Though Tony Blair has been the most slavish supporter of President Bush’s Middle East policy, the British on the ground, partly because of the public disapproval of the Iraq war and partly because they have had the less troublesome Shiite area of southern Iraq to look after, have tended to distance themselves from the Americans.
Implicit in the most carefully worded official British Army comment on US disasters such as Abu Ghraib and the burgeoning violence in American occupied areas was the notion that UK troops were better disciplined, better organized and, thanks to their long experience in Northern Ireland, more attuned to the sensibilities of working with a hostile or distrustful civilian population.
This image has been shattered by the trial in Osnabruck, Germany, of three British soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, depicted in 22 photographs. The photos show that in the early stages of the occupation, the international rules governing the treatment of prisoners were jettisoned and serious crimes were committed.
The victims were apparently looting a warehouse of food. They may have been ordinary people seizing the opportunity in the chaos and uncertainty of conflict to grab sustenance for their families, or they could have been a criminal gang intent on enriching themselves by plundering food that might otherwise have been distributed to locals. Whatever their motives, they were entitled to the due process of law when they were detained by a patrol of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. These soldiers, it is claimed, had been told by their officers “to work captured looters hard”. They thus abused the detainees, in one case forcing them to strip naked and behave grossly.
The British from Prime Minister Tony Blair downward have been loud in their condemnation of the photographs. Their explanation is that the defendants in Germany were acting beyond orders and were an exception to the otherwise exemplary behavior of British troops. This is not, however, good enough. The responsibility for these abuses clearly goes far higher than the accused soldiers. Either by neglect of duty or deliberately, someone more senior than these men permitted these crimes to happen.
Unfortunately for the British, even if this is one of only a handful of illegal acts committed by their army in Iraq, the reaction in the Arab and wider world shows that the damage has been done. The image that the British like to promote of a competent and evenhanded member of the coalition has been shattered. This is only going to make life harder for all British forces in Iraq. It is also going to make the position of the interim government of Iyad Allawi that much more difficult in the nine days before the election, since the Osnabruck trial is likely to be running over the next few days. The opposition will use these latest Coalition crimes for their own purposes. Ordinary Iraqis meanwhile will feel yet further despair that they have once again been let down by those who came to them in the name of stability and justice.
