Churchill's Colonial Karma

The honourable Libyan anti-imperialist Omar al-Mukhtar is a hero in the Arab world and beyond for resisting Italian occupation, colonialism and imperialism during what is referred to as the inter-war period, that is between World War One and Two. al-Mukhtar was eventually captured and summarily executed by the Italian imperialists. This is a demonstrable fact. The former Guantanamo Bay inmate, the British-Pakistani cause celebre and political icon, Moazzam Begg is in possession of a tenuous relationship with the truth. This too, is a demonstrable fact. In the early part of this decade Begg felt morally qualified to give a lecture about the life of al-Mukhtar. In this essay I argue Begg has an artificial relationship with the truth and is morally unworthy to speak of Omar al-Mukhtar.

In an interview with journalist Dilly Hussain on the 5Pillars news site podcast, “Blood Brothers” Begg shared his thoughts about the regime change war on Syria in the 2010s. In the course of this interview Begg made two glaringly false claims about the regime change war on Libya in 2011 which had preceded the regime change war on Syria. Firstly, he claimed no votes were held to implement a No Fly Zone in Libya in 2011, or to “bomb Libya” as he says. This is false.  There were two votes, one in the United Nations which resulted in the UN resolution 1973 and another vote in the British parliament to implement the UN resolution. The NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) bombing campaign began in March 2011 and officially ended October 2011. This campaign in effect provided air-cover for a motley crew of treacherous, Islamically garbed, foot soldiers to overthrow the Libyan state.

Secondly, Begg makes the customary rape accusations, a standard western imperialist propaganda allegation, when manufacturing consent for regime change. Begg claims that “sisters being raped en masse” when speaking about Syria (or he may be referring to Libya). Obviously, this is a very serious accusation and evidence should be provided. So far it has proven to be false. In 2011, as Britain and France led the campaign for imperialist regime change in Libya, it was claimed that Libyan forces were providing Viagra to African mercenaries to rape Libyan women. This turned out to be absolutely false. And if Dilly had respect for his profession he may have asked Begg about any evidence he had to support his claim of rapes “en masse”. Nonetheless there have been historical episodes of ‘en masse rape’ of Muslim women, specifically during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 when Pakistani military gangs raped Bengali women in their thousands. The Pakistani Army and their Bangladeshi collaborators, the ‘Razakars’, actually set up ‘rape camps’. Some have stated that at least 200,000 Bengali women were raped by the Pakistani occupation forces and their Razakar collaborators. Or there is the contemporary ugly episode of grooming gangs raping girls “en masse” across some of Britain’s towns and cities. This leads to the question why do Begg and Dilly indulge in false claims about Africans and Arabs ‘raping sisters’ in Libya and Syria ‘en masse’ yet are quiet about the true stories of Pakistanis and Bengali Razakars raping women and girls in their hundreds of thousands?

Furthermore, a year after the NATO led destruction of Libya in 2011, the Turkish president and NATO leader, Recep Erdogan visited the new Libya. Begg recalls Erdogan rallying the assembled and no doubt vetted group of de facto NATO foot soldiers thus:

“…he’s saying you are the sons,… the descendants of Omar Mukhtar, the great mujahid who fought against the…Italians [colonialism]. And he said today Libya and tomorrow Syria and he shouts, Syria, Syria and everybody’s going Syria, Syria, Syria. That so clearly he’s supporting…the regime change, that people need to rise up to do in in Syria, what they did in Libya. So that was an expectation and the people did so as a partly because they felt that the powerful NATO neighbour is in support of us…”

Among other factors, Erdogan is laundering the Libyan, NATO collaborators as the descendants of the very people who fought NATO’s fore bearers, that is the European, specifically Italian, colonialists. Erdogan is saying those Libyans that fought the Italians in the inter-war period are one and the same as those that provided ground forces for NATO in 2011! This is clearly history shamelessly turned on its head. Omar al-Mukhtar fought European invasion and control of Libya, the likes of Erdogan and Begg were facilitating European military intervention so Libya can once again be a state that serves European interests.

This comparison with anti-imperialist heroes of the past leads to another important issue, specifically the connection between historical and contemporary Muslim military collusion with western imperialism and occupation. As such, Begg has an interesting political background. In his autobiography, Enemy Combatant, he states that his,

“…ancestors had been officers in the British Army…my grandfather and his father and grandfather had seen action in the Indian Mutiny (though I don’t know on which side), the Boer War, and the World Wars. One of my father’s uncles had been a POW in Europe, while another was killed fighting bandits near the Afghan border. We had a very strong military tradition as a family…”

No one would dispute that this is certainly “a very strong military tradition” but this paragraph needs to be critically and objectively unpacked to uncover hidden uncomfortable truths. Firstly, if Begg’s great grandfathers had fought with the honourable Indian revolutionaries during India’s first war of independence (“Indian Mutiny”) in 1857 does anyone think that Begg would ever stop reminding people of this noble background? Also, as this author has discussed elsewhere the categorisation, “Indian Mutiny” is aimed at militarily belittling and localising the revolt against British rule in the 1850s with a view to falsely distance it from the general masses who predominately supported and participated in the Indian revolutionary uprising.

Secondly, Begg claims his family served as part of the British auxiliary forces in South Africa, that is presumably the “Boer War” and also the two World Wars. Indian leaders had wanted nothing to do with the internecine imperialist wars of Europeans such as World War Two which compels one to ask what “action” did the Begg family actually see during World War Two? Were they actually fighting other Indians who sensing Britain military tied up elsewhere were revolting against the British occupation or were they actually fighting Japanese?

Finally, in his autobiography Begg treats his readers to an old black and white photograph of his grandfather, Abdus-Sattar Begg, alongside his brothers in full British Raj military garb. It’s a photo that clearly compliments the above paragraph. Begg claims one of his grandfather’s brothers was killed on the Afghan border clearly doing the British Raj’s bidding against what Begg labels “Pushtun tribesman”. As this author understands the Begg family is originally from the Indian interior, so what compelled them travel to the borderlands with Afghanistan to confront “Pushtan tribesman” other than to be bag carriers for British white imperialists hunting “natives” who rejected the rule of the British Raj? The truth is over the course of two centuries Britain had impoverished India and reduced it to a state of penury and the Begg grandiose, mealy-mouthed family “strong military tradition” was nothing more than cheap Indian enforcers and servants of this British imperialist predatory, impoverishing occupation. While the average Indian – Hindu, Muslim or Sikh – had an average life expectancy of no more than 30 years old because of imperialist extractive policies, the Begg family were dressed up in their ‘collaborator costumes’ for the family photo album!

Omar al-Mukhtar aimed to free Libya of European domination. al-Mukhtar was the complete anti-thesis of the Begg family. At the same time al-Mukhtar was resisting the Italian occupation, the Begg family “strong military tradition” was fighting to keep their fellow Indians under European domination, specifically the British Raj. Other anti-imperialists who were resisting British colonialism were Palestinians led by Izz al-Deen al-Qassam who died in 1935 fighting the British occupation of Palestine. Begg is clearly a grandchild of veritable Indian collaborating fodder of the nineteenth and twentieth century British imperialist white supremacy. While other Indians saw existence in resistance to the British Raj, the Begg “strong military tradition” saw collaboration with the British Raj as its ideal form of existence.

This unpacked hidden truth about Begg’s political family background, i.e “strong military tradition”, dovetails neatly with an important observation made by the deposed Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Ghadhaffi in the month before his livestreamed lynching by NATO’s foot soldiers in October 2011. Of those that allied with NATO’s war on Libya, Ghadhaffi said:

“…their families back then where spies for Italy, and nowadays are spies for France and Britain the same sons are following in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers; the steps of dishonour…These rats and armed scum; are examples of their grandfathers. Each one of them is a clone and a mock-up of traitor-ship, they aren’t Libyan, ask about any of those that are backed by NATO; that destroys Libyan infrastructure and kills Libyan children; you’ll find that his grandfather and his dad where traitors. They carry the genes of traitors…”

Ghadhaffi had argued that those Libyans who had joined NATO in the 2011 regime change operation, “are following in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers; the steps of dishonour…These rats and armed scum; are examples of their grandfathers.” Basically, the bloodline of today’s collaborators are decedents of yesteryear’s colonial collaborators. Begg in his championing and participation of Western backed regime change in Libya and then in Syria is literally following in the “footsteps” of his family’s own “strong family tradition” or as the late Ghadhaffi would say Begg carries “the genes of traitors…”

Colonel Ghadhaffi had come to power in 1969 by overthrowing the British puppet ruler King Idris. He accomplished what Omar al-Mukhtar aimed and established Libya as an independent country by throwing out the American and British military bases. Ghadhaffi then set Libya on a journey whereby it became the most prosperous country in Africa as well as providing housing, healthcare and increasing literacy rate for its people. Fabulous infrastructure projects were constructed such as the ‘Great Man Made River’ which transferred clean water from the southern regions of the country to the populated northern coastal regions for domestic, agricultural and industrial use. Millions of migrants from Arab and African world travelled there for work. But with the NATO destruction of Libya in 2011 all this was decimated, lost and directly led to the 2010s migration crises across the Mediterranean Sea. As the NATO intervention showed, the bloodline of traitors were keeping their heads down, waiting for their moment to pounce with their European masters. The difference this time was whereas the in the past the likes of the Begg family wore British Raj costume to give themselves authority over other Indians, today’s lickspittle collaborators have long beards, shaved moustaches and are more often than not admirers of the alleged theologian the Najdi, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab. From Libya, Begg clearly jumped at the opportunity to get involved in the CIA led regime change operation in Syria known as Operation Timber Sycamore. He co-ordinated with British intelligence before travelling to Syria to, inter alia, train foreign foot soldiers and was later to speak about his experiences with Zionist author, Charles Lister for his pro-regime change book, The Syrian Jihad.

In one respect Begg is the British-Pakistani equivalent of American Jewish author and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. One can sympathise with the horrors Wiesel witnessed during the 1940s European holocaust but at the same time reject his Zionism. Likewise, with Begg, we can all condemn the suffering he endured during his incarceration at Guantanamo Bay but totally reject his Islamically coated regime change propaganda, blagging and untrue statements about regime change in Libya and Syria. What’s ironic about Begg is that he was hunted down by Pakistani police; it was the Pakistani police that raided his home in Pakistan; the Pakistani police that arrested and imprisoned him and separated him from his family. It was then the Pakistani police who handed him over to the Americans to be incarcerated and interrogated first at Baghram Airport and then at Guantanamo Bay. Yet he and his ilk have not called for NATO or American aircover for military regime change in Pakistan or to in effect dismember the Pakistani state. Why the double standards? Is it because Pakistan will always be a Western client state and regime, while countries like Libya and Syria needed to be destroyed and dismembered because they didn’t fully obey the United States and Britain? Instead, in his biography, Begg provides an apologia for the Pakistanis that captured him implying they had their arms twisted by the Americans and anyway they treated him better than the Americans or as he writes, the “Pakistanis never shouted at me, or dragged me around, or shackled my legs during transportation.” How marvellous of them! He may have added the Pakistanis gave him a cookie and a jalebi as they bundled him over to the Americans for a three-year torturous incarceration.

It is fabulous testimony to Moazzam Begg’s unabashed political shamelessness, undimmed hypocrisy and his deep-seated family “strong military tradition”, that is, a family tradition of bootlicking, amoral collaboration with British imperialism, that he sees no contradiction between himself joining the Western regime change operations in Libya and Syria and also giving lectures about an anti-imperialist hero such as Omar al-Mukhtar. Then again, to ask a liar such as Begg to cease his deception and keep a noble warrior like the great honourable Libyan, al-Mukhtar out of his mouth, would be tantamount to asking the Devil to stop deceiving. Indeed, it is an insult to the memory of Omar al-Mukhtar for Begg to utter his name.

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©Nu’man Abd al-Wahid

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Nu’man Abd al-Wahid is the author of “Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle” which conclusively shows that British militaristic foreign policy during the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is rooted in the history of British imperialism’s own historic militarism and not because of any subservience or kowtowing to United States’s foreign policy. His X account is @NumanAbdalWahid

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