Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I note the minister’s statement but want to draw the Senate’s attention to some very different points of view, as Senator Bartlett was just indicating. If you turn to the Guardian Weekly of last week, you will find a column entitled ‘Blair’s imperialist illusion’ by Simon Jenkins. He talks about the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, whom Australian Prime Minister Howard refers to in the first sentence of this statement, in these terms:

This exit strategy was galvanised last month when the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said he expected coalition troops to leave 16 of Iraq’s 18 provinces by the end of the year. The only remaining American troops would be in lawless Sunni Anbar and in Baghdad. His statement implied a total withdrawal from all Shia provinces, including the British from the south.

Maliki’s statement should have been music to London’s ears. Here was an elected leader eager to appear his own man, to show the militias, clerics, warlords and ubiquitous Iranian agents that he was not a coalition puppet. His view is supported by the shrewd American ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

So why did Blair rush to Baghdad and dismiss Maliki’s request out of hand? His spokesman indicated that Iraq would not be remotely “ready” for such a British troop departure by the end of the year. Offered a window through which to escape, Blair slammed it shut. Told to prepare to leave by the very democratic leader he had helped to install, he refused to listen.

Ditto Prime Minister Howard. The new democratically elected Prime Minister of Iraq is saying that he is planning for coalition troops to leave 16 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, including Al Muthanna, where the Australian troops have been, by the end of the year. But there is no indication in this ministerial statement that Australia is going to comply with the expectations of the Iraqi Prime Minister. As the British commentator said, given the opportunity to leave Iraq, the Prime Minister has slammed the window shut in front of him.

A recent opinion poll in Iraq was conducted for worldpublicopinion.org by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in the United States and fielded by KA Research Ltd/D3 Systems. Polling was conducted in January with a nationwide sample in Iraq of 1,150 people, which included an oversample of 150 Arab Sunnis. Asked whether the US government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq or to remove all its military forces once Iraq is stabilised, 80 per cent overall assumed that the US plans to remain permanently, including 79 per cent of the Shiites, 92 per cent of the Sunnis and 67 per cent of the Kurds. Only small minorities believed that the US plans to ‘remove all its military forces once Iraq is stabilised’.

When the Iraqis were asked what they would like the newly elected Iraqi government to ask the US-led forces to do, 70 per cent of Iraqis favour setting a time line for the withdrawal of US forces. These are the people of Iraq. Asked if it was a good idea for Iraqi leaders to have agreed at the Arab league conference that there should be a timetable for the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq, 87 per cent said it was. That included 64 per cent of Kurds, 94 per cent of Sunnis and 90 per cent of the Shiah.

When the Iraqi people were asked earlier this year whether or not they approved their government endorsing a timetable for US withdrawal, 35 per cent supported it being within six months and another 35 per cent within two years. Overall the figure was 87 per cent. We know the Kurds have looked much more favourably on the occupation; nevertheless, 64 per cent of them wanted a withdrawal. For the Shiah it was 90 per cent and for the Sunnis it was 94 per cent. What is more, asked how they felt a six-month withdrawal would go, 67 per cent of Iraqis thought it would increase their overall day-to-day security, 64 per cent said it would lead to a reduction in violent attacks, 61 per cent said it would reduce interethnic violence and 56 per cent said it would reduce the presence of foreign fighters.

I wanted to put those matters on record because, as Senator Bartlett said, they are almost counterintuitive to the media we read. We have here the Prime Minister of Iraq reflecting the feeling of his people, who put him there, that it is time for the occupying forces of the coalition to leave, that it should be a phased withdrawal and that it should be soon. The Prime Minister of Iraq says he hopes troops will leave all but two of the provinces—and one of them notably is Baghdad, where there is a concentration of this awful violence—and that it should happen by Christmas; and our Prime Minister is making no such commitment.

I think Prime Minister Howard would do well to listen a lot more to Baghdad and a lot less to Washington. There is more at stake than the wishes of the Iraqi people here; there is the security and wellbeing of our own security forces. I am one parliamentarian who does not like to have security forces there not necessarily in the best interests of our country, and we are here to the debate that matter.

I do not think it is in our best interests as a nation to have this prolonged presence in Iraq. I have called today, on behalf of the Greens, for the return home of the Australian security forces, particularly in this milieu in which the Iraqis are saying that that is going to be a good thing and will decrease violence in their country. I might add that the awesome other side of that polling is that a majority of Iraqis support the attacks on US troops. It is an extraordinary situation. Although we cannot stand looking at the violence in Iraq day by day, I think it is a great pity that, since there was coverage of how well the invasion was going, it has gone from the front page to the back page.

I did wake up one morning last month to hear the Mayor of Baghdad say that 1,100 people had been murdered in that city in the previous month. In the last couple of days, we heard shocking evidence about two American soldiers kidnapped, murdered and tortured. How can you, having heard about their kidnap, not feel a chill of utter despair and horror at the circumstances those two 20-year-olds from the United States found themselves suddenly in before they were put to death in that way—and the horror for their families, of course. Eleven hundred people in Baghdad suffered fates like that in one month, and it has been occurring at a rate of more than 1,000 a month in Baghdad throughout this year. It is a horrendous situation. The Iraqis say that, having now established a democratic form of government, they would be better off and there would be less violence if the occupying troops were withdrawn. That is what I would have liked to have seen in this statement.

I would like to have seen some acknowledgment by the Prime Minister or the Minister for Defence that we have an open ear to what the Iraqi people themselves are saying. I know that the United States is building the largest embassy anywhere on the planet in the green zone in Baghdad at the moment. One news report says it takes five minutes to drive past one side of the perimeter fence. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.