Culpability

[Nbadan]

From Iraq to Libya and Syria: The wars that come back to haunt us
Sunday, April 19, 2015


World View: Tony Blair is still pilloried for the decisions he took over Iraq. David Cameron should not escape blame for his role in conflicts that are still raging

Few recall that David Cameron led Britain into one war in Libya that overthrew Gaddafi, but was disastrous for most Libyans. Without this conflict, the drowned bodies of would-be emigrants to Europe would not be washing up in their hundreds on Libyan beaches. To get the full flavour of what went wrong, it is worth watching a YouTube clip of Cameron grandstanding on a balcony in Benghazi on 15 September 2011, as he lauds Libya’s new freedom. Then turn to almost any recent film of Benghazi or Tripoli showing militias battling in streets and buildings shattered by shellfire.

Another scene worth revisiting via YouTube is the House of Commons on 29 August 2013, when Cameron lost the vote which would have opened the door to British military intervention in Syria. Ostensibly this was in response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Damascus, but would have had an effect only if it had turned into a Libyan-type air campaign to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. There is every reason to believe that al-Qaeda-type movements would have filled the vacuum and Syria would have descended even deeper into anarchy.

What is striking here is not so much that Cameron never seemed to have much idea about what was going on in Libya or Syria as the degree to which his culpability has never been an issue. Contrast this with the way in which Tony Blair is still pilloried for the decisions he took over going to war in Iraq in 2003. Focus on the decisions taken in the lead-up to the invasion has become a national obsession in which Blair is a scapegoat, as if most of the British establishment and popular opinion did not support him at the time. Admittedly this support was partly the result of concocted evidence about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD, but there is something absurd about the fact that it is almost impossible these days to meet a diplomat or a general who does not claim to have been deeply, if silently, opposed to the whole venture at the time.

A problem about this obsession with the events of 2002 and 2003 is that they have led to amnesia about what happened subsequently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the mourning for soldiers killed in these two wars treats them as if they were victims of a natural catastrophe rather casualties in conflicts which were the result of political decision-making. This is deeply convenient for the governments responsible since they don’t have to answer too many questions about their war aims and why they failed to achieve them.

in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/from-iraq-to-libya-and-syria-the-wars-that-come-back-tohaunt-us-10187065.html

The Middle East is a classic example, where Britain and France decided, via the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to divide up what they did not possess. Followed up by the Balfour Declaration of course. The peoples of the Middle East are still fighting because of the meddling of western Empires.

And we can all see the seeds of another similar conflict sprouting in the Ukraine....

[Nbadan]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/bild-1029274-836847.html

Source: Huffington Post and Reuters


A former intelligence officer for the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was the mastermind behind Islamic State's takeover of northern Syria, according to a report by Der Spiegel that is based on documents uncovered by the German magazine.
...
The documents were the work of a man identified by the magazine as Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force, who went by the pseudonym Haji Bakr.
...
"It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an 'Islamic Intelligence State' -- a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany's notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency."

The story describes Bakr as being "bitter and unemployed" after U.S. authorities in Iraq disbanded the army by decree in 2003. Between 2006 to 2008 he was reportedly in U.S. detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/19/isis-saddam-spiegel_n_7095764.html

The spies were to find out as much as possible about the target towns: Who lived there, who was in charge, which families were religious, which Islamic school of religious jurisprudence they belonged to, how many mosques there were, who the imam was, how many wives and children he had and how old they were. Other details included what the imam's sermons were like, whether he was more open to the Sufi, or mystical variant of Islam, whether he sided with the opposition or the regime, and what his position was on jihad. Bakr also wanted answers to questions like: Does the imam earn a salary? If so, who pays it? Who appoints him? Finally: How many people in the village are champions of democracy?

The agents were supposed to function as seismic signal waves, sent out to track down the tiniest cracks, as well as age-old faults within the deep layers of society -- in short, any information that could be used to divide and subjugate the local population. The informants included former intelligence spies, but also regime opponents who had quarreled with one of the rebel groups. Some were also young men and adolescents who needed money or found the work exciting. Most of the men on Bakr's list of informants, such as those from Tal Rifaat, were in their early twenties, but some were as young as 16 or 17.

The plans also include areas like finance, schools, daycare, the media and transportation. But there is a constantly recurring, core theme, which is meticulously addressed in organizational charts and lists of responsibilities and reporting requirements: surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping.

For each provincial council, Bakr had planned for an emir, or commander, to be in charge of murders, abductions, snipers, communication and encryption, as well as an emir to supervise the other emirs -- "in case they don't do their jobs well." The nucleus of this godly state would be the demonic clockwork of a cell and commando structure designed to spread fear.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

[SnakeBoy]

The Middle East is a classic example, where Britain and France decided, via the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to divide up what they did not possess. Followed up by the Balfour Declaration of course. The peoples of the Middle East are still fighting because of the meddling of western Empires.


They were fighting long before those.