Robin Simcox: Why are the New York Times publishing apologies for the Taliban?

Frank Lindh - the father of John Walker Lind - has just had a piece published in the New York Times in which he laments his son's unfair incarceration.

John Walker Lindh is no petty criminal. He was convicted in the US in July 2002 for fighting with the Taliban and carrying weapons while doing so, being sentenced to 20 years. He was known to have trained in Afghanistan in summer 2001, attending al-Qaeda's notorious al-Farouq training camp (which also hosted several of the 9/11 hijackers). While there, he met Osama bin Laden.

Yet to Lindh's father, this is by the by. True, his son may have been fighting for the Taliban, but this was only 'like Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War.' His path to radicalisation was apparently an 'unusual odyssey of learning and adventure'. What's more, Lindh is 'idealistic', 'spiritual', has 'a wry sense of humor' and is fluent in Arabic. So how can he possibly be a bad guy? The piece goes on to argue that now that bin Laden is dead, Lindh should be freed - an odd interpretation of the US justice system.

I'm not surprised that Lindh's father wants his son released. I am surprised that - at a time when the US is still mired in a war against the very organisation that Lindh was fighting for - the New York Times thought fit to publish the rant of an upset father that seeks to exonerate his actions. It's easy to forget the nightmarish excesses of the Taliban and the horrors of what they inflicted in Afghanistan before the US led invasion of October 2001. Anyone who fought for that group was not an idealist. They were part of a death cult.

Robin Simcox: What is it with Democrats and interventionism?

By Robin Simcox

It's harder to imagine a much more relucatant warrior than President Obama over Libya. Still, as Bill Kristol says, setting up a no-fly zone now is better late than never. There has hopefully been immediate pay-off, with Gaddafi declaring a ceasefire. Whether he plans to sticks to that is open to debate.

Setting up the no-fly zone was the right decision, even if the international community got there slowly. It would have been terrific if a genuine grassroots movement across the Middle East deposed the Mubarak's and Gaddafi's without western intervention. However, once the blood-letting began, it was imperative to take action. Outside the moral dimension, an emboldened Gaddafi returning to power is in no way beneficial to our, or the region's, wider interests.

However, all this should not disguise what a truly pitiful performance this has been from Obama. Over the last few weeks, he has resembled the invisible man. He has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into involvement on Libya. In the past couple of days, senior White House officials have been briefing The New York Times as to why the leader of the free world was so keen to sit this one out. The reasoning goes:

• they are reluctant to involve themselves in an armed conflict in another Muslim-majority country
• interference could provoke an anti-American backlash
• involvement in a third war would lead to military overstetch
• Libya is not a vital security interest

For someone whose presidential campaign ran pretty much solely on an idealistic basis, it is interesting to see how calculating and amoral Obama is in power. There is something very Kissingerian about the way Obama sees foreign relations.

This follows a general trend of Democrat Presidents being increasingly adverse to interventionism. It is now over half a century since an instinctively interventionist Democratic president - which I would classify Kennedy as - was elected. Johnson may have escalated the Vietnam war, but he still inherited it. Carter encouraged the US to look inwards, not outwards. Clinton would have not have involved the US in Kosovo were it not for Blair. All these presidents have extolled democracy promotion and human rights at various times, yet have often been reluctant to do much about it.

On a more positive note, it has been an extremely impressive diplomatic triumph for David Cameron. The Prime Minister, like Obama, is essentially a domestic politics type of guy who views foreign affairs as a nuisance rather than something to define his legacy. Unlike Obama, however, Cameron has shown a greater moral fortitude and willingness to get things done on the international stage.

Robin Simcox: Events in the Middle East are vindicating the neoconservatives

In recent weeks, the Prime Minister has given two vaguely neoconservative speeches - one in Munich on multiculturalism, and the other in Kuwait on democracy in the Middle East. Yet he also has a track record of misrepresenting neoconservative thought, just in case any potential voter mistook him for one. Everyone knows neocons are pretty dastardly, so if you are not for them, then that must mean you're an OK guy.

It was therefore unsurprising to see Cameron comment in Cairo this week that 'I am not a naive neocon who thinks you can drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000ft'. This is the third time, by my reckoning, that Cameron has used some kind of variation on this theme. At the Conservative party conference in 2007, he said that 'I think that if we have learnt anything over the last five years, it's that you cannot drop a fully formed democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet.' Since nobody has ever tried to do such a thing, I would have thought that would be quite low on the list of all the things that were learned between 2002-2007. Cameron continued down the same track in a speech in Pakistan in September 2008; though at this stage he was less sure at what height democracy could actually be dropped from, revealing that 'we cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet'.

These are perhaps throwaway comments. But language matters - and so does differing truth from lies. I would be fascinated to know which neoconservative the Prime Minister thinks he has ever heard suggest democracy can be imposed from 40,000 feet. Surely if you were trying to do so, you would launch bombing campaigns but not commit troops to the ground; you would not care about elections, democratic structures or fostering a basic civil society; and you would certainly not risk your troops' lives. In short, you would act how Clinton did in Sudan in 1998. Yet it is clearly not Clinton that Cameron is aiming his criticism at. It is Bush; the president who, by committing blood and treasure in the way he did to Afghanistan and Iraq, did the precise opposite of trying to drop democracy from 40,000 feet.

Cameron also said in Kuwait that

"Democracy is the work of patient craftsmanship it has to be built from the grassroots up. The building blocks have to be laid like the independence of the judiciary, the rights of individuals, free media and association, and a proper place in society for the army. It can’t be done overnight."

What on earth does the Prime Minister think has been happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not precisely that? Either Cameron has bought hook, line and sinker the grossest misrepresentations of US policy or - more likely - he is so keen not to be portrayed as a neoconservative that he is happy to distort what previous US/UK policy over the last decade or so actually was.

The problem for Cameron here is that what has been happening in the Middle East is proving the neocons right - that no race or culture wants to spend their lives living under murderous dictatorships and 'strongmen'. Neoconservatives have been arguing this for a long time - and it is the realists who are increasingly coming round to this point of view. So who were the 'naive' ones here?

Robin Simcox: The LSE and dictatorships

The London School of Economics (LSE) says it is reconsidering its links with the Libyan government as a 'matter of urgency' following that government's slaughter of its own people over the last few days. Those links are significant. In January 2010, the LSE accepted a £1.5m donation from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation - headed by Saif Al Islam Al Gaddafi (who has just gone on state TV to proclaim 'we will fight to the last bullet') - towards their Global Governance department; in December 2010, Colonel Gadaffi delivered a lecture via video-link; and LSE director Howard Davies has acted as an economic envoy to Libya. 

Those hoping that there wouldn't be much to consider from the LSE's point of view underestimate how embedded our universities often are with Middle Eastern dictatorships. The LSE, especially, has past form. In 2006, the LSE received £9m from the Emirates Foundation, effectively an arm of the UAE government. In 2008, it named a new £2.5m lecture theatre after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the former leader of the UAE whose Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up 'regularly published anti-Semitic and conspiracy theory literature and promulgated anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism through its speakers and official publications'. At the time, the LSE student union executive committee said that 'to accept a donation from a state with such a well-documented history of human-rights abuses is simply unacceptable. Further, to name a new lecture theatre after a dead dictator with suspected links to Holocaust denial and antisemitism is completely beyond the pale.'

Furthermore, in 2007, the LSE Global Governance department received £5.7m from the Kuwait Foundation. Half of the members of the LSE's Kuwait programme advisory committee are Kuwait Foundation employees. And these are just some of the examples that the university actually makes public.

Universities are increasingly going to cash-rich Middle Eastern dictators to make up for funding shortfalls. In return, these dictatorships get legitimacy; its representatives are placed on university management committees; and there is evidence of the money influencing the kind of events a university puts on and the research it does. Unfortunately, the LSE's acceptance of cash from the Gaddafi's of this world is not an isolated incident.

(Further reading and a shameless plug: A Degree of Influence: The Funding of Strategically Important Subjects in UK Universities and the controversy surrounding the Iranian government funding the University of Durham this time last year).

Robin Simcox: Lib Dem MP says school that calls non-Muslims 'the worst creatures' is 'doing its job properly'

By Robin Simcox

Channel 4 will tonight broadcast a documentary which reveals exactly what has been going on at a British faith school and madrassa. Undercover reporters have recorded grizzly footage of the type of education being handed out at Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Birmingham and a madrassa in Keighley, west Yorkshire.

In Keighley, the documentary shows pupils being regularly punched and kicked by their teacher. A man has since been arrested on assault charges. In Birmingham, there are no physical attacks but rather a serving up of depressingly familiar sectarian fare. Students are taught that 'disbelievers are the worst creatures' and that people who have 'less than a fistful of beard...you should stay away from him the same way you should stay away from a serpent or a snake'. If you want to avoid being sent to hell and attacked with forked iron rods, then women must not remove their headscarves and shaving, dancing and listening to music are big no-no's. There is also the bizarre claims that Hindu's 'drink piss' and have no intellect; and that 'You're not like the non-Muslims out there. All that evil you see in the streets, people not wearing the hijab properly, people smoking... you should hate it'.

On cue, a supposed liberal has immediately leapt to the defence of a school teaching social segregation, hatred of non-Muslims and religious apartheid. John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley, says that 'this kind of documentary is ideal fodder for the EDL. Channel 4 is putting the safety of children at risk by critcising a school which is doing its job properly.'

Robin Simcox: Democracy promotion and the problem of legacy in U.S. politics

It is generally Ronald Reagan, not George H.W. Bush, who is given credit for ending the Cold War - despite having been out of office for three years when the Soviet Union packed it in. Similarly, it is Reagan who is associated with funding the Afghan mujahideen, despite it being Jimmy Carter who first approved covert aid of anti-Soviet forces in 1979.

Potential revolution occurring in the Middle East at a time when President Obama has been slashing George W. Bush's democracy assistance aid budgets abroad could be a similar quirk of history. This is especially relevant in Egypt. Relations between Bush and Mubarak were generally icy, with the Bush White House keen to fund democracy promotion outlets in Egypt. The same cannot be said of Obama, whose administration's approach to democracy promotion in Egypt was spelt out as early as December 2009 by Shadi Hamid, Director of research at the Brookings Institute in Doha:

As early as March 2009, the Egyptian Ambassador Sameh Shukri happily noted that relations with the United States were improving because Washington was dropping its demands “for human rights, democracy, and religious and general freedoms.” Meanwhile, in her first trip to Cairo the same month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Egyptians that “conditionality is not our policy.” More striking, however, are the drastic cuts in democracy assistance to Egypt contained in the Obama Administration’s 2010 budget request. 

President Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq on national security grounds, not to promote democracy; but he was keener to push a liberalising agenda in the Middle East than any of his predecessors, and certainly his successor. Yet it is Obama who will be in the White House at a time when some of these Middle East government's either fall or are forced to vastly reform.

What is still unclear is whose policy was the shrewder. Paul Wolfowitz is optimistic, saying that 'we have a better chance of a good outcome if we support positive change than if we support the status quo'. I tend to think he is right - we have to encourage democracy, and should no longer be in the business of propping up dictators for short-term gains which only foster longer-term resentment in these countries. However, if full and fair elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, not too many of these newly elected democracies would be pro-Washington. The large amount of seats the Muslim Brotherhood gained in the 2005 Egyptian elections - even in the face of government rigging - should make us nervous about what is to come.

Robin Simcox: Theresa May has by and large got it right on Control Orders

By Robin Simcox

It took a long time for them to get there, but the government has by and large got it right on control orders. The system will remain until 2011, and even then the fundamentals that make control orders vital - the electronic tagging, the ban on foreign travel, the prohibition from meeting other terrorist suspects - will all remain. In the face of the terrorist threat, the government could not credibly sweep the system away entirely.

Furthermore, some of the modifications the government has made to the control order system are only cosmetic. For example, 16-hour curfews being replaced with a mandatory overnight residency lasting 10 hours amounts to essentially no change at all. Some terrorist suspects are not under curfew at all as it is and, under the current system, the average curfew time for controlees was already 10 hours.

However, praise on the Government's decision should only be qualified. It is the nature of coalition governments that compromise will be the norm. However, there was something especially pertinent about Yvette Cooper's comment in the Evening Standard this week that 'this Review should be about keeping people safe in their homes, not keeping Nick Clegg safe in his job'. There has also been some truth in Labour's accusations that national security concerns being played out in the press - with briefings and counter-briefings over the future of control orders rampant over the last couple of months - is unedifying and not worthy of HM government. 

It is also worth a reminder as to why this debate was happening at all. Control orders were only introduced because deporting certain foreign national security threats risked contravening the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (Article 3 - prohibition of torture). Such individuals were then detained at Belmarsh prison until that too violated the ECHR, under Article 5 (right to liberty) and Article 14 (prohibition from discrimination). As long as we are determined to strictly adhere to the ECHR in the way we treat our terrorist suspects, some form of control order remain essentially the only option we have left.

These are fundamental issues that successive governments have refused to deal with. It is time that they started. Because until they do not, the conditions that make control orders vital are here to stay.

> Patrick Mercer MP: The odious aspects of Control Orders remain, sadly, largely untouched by the Home Secretary

Robin Simcox: Control order detainee - and darling of the Left - proves he was a terrorist all along

Mahmoud Abu Rideh is a former control order detainee who was allowed to leave the UK last year. He has long been a cause célèbre for those trying to prove how unpleasant the British government is, and how evil we must be as a nation to use control orders.

The Guardian devoted a puff piece to him, and published letters written in his defence. The Independent allowed Rideh's wife to write a whole article about what a stand up guy he was. Cageprisoners, run by former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg, devoted a piece to Rideh and urged their readers to 'take action' in his defence. According to Helping Households Under Great Stress (HHUGS), run by Begg's wife, Lord Nazir Ahmed escorted Rideh around the Houses of Parliament. Amnesty International ran an entire campaign between 2005-2009, titled 'Lift the control order on Mahmoud Abu Rideh immediately'.

The entire time, Rideh was portrayed as an innocent man driven hopelessly insane by his control order; he was forced to use a wheelchair; he was suffering from depression; he was suicidal. Amnesty's director, Kate Allen, said that 'all Mahmoud Abu Rideh wants to do is escape the hell that the UK government has put him through for the last eight years'.

Well, apparently not. It turns out what Rideh actually wanted to do was join up with his al-Qaeda pals and fight jihad. Al-Qaeda web forums are reporting that Rideh was recently 'martyred', along with several other terrorists, in Afghanistan. He obviously managed to summon up the strength to pull himself out of his wheelchair and get himself on the battlefield.

That Rideh would end up being killed fighting jihad is not that great a surprise to those familiar with his case. Having entered the UK seeking asylum, he immediately set about spending his time here constructively, disseminating literature for a terrorist group. He was assessed by the Security Service to be in contact with senior members of al-Qaeda and was even referred to in correspondence between al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Musab al-Zarqawi, the now deceased head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Furthermore, despite being on state benefits of £11,000 a year, his bank account received payments of almost £150,000, which quickly found its way to Afghanistan. The Security Service assessed this as being for terrorist purposes. Understandably not wanting Rideh to do any more damage, the government placed him under a control order.

All of this information was easily accessible at the time, and still is. Presumably the Guardian, Amnesty International, Moazzam Begg, Lord Ahmed et al accidentally overlooked it. Still, I look forward to them correcting their stance now.