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Christmas Adjournment

I acknowledge the progress in the north, but the people there did not have the same sanctions as the rest of the country, because they had an exclusion zone. I am not in favour of Iraq being broken up, and I shall come back to that point later. The coalition military presence fuels the insurgency, which is viewed by many in Iraq as a war of national liberation to end foreign occupation. The activities of the overseas forces—such as what happened in Abu Ghraib, torture, the use of white phosphorous, extraordinary rendition, and even destroying police stations with remote detonators to free soldiers dressed as Arabs—alienate the Iraqi people, and are recruiting sergeants for the insurgents. I want to share with the House some extracts from the brilliant Glen Rangwala’s November paper ““What would disengagement mean?””, because it puts the argument extremely well:"““The reduction in Coalition troop numbers to significantly lower levels than at present””—" that is being mooted at the moment—"““would reduce the . . . casualties of Coalition troops simply by virtue of there being fewer Coalition personnel in the country to attack. The Coalition draw-down plan is not conditional upon an abatement in the overall level of violence, despite their occasional public claims to this effect: indeed, the reduction in troop numbers over recent months has occurred alongside a heightening of the insurgency, with a level of attacks that has been greater than at almost any point since the invasion occurred: 92 attacks occurred on average per day in early November 2005, compared with 52 per day in June 2004 or 70 per day in May 2005.""One possibility is that the reduction of Coalition troop numbers will take away the primary reason for the insurgency. That is, if US troops were not so visible on Iraq streets and roads, the Iraqi population—particularly those who have actively supported the insurgency in the past—will no longer consider themselves as living under occupation, and thus be less hostile to the Iraqi government and more readily drawn exclusively into the peaceful political process . . . This, at least, is what the optimists within the Coalition have been arguing during most of 2005 .””"