen since early 2005. But it remains the case that the military can only ‘hold the ring’ to enable the Iraqis to do politics. The genie of sectarianism must be coaxed back into the bottle.
And it is here that there is cautious − very cautious − ground for optimism. Late August 2007 saw the ‘Battle for Karbala’. The significance of this was largely missed in public discussion. In it, the Shia prime minister Maliki faced down the men of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, on their home territory, with the increasingly effective Iraqi army.  Sadr subsequently called a 6-month ceasefire for the Jaysh Ar Mahdi, the militia he controls. If Maliki has the political strength not to be held hostage by extremist Shia factions, he may yet be strong enough to shape the tricky detail of policy on hotly contested issues on a non-sectarian basis, like the national division of oil wealth.
With this is the remarkable change that has occurred in the Sunni heartlands in 2007. Tribal leaders have now recognised that reconciliation with the Shia is their only long-term hope, and have turned against Al-Qaeda, creating local militias dubbed the ‘Awakening Councils’.

What both these indicate is that the Iraqis might − just possibly − be beginning to recognise that neither the Shia nor the Sunni can be the winner that takes all, because the other side has too much to lose. Compromise is required − this may finally be the prolonged, painful birth of a genuine political process.
All this could change, of course. If the progress won in the last 6 months is not consolidated by the summer, a return to sectarian violence may result. ‘Victory’ is no longer defined solely by the heady rhetoric of liberation.
The National Security Council’s September 2007 report instead sought to point the way towards drawdown in Iraq, whilst avoiding three worst case scenarios: humanitarian catastrophe, a failed state providing sanctuary for international terrorism, or a regional conflict.
The last is clearly looking to the danger posed by Iran; here, not so much the spectre of mullahs with their fingers on a nuclear button, but the more realistic and therefore more dangerous possibility of a puppet-Shia administration in Baghdad taking orders from Tehran.
What this points towards is the likely shape of an enduring American presence in Iraq, if US casualties rise again or a post-Bush administration loses patience. A substantial contingent of US Army forces (at minimum divisional strength) would likely be maintained. Such a force could intervene decisively in Baghdad against any attempted coup, and could be swiftly reinforced by designated reserves airlifted in from the US, or driving up from Kuwait.
Additionally, small teams of embedded personnel would continue to work alongside the Iraqi military; they would call in close air support in tactical situations as required, and continue to build logistic and training capacity across the Iraqi military as a whole.
The US Embassy political mission would retain its role: both representing US interests and helping build capacity in the Iraqi ministries. However, this would be hunkered down behind the formidable walls of the largest embassy building in the world − currently being built on the banks of the Tigris in Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Finally, the existing, substantial and extremely successful apparatus used to hunt Al-Qaeda leaders would almost certainly retain its current freedom of action. This consists of special forces, cued on to targets by a sophisticated array of tactical and strategic intelligence-gathering assets. Agent running, communications intercepts, and long-loiter imagery gathering systems such as Predator all contribute to building a general picture.
But often the most important intelligence comes from exploitation at the scene of capture – seizing computers, mobile telephones and paper documents, as well as tactical interrogation of detainees. This task force would continue to ensure that the terrorist leadership in Iraq must always be watching their backs
The fourfold structure above could be maintained indefinitely, and would ensure that however bad things got for the average Iraqi, US strategic interests were safe-guarded.

But what of the prospect for the wider war on terror? More than anything, Afghanistan shows the simultaneous necessity, but also limited utility, of military force. Men who are willing to kill and have a vision of how society ought to be, will only be stopped by other men, also willing to kill, with a different vision of how society ought to be. Such is the uncomfortable truth of the ‘state of nature’ between societies; violence is the bottom line.  We have an advantage in this: the power for coercion of the modern, high technology, professional military has to be seen to be believed — our ‘hard’ power is nearly unstoppable, and it is the first guarantee of our liberties.

But to resolve conflict, coercion cannot be the final answer; it is recruiting the soft power of ideas and money that proves the harder but more effective solution.

But to resolve conflict, coercion cannot be the final answer; it is recruiting the soft power of ideas and money that proves the harder but more effective solution.

NATO’s problem in Afghanistan is lack of troops. With only 41,700  ‘boots on the ground’ across the country, fighting the Taliban has been termed “whack-a-mole”. Whenever you chase them out of one area, they pop up in another, and there are never enough coalition forces to hold the ground that has been taken.  The Canadians, having cleared the volatile and deadly Panjwayi District in Kandahar Province in 2006 and again in 2007, have compared it to ‘mowing the lawn’.
NATO’s hard power is indispensable in establishing the space in which the Government of Afghanistan can begin to govern in remote, traditionally lawless areas.  But it is the effective application of soft power, in terms of the tangible benefits of roads, hospitals, schools, governance, and corruption-free policing, that actually achieves the effect we are seeking: that of building a stable country.  And this takes much longer.
There is strong evidence that the Afghans themselves strongly approve of the NATO mission − with a 71% approval rating in a September poll by the BBC. The challenge NATO faces is to ensure that the ‘soft’ benefits of our presence are seen quickly enough – or popular consent will be eroded, possibly irreparably.

Musa Qaleh is the case study.  When British troops walked out in October 2006, it was under a deal brokered with the local elders that they would keep ‘irreconcilable’ Taliban out of the town.  Reports of the town ‘falling’ in February 2007 conjured up certain images: bearded men on Toyota pick-ups, with staring, kohl-lined eyes high on both tea laced with opium and the blood lust of summary executions; brandishing RPGs and AK-47s and roaming around the desert, about to swoop on to Kandahar, à la 1996.

The reality was less dramatic. A prominent ‘reconcilable’ Talib was persuaded by his more radical brother, who had just narrowly survived an attempt on his life by a NATO air strike, to contest for power with those local elders who had signed up to the deal a few months earlier.  The financial reward of controlling the local, important drug bazaar also looms in the background. ‘Control’ of the town was established by holding the local elders hostage, daubing some graffiti in the District Centre, and killing some people believed to be spies.
So British troops held off, until ‘re-taking’ Musa Qaleh this last December − this time with Afghan forces in the lead, and a plan for consolidating control.

Playing “whack-a-mole” is not just costly in terms of coalition lives, but also costly in terms of consent by the local populace, whose homes and fields are the ones that get bombed.  Fighting is the easy part; the politics and development afterwards is harder, so it only makes sense to “go kinetic” and start shooting when there is a thought-through “non-kinetic” package to follow-up.

So the NATO mission in Afghanistan is a race against time.  Can the development project progress fast enough to counter the loss of consent caused by persistent fighting? But it is also a race that will take a long time. Everything indicates that this will be a prolonged campaign, 10-20 years at minimum. The question has become: although eminently winnable, do the democracies of the West have the stomach to see Afghanistan through?

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have their own specific complexities, and both seem set for the long-term. A phrase fashionable in US military circles at one stage was the label, “The Long War”. To show how seriously they mean this, the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review set about the restructuring of the American military to address the need for discrete, smaller-scale ‘expeditionary’ and asymmetric interventions across the globe.

The reason why this will take some time lies in the root cause of radical Islamism: a heady mix of theology, with a perception of loss of honour by Arab nations, exacerbated by widespread but local grievances, which causes young men to think it noble to be a suicide bomber.This is a structural problem, and will not go away in the short term. Bin Laden’s narrative of cosmic struggle, couched in the resonant appeals to the Caliphate and loyalty to the umma, the global Muslim community, appeals widely.

It is for this reason that Her Majesty’s Government’s counter-terrorist strategy, labelled ‘Contest’, starts with “prevent”. It is worth quoting this at length. It seeks to tackle the “radicalisation of individuals” by:

• tackling disadvantage and supporting reform by addressing structural problems in the UK and overseas that may contribute to radicalisation, such as inequalities and discrimination
• deterring those who facilitate terrorism and those who encourage others to become terrorists by changing the environment in which the extremists and those radicalising others can operate
• engaging in the battle of ideas by challenging the ideologies that extremists believe can justify the use of violence, primarily by helping Muslims who wish to dispute these ideas to do so.

Only subsequent to this do we pursue terrorists, protect ourselves and our infrastructure, and prepare for the worst case scenarios.

“Regardless if Osama is killed or survives, the awakening has started, praise be to God, ” Bin Laden declared less than 3 months after 9/11. Sadly, he was right. MI5 now reports that it is tracking 2,000 individuals, 200 terrorist networks and 30 active plots in Britain, plus a significant number of sympathisers.
The scandal is that the public debate in Britain has been so infected by post-Iraq suspicion that, when Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller reported these figures for the first time, the Today Programme presenters seriously asked whether this was simply a bid for more funding. Only a deep myopia about the history of global Islamism could allow her warning not to be taken seriously.

But cautious optimism is warranted. The West has and will absorb the damage of terrorist spectaculars, so long as a nexus of rogue states, WMDs and Al-Qaeda-inspired cells are prevented. The longer the conflict goes on, the more radical Islamism’s true colours are revealed: deeply anti-libertarian, founded on anger and resentment, murderous, with no long-term plan for political reform other than seizure of power and merciless oppression.

Such is the lesson in miniature from the ‘Sunni triangle’ in Iraq — those to whom Al-Qaeda’s ideology immediately appeals, nevertheless turn their backs when they meet it at first hand.

So Bush and Blair should be more than piqued by Galloway’s accusation. Tough times are undoubtedly still to come, particularly for Iraq around the draw-down this coming summer as the surge runs out. There will be a moment to ‘pull the troops out’, either because we have bequeathed two stable regimes in the Middle East, or because the fighting is interminable and not worth coalition lives. But, right now, the West’s need is for some steadfast moral resolve.