If you look down the right hand side of this blog, underneath my blogroll, you’ll see a section of links called Campaigns. The first in that list is a pretty image which links to a campaign that ran from about 2007.
It calls for the British government to help the those Iraqis’ that helped the British by being interpreters. Those interpreters put their and their families lifes in danger to help our armed forces. In the eyes of some of their countrymen, and others who sought to influence the course of Iraqs’ future, these interpreters were traiters and were hunted, and beaten and killed. Those Iraqis asked for our help, for refuge. The British government dragged it’s heels and lots of interpreters died.
They deserved to be treated better. Many, many of them didn’t get it.
Although I have added and removed many links from the sidebar since 2007 that one has remained. An important issue that never really got resolved.
The button links to a video (by Bloggerheads) that explains a little about that campaign. It is just as relevant to a new campaign for Afghan interpreters that are facing the same problem after helping our armed forces in their country.
About six years ago, bloggers from across the political spectrum banded together for a campaign to offer asylum to Iraqi interpreters to British armed forces. It was a long and bumpy campaign, and we didn’t get all that we wanted at the time, but it helped to get more Iraqi interpreters into the UK than if we had done nothing.
Now it’s time to revisit the issue, for interpreters who have helped British armed forces in Afghanistan.
The reasons this is the right thing to do are straightforward:
1) These interpreters have helped save the lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan.
2) They put their lives at risk, from extremist elements, to help British forces.
3) If we abandon them, it hurts British peace-keeping missions in the future. Locals will be less willing to help British armed forces in the future if they think they will be abandoned at a later date.
Whether you were for or against the war in Afghanistan, helping Afghani interpreters and their families is the morally righteous course of action. This says nothing about whether Afghanistan was right or wrong – only that these people need help, and should be offered asylum in the UK for their services.
The true extent of the Labour government’s involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001 has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.
Previously secret papers that have been disclosed include a number implicating Tony Blair’s office in many of the events that are to be the subject of the judicial inquiry that David Cameron announced last week.
Among the most damning documents are a series of interrogation reports from MI5 officers that betray their disregard for the suffering a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan. The documents also show that the officers were content to see the mistreatment continue.
Lest we forget, the man is all but blind, and the idea that he – even he – would deliberately set out to insult a grieving mother is just stupid. If he really didn’t give a shit, he’d get his secretary to type the letters and then sign them at the bottom, and none of this would ever have been a story in the first place.
I completely agree but it’s a note of condolence not a shopping list. You get these things right not go ‘fuck it that’ll do’.
The arguement that Gordon is nearly blind and that if someone else had written it or he’d knocked it up on a computer means he doesn’t care just doesn’t stand up.
As Justin says, It’s a letter of condolence, even if your writing is scruffy, you at least get the name correct. Nothing says you don’t care more than getting the name wrong, especially when you’re the prime minister with all those people around that are supposed to help and advise you.
If Gordons’ eye sight is that bad, why are we expecting him to hand write letters? Did Blunkett get it in the neck every time someone else wrote a letter for him?
What’s worse? A load of unintelligable scrawl or a typed letter with a real signature at the bottom?
it [The Sun] seems a little hazy on history as well, as this passage from the editorial makes plain:
Mr Brown has taken the country to war but is ducking responsibility for the conduct of it. The tradition of our country is that in wartime, the Prime Minister takes charge.
Lloyd George led us in World War One and Winston Churchill in World War Two.
Margaret Thatcher led from the front in the triumphant Falklands War in 1982.
John Major took charge in the first Gulf War of 1991. Tony Blair assumed full responsibility when we invaded Iraq to topple Saddam. And he did the same over the liberation of Kosovo.
Except Gordon Brown hasn’t taken the country in Afghanistan; Tony Blair did, in 2001. We’ve been there ever since. Brown as chancellor provided the funds for the war, it’s quite true, but was not personally responsible for taking us there. He also wasn’t prime minister when we entered Helmand in 2006: the defence secretary then was John Reid, who famously said he hoped that we would leave without firing a single shot. Then there’s the fact that we’re there in the country, not just on our own, but as part of the ISAF NATO coalition. Additionally, if we’re going to split hairs, Winston Churchill didn’t lead us into WW2; Neville Chamberlain did. The war in Afghanistan is also not, in any meaningful sense, a war with specific aims like all of those the Sun lists. It’s far more comparable to what we were doing in Iraq from the fall of Saddam up until our exit this year: peacekeeping, reconstruction and providing security. Missions, like Operation Panther’s Claw, which had the specific aim of clearing out Taliban so that people could vote in the presidential election, have been few and far between. As also argued above, we are quite clearly not in “wartime”.
I would like to post the lot, but that would be a little too much, I think. So, go and read the rest
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
“It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her,” the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
