Advertising
In 1960s Iraq, the children of the poor carried their most treasured possessions to school in much coveted, branded soap-powder packets. When these eventually disintegrated, what remained was stuck up on the classroom wall. As a result, children could pick out the words ‘Tide’ or ‘Omo’. Praised by their teacher for doing so, a whole generation associated this approval with a country they did not know and might never visit. Thirty years earlier, the teacher’s football-mad father played footie in the desert with equally football-mad Iraqis. They called their team ‘Arsenal’.(1)
American soft drinks were also marketed in Iraq. These, in marketing/PR terms, had ‘youth’ as their ‘fixed point’, ‘freedom/ America’ as the subtext and a subliminal ‘message’ to downtrodden communities everywhere to trust America and to have hope…. Which is to say, the US business community’s message reinforced that of the American government, however phoney.
Flash forward to October 2003 in London and the announcement that an American coffee-shop franchise is to take out the sofas in its shops world-wide to maximise profits. The ‘fixed point’ and ‘subtext’ being jettisoned here is ‘the community of metropolitan youth’ twinned with ‘American sophistication’. Inserted instead is ‘profit’ and a ‘subtext’ along the lines of ‘hey, suckers, wherever you are, we want your money – fast’.
October 2003 also saw the high profile launch in London, carried on the evening news, of an American doughnut chain (2) Here, the ‘fixed point’ was ‘indulge yourself/your friends, even if it is bad for you/them’: the ‘community’ had been cynically reinserted.(3) This degrades the work of other US corporates, irrespective of motive, taking some community responsibilities seriously; e.g. the American soft drinks company attempting to build a factory in Gaza. Meantime, the ‘doughnut subtext’ subliminally cajoles/threatens ‘join in the fun – or get left behind’, a milder version of President Bush’s derisory ‘You are either for us, or against’.
Trying to recover some ground, parts of the US executive announced it wanted to change America’s image.(4) In future, it will customise/localise its message.(5) This is difficult globally, particularly so in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, because of the illegal invasion of Iraq, its unfolding horror, the US Administration’s contempt for Islam and its support for Israel.(6) Added to these is universal awareness of America’s aggressive acquisition plans that it projected would spring-board the US into the top dog role world-wide, with a fee income worth billions.
Playing ‘catch-up’, a neo-con (Christian) US administration is now seeking to portray itself as Islam-friendly.(7) This has angered modernisers all over the world, including religious leaders anxious to separate faith and state; the secular, some of whom are secular by choice, others in order to advance in their societies and/or avoid persecution; and religious minorities, including Christian ones, in many parts of the world. It has particularly annoyed Arabs of all faiths and of none, because being ‘Islam-friendly’ means no more than the US being a little more polite to Africans and Asians, some of whom may be Muslim. It has also infuriated those who remember the USA’s one-time praising of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for being secular and its post-invasion ridiculous over-representation of Iraq’s devout (8) – e.g. respectful images of chanting worshippers – but none of Iraqi university professors protesting about secular jobs, or courageous Iraqi trade unionists seeking better conditions for those working in, say, the dangerous oil installations.
The only ‘messages’ that the US can continue to try to customise/localise are ‘democracy’ (see below) and ‘terrorism’. The latter is under attack on four fronts. First, because the US Administration is a ‘professional’ bomber and bigot itself; second, because it supported terrorism selectively; third, the only reason it has belatedly recognised that terrorism hurts African, Arab and Asian civilians too, is because it now understands that it is in the USA’s interest to do so; and fourth because of the failure, through no fault of their own, of those who sought recognition of their legitimate aspirations through non-violent means.
Iraq
In Iraq, America’s ‘customised message’ has been undermined by worsening mayhem and ‘amateur’ voices. The ‘professional’ talks belatedly about the tragedy of Halabja and the 5000 innocents murdered by Saddam Hussein. The ‘amateur’, knowing that the event, at the time it occurred, went unreported for cynical reasons, factors in the mess Iraq is in today and adds up all the dead or maimed, of all nationalities, following the illegal invasion. Meantime, the product the US continues to bang on about – ‘democracy’ – is known to be imperfect and not the only one available.
An inability to offer a trustworthy ‘message’ has had particular impact on America and Britain’s Middle Eastern intelligence product because it has undermined its agents, especially ‘agents of influence’.(9) This is one of many reasons why, today, ‘the allies’ have no agents, cannot ‘sell’ their message and Iraq disintegrates.
US Attitude to agents
America describes its foreign agents as MICE. (Its subliminal subtext implies CIA officers are ‘MEN’.) MICE stands for money, ideology, compromise and ego, airbrushing the valour of unsung heroes and patriots, often civilians, many of them amateurs. It forgets a cardinal rule of public relations: the various strands of an organisation’s message must not conflict with each other at the level that the target audience perceives them. Meantime it rewarded the memory of dead MICE by signing-up Saddam Hussein’s hated, secret police.
According to US logic, all the local agents in Iraq it is desperate to recruit but cannot are MICE; the brave agent executed by Saddam Hussein in April this year for guiding US missiles to a restaurant, in which attack innocent civilians were killed, was also one; (10) as was the magnificent Shia cleric Abd al Majid Khu’i, also murdered in Iraq.
British attitude to Agents
Agents are equally despised in Britain.(11) The most recent, high-profile stereotypical attack was made by former Ambassador to Brazil, Sir Peter Heap.(12) Supporting him in a different newspaper, albeit not in concert, was Philip Knightley.(13) Knightley wrote:
‘As an Ambassador in Ankara once said to me, “I’m here to foster good relations between Britain and Turkey and I have to share my embassy with British spies who spend their time trying to persuade Turkish citizens to be traitors. Is it any wonder I would like to see the back of them?” ‘
He omits to mention that these Turkish ‘traitors’ – including ‘agents’ – were likely to be, say, courageous Turkish and Kurdish trades unionists, teachers and journalists fighting for civil rights. Nor does he mention that, in the interests of ‘stability’, many were betrayed by America and Britain to the Turkish government anyway.
At a time when Britain’s intelligence services are desperate to recruit staff and agents – not just in Iraq, but also as international ‘policemen’ for the good of all, as well as in their political/economic role (e.g. the EU’s twenty-five member states, the ILO, UN, WTO, ASEAN), for the good of some – Messrs. Heap and Knightley damn them.(14)
The Hutton Inquiry
See note (15)
For different reasons, Whitehall mandarins were similarly irresponsible during the inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly. For example, their minimalist ‘performances’ were an error of judgement given the multiple global audiences, diversity of stakeholders and growing sophistication of those following the case. Which is to say, far from being enough ‘spin’, there was too little.
Spin-doctors (e.g Alastair Campbell) are propagandists. They are not public affairs strategists who prepare for all possible audiences/crises before they happen. The mistake made by Prime Minister Blair and his unelected advisers, including civil servants, was not anticipating that, following the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, rather than a spin-doctor, they needed (public sector) public affairs professionals to meet the global public affairs challenges. This, co-ordinated from London, required allies in every market massaged by country-by-country staffing (e.g. embassy staff with the authority to act quickly to put across arguments and resolve issues.) The Blair government failed from the outset because the majority of British officials were appalled by the Iraq war.
True or false, the perception created by Lord Hutton’s inquiry was that, a) Britain’s intelligence product was distorted to further the ambitions of government and commerce; b) a former tabloid journalist – the tabloids in themselves being an affront to many societies – sent Britain to war; and c) Dr Kelly was murdered – overseas subtext, if even a Brit, and a prestigious member of the world-wide scientific community (presumably a spook target group) is treated so badly, how will I be treated?
Facing reputational threat, and much else besides, the mandarins appeared not to know that in addition to offering a sincere apology to the Kelly family and an explanation to the public; their performances were also meant to provide reputable, modern, pastorally-aware, internationalist and multi-focused cultural reference points for those overseas. Instead they looked vicious, petty and parochial.
Instead of emphasising that they were ’employers of choice’ where people work in a variety of client teams, playing different roles, gaining different experience and mixing with colleagues from different disciplines – in order to attract the highest quality of recruit – they offered the portrait of poor management, no leadership and outdated hierarchy and snobbery.
The mandarins failed even in their most basic of duties: they omitted to offer public reassurance to present and future agents that despite what happened to Dr Kelly, the agent’s pastoral care would be second to none, his/her identity protected;(16) s/he would be managed as a single unit, supported by a full range of specialists; and, in acknowledgement of those agents dismayed by the illegal invasion of Iraq, emphasising the hoped-for morality of Britain’s future intentions. This, at the very least, would have eased the present burden on case-officers and recruiters, particularly in view of Britain’s acknowledged poor treatment of agents who served in, say, Northern Ireland or the Balkans. Instead, the mandarins did the reverse, giving the impression of men divorced from staff/colleagues/sources, their work and welfare.
Equally, they failed to extricate the agent community from culpability for Britain and America’s (staff) intelligence failure in Iraq.
Britain’s Iraq Intelligence Product
See note (17)
One way to evaluate Britain’s Iraq intelligence product is to read SIS’s ‘Briefing Note’ to the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) which was published in September 2003.(18) Under the heading ‘The Iraqi in the Street’, and sticking to all outdated stereotypes, SIS writes, ‘Are you a member of one of Saddam’s favourite tribes? Yes? Then join the Ba’th Party.'(19) Actually, under Saddam Hussein (February 2003), ‘the Iraqi in the Street’ was just as likely to have been, say, a war widow, her plight worsened by sanctions, or a female dentist also impoverished by them, than a tribesman grown fat on them.
The ‘Iraqi in the Street’ was equally likely to have been a young, professional, mixed-marriage upwardly-mobile Sunni-Shia couple off for a day at the races; or a Christian academic, army officer or licensee.(20) Also in the Briefing Note, SIS compares Iraq to ‘Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 1930s with show trials, terror……. torture and death’. Yes. Probably even worse. However, a more accurate description would have been to describe it as a vicious, efficient, family-run enterprise/absolute ‘monarchy’, sustained, along with all its evil, over three decades, by the West’s commercial and military elites.(21) In addition, unlike the Soviet Union, and as described by the UN, it had ‘the world’s most efficient food network. This gave free rations of flour, rice, cooking oil and other staples to every Iraqi’.(22) What’s more, until sanctions and all the attendant misery and corruption, it was so prosperous that it was a net importer of labour, had a highly developed infrastructure, fabulous healthcare and superb universities. Which is to say, Iraq was never, ever, anything like Stalin’s Soviet Union.
War intelligence, March 2003
In March 2003, as we now know, SIS had excellent sources close to Saddam Hussein; among some religious leaders; and Brits, probably SAS, running around with tribesmen in, say, southern Iraq, who were also nipping in and out of Basrah. This daringly acquired singular information aided a military advance. It was not ‘intelligence’ which is multi-layered. (‘Military’ intelligence, like the ‘commercial’ or ‘religious’, is meaningless when it is in a vacuum.) Real intelligence is the ability to determine local values – which are different to local conditions – which, in the case of Iraq, would have indicated that some believed that their future was better served under a brutal, secular tyrant, than under, say, a religious leader or a stooge. This type of intelligence, however, can only be provided by those who have a detailed knowledge of a country’s clashing cultures and networks; i.e. agents. Which is to say, the UK/US intelligence vacuum was due to an absence of agents, not because of them. Had SIS delivered a holistic intelligence product, which is what the taxpayer – including the American taxpayer – pays it to do, Britain and America might not have unleashed unbearable tragedy for many nationals, including their own, or created irrevocable failure in the Middle East. Nor would Britain’s overseas aid programmes in, for example, East European and Central Asian countries – vital for influence, as well as humanitarian relief – have had to be slashed.
As for Iraq, its ancient land and gloriously diverse people – including some returnees who were profoundly honourable in exile – deserve better. So do the heirs of a long forgotten Iraqi football team called Arsenal and an Iraqi schoolteacher who taught his pupils English with soap-packets.
Notes
1 In the 1960s, at the time that black independence movements were gathering strength everywhere, Omo was being sold all over the Caribbean, Africa and the African Middle East with the advertising strapline ‘Omo washes whitest…..’
2 BBC 6 O’clock News, 3 October 2003. The high profile launch of the American doughnut chain contrasts with the non-existent one in many London suburbs of the state-owned Chinese ‘Dr China’ shops, which capitalise on interest in Chinese medicine. The latter allows the Chinese to acquire a recorded, snapshot of London suburbia – mums with asthmatic children, office-workers with sports injuries, those with libido problems – i.e. low level authentic voice espionage. (A by-product of the wicked sanctions and travel restrictions imposed on Iraqis for over a decade, was that the US/UK were denied such information.)
3 I assume that the cumulative impact of an overdose of doughnuts is as bad for people as, say, cigarettes. I wonder whether the increasing emphasis on the ‘obesity epidemic’ and junk food, is part of the tobacco industry’s fight back.
4 The US is not the only place with an image problem. The EU, for example, among member state electorates, has one too. However, in contrast to the USA it is doing nothing about it, relying instead on ‘organic’ change: e.g. the better off in some member states, buying cheap properties in others with all the good, or exploitation, this can imply. I think it likely that in due course the USA will follow the EU’s example.
5 The wonder is how, in the birthplace of public relations, the US Administration failed to customise its message in the first place. The only explanation I can come up with, is that although the Bush Administration is full of businessmen, these, for the most part, are from ‘consultancies’. ‘Consultancies’ tailor their message to an elite, including despotic foreign governments. They have no experience of engaging world-wide civilian, often hostile, populations.
6 Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Blair scored because he has never been islamaphobic. (In overstating his respect, he annoyed/undermined many modernisers.) His reputation was further enhanced by his wife’s support for Palestinian causes. Some in the Middle East believe that the discrediting of Mrs Blair in the British media initially stemmed from this. Originally, she was a phenomenal PR asset: pretty, honourable wife, mother of sons and future judge – all much respected characteristics in education-mad, modernising, parts of the Middle East.
7 Mainstream Christian churches have distanced themselves from the US neo-cons. The world-wide Anglican Church, which was strongly against the Iraq war, has long portrayed itself as a global friend of other religions. The similarly anti-Iraq war Vatican – its loathing for the US neo-cons being legendary – is: a) supporting France and Germany’s bid to build an EU defence force outside of NATO; and b) has appointed new cardinals, who, mirroring the Anglicans, are likely to reinforce Roman Catholicism as the global friend of all faiths. Meantime, long-established non-spiritual Christian groups/charities are moving in a secular, or spiritually-inclusive direction, and have been for some time.
8 This has undermined secular and spiritual modernisers in Iraq, increasing religious schism. There was no such thing as the ‘Sunni Triangle’. There is now.
9 As my father, an SIS agent and SIS’s one-time leading authority on Iraq, said (without being Iraq-specific), ‘A spy, on behalf of the Crown, cannot recruit good quality sources seeking to undermine a regime from within, if HMG is doing all it can to secure the status quo from without.’ (He was never an ‘agent of influence’.)
10 This proves how good Saddam Hussein’s intelligence was. Equally, it points to SIS’s superior contacts.
11 The latest Intelligence and Security Committee Report, CMND 5972, published September 2003, praises Britain’s intelligence agencies’ staff for their ‘tremendous efforts, sometimes at great personal risk….’.
12 The Guardian 2 October 2003.
13 Independent on Sunday, 5 October 2003
14 Points Sir Peter Heap could have explored include: a) Tensions between diplomats and spooks, e.g. the unfair advantage some spooks may have over diplomats pursuing identical goals; b) whether the spooks and overseas corporates with whom they may be working are applying DTI anti-corruption/social responsibility guidelines; c) whether the taxpayer is subsidising the corporate sector’s use of the publicly funded espionage product – accepting that commerce pays tax too – which may additionally conflict with ethical foreign policy expectations; d) spook/ corporate triangular relationships with, say, commercial clients of the private security companies – some of which may be dodgy, not British owned, or both; and e) the legitimate anxieties of citizens, civil rights groups and NGOs.
15 The Labour Party’s continued constitutional modernisation programme was apparent in the Hutton inquiry. For example, the phrase ‘The Crown’ was seldom used.
16 Re: SIS Chief Sir Richard Dearlove’s refusal to be photographed: for much of his career, Sir Richard would have been a senior case-officer. Overseas, and so far as it was possible, case-officers and agents avoid being seen together in public. (Back in Britain the rules are less strict.) However, sometimes it is unavoidable. Sometimes too, the contamination of innocents is equally unavoidable. These, in particular, would be put in jeopardy were Sir Richard’s features to be flashed around the world.
Note: The intelligence agencies announced a while ago that staff, rightly, now have access to trades union rights via the First Division Association (FDA). The FDA primarily represents senior civil servants although it does not appear to have advised the late Dr Kelly. Nor did he have access to independent legal advice. So far as I am aware, agents are not represented by the FDA or by any other organisation.
17 The intelligence agencies have yet to learn how to communicate with the public – who are not necessarily hostile – or a new generation of politicians, some of whom are. One reason why the agencies have lost influence in Parliament is because of changes in the House of Lords. For example, having ex-spook/BP chairman Lord Brown there, is not the same as having, say, a Lord Hayter in situ. The latter was ‘the last family chairman of Chubb’ whose products ‘guarded the Bank of England, Crown Jewels and Shah of Iran’s treasure’. He was also deputy speaker in the Lords – i.e. an intelligence agencies ‘friend’ at the centre of a once powerful court. (Obituary, Daily Telegraph, 5 September 2003)
18 Annex A, page 46, “Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction” , Cmnd 5972, published September 2003.
19 Tribesmen: urban Iraqis/Kurds have nothing to do with tribesmen. Similarly, under Saddam Hussein, much has been made of the plight of the Marsh Arabs and the draining of the marshes, an ecological disaster. As and when the situation stabilises, these will be refilled. The young however, are unlikely to want to be extras in an ecological Thesiger-style theme-park, will refuse to return to them, preferring the towns instead.
20 This an example of Iraq’s one-time brilliant pragmatism. The majority of Iraqis love a drink but Christians had all the liquor licences, including in the grand hotels, night-clubs and social clubs, because Muslims are forbidden to hold them.
21 The West has always praised Soviet dissidents. The exceptional bravery of Iraqi dissidents never gets a mention – a mix of racism and Western complicity in their torture/deaths.
22 The Guardian 9 October 2003.