13/06/2014 Newsnight

Has a decade of Western attempts to bring order

The Iraqi army we paid blood and treasure to build is falling

Did the 2003 war achieve anything of lasting value at all?

A decade on is the country on the way to a violent and bloody breakup?

We're devoting tonight's Newsnight to the crisis in Iraq.

Extremists swear to continue their journey of destruction

across Iraq, taking their fight all the way to Baghdad.

Anyone who gets in their way - soldiers or civilians - gets killed.

But President Obama tells what is left of Iraq's Government,

Today's chaos may have some of its roots in Western failures,

but no Western boots will touch Iraqi ground to help now.

Tonight we'll hear from Iraq and Washington, asking

First with his analysis our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban.

After the shock of this week's set backs, Nouri Al-Maliki's Government

has started to fight back and he has done so in Samarra, where ISIS

fighters arrived this week. It is home to important Shia shrines.

Nouri Al-Maliki was in Samarra today. His visit to the city is

significant, because it is in the Sunni heartland of Iraq and it is an

attempt to show that the armed forces are in control of strategic

cities, even to the north of Baghdad and it is a symbolic visit, because

it is home to one of Iraq's most sacred Shia shrines and in 2006 an

attack there started a sectarian war. There is a determination to

prevent that from happening again. ISIS can advance rapidly, because it

is a guerrilla army. It headed past Kirkuk, where Kurdish fighters are

in control and then tried to take Samarra, where it has met fierce

resistance. Some fighters have pushed to the south. But ISIS is

probably overstretched and government forces regrouping. In the

long-term, I think the odds favour the Iraqi state, which has plenty of

resources and advanced weaponry and has some good special operations

forces that they can deploy against the militants in the north. The

problem is that with today's announcement by Ali al-Sistani we

may be entering a new phase where it is not just the Iraqi military that

is fighting, but Shia militant and we could enter a new phase of the

war. But the military have a long way to go. One deserter who fled to

Mosul told the BBC about the collapse of military leadership.

Transour commanders did not fight in 2004 I used to see the American

officers, all ranks fighting alongside them and leading them. The

problem is not because of the soldiers. If they had support,

physical and mental, they would fight. But they saw that their

commanders didn't fight. And a religious fight back has started

too. The Shia clerical leadership issued a call to arms in Karbala.

From here we call on all citizens who can carry weapons who can defend

the country to volunteer and join the security forces to fulfil this

sacred goal. With that, the volunteers headed for the coaches,

ready to take the fight to ISIS. Today's sermon carried instantly

into action. But empowering sectarian forces may sharpen Iraq's

divisions and show up the crumbling of state institutions. It is those

that t United States by its initiative hopes to strengthen. The

US said it is looking at options to support the Nouri Al-Maliki

Government, but America's quid pro quo is that Iraq's leader behave in

a less sectarian fashion. We are not going to be able to do it for them.

And given the very difficult history that we have seen in Iraq, I think

that any objective observer would recognise that in the absence of

accommodation among the factions in Iraq, various military actions by

the United States, by any outside nation, are not going to solve those

problems over the long-term and deliver the stability we need. So is

America about to mount air strikes in support of a Government that has

been backed by Iran? Well we are not there yet. But the US will step up

deliveries of weapons, more intelligence too and try to

co-ordinate the actions of Iraqi forces better. But if the position

of Nouri Al-Maliki's Government continues to slide, it is possible

that American air attacks could go ahead. ISIS has not been stopped,

but a fight back has started. It extended to the Government blocking

some Jihadist twirt -- Twitter accounts. But what could follow is

prolonged civil strife. Paul Wood has been on the front line and he is

in Iraq for us. You were in Kirkuk today what, did you witness? Well

until yesterday, Kirkuk was shared between the Kurdish and the Iraqi

army. But the Iraqi army simply melted away and the Kurds assumed

control and that means that the front line now, the last line of

defence against ISIS is the Kurdish peshmerga and two people were killed

yesterday. What struck me yesterday was the commander there, a colonel,

showing me a car park full of armoured vehicles and tanks

abandoned by the Iraqi army. There was a huge pile of helmets. The

army, which has been funded by the Americans to the tune of $15

billion, simply did not stand andifies in places like Mosul. --

stand and fight. Nouri Al-Maliki said this is where the fight back

begins. But we spoke to a Sunni tribal sheik who, leads a militia,

this is a man who two months ago had his son, wife and two members of his

family murdered by ISIS. He is not going to cut and run. But he said,

unless the British and Americans help us with air strikes, I don't

know how long we can hold out. What is ISIS trying to achieve? Take over

the whole country or just create chaos. Not just the whole country,

they want to reshape the Middle East and dissolving the borders created

after the World Wars and create a new state. But these the shock

troops of a wider Sunni uprising targeting a Government that many

feel is sectarian and dominated by Shi'ites. The terrorist that ISIS

inspires means many Shi'ites are grouping around sectarian ground.

With us now is Liam Fox and PJ Crowley, a former US sectarian of

state and And I'm joined by the international relations direct for

Iraq's ruling party. Liam Fox, isn't it an abdication of the UK and the

United States to stand back and think about what to do when this is

up fold something First, I think the Nouri Al-Maliki Government is

suffering from the fact that it didn't agree a status of forces

agreement with the United States, which would have led to the Iraqi

officers continuing to be mentored and trained and there is a price for

that. There is a price for the armaments that have gone into Syria

to support rebels there. It is not clear what the Government of Iraq

wants. It is vital however that ISIS are stopped, because the

consequences of them achieving their objective would be catastrophic.

Although Barack Obama has said that America wants s to stand back, were

Nouri Al-Maliki to ask the United States for something like air power,

it would be difficult for the president to resist that, given the

consequences of what ISIS's success could be. The west must stop them.

If they do not, then someone else could step in, Iran? You point to

one of the potential consequences of the success of ISIS, in drawing

other powers into the struggle in a catastrophic sectarian war. What

does -- What does stopping them look like? Boots on the ground? The

Iraqis must use the military forces they have and we have seen them in

the past being able to take on insurgents and they should be able

to do so again. But there is not that much sign of that, the Iraqi

army has been melting away at this stage would you rule out putting

western boots on the ground to stop ISIS, if that is the priority? I

think there will be extreme reluctance by any western

governments to do so. But I don't think at the moment given the

potential consequences think at the moment given the

success that anything can be ruled out. Although I do agree that

success that anything can be ruled does look as though the Iraqi

Government are starting some sort of fight back, not withstanding the

pathetic efforts of their forces so far. PJ Crowley, your president

pulled out troops too quickly and is now sitting in the White House

thinking about the consequence and not prepare d to do anything? Well,

first Iraq is a sovereign country and made its own decision not to

meet the US conditions for a follow on mission. Obviously if we had

10,000 US or British forces in Iraq, there would be useful. However, this

was a decision that made in Iraq and there was no basis for the US to

stay. That said, a lot will depend on first as Liam Fox said what the

do the Iraqis do and what does ISIL do? Air I power could be an option,

but you have to have a clear battle line and actually targets to hit. If

ISIL melts back into cities, you could attack them but you woil

probably injure or kill a lot of civilians. Your party was elected,

but they did not want the west to stay and now Nouri Al-Maliki has

failed entirely to bring the country together? What we have now is a

situation where there is a militant terrorist group terroristising the

-- terrorising the population. The cry from Ali al-Sistani goes to all

the Iraqi community, Shias, Sunnis and Kurds to fight and defend

themselves against this scourge. But President Obama and many, are they

wrong too characterise like that as Nouri Al-Maliki's failure to bring

together the two factions in the country? He has ruled as a

sectarian, do you deny that? Yes, absolutely I deny that. Nouri

Al-Maliki has tried to bring all sides together. He formed the state

of law coalition which is a nonsectarian identity to bring all

sides together. But the extremists Sunnis have been putting pressure on

the moderates to try and derail that. Well, President Obama is

wrong, Nouri Al-Maliki has not been sectarian? Well I think, Nouri

Al-Maliki is behaving like a statesman this week, it is eight

years too late in my opinion. He spent a lot of time attacking his

Sunni political rivals. But most importantly, he has not taken the

necessary steps as leader of Iraq to integrate the security forces, Kurd,

Shia and Sunni, into an effective force that can be a model for the

way governments have to function if Iraq is going to get stronger. There

is no denying that, we have seen in just three days the army, fall away

and people now say there is no such thing as the Iraqi government.

Firstly, this extremist militant group, ISIS, has been working

because it's an irregular army, has been working away and there are

failures of the Iraqi army, there is no denying that. However, this

terrorist group will not get any further. This is not failures of an

army that you admit. We have seen pictures, the army has dissolved,

people have escaped, they've ran away. The civilian population is

left with no protection from these people. You talk as if it's a small

group. This is an extremist, almost looks like an extremist army

rampaging across the country. The point is this is - Maliki said this

is a conspiracy and it's a conspiracy that's been - these

people, these terrorists have been given material support, weapons,

there is a vacuum which was created in Syria which allowed them to move

across borders. There are no borders any more between Syria and Iraq.

They are opportunists using this. They have shown their true face,

which is an ugly face with executions of civilians today and

yesterday. It is certainly an ugly and appalling face as we have all

seen. Liam Fox, should it not be the case, if you care as you do, you

will not rule out military action but actually if you care as

passionately as you do about stopping these people, military

intervention from the West is really the only way to do this? I don't

think it's the only way to do it but I think it would be wrong to rule

anything completely out at this point. I think there's been a

failure of the Government. The point you made was correct, there's been a

failure of the Government in Iraq. They failed to integrate their

population sufficiently. They failed to engender ideas of Iraqi

nationalism that would trump sectarian divide. Has there been a

failure by the US and the UK, are you disappointed the British and

American governments so far have ruled out military intervention and

that's not what you suggest? Well, of course it was the Iraqis who

actually didn't want to continue the military relationship. As of now...

They're paying a price for that now. The question in the coming days will

be whether Maliki can rise up as a statesman at this late stage,

whether the military given the investment that's been made in their

equipment and training can fight back and that remains to be seen and

then I think the situation will have to be watched closely by the

international community because the price of failure and the failure to

confront and defeat ISIS could be catastrophic and could be felt well

beyond that region. OK. Thank you all very much for joining us.

The appalling violence is driven, at least in part,

by grievance between Sunni and Shia Muslims - that's been built up

over 14 centuries, and has not been contained by borders that have been

Understanding the religious patchwork is crucial

The Iraqi city of Karbala, here a dispute over the succession to the

prophet Mohammed led to a battle in the 7th century that divided the

Islamic world. Pilgrims still come here.

From the 16th century to the 20th, the Ottoman empire was three

separate Provinces. In the north with a Kurdish population, Sunni

Baghdad and Basra in the south. A historic division to which Iraq now

seems to be returning. The British invaded in 1914.en when

The Empire collapsed, Britain and France carved the region up between

them, drawing lines in the sand that fixed the international borders we

know today. Britain bound the three old Provinces together to form the

kingdom of Iraq, installing a new pro-British monarch from the Sunni

dynasty whose cousins still rule neighbouring Jordan. The King was

killed in a coup in 1958. A second coup five years later brought the

Ba'ath Party to power and eventually Saddam Hussein.

After the Gulf War of 19191 Iraqi Shias in the south rose against a

weakened Saddam Hussein with US and British encouragement. The rebellion

was brutally suppressed. Thousands were killed. The entire Shia

population cowed. Minority Sunni hoity was restored. The overthrow of

Saddam Hussein brought Shia majority rule to Iraq for the first time. It

sent shockwaves around the Sunni Arab world, prompting fears of a

so-called Shia crescent spreading through the region, bringing the

influence of an old enemy, Iran. With us now is Roula Khalaf, foreign

editor at the Financial Times. Despite the appalling violence is

there a logic to Iraq breaking up? Not necessarily a logic. I think

there might be enough ability - what I have noticed, is that not only in

this crisis, but particularly in this crisis, every ethnic and

religious group in Iraq is thinking a lot more about its own survival,

its own existence and not about the existence of the state. If you see

the reaction of the Shia, the real resistance is taking place where

there is a Shia shrine. Nobody's tried to fight for Mosul. The Kurds

did not push down from Kurdistan to try to retake Mosul. They went for

Kirkuk. The logic is developing within the various groups in Iraq

that perhaps we need to secure our own territory. Safety is leading

people to turn inwards, but the country was an artificial construct

in the first place. That's true but in the mooegs a lot of countries --

in the Middle East a lot of countries, we can say dreamt up by

foreign powers, the borders were dreamt up by foreign powers. We must

not underestimate the extent to which national identity does develop

and I find that people in the Middle East are actually attached to

borders. A lot more attached to borders than western analysts tend

to think. Isn't one of the really dangerous curiosities about this

situation is we are seeing very unusual, surprising alliances

developing, enemies becoming friends. The US and Assad being on

the same side. Absolutely. This is the complexity of the Middle East

today, of shifting alliances, shifting sands. In this crisis, for

example, the US and Iran today find themselves on the same side. But do

they really want to work together? Not necessarily. Iran's priority is

the Shia in Iraq. The US's priority is the Iraqi state and the

territorial integrity of Iraq. And a power-sharing arrangement between

Iraq's various communities. Briefly, with your insights, are you pretty

convinced there will be a split? I think that what you could see is for

a while a sort of defacto partition, and perhaps then a political deal on

a federal state. Thank you so much for coming in tonight.

Wherever the pieces fall, there is little sign that the West

has any intention of spilling its own blood on Iraqi soil again but

the stain from the political fight from more than ten years ago still

Iraq has weapons that could be activated within 45 minutes. We have

never marched before. The numbers were huge, filling the wide streets

of central London and stretching for several miles. We will stay on task

until we have achieved our objective. Saddam Hussein, your days

are numbered is the catchy refrain. Shock and awe was what the Americans

promised, that's what they're delivering. This is how regime

change was going to be defined today. It was a breathtaking image.

John McTernan is a former special adviser to Tony Blair and previously

And Clare Short is the former International Development

Secretary who resigned from Tony Blair's Cabinet back in May 2003 in

Surely you must deep down in your heart of hearts now have some

doubts? Why should I have any doubts at all? We create a democracy in

Iraq, there's a general election recently when people queued to vote,

even though they knew, at the threat of their own lives from the

terrorists, our job now is to go back in to support the Democrats, to

support the Maliki Government and the Kurds in the autonomous region

in the north. When you see terrorists executing civilians, you

have no doubts, not a single shred, not even pausing for thought that

maybe Britain was wrong? So what you are saying is we should have left a

fascist dictator in place, a dictator who was committing genocide

in his own country, gassing Arabs, and Kurds in the north and that

would be better because then ISIS wouldn't be around now? That's

immoral. I think that's completely immoral, that position. You would

even argue we go back in to protect the scraps of what we tried to

create? It's not scraps. This is a country with millions of people who

just voted in a general election. People who wanted to vote in a

general election. They're human beings there whose democracy we

helped create, we need to help sustain it. If we don't do it now,

this is a region-wide conflict now, the reason Iran is sending the

Revolutionary Guard to the border is they understand the danger for the

region. If we stand back this keeps on going. We got rid of a dictator

and established democracy, the terrorists are attacking democracy.

We have an interest there. Democracy. Clare Short, what do you

make of that? I think that's not worth listening to. The truth of the

matter is, I mean, this isn't the only cause, but because of all the

deceit about getting to war, the preparations for the post-conflict

phase were not properly made, or at least those that were made in the

UN, in the State Department were thrown away and a well-organised

stable state was never created and sectarianism was unleashed in the

Maliki Government, and ISIS is partly succeeding because the Sunni

people are so ailianated. So there were -- alienated, so were grave

errors in the route to war and the lies led to a failure to prepare for

afterwards, a properly organised procedure to try and help the people

of Iraq, get rid of Saddam Hussein could have got international support

for the reconstruction of Iraq which would have been a totally different

operation. But isn't part of the problem that people like you who

disagreed so much after the fact of the invasion made it politically

impossible for politicians like Barack Obama and the Government here

to stay the course? You were urging them to cut and run, they weren't

able to stay and create a stable and secure democracy? No, that's

complete nonsense too. I didn't have any influence about Obama's

decision, that was - he was elected on a commitment to get out of Iraq

and kept to that commitment. That was partly because it was a sort of

fruitless exercise with endless killing and dying. No, that doesn't

stack up at all. John? What? Well, what do you make of that suggestion?

You worked in the early formation of the Iraqi Government, what Clare

Short suggests is there was never any proper attempt to secure a

decent, stable functioning Government that could have been able

to cope with what it would have to withstand? No, there has always been

a complex set of coalitions there. For example, there's been a Kurdish,

socialist President of Iraq working with the Maliki Government and the

other parties. There is undoubtedly true the Prime Minister of Iraq made

a disastrous decision when he refused to sign a agreement with the

Americans, the situation would be different if there were 10,000

American troops in Iraq who would be available to mobilise. That was the

strategic error by Maliki. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be

supporting him now. It doesn't mean that we should be abandoning... How

can we trust him now, if as you say and as many people have suggested,

that he has become a sectarian leader, he has been divisive, how

could we trust him now? He didn't get rewarded at the general

election. There is a democracy there. The public voted for

different parties. A Government has to be created that brings together

all the parties in Iraq and we see what's happened in the Kurdish

region. They've taken control of Kirkuk. The army that represents

both the main parties there, who have had in the past a big civil

war, they united after the civil war, they've had democracy for over

20 years. They can defend and retake territory from the terrorists. There

is a model there in Iraq... We are short on time. Clare Short, what

would you want to see now? John wants us to go back in, what would

you do, leave it? No, but I don't see any military intervention that

is going to solve anything. By the way, President Obama has said no

troops on the ground but they're looking at drones or bombing, but

who do you bomb? As one of your previous people said, moss system a

city of two million -- Mosul is a city of two million people, you

can't go bombing people, that doesn't rescue the situation. We are

in an incredibly complex situation. ISIS isn't doing it alone. It's got

support from the Sunni community because they're so alienated. The

thing flows over to Syria. You have to start... We must leave it there.

Thank you both. It's a complicated situation.

Now, on 7th March the 10.00pm news and Newsnight broadcast

a report alleging a possible police cover-up over an allegedly corrupt

The claims should have been put to the Met,

The Met, in fact, says it did not claim in its evidence to the Ellison

Review that there were no records of the officer's links to a separate

investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan and it does not accept

that the BBC produced evidence of a possible cover-up.

We were wrong to suggest the document we showed demonstrated

such a cover-up and we apologise for this. Up with

thing this World Cup doesn't have is the voice of football. We thought

John Motson should have a chance to be heard. Here he is with his latest

extraordinary World Cup story. Age 42 the Columbian keeper suspect just

the older player u he is a link to the tournament darkest moment. He

was a back up player in the 19 94 World Cup squad that the Columbian

nation believed was destined for greatness. But the country's drug

cartels had pumped money into the league and allowed a talented crop

of players to thrive. But they didn't just bring money. The players

were surrounded by violence, intimidation and what was an

intolerable pressure to succeed. Two straight defeats saw Columbia

eliminated and an own goal by the captain Escabar led to the defeat.

Ten days later he was shot dead in his home down. A - town. A

disastrous campaign ended with the player losing his life. The current

squad is the country's most fans Yipped since that time -- fancied

since that time. But Columbia is a country much changed from one pr