Haringey Stop the War Coalition
	What you can do

• Join the national demonstration on 19 March 2005.
• Come to local protests and public meetings and bring your friends, neighbours and colleagues.
• Tell everybody to protest against the continuing war on the Iraqi people. Take the national Stop the War Coalition “End the occupation” petition around your friends, family and workmates. Ask everyone who signs to do the same.
• Spread the word by any practical means you can. Put a poster in your window to let your neighbours know what you think. Wear a End the Occupation badge, add text such as Demonstrate for peace on 19 March to your email signature. Keep an eye on the national Stop the War Coalition website - www.stopwar.org.uk - for the latest news and developments in the campaign.
• Join our mailing list to get regular updates on anti-war activity in Haringey. Join your local group. If there isn't one, talk to us about getting one started. The increasing threat of war means that lots of people will want to get involved. Set up a stall in the high street. Leaflet a tube station. Ask others to join in. Lets form a human chain of activity culminating in the next national demonstration.
• Keep the pressure up on Tony Blair and other politicians. Write a letter to your local MP (see below). Mailbags in Westminster are full of letters against the war. Be the straw that breaks Blair's resolve. Every bit helps.

	Tell the politicians what you think

• Write to Tony Blair or to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, at the House of Commons, London SW1.
• Write to your MP. In Haringey that’s Barbara Roche for Hornsey and Wood Green, David Lammy for Tottenham. See www.FaxYourMP.com for how to send a fax to your MP (whoever s/he is) over the internet – it’s very easy. Or email lammyd or rocheb@parliament.uk.
• Visit your MP’s ‘surgery’ for constituents. You can see Barbara Roche at Wood Green Library, 10am to noon on Saturday 3 November and every 2 weeks at the same place and time.
• Write to newspapers - national and local
  • That also makes the politicians think. Letters of only 2 or 3 sentences are the most likely to get published, so it need not take long.
• Phone a TV channel or radio station
  • Object to biased or unfair coverage of the war and of people’s views about it. Use phone-in programmes. Also phone to support and encourage reporters you think are taking the right line.

	Tips for letter writing

• Be polite – heavy sarcasm or insults will make a politician or editor more likely to bin it.
• Be brief – editors rarely publish more than 250 words.
• Be patient – if your own letter didn’t get published, it still might have helped to persuade the editor to publish one out of many letters against the war – they count the letters on different topics a bit like votes.
• Be original – if you have access to some source of information that most people don’t, like foreign newspapers or what you learnt from Asian relatives or business contacts, use it.

	Some arguments you may want to use

• If the US wants to get rid of Saddam Hussein, why did they (a) put him there and (b) allow him to keep control of the country at the end of the Gulf War last time? Why did they call on the Kurds and Marsh Arabs to rise up and then allow Saddam to suppress them? Was it just a cynical ploy to exploit and demoralise domestic opposition to Saddam?
• If the US does remove Saddam, will they purge the state apparatus, or use them to police and control Iraq? Will Saddam's henchmen be torturing people in the name of the US's appointee in a couple of years time? What is the longterm plan? Is there one?
• If Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, like North Korea, would the US be attacking it? Isn't the difference OIL?
• Iraq has been devastated by war. 100,000 people died in the Gulf War in 1991. The World Health Organisation say that by 1997 at least 1 million people, including 500,000 children, had died in the aftermath as a result of sanctions. Bombing still continues, mostly unreported, as US and British planes over-fly the “no fly zones” imposed at the end of the war.
• British Gulf war veterans are dying at a rate of 2 a week. Aren't British soldiers being used in a filthy war in the US's interests?
• Scott Ritter, the US’s chief weapons inspector, and Denis Halliday, the UN High Commissioner, have both resigned saying that the weapons inspection was just an excuse to keep up the “rogue state” threat of Iraq and to justify the sanctions and bombing. Are they right?
• What happened to Blair's promise to restrain Bush? Around the world, Britain is being seen as a loyal appeaser of the US military machine. Blair is making Britons into terrorist targets.
• Why has Britain been deporting Iraqis and Iraqi Kurds? Why are they now denying them benefits and support? Doesn't this challenge the supposedly humanitarian aims of the mission?

	The war on Afghanistan

• The war has already cost more innocent civilian lives directly by bombing than died on 9/11. Moreover as the war continues, many Afghans are dying of starvation, cold and disease, possibly hundreds of times the number killed in the 11 September attacks on America. One atrocity does not justify another.
• Just as in the Gulf War, ‘surgical strikes’ against military targets are making disastrous and cruel mistakes – a village, a refugee convoy, a Red Cross food warehouse, a UN mine clearance team.
• Why, when Milosevic, Pinochet and numerous Nazis were brought to trial, is it considered appropriate to hunt and destroy Bin Laden and the Taliban leaders? Isn’t this a racist double standard – international law for whites but bombing for Afghans and Arabs?
• The more killing and destruction the US and UK do in Afghanistan, the greater the chances of serious retaliation against civilians in the UK. True security means having fewer enemies. The war is just making more enemies for the UK’s people, without bringing anyone nearer to justice for the attacks on America.
• The US – and Blair its ally – seems to be assuming a God-given right to tell the Afghans who should be their government. Is this democracy or imperialism?
• What’s the alternative? There is a need for lots of debate here, but key issues are:-
  • Bombing should stop NOW. Ground troops should be withdrawn and aid must be sent, without strings. The US and Britain have promised less than 1/200th of the cost of bombing Afghanistan in aid to Karzai’s government!
  • Aid agencies need support for food delivery, and refugees should be supported whether they wish to return home or flee the country.
  • Politicians should stop blaming refugees trying to get to the UK for fleeing the wars the same politicians supported.
  • What sort of international aid effort can help rebuild an economy and civil society in Afghanistan, as a pre-condition of peace, democracy and human rights (especially for Afghan women)?
  • What can be done to end the causes of fundamentalist discontent – which is basically a reaction to imperialism and poverty?
  • Especially, what can UK politicians do to secure justice for Palestinians?
• The war should not become an excuse for undermining democracy in the UK itself – nor for undermining the right to claim asylum. Even before 11 September, the Terrorism Act 2000 gave the government excessive powers to ban organisations, criminalise certain international solidarity actions and criminalise political protest. Since then, proposals for new legislation and a new European directive about anti-terrorist measures will make things even worse. Ask your MP to oppose these measures NOW.

	And war on Somalia?

• Why did a supposedly humanitarian mission in Somalia turn into a disaster? Why did US special forces try to seize General Aideed, who was a US “enemy” at the time, and why is the US now relying on “intelligence” supplied by his son?]

	QUOTES

	September 11th families & survivors

“The day of my brother’s memorial service, the bombing started, which made it harder ... I didn’t want to see any more victims of September 11th [I want] fundamental changes in a world where things like this can happen” - Ryan Amundson, brother of Craig Amundson, who was killed in the Pentagon on September 11th

“I don’t think patriotism means accepting the actions of your leaders. [It means] caring about the principles of democracy and caring about the people of your country” - Ryan Amundson

“What we need less of is war rhetoric and war against Afghanistan in particular, and to explore the possibility of a judicial solution. In the short term, the first priority should be to hunt down and arrest the criminals with the goal of achieving justice, not revenge. This is a task left not to the military but to investigative police forces, who can prepare for a trial. The last thing I wanted was for more widows and fatherless children to be created in my name. It would only produce a backlash. As the victim of violence, I’d never want this to happen to another woman again” - Professor Robin Theurkauf, whose husband Tom was killed in the World Trade Centre on September 11th

“There is no heroism in bombing innocent civilians. So many people, especially politicians, seemed so keen to get angry on our behalf. It seemed the only people not in rage were the families of the victims. We had too much grief to cope with for that” - Rita Lasar, whose brother was killed in the World Trade Centre on September 11th

“Let’s put all the politics aside. What really matters is human beings and taking care of each other” - Kelly Campbell, whose brother-in-law Craig Scott Amundson was killed in the Pentagon on September 11th

	Civilian victims

“A European demining expert in Kabul who works closely with the Pentagon reckons that up to 8,000 civilians have been killed ... Professor Marc Herold, of the University of New Hampshire, puts the number of civilian casualties at at least 4,000” - The Guardian, February 12th, 2002

“This has been the most accurate war ever fought in this nation’s history” - General Tommy Franks, US Afghan campaign commander

“In fact, [the rate of civilians killed per bomb dropped] was far higher in the Afghanistan conflict - perhaps four times higher - than in the 1999 Balkans war” - Carl Conetta, Commonwealth Institute

“What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties - 3,767 civilian deaths in eight and a half weeks? ... The critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by US military planners... as clearly revealed by US willingness to bomb heavily populated regions” - Professor Marc Herold, University of New Hampshire, in the first major study of Afghan casualties

“Undoubtedly there have been civilian casualties. No one is doing a real assessment of that. It gets very political. Please don’t ask me about that” - Afghan NGO worker (NGO mostly funded by US government)

“A lot of civilians have been killed or injured. It’s definitely in the four figures” - UN source, quoted in The Guardian
February 12th

“Despite US radio broadcasts in local languages, many Afghans have no clear idea of why they are under attack” - Professor Marc Herold, University of New Hampshire

“I and all my classmates are very sad because of the situation in our homeland. When our teacher said in the class that many people have been killed in Afghanistan, I and my classmates started weeping because everyone has relatives there. I expect America not to kill the poor Afghans. They are hungry and poor” - Feriba, a young Afghan girl

“If they are not al-Qaida, they’re the people who supported al-Qaida. They should be bombed just frighten them” Kabul’s new security chief, - General Basir Salangi of the Northern Alliance

“Medecins Sans Frontieres increasingly sees evidence of unacceptably high numbers of Afghan civilian casualties from the military operations” - Statement of Medecins Sans Frontieres

“Fortunately for us, the civilian victims of America’s B52s will remain unknown in their newly dug graves. Even before the war ended, around 3,700 of them ... had been ripped to pieces in our War for Civilization” - Robert Fisk, Britain’s leading expert on Middle Eastern affairs and corespondent on the region for 20 years

“Some analysts say more than 60 Afghan civilians are being killed daily on average since the bombing began on October 7. A European demining expert in Kabul who works closely with the Pentagon reckons that up to 8,000 civilians have been killed” - The Guardian, 12/2/2002

	Opportunism in the face of tragedy

“For the foreseeable future, much of the world will understandably be focused on efforts to bring those responsible for the attacks of September 11th to justice. In the meantime, some governments may cynically try to take advantage of this struggle to justify or intensify their own crackdowns on political opponents or religious groups” - Human Rights Watch

“China ... has reasons to ask the United States to give its support and understanding in the fight against terrorism and separatists ... Opposing East Turkestan terrorism is also a component part of the international community’s struggle against terrorism” - Chinese foreign ministry spokesmen

“Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Abeid lashed out at human rights groups for ‘calling on us to give these terrorists their “human rights”’, referring to documented reports of torture and unfair trials ... ‘Maybe Western countries should begin to think of Egypt’s own fight against terror as their new model’” - Human Rights Watch

“On September 13, Defense Minister Peter Reith cited the attacks in the United States to justify his government’s effort to prevent asylum-seekers entering Australia” - Human Rights Watch

“Bin Laden’s people are connected with the events currently taking place in our Chechnya ... Our American partners cannot but be concerned about this circumstance. So we have a common foe” - Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

“As for the corespondents, we would like them to know that we agree with US President Bush that anyone who in any way finances, harbours or defends terrorists is himself a terrorist. We, too, will not make any difference between terrorists and their friends and supporters” - Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe

“It is a fact that we have killed 14 Palestinians in Jenin, Kabatyeh and Tammum, with the world remaining absolutely silent!” - Benyamin Ben Elizier, Israeli Defence Minister, September 14th

	Were Negotiations Possible?

“When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations” - President George W. Bush, October 15th 2001

“A senior Taliban leader said Sunday that Afghanistan would be willing to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country if the United States halted its bombing campaign. ‘But President George W. Bush pointedly rejected the Taliban offer” - International Herald Tribune, front page, October 15th

	WEBSITES and RESOURCES

Stop the War Coalition: national Stop the War website. This has a list of contact addresses for national newspapers here.
Media Workers Against the War: Critical journalists’ website.
Znet Magazine: US-based alternative media site with massive archive of anti-war articles and more.
Fax Your MP: Tells you how to fax your MP and does it for you on the internet. Write your letter first, enter the site and paste your letter in.
Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association: See this for why the bombing should stop, what’s wrong with the Northern Alliance as well as the Taliban, and also for the situation of refugees and Afghan women.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: The UK’s most well-known and best-respected campaign for peace and nuclear disarmament.
Terrorism Act 2000: Anti-terrorism laws and what’s wrong with them.
Transcend: US-based anti-war site.
Peaceful Tomorrows: September 11th survivors’ site for peace and justice.

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