So George Bush and Condoleezza Rice have asked Tony Blair to be the Middle East envoy for the so-called 'Quartet'. Blair's departure from office as Prime Minister is not a voluntary act. It results from the high levels of opposition to the invasion of Iraq, from the evidence given publicly at the inquiries of Hutton and Butler, from the disappearance of any semblance of trust in politicians. He was forced to concede that he would not seek a fourth term in government.
So what justifies a failed politician's role as Middle East envoy? What exactly is his legacy in the Middle East? Is his legacy his alone or the legacy of a Labour government? Blair and his government knew well in advance that the US planned to invade Iraq. They knew it would be illegal but they backed it nevertheless.
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Iraqi billionaires who made their fortune on contracts to build US bases in their country launder their money on building luxury hotels in the safety of Amman, Jordan.
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Blair – Bush
WORKERS went to talk directly to Iraqi refugees and Iraqi human rights organisations. They identified Blair and Bush as one and the same. They are aware that Blair could have stopped Bush in his war quest if he had chosen to do so, and that he did not. This is their description of the Iraq that Blair has bequeathed them:
"Before the invasion, we had free health care, free education and a network of welfare care. We had jobs, our sons and daughters were able to train and become professional workers. We had equal pay for women and full equality in society for women. We had a good standard of living, affected a little by the war with Iran. Our children could go out to play. We could have a good night out partying with friends, get drunk and go swimming in the Euphrates at 03.00 am if we wanted.
"After the first Gulf war, we rebuilt the infrastructure very quickly so there was a return to a proper water and electricity supply. It was our country and we were proud and had a particular set of Iraqi values. There were never any problems of religious differences because we were a secular nation. We found ways to keep going through the harsh UN sanctions although the children suffered most.
"All this was destroyed by the invasion and occupation which destroyed the economic environment and the academic fabric. The occupiers targeted our system of values and tried to destroy them. They introduced a system of religious representation that was alien to us and set one group against another.
"According to the Lancet, 600,000 have been killed since the invasion but according to a new report from an Australian NGO, 1 million have been killed. In Baghdad, 1 person in every 160 has been killed since 2003 and in Fallujah 1 in every 120 in 2004 alone, most by the occupiers and some by militias. The rate of killing of journalists has increased and 500 have been killed since 2003. By April 2007 200 priests had been killed as well as 800 Palestinian refugees and 3,000 intellectuals and professionals. A further 40,000 professionals including many doctors were forced to leave. There are now 5 million orphans in the country, 4 million refugees in Syria and Jordan and a further 2 million displaced persons within the country. Because the host countries only offer at best a temporary residence document, the poorer refugees that fled to Syria are desperate and beginning to resort to prostitution to survive. Some 40,000 each month are fleeing to Syria alone.
"The occupiers control four prisons at Abu Ghraib, Buka in Basra, Kroper at Baghdad Airport and Susa at Sulemania and all are full with a total of 300,000 inmates. Torture, violence and murder against prisoners in these jails are common. The Iraqi National Security services hold many times this number of prisoners. The Ministries have been distributed among the sects so that the Interior Ministry is controlled by the Badr militias and the Health Ministry by the Sadr militias.
"Industrial capacity has been destroyed and our country has moved from being a producing and exporting economy to a consumer and importing society. Oil buys our imports. Depleted uranium from munitions litters the country and there are increases in cancers. If you walk through a cemetery with a Geiger counter, the meter will register a noticeable increase.
"Many cancer victims are told to go to Jordan for treatment that used to be free in Iraq. Once in Jordan, they find that they have to pay for everything at the King Hussein Cancer Centre whilst other governments, including the Jordanians, pay for this treatment for their citizens. In many areas of Iraq, women cannot go to hospital to give birth because of the militias and are now resorting to traditional birth at home, which needs an increase in the number of midwives. Infant mortality is now the third highest in the world. Some 30 per cent of those injured in bomb attacks die before they reach hospital because of lack of skilled paramedics or ambulances. Health services are now expensive, in the hands of militias, and dangerous to access. Mental illness and trauma is at epidemic levels. The water situation is very bad and worse in the south.
"Our oil production peaked after the industry was nationalised in 1964. In 1974 and 1979 for example, production peaked at 3.5 million barrels per day. This was the best period in Iraqi life; 55 per cent of revenues went back to Iraqis. After nationalisation, oil reserves increased from 85 billion barrels to 115 billion with potentially double that amount in the reserves, and we built a major refinery in 1981. We now spend $4 billion a year on oil imports."
WORKERS asked Iraqi human rights NGOs, international NGOs, and the National Coordinating Committee for Iraq – an NGO coordinating body (including human rights NGOs) based in Amman – if they had heard of or come across the work or reports of Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq, Labour MP Ann Clwyd. They all replied that they had no knowledge of her and thanked us for informing them of her role.
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Decades on: Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan.
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Middle East legacy
So this is Blair's legacy in Iraq. But what about Blair's legacy in the rest of the Middle East? Blair backed Israel in its bombing of Lebanon. He backed the US in its bid to starve Palestinians into submission after they elected a government chosen by themselves and not by Israel or the US.
Meanwhile, 2 million Palestinian refugees languish in cramped, unplanned camps in Jordan with a further 1 million in Syria and hundreds of thousands in Lebanon. Inside the West Bank and Gaza the population suffers from no wages to public workers, poverty, Israeli checkpoints similar to those in Iraq that make daily life unbearable, arbitrary arrest and shootings by Israeli troops, houses bulldozed and denial of access to health and education.
The Zionists in control of Israel treat the indigenous Palestinian population as subhuman. Little wonder then that Unison at its National Delegate Conference became the second British trade union to call for a boycott of Israel on the same basis as the boycott of Apartheid South Africa forty years ago.
British workers know well of Blair's legacy in Britain. Fewer know much about his crimes in regard to Israel and Palestine, and the damage he will be doing as envoy. We cannot wish him on anyone else, particularly when he has been so complicit in their ruin. He should quietly go away and leave the people of the Middle East to sort their own future out, just as we must sort out our own in Britain.