All is not well on the frontiers of T.W.A.T.

Remember Afghanistan, that dusty poverty-stricken country we bombed a war or two back? All to smoke out some guys called the Taliban who repressed women and conducted public executions? Well the war was a roaring success:

Reuters: Afghan woman stoned to death for adultery

Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court’s decision on Thursday in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan, they said.

Well, if you’re going to export freedom and justice, why not make to Ol’ Time freedom and justice. And I do remember somebody saying something about Afghanistan being bombed back to the Stone Age. I think we managed it. (Link via Honourable Fiend)

And what about Iraq? Well, Iraq wasn’t on the frontier of T.W.A.T. until we invaded, after which every son of a bitch in the region flocked to the place to bag themselves an infidel coalition soldier. At least we’ve got most of them in one place now like One Man And His Dog.

There is a town, Fallujah, that the coalition pounded not once but twice last year in an attempt to pacify the insurgency. You probably haven’t heard much since because it’s not safe for most Western reporters to get around in Iraq - they have a careless tendency of getting kidnapped and occasionallly their heads snicked off.

But some news is getting out:

The Guardian: This is our Guernica

Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city’s residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the US cordon around the city.

In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade’s unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.

But at least we disarmed Iraq of its terrible weapons. Remember when we were 45 minutes from doom? You’d think that once we got in there we’d make damn sure we rounded up all the scientists involved in WMD programmes, collected all the documentation and anything else (not much, admittedly) that was left to make sure none of it fell into the wrong hands. Think again:

The Guardian: Interrogators ‘botched hunt for Iraq’s WMD’

US military interrogators botched the questioning of Iraqi scientists in the search for weapons of mass destruction and their detention “serves no further purpose”, a new CIA report has found.

First, the US “black list” of scientists wanted for questioning was full of holes. “Some very despicable individuals who should have been listed were not, while many technocrats and even opponents of the Saddam regime made the list and hence found themselves either in jail or on the run.” Mr Duelfer wrote, adding that some of the former had been released in the first few months after the war.

Still, with Saddam in prison, his depraved sons dead and democratic elections having taken place - unless you are a ChaldoAssyrian - Iraq should be a calmer, more peaceful place. I’m sorry to have to do it again, but…

BBC News: Iraqi insurgency ‘undiminished’

Militants staging attacks in Iraq are as strong now as they were a year ago, America’s top soldier has said.

Between 50 and 60 attacks are carried out each day, the same number as in 2004, according to Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

And that was followed by more grim news:

BBC News: Iraqi woman MP killed in Baghdad

Lamia Abed Khadouri, a member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s coalition, is the first MP killed since elections at the end of January.

Police said gunmen knocked at her door and shot her when she answered.

By this point, you’d be forgiven for asking yourself what all the cluster bombing and depleted uranium-ing has been for. Public stonings, razed towns and anarchy? Is that the best that we could have hoped for when the first bomb doors opened in the clear blue sky over Kabul all those years ago?

Gordon Brown, defending the Iraq war in an interview today, said that the world was a safer place. It clearly is for him (and me for that matter) as nobody is throwing rocks at his wife or shelling his home town. It’s all relative, I suppose.

One way to gauge whether the world is getting safer would be to read the US State Department’s annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report which gives an “overview of terrorist activity on each continent”. Except, erm, they’re not publishing it this year. Apparently the news wasn’t good.

At any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace.