Recent media coverage has focused on the British public’s ostensibly paranoid reaction to these new residents. Do we want them here or not? Are they taking all our jobs? Or are they just revealing the extent to which the benefit culture has spread in Britain?

These questions and others have been banded back and forth in recent months with increased fervour. It looks like the Poles, who represent the biggest proportion of Eastern European migrants in the UK, are here to stay.

But the views which have most often been neglected or difficult to tap into have been those of the Polish immigrants themselves. What a lot of Britons fail to realise is that a magical aura surrounding Britain spread to Poland during the 2006-onwards immigration boom. The early Poles told stories of buying cars and big houses, and sent home cold hard cash to prove it. And as word spread of the opportunity – and indeed ease – of working in Britain, the Poles quickly jumped on their own bandwagon.

But there was often no Holy Grail in Albion after all. Poles who wanted to come here were often exploited by employment agencies, and when they arrived they were greeted with an unexpected sense of loss and terrible living conditions. Then there was the work itself. Often paid less than the minimum wage, and frequently expected to do a greater proportion of work than other employees, many Poles realised they had received a raw deal.

Now we are faced with a new concern. Before the debate over immigration has even reached its peak, we are beginning to wonder why some Poles are leaving the UK, and quickly putting a check on the boom which brought so many of them here in the first place.

A disgruntled House of Lords committee recently published a report looking into the economic impact of immigration in the UK. As well as grumbling about the lack of net benefits to the British economy, the committee picked up on a characteristic of the latest wave of immigrants: most of them never planned to stay or integrate into the British community.

The improved Polish economy and an exchange rate favouring the value of the zloty has started to pull Poles back, and the realization that the dream of working in the UK is a double-edged sword has begun to set in.

Krzsztof Tomkowski, Grounds Manager for the Polish Association in Slough, had an all-too-familiar initial experience: “It was difficult to make a living in Poland. The earnings were poor and back then the prognosis for our economy didn’t look good.

“I got here through an agency. I paid 1500 zt. for them to provide transport and find me work and accommodation in this country. They organized transport, yes, but nothing else. When I got here I didn’t know what to do.

“After two weeks I was offered illegal work. There was no formal registration and they paid less than £3 per hour – cash in hand. They effectively told me to work non-stop, for 12 hours each day, for £30.”

After a series of trying to get legal employment through different English agencies, and a string of jobs including working at Heathrow Airport and on building sites, Krzysztof found a job with the Polish Association in Slough.

His new employer, Edward Jasnikowski, commented, “We took him on in January and he’s been an absolute gem. He can drive tractors, service engines and do a range of maintenance work on our buildings. Things have worked out well now, but his initial experiences were rather upsetting.”

Mr Jasnikowski, a British citizen, has watched as Slough became home to an estimated 10,000 Polish immigrants.

“The English community has been particularly accommodating in Slough. They were a little slow to accept the new arrivals, but more recently there has been a positive atmosphere.

“Of course, I’ve heard a whole host of stories about Polish workers being exploited. I was involved with a local committee which tried to tackle the problem. Polish people would respond to advertisements in Poland offering work in the UK. They would be picked up by a car in England, their passport and a deposit would be taken and then they’d be left at a house with other Poles. After a few weeks they could be out on the streets.”

Mr Jasnikowski says that the trend of Poles returning home is becoming visible.

“Poland has been making an effort to entice its workforces back. The Poles who have been exploited are most likely to return sooner rather than later.” Krzysztof has said that he has no concrete plans to return, but he was considering it when things weren’t looking so promising.

“It’s also harder to get jobs now. The agencies exploiting immigrants are being disciplined and Poland’s improved economy has been a big factor in attracting Polish workers back to their home country. The advantages of working in the UK are less obvious than they seemed to be before, and when faced with a choice between those advantages and going back to their families, a lot of Poles are starting to choose the latter.”

It’s clear, then, that there are reasons for and signs of Polish workers returning home. This looks set to be the next subject of the immigration debate. As soon as Britons realise that the Poles are going home, attitudes to Poles’ influence on the British economy will change.

There is a flip side to the coin. Some Poles are settling in the UK, and integrating with British communities, like Krzysztof Tomkowski. Monika, who works for a chain of Polish convenience shops in England, spoke to me about her plans to remain in this country for the foreseeable future.

“I work in the administrative department of a chain of Polish shops. At this moment in time, I’m happy here. My situation is slightly different because I’m a single parent and I’m bringing my children up in the UK. From my point of view, it’s easier to live and work here. I came just before the Polish immigration boom, in 2004 and I’ve enjoyed living here because of the provision of social services which aren’t available to single parents in Poland.

“I’m more secure here and more independent than I would be at home. A lot of younger Poles have come over and are going back now. Living here isn’t how they imagined. Polish people are expected to do more than others. I have a friend who works for a transit company in Wolverhampton. His employer expects him to drive the vehicles like the other employees, but also to clean the vehicles and the garages after everyone else goes home. He gets the same wage as they do, however.

“Unlike a lot of the Polish workers here, I’ve been able to take a language course and I can speak English quite well now. Many Poles don’t integrate with the English, they find it very difficult to socialise with them especially. I haven’t found the same problems, though. I have a lot of English friends; I can joke with them, we go out together and get on well.

“I can’t see myself going back soon. It will take too long for the services and situation in Poland to change enough to suit me. Also, I don’t want to move again while my children are growing up – it’s unfair on them. Here they’ve got their education, I have a home, a job and friends – there’s no reason for me to go back.”

Before the immigration debate goes any further, perhaps greater attention should be paid to the real situations of the Polish people. Understanding who these people are, and why each of them has decided to come here is the key to knowing what effects they’ll really have on British economy, culture and society.

Negotiations between the Cultural Ministry of the Generalitat of Cataluña and regional museums are, after recent elections, back on track. Talk of a major retrospective in Barcelona, a touring exhibition, and a permanent gallery space for Armengol’s work is advancing as his story blends with the retelling of one of Spain’s most turbulent eras.

Mariano Armengol Torrella was born in 1909 in San Juan de las Abadesas, a pretty town in the shadow of the Catalan Pyrenees. The second of six children, and the elder of the two sons of Benito Armengol, a wealthy textiles manufacturer, and Francisca Torrellas, Armengol junior was a bright and affectionate boy with unruly auburn hair, and a love of nature. He was voraciously intellectual.

His commitment to study and learning led him in many different directions. The young Armengol loved fishing and patiently made his own flies to catch trout and salmon. Angling became a lifelong joy. He was a regular hill-walker and, later, an accomplished mountaineer. These skills helped him to survive in future years.

He and his siblings learned to swim during regular family trips to the nearby Barcelona coast. They took turns to develop a strong breast-stroke alongside their very large pet dog, occasionally holding on to its tail for safety. The beast seemed to enjoy its role as ‘swimming coach’, under the watchful eye of the family Governess.

However, Armengol’s overpowering love was painting and drawing, and his extraordinary talent was evident from the age of seven. His mother encouraged him from the outset, and a quite remarkable sense of colour and design, and skilful figurative work emerged.

Always an inquisitive boy, his early ‘investigations’ led to a series of death-defying incidents. A wealthy aunt owned one of the first cars to be seen in the province. After learning to ‘drive’ the noisy auto at the age of eight, he was fascinated by the engine and its mass of mysterious moving parts, and he enjoyed hanging upside down over the bonnet to watch the pipes steam, flywheels turn and gears rotate. Hanks of hair were left scorching on the engine block as the shocked boy was yanked free with a souvenir bloody scalp, after toppling over the bonnet edge. Thrilled by the growing sophistication of airplanes, the youngster was moved to launch himself from the upper balustrade of a grand staircase, with braced bed sheets for wings, and was left severely concussed on the marbled floor below. A primal interest in fire led to perilous experiments with petrol and candles, and his hair combusting over a primus stove. The rapid actions of a servant, who wrapped him in a heavy tapestry, saved his life, but left Armengol with a heavily scarred neck and pitted cheeks. These childhood episodes and wounds neither diluted his intellectual prowess, nor the attentions of women in future years.

His industrialist father moved the family to a large, elegant house in the city of Terrassa, which then had a population of 30,000 and was an important regional centre for textiles manufacture. It had played an important role in the development of Spain’s industrial revolution, particularly in the production of woollen fabrics. It flourished further from the 1890s, and has an important art nouveau design and architecture legacy dating from this period.

The Paris of the 1920s and its dynamic artistic community drew Armengol irresistibly. He left Spain to enrol at an Arts academy and continued his studies living on the breadline, telling tales of cold nights under bridges when the cash ran out. But he thrived on the bohemian lifestyle, and made friends with the painters, radicals and free-thinking women with whom he lived.

Armengol’s paintings, with a distinctive, bold style with dashes of impressionism and wonderful atmosphere, began to sell, and his reputation as an outstanding colourist grew rapidly. He held two successful exhibitions, hanging alongside Picasso and Utrillo, and received favourable critical notices in La Gazette des Beaux Arts and mainstream French press.

With starvation allayed, he became very political, and his eye turned searchingly to Spain, then in the midst of one of the most turbulent periods of its history. Post-Russian Revolution, political ideals and pressures for change were building. The desperate poverty of the Spanish rural poor, set against the vast wealth and unbending authoritarianism of the landed gentry, was inflaming resentment and insurrection as never before, and the whole world was watching.

Armengol was in danger under the new regime. He was on a list of ‘undesirables’ being targeted by the Rightists. Using his knowledge of the mountains and climbing skills honed in his teenage years, he fled, crossing the Pyrenees into France, burying his artistic materials on the way lest he be caught and taken for a spy, arrested by the police and, along with many other Spanish refugees, interned in a transit camp.

The French authorities were inundated with Spaniards escaping the Fascists. Armengol was given two choices; forcible repatriation which would result in imprisonment and almost certain death, or joining the French Foreign Legion. He joined the Legion, enlisting with the 2nd Battalion of 13th Demi-Brigade and, following the custom of the Legion, acquired an official pseudonym – Hubert. The young recruit was posted to the Legion’s headquarters at Sidi-bel-Abbes, Algeria. His head was shaved, and he tried to smarten up his ‘Beau Geste’ uniform- always the dandy- by pressing his tunic between two straw mattresses. He wore wooden-soled boots and was bitten mercilessly by insects. But he did try his best to integrate with the strange mix of men that made up the fighting force, many with murkier reasons for taking on a new identity.

Armengol’s poor soldiering skills soon became painfully obvious. Luckily, the Brigade Captain recognised his artistic talents, took him off rock-breaking, target practise and marching drills, and set him to work as a cartographer on topographical surveys. In between mapping expeditions into the desert, he used his pens to create a caricature narrative of his legionnaire’s life.

After Dunkirk Armengol was evacuated to France and fought a rearguard action, before being evacuated from Brest, in North-West France, to Plymouth Sound, and then to Liverpool, where he was interrogated by political and military intelligence officers. Here he was demobilised from the French Army. He had not fired a single shot throughout the hostilities.

In 1941 Armengol was one of thousands of displaced people newly arrived in Britain. He was granted refugee status and official leave to stay. He and two friends, Juan and Agustyn, an Armenian jewellery designer, were befriended by Francisco Madariaga, a restaurateur, wine importer and ‘big noise’ in Liverpool’s long-established Spanish Basque community. With many hours in the day to fill, Armengol found himself, in halting English, talking with the owner of an art materials shop. The man eventually presented him with a box of inks, paints and cartridge paper, which had been ordered, paid for, but never collected by a number of customers. Armengol had the tools to work again. In return for the Basque hospitality he was enjoying, he painted panels of exotic sea food and traditional paellas to decorate the restaurant bar, and designed advertisements and menu cards. The owner was delighted. Here he met Rolindez, the owner’s striking elder daughter; their relationship was to last 60 years. An instant attraction flared between them, but a penniless, already-married (a connection which had taken place some years before) refugee artist was certainly not part of the family plan for their handsome daughter.

Armengol went to London on the recommendation of the International Commission for War Refugees, to work as an artist for the Ministry of Information. He presented his credentials, his caricatures and legionnaire drawings. He found rooms in Hampstead and joined the Latin American Section, then transferred to the European Art Department, led by Edwin Embleton. Rolindez joined the Army and tried to forget him.

A highly sensitive man, Armengol was close to mental collapse after being on three war fronts, rapidly followed by constant bombing in Liverpool and London. The Ministry billeted their valuable propagandist in a tiny village in rural Nottinghamshire, far away from the air raids. He made friends with the villagers of Laneham, who found him truly exotic, many never having seen or heard a foreigner before. He helped on their farms, and drew murals to brighten up their homes. He also painted atmospheric landscapes of the River Trent, a fisherman walking the banks, and a small oil sketch of one of the lads with whom he went fishing. He had fun showing the kids how to make flies, just as he had done as a boy. And he had a relationship with a ‘certain young woman’, whose reputation is preserved to this day. Mister Mario is vividly remembered, in 2008, by the community as a ‘folklore’ figure.

In better health, Armengol moved back to London, coping with hysterical sprints to shelters and the underground to avoid bombing raids, and had two paintings included in an exhibition of Western Art at The French Institute. Other contemporary artists exhibiting included John Piper, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Walter Sickert, Augustus John and Pablo Picasso. Armengol also had his first political cartoons reproduced in British publications, including Tribune. Political cartoons were then published in the mainstream press; the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, and several US newspapers including the Chicago Sun and Boston Globe.

Those Three (Hitler, Mussolini & Emperor Tojo), a collection of Armengol cartoons, was published with a foreword written by his old Catalan acquaintance, Dr Josep Maria Batista I Roca. A second political cartoon collection entitled According to Plan was also published, and he won a commission to illustrate a children’s book, Spanish Fairy Stories, translated by the American poet and novelist, Gamel Woolsey.

Armengol was a lonely man in a restless, dark and troubled capital city. He met Sylvia Lawrence, a divorced Czech refugee working as an MOI translator. They lived together, more out of comfort than grand passion, which diluted still further into an uneasy mutual tolerance lasting more than 50 years. Paintings of a woman with magnificent skin tones date from this period; were they imagined, or were they drawn from life?

In 1951 Armengol’s career really took off. He created a mural for the Houses of Parliament- a montage of chess figures representing the First Parliament. He produced displays for the Festival of Britain, a post-war celebration to launch the country’s brand new future. These included transparent sculptures. The new material used, Perspex, was manufactured by ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). Armengol was one of the first artists to work creatively with this medium. An early experiment was to create a translucent corn on the cob, which was immediately purchased by Brown & Polson, a major corn milling company, and displayed at their Company HQ for years afterwards. These early creative innovations cemented his 20-year designer relationship with ICI, one of Britain’s most successful international companies, during which he won many awards and broke new ground, including being the first British designer to visit Moscow at the height of the Cold War. This included a firm handshake and eye-contact with Khrushchev.

For over 30 years Armengol continued to receive high profile and prestige commissions, won international sculpture and design awards and gold medals, furniture design awards, and worked for some of the biggest companies and institutions of the 20th century, including Dexion, the BBC, ICI, and the British Board of Trade. One of his major works for the government was a sculptural group entitled Brotherhood of Man for the 1969 Toronto World Fair, British Pavilion. The sculptures were then offered at international auction, bought for the City of Calgary, and installed outside the Education Ministry building, where they are still a major tourist attraction today.

The mystery is that Armengol stubbornly refused to hold any exhibitions of his fine art, despite the persistent persuasion of friends, business acquaintances and agents. Was he punishing himself, fearful of failure, or simply perverse? A fear of the possible critical rejection of the work which documented so many periods of his life may have been too worrying a prospect.

In his retirement, Armengol moved to Cornwall, built another studio and worked constantly. He experimented with sculpture again, and produced a collection of fascinating paper sculptures which were then commissioned in vast number by a major greetings cards company, Gallery 5, and sold internationally. They were a development from his habit of customising multiple folded sculptural cards of birds and beasts for friends, who never threw a single one of them away. They were all ‘works of art’.

He died in 1995, and was buried in Nottinghamshire, the county where he had spent much of his wartime years and made many friends. His artwork passed to Rolindez, and then to her daughter, for whom Armengol was a surrogate father, and who owns his Estate.

In 2005 an exhibition of his war cartoons, part-funded by the Arts Council, toured Britain, together with a short documentary film of his time in Nottinghamshire, as part of the WW2 60th anniversary commemorations. An Edinburgh Festival exhibition was sponsored by the Spanish Consulate – the festival theme being ‘Cataluña’. The mayor of Barcelona attended the celebrations, and word broke that there was a dead Catalan with a wealth of wonderful artwork, waiting for recognition in the country of his birth.

Armengol, through his art, may well return at last to his homeland. He might tour the Province, perhaps hang alongside Picasso again, and maybe share wall space with Dali. Recognition in Cataluña of this son of Terrassa is well overdue.

After Pyongyang, Seoul and Tokyo, Beijing is in fact the fourth closest national capital to the headquarters of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, which is a fairly high position on a list of around 30 capital cities which are closer to this particular harbour than Moscow is. So why is this territory not managed from Ulan Bator, or Delhi, or Bangkok, or, for that matter, Darwin, Australia? These are all relative neighbours when compared to the seat of the Russian government. The reason, apparently, is because in 1860, the Russians laid claim to this beautiful and sheltered bay, naming it the Golden Horn in honour of its resemblance to a similar inlet of sea in Istanbul. Though superlatives of distance abound in describing where exactly this formerly Chinese-controlled piece of land is, at that time it was simply the south-eastern limit of a colossal Russian Empire which already had hundred-year-old settlements, much further east in what is now Alaska. And in its way, the Federal Maritime Region has more in common with places like Alaska or north-eastern China in terms of climate, biodiversity and peoples. The region’s heraldic symbol, the Siberian tiger, is surely influenced by the proximity of Harbin in China, which is the location of the largest park for these feline beasts. One of the regional capital’s main streets is named after the Aleut people, the same group who give their name to the Alaskan Aleutian islands. That regional capital is Vladivostok, and a cursory glance at the geographical realities of the city barely tells you the half of what this place is really like.

However, there can be no doubt that the nature of Vladivostok’s surroundings plays a defining role in the appearance and feel of the city, though it often seems to be less an embracement of these surroundings than a struggle against them, which really makes Vlad what it is today. Principally of course, the Golden Horn lies a very long way away from Moscow and, as if trying to force this gaping distance closed, successive governments have left ample evidence of their attempts to include Vladivostok in their own vision for Russia. The Tsarist regime commissioned the building of the city’s classically Russian over-the-top railway station, and more recently, the Soviets erected the ‘Monument to Fighters For Soviet Power in the Far East’ in the centrally located Square of Revolutionary Forces. This towering statue was presumably in some way supposed to be proportional in size to the length of time it took for the Bolsheviks to reach the city; from 1917, the time of the revolution in the west, it took a further five years for Vladivostok to fall, in October 1922.

Today, the city exhibits two quite different struggles against a natural setting. Firstly, the often very steep hills over which Vladivostok is spread pose a practical challenge to developers and road-builders alike. Not renowned for the quality of their work anywhere in this vast nation, Russian pavement makers undoubtedly struggle to fashion concrete or tarmac into a smooth surface on these slopes, and this makes getting around the city on foot an extremely trying task. This is worsened because these sidewalk engineers have at times clearly felt that it was not worth trying to make any kind of walkway along the edges of many of the roads, and the carriageways themselves are no less treacherous, with a complete absence of markings of any kind throughout most of the city. What makes things worse is that in contrast to the Ladas, Skodas and Volgas driven choking and stalling in much of the rest of Russia, almost all cars here are Japanese. This means both that the steering wheels are on the same side as the cars drive, and that local drivers are able to indulge their desire for speed to their hearts’ content in cars which perform far better than their left-hand drive Russian counterparts. The presence of these cars imported on big ferries from Japan gives an insight into the second of the region’s principal struggles. Evidence of the city’s East Asian location is present wherever you look in Vladivostok, from the Korean buses with route maps from Busan and Seoul still plastered to the backs, to the vast sections of imported Japanese noodles in supermarkets, and the popularity of the study of East Asian languages at the city’s universities. But as is the case elsewhere in Russia, statistics for violent crimes perpetrated against people of obvious non-Russian provenance are alarmingly high, and conversations with some locals will reveal views on race which would most likely shock anyone with a ‘western’ point of view. A lack of willingness to embrace what neighbouring countries have to offer also extends to official spheres, where Chinese immigrant workers or tourists feel they have more trouble every year obtaining the correct travel documents for legal entry into Russia. In the opposite direction, China has recently extended a three-day visa-free amnesty period to Russian tourists and traders wishing to cross overland into China to shop or simply look around- an ever more popular pursuit for bargain hunters from Vladivostok. The study of the languages of up-and-coming China and already highly-developed Korea and Japan, which often seems to be the driving force behind Vladivostok’s tertiary education sector, is ostensibly driven by the necessity of being able to be competitive in a difficult and not particularly fluid job market. However, the apparent lack of real academic interest on the part of many students of these languages could merely be symptomatic of an unusually large student body focussing on certain subjects. Unwillingness, in official as well as informal spheres, to open up fully to the potentially very beneficial influences of other nations around the Primorye region can make relations with these countries seem like a vain yet constant struggle. Perhaps it is the very emphasis historically placed on including Vladivostok and its surroundings in any vision of the Russian empire which leads to an overly defensive stance, both of people and government, against nations which are seen to be as much a threat as a partner in the region.

Despite the difficulties for Chinese people associated with doing business in Russia, the markets are thronged with Chinese stall owners selling their goods, and Chinese restaurants are far and away the city’s most common outlets of foreign cuisine. South Korea, Japan and China all have consulates in Vladivostok and even North Korea has diplomatic representation in nearby Nakhodka, so situated to avoid being in the same city as South Korean officials. The USA is the only western country with a full consulate in or anywhere near this part of Russia; Britain’s closest Russian consulate is over 5000km away in Yekaterinburg. The closest thing greater Europe has to any representation in Vladivostok is a recently opened Alliance Française, and an elderly German Lutheran pastor, who has been here since the city opened to foreigners in 1992. The small community of western foreigners in the city is quite a select, some might say odd, bunch, perhaps by virtue of the fact that these people made it here at all, and it is by no means surprising to meet a Frenchman who has cycled here from Strasbourg. But the presence of such westerners in this city is merely a muted return to a way things were in Vladivostok’s heyday, as a frontier town and multicultural centre of international trade. Russians were in a minority here when the grand German department store was built of bricks brought from Hamburg, or when actor Yul Brynner was born in an attractive Art Deco house to Swiss parents. The observant visitor will pick out all sorts of architectural relics of a pre-revolutionary period of prosperity and vibrant internationalism. Just as gold drew prospectors to the American West, the trade and import – export opportunities offered by the multinational community, and excellent natural harbour, brought western Europeans, Americans, Chinese and those Siberians already enticed east out of European Russia by the former boom in furs, flooding to this edge of the Eurasian landmass. Like a USA in mirror image, large settlements in this far-eastern part of Russia are far more spread out than those at the opposite longitudinal extreme of the country, and local railway stations here are named along the lines of ‘Kilometre 94’, simple measurements from the closest large population centre. There is evidence of official enthusiasm to tie Vladivostok to the western American cities which grew up around the same time, on the other side of the Pacific. The hosting of the APEC forum in 2012 is presumably supposed to be seen as an opportunity for Russia to demonstrate its importance in Pacific Rim affairs, complementing its oil and gas diplomacy in Europe.

There is not much danger of Vladivostok going the way that Alaska did in 1867, and becoming property of the US. People here do of course feel disconnected from the political machinations of the Duma and Kremlin, but no more so than Muscovites themselves do. Support for Dmitri Medvedev in March’s presidential election was as high here as elsewhere in the country, and the only real difference that you will hear mentioned between residents of Moscow and Vladivostok is that the former speak more slowly, a linguistic difference as small as that between people’s views.

The material privations in Vladivostok, which manifest themselves in water and electricity problems at the university dormitory in which I was initially housed, were by no means the main challenge to be encountered as a resident of what I saw initially as a mysterious end-of-the-earth kind of a place. Incidentally, these shortages may even have helped me on my path to discovering exactly what this place is, by giving me insight into one of the city’s historically notorious characteristics: it was said that in the 1990s you could have water, electricity or heat, but never all three.

Seven months in a place definitely changes your perspective on what it means to travel, to move house, to live somewhere. You do not lug 43 kilogrammes of luggage halfway round the world just to go backpacking, but equally you do not move house with only a suitcase and a rucksack. It takes at least 14 hours of flying on two separate planes to get home to Britain, and it is actually easier to spend Christmas and New Year in Korea or China. This blurring of the lines between travelling and living, occasioned by being a temporary resident in a place, and yet being here for long enough to want to invest in a few things to make life easier, has undoubtedly fashioned my relationship with Vladivostok. And yet despite the ever-present knowledge that I am a kind of western European ghost passing through here, there has been a gradual yet significant process of getting more used to the city. While every trip to the Tsarist railway station during the first few weeks brought both a sense of wonder that there were trains every day to distant Moscow, and a desire to get on one of them, later visits have seen me much more appreciative of the station itself as an important building in the city in which I live, rather than the gateway to a direct- if slow- route out. My first weekend was spent at the home of an Azerbaijani friend out of town in Dunai, a hundred-year-old settlement east of Vladivostok, highly representative of the small and young centres of population which are dotted throughout the region. Returning to the regional capital after that weekend already felt like a return to something known, at least in comparison to Dunai, and the process of familiarisation had begun with noticeable effects.

Of course the much-discussed location of the city also blurs lines between what one normally understands as East and West. Frequent assertions by residents of this area that they are European have always sounded strange to me, given both the difference I perceive between the local way of thinking, that which I remember from Europe, and the region’s proximity to China and other definitely oriental countries. In the Russian Far East more than anywhere else, a European is perhaps drawn to the historical Slavophile view that Russians are very much their own people, pursuing a middle path between Europe and Asia. In Moscow however, a European can simply justify Russian idiosyncrasies as being a result of the Asian connection, and Asians in Kamchatka or Khabarovsk can attribute equivalent oddities they notice to European-ness. Evidently, as far as location is concerned, Vladivostok is very much locked in Asia, yet the apparent reluctance to accept the presence and influence of its neighbours combined with the obvious non-European characteristics of its population leave you wondering where this region, and, by extension, this country, fits. Stereotypically Russian weather certainly seems keen to stake its claim on the area, as every winter sees the Sea of Japan frozen thick enough to drive on, despite Vladivostok’s latitude being the same as that of Marseilles.

It is easy to grow used to seeing dilapidated buildings, worn down steps and shoddy construction work, to the extent that they are hardly noticed after a period of settling in. But having come to accept such difficulties visual and practical in everyday life, you come to appreciate enormously functioning lifts, clean and navigable pavements and other evidence of a government which cares for its subjects, and a society in which people appear to care for each other because they are given the space and time to do this. Under the Soviet Union from 1958 until 1992, Vladivostok was off limits to foreigners, and Soviet citizens alike, as the headquarters of the Russian Pacific Fleet, and in this sense, Russia had its own Forbidden City, just as nearby Beijing had had years before. Only time will tell whether Vladivostok and the Primorye region choose to draw on a more recent Chinese, Japanese or Korean example of modernisation and development, while still making the most of its ties to the West. It is a city in a country which lies partly in Europe, and has the legacy of the international cosmopolitan centre it could be once again.

The media is characterised by a “constant tone of aggression” which leads to an ever increasing loss of confidence in public life.  What worries Clegg most of all is the selectiveness and self-appointed superiority of the media.  “Come election day, the BBC Political Correspondent is far more important than any politician.  What he or she thinks is what the public hear, not what the politicians actually say.”  There is, as such, a “deathly embrace” between politics and press – a destructive reliance, which is a constantly tightening vicious circle. “Many people don’t even read the newspapers these days. I bet if you asked Varsity readers, you’d find that most are very selective about their news, and get most of it off the internet.” I am not sure that he has done his research on this note; as far as I have noticed, most Varsity and Cherwell readers also have a copy of The Sun under their arm, disproving his point entirely.

Brown is currently appealing for the legalisation of the use of intercept evidence in criminal proceedings. Nick Clegg couldn’t be more in favour of the initiative: “this represents a move to more precise judicial process, deployed to the fullest possible extent. Up to now, this evidence has been used covertly.” I mention that Shami Chakrabarti, Director of the human rights organisation Liberty, expressed concern that the use of this intercept evidence might act against the interests of the defendant. He might not know what evidence would be used against him in the proceedings. “Nonsense,” says Clegg. “Shami is a great supporter of the legislation.”

“No, hitherto, government strategy has been to circumvent due process.  With this new initiative, we will be able to use the intercept evidence in full daylight.  We need to move faster;  there can be no time wasted.  I am all in favour of extending questioning without charge, but, to be honest, if we didn’t delay as we do at the moment, there would be no need for any further extensions on the 28 day limit. Most jurisdictions sanction such a process.  And we need to allow further scope within the Threshold Test, which “requires Crown Prosecutors to decide whether there is at least a reasonable suspicion that the suspect has committed an offence, and if there is, whether it is in the public interest to charge that suspect (CPS website).”

And then there is a phone call, which confirms to me that the Leader of the Liberal Democrats is a real man, too.  Busy he might be, but there is always time to delay any business to coo down the “other line” to his wife, discussing the children’s tears this morning with paternal concern. And all partly in Spanish. “Libertad” was mentioned.  Are they plotting the next government coup?!

Well yes; Nick Clegg is, in effect, plotting the next coup. He terms the Lib Dems an “anti-establishment party” in the face of the homogenous opposition, united by their faith in “overcentralisation.” I mention that there is a general consensus concern of the loss of adversarial politics in today’s parliament, and that this is widely acknowledge to be due to the over-population of the centre of the spectrum. “Don’t agree with the premise. In terms of civil liberties and environment, yes, but otherwise, there is a lot between us. And to add to that, I don’t think that the ’40s/’50s style of debate we saw in parliament, with true opposition, is lost.  Then the differences were between capitalism and communism.  Now it’s between authoritarianism and liberalism.”

“The ‘command and control’ concept, thank God, has left the Labour Party now, but the Party has no soul any longer.” The Lib Dems, however, “have always had their fair share of eccentrics and characters”- which will surely mitigate against any ‘loss of soul.’   Clegg has great faith in constituency politics. The constituency is the “bedrock guarantee” that makes the Westminster system so unique. MPs have to be fully accountable for their actions, and they have to win over their constituents.  He mentions David Howarth in Cambridge. “He is, in my opinion, the most intelligent MP in parliament, but that didn’t get him his seat.  He knows Cambridge inside out, he knows all the local issues. Ok, maybe in the rural south-of-England seat, the Conservatives will always win, and the same in some industrial north-of-England seat for the Labour Party. But that doesn’t mean MPs can be complacent. People get bored, they start getting fed up.”

No discussion with an MP is complete without a quick turn to Iraq. I ask if, in retrospect, the war could be legitimised by being a viable force against terrorism. “A war is only legitimate if it makes the place safer.”  “So how are we going to destroy this terrorist training ground in Iraq?” I ask.  A Humphrys-style cat-and-mouse ensues.  I keep chasing, he keeps running away.  Clegg has no answer.  We just need to “win over the hearts and minds of the people involved” – with liberalism, presumably. A better example of the politician’s stereotypical cop-out there could not be.

“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.