The latest reports of British special forces injuries fighting in the Saudi led war on Yemen once again provides further evidence the British political establishment are the main Western backers behind the war launched in March 2015. It’s not for the first time British elite forces operating in Yemen are reported to have been injured. Yet western commentary, especially before these injuries became known, largely blames the United States as the main instigator behind the current destruction of Yemen. For example, former British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband’s latest article on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen claims that the war is a “strategic failure” and only the United States possesses the might to put it right. Above all else, he implies the US is the nation most responsible for the dire situation. Last year, the same Miliband was forthright and declared after a visit to Yemen, that the United States, has a “threefold responsibility” for the crisis in Yemen without mentioning the British role in assisting the Saudis. But in the light of these latest reports of British injuries how accurate is it to say or imply that the United States is the main global power behind the war on Yemen? Continue reading
UK
London’s Shard and the Arab World’s Sectarianism
During the heyday of George W.Bush’s “War on Terror”, his erstwhile ally Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair scolded the late President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and the Bolivian President, Evo Morales in the aftermath of a European Union-Latin American summit.
Blair requested both Presidents behave sensibly and responsibly with their respective country’s natural resources. Obviously, Bush’s right hand man did not qualify how such ‘sensibility’ and ‘responsibility’ should manifest itself. But if we gaze across the world and look at how the Arab despots of the Persian Gulf spend their wealth we certainly can decipher what the war criminal meant Continue reading
Libya: ‘Operation Dignity’ or a British and American proxy war?
During the first week of General Khalifa Hiftar’s so-called “Operation Dignity” in Libya ostensibly launched with the modus operandi to military rid the country of armed Islamist militias and to establish stability, it wasn’t too difficult to find some in the British media highlighting the General’s supposed proximity to American intelligence and specifically to the CIA.
‘Operation Dignity’ was launched on Friday 16th May, by the following Monday the Financial Times (FT) was informing its readers that after the General’s defection from the Libyan army a couple of decades ago, he moved to a Washington D.C suburb where “he is said to have cultivated contacts with Western agencies seeking to undermine” Colonel Muammar Ghadhaffi, the former leader of Libya.
On Tuesday 20th May, the FT once again reminded its readers that Hiftar “is believed to have links to the U.S.” On the same day the Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black referred to him as a “US-linked figure”, while Continue reading
Why the United States must Reject British Foreign Policy in Syria.
One of the effects of the Obama presidency is that it has turned international warmongering on its head. The script, has been somewhat flipped. During the George W. Bush era there was very little doubt who was perceived to be leading the mindless, breast-beating clamour for war. What is now clear and impossible to avoid is that the United Kingdom is assuming the lead in calling for more Western intervention in the Middle East. As such and like Libya, the British have been leading the calls for a United States led intervention in Syria.[1]
In an interview with the historian Niall Ferguson, David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, declared his “frustration” at the lack of interest in intervening in Syria. He had similarly declared his frustration when it did not seem the British were going to be granted an intervention in Libya.[2]
Since Obama’s re-election Cameron has raised the verbal stakes in advocating intervention in Syria. Firstly, on the day of Obama’s historic re-election and on the back of peddling weapons to the Persian Gulf despots Continue reading
The Rise of North Yemeni Islamism in Birmingham, UK.
One of the reasons generally given for the rise of extreme Islamism is the Arab defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967 in the six day war.
It is theorised that, from this defeat (or Naksa as the Arabs refer to it), loomed the beginning of the end of Arab Nationalism and other, largely secular ideologies, which had hitherto led the struggle to liberate the Middle East from western domination and zionist colonialism. This defeat created the vacuum political Islamism has supposedly filled since.
This theory tends to be strongly insinuated at and espoused by British writers such as Seamus Milne, Jason Burke and the late Chris Harman.[1]
The theory overlooks one very important British initiated strategy[2] played out in the Middle East and South East Asia during the Cold War. Continue reading
Colonial Karma 