they knew anything about why they were seized. To this day they have been prevented from seeing the material that is said to justify their detention. They have been isolated and abused. The impact on them and their families has been devastating, with some now on anti-depressants and two being classified as suicide risks.
The courts have been forced to release three men wrong fully imprisoned in the last year: Lofti Raissi, Yasser al-Siri and Suleyman Zainulabidin. This and the declaration in July that the internment was unlawful gives reason for hope.
But any reliance on the courts would be a mistake. Two months after their internment was declared unlawful these men are still being detained without trial. And the court's declaration was on the limited grounds that the power of interment is discriminatory against foreign nationals - effectively that it is racist - not that it was wrong in principle.
The government could respond by scrapping the power. But another possibility is an extension of its ambit to encompass all potential 'suspects'.
In the USA some 1200 people were detained without trial in conditions of such secrecy that the identities of many are still not known. Many have been beaten and kept incommunicado. In addition 598 detainees from the Afghanistan war have been held at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo bay in barbaric conditions. Mainstream media commentators accept that few if any of these are now regarded as individuals of any significance. These detainees are effectively hostages, held to punish and deter the communities they come from.
In the European Union there is a new arrest warrant that will strip away many safeguards against the arbitrary extradition of suspects. The EU has agreed a Framework Decision on combating terrorism which threatens any international political protest. And a new agreement between the EU and the US is being drafted that will have major implications for basic rights and liberties - but the negotiations are in secret and outside any mechanism for democratic control.
As well as targeting states that are deemed to challenge a new international order, the war against terrorism is focusing on Muslim and Middle Eastern communities in the west. This is feeding into a racist culture already nurtured through measures against asylum seekers, a xenophobic media and the rise of the far right. The threatened military assault on Irag makes a stand against racism and the need to defend these communities even more vital. being very badly treated by the Home Office and sometimes suffer a lot of racism.
All the European govemments have made it clear they hope to expel as many Iraqis as possible once the war is over.
purds have been
pouring out of South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) for several years.
They have been forced to flee from the instability and poverty, the dictatorial regimes run by the west's allies - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) - and because of the danger to people's safety from Saddam, Iran and Turkey. The coming threat of the war makes an already bad situation worse.
Today Bush claims that he wants to help the Kurds and bring the light of democracy to Iraq as part of the cover for his murderous war drive against the peoples of Iraq But in 1988 when Saddam Hussein killed 5000 Kurds at Halabja, the US and Britain reacted with indifference because at the time they were supporting Iraq in the war against Iran. And is it likely anyway that the Kurds will be 'helped by being oppressed by the next USinstalled Baghdad regime?
The same fate awaits the Shias in the south of Iraq.
At the end of the 1991 Irag war, 'safe havens were created southern Kurdistan under the rule of the KDP and PUK. This has resulted in a contradictory situation for Kurds living in these areas
It is true that the relative absence of the Baghdad regime from the area has enabled some improvements in living conditions, liberty and education.
For example, there is considerable freedom to use the Kurdish language previously discouraged by Baghdad - and also of course by Turkey in northern Kurdistan. But socialists and Kurdish nationalists are still not safe in these areas unless they support the PUK or the KDP.
Some Kurdish people calculate that Kurdish entity will be allowed to continue after the coming war. That is the basis on which they argue that war should be sup Saddam.
The PUK and KDP leaderships are going along with the US war plans, presumably for these reasons. But there are real dangers involved. The Kurds as a whole will risk being regarded even more by the Arab peoples in surrounding countries as stooges of the US and Britain. Route into Iraq
Part of their country is already being used as the way into Iraq by the US The Americans are building
airstrips in South Kurdistan in both PUK and KDP territory. This territory is inevitably going to be fought over. There are also a lot of Kurds elsewhere in Iraq who will be killed in the war along with members of the Iraqi population.
Many Kurds are against the war because of this and because they have seen the disastrous results of their leaders doing outsiders' bidding in the past. They are terrified of the fate that they know so many people will suffer, either from bombing or from military action on the ground, whether by Allied invaders or by Iraqi, Turkish or Iranian forces.
Turkey is very hostile towards the possibility of the further development of the towards statehood, fearing that it would give a boost to the struggle of the Turkish Kurds and indeed to the national aspirations of the Kurds generally.
-he Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) may have given up the armed struggle, and opted for peaceful methods of campaigning, but Turkey knows that neither they nor the Kurdish people have given up their determination to win Kurdish rights The Turkish state would also like to recover Mosul and Kirkuk (with their vital oil reserves) lost to Iraq during the break up of the Ottoman Empire.
So there is a serious risk of permanent occupation of more of South Kurdistan by Turkey. For the inhabitants of the area this would be bad enough on its own, but there is also the possibility that Iran will get further dragged in if the Iranian government feels that US, Britain and Turkey are pushing too much against Iranian interests, and there will be further warfare throughout South Kurdistan and perhaps further into Iraq.
War against Iraq is bad news for the Kurdish people as well as for the other peoples of Iraq
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A new mood of confidence and militancy has brought solid strike action from NHS clerical staff, local government workers and now the threat of all-out action by firefighters I Sockefst Norter £30K NOW NO STRINGS