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Canada to join fight against Islamic State militants for 6 months

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Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlines his government's plan to participate in a military campaign against Islamic State militants, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 3, 2014. REUTERS/CHRIS WATTIE

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlines his government’s plan to participate in a military campaign against Islamic State militants, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 3, 2014. REUTERS/CHRIS WATTIE

Ottawa: Canadian fighter jets will take part in U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State militants operating in Iraq for up to six months, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday.

Harper told the House of Commons that Canada also planned to send an air-to-air refueling aircraft and two surveillance planes to the region. He did not say how many jets would take part in the campaign.

Harper said Canada would not deploy ground troops against the Islamic State group, which is also known as ISIL. The plan is subject to a vote in Parliament next week but is bound to be approved, since the ruling Conservatives have a majority.

“We intend to significantly degrade the capabilities of ISIL, specifically, its ability either to engage in military movements of scale or to operate bases in the open,” Harper said.

The United States has been bombing Islamic State and other groups in Syria for almost two weeks with the help of Arab allies, and hitting targets in neighboring Iraq since August. European countries have joined the campaign in Iraq but not in Syria.

Canada’s two main opposition parties signaled on Thursday that they might oppose the deployment, saying Harper had not given enough details of the proposed mission and could mire Canada in a long war.

Source

Saudi and UAE join raids on Islamic State

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A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq

Washington: Aircraft from Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined US warplanes in a new wave of bombing raids yesterday against Islamic State jihadists in Syria, the US military said.

Coalition fighter jets and robotic drone planes conducted six strikes in Syria, hitting militant tanks, oil refineries and a training camp.

American aircraft also conducted three air raids in Iraq over the past 24 hours, including two in northeast of Fallujah.

Centcom offered no further details on the precise role of the allied aircraft in the latest strikes.

US and coalition aircraft have flown more than 4,000 sorties in an air campaign that began in Iraq on August 8 and was extended to Syria on September 23.

Source

Bangladesh minister sacked after criticism of Haj

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A general view shows pilgrims converging for the evening prayer at Makkah’s Grand Mosque on Sept. 29, 2014 as hundreds of thousands of Muslims started pouring into the holy city for the annual Haj. Bangladesh's telecom minister was fired on Tuesday after criticizing Haj, one of the five pillars Islam, as an economically unproductive activity. (AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH)

A general view shows pilgrims converging for the evening prayer at Makkah’s Grand Mosque on Sept. 29, 2014 as hundreds of thousands of Muslims started pouring into the holy city for the annual Haj. Bangladesh’s telecom minister was fired on Tuesday after criticizing Haj, one of the five pillars Islam, as an economically unproductive activity. (AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH)

– by AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

Dhaka: Bangladesh has sacked a top minister after his criticism of the Muslim pilgrimage of Haj triggered protests by Islamists who declared him an apostate and set a 24-hour deadline to replace him.

Abdul Latif Siddique, the country’s telecommunications minister, who is in New York accompanying Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, made the comments which were aired by local television stations.

Siddique said: “I am dead against Haj and Tablig Jamaat. Two million people have gone to Saudi Arabia to perform Haj. Haj is a waste of manpower. Those who perform Haj do not have any productivity. They deduct from the economy, spend a lot of money abroad.”

The comments drew immediate protests from the group Hefajat-e-Islam whose leaders called him “an apostate” and set a 24-hour deadline to the government to sack him from the Cabinet.

A senior official told AFP Siddique would be removed but he did not comment whether it was linked to demand by the Islamists.

“The decision has been taken to remove him from the Cabinet,” the official from the Prime Minister’s Office said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He added the decision would be effective after Hasina returns home.

At a New York rally where Siddique was the lone speaker on Sunday, he was also heard making critical comments about Hasina’s influential son and technology adviser, Sajeeb Wazed Joy. “Who is Joy? Joy is not part of the government.”

He also slammed the non-political Islamic group, Tablig Jamaat, millions of whose followers congregate outside the Bangladeshi capital each year in what authorities called the second largest Muslim gathering after the Haj.

He said the around two million people who gathered “don’t do any work except halting traffic movement throughout the country,” Siddiqui said.

There was no comment from the Tablig Jamaat.

IHC moved for registration of murder case against Pervez Musharraf on killings in drone strikes

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pervez-musharraf

– by The Nation

Islamabad: Islamabad High Court (IHC) has been moved for registration of murder case against Pervez Musharraf in respect of the innocent citizens who have been killed in drone strikes in tribal areas of the country.

A constitutional petition was filed by Mian Zahid Ghani a citizen of Islamabad in IHC Wednesday in this respect. The petitioner has requested the court former president Pervez Musharraf had signed a written agreement with US government and allowed the latter to conduct drone attacks in tribal areas wherein hundreds of the citizens were martyred. At least 1600 Pakistanis were martyred and hundreds were injured in 379 drone attacks during the period from 2004 to 2013. The injured are living the life of disabled persons. Former president violated constitution of Pakistan. Protecting the life and property of the citizens is responsibility of the government. Therefore, court should order for registration of murder case in respect of innocent Pakistanis martyred in drone strikes, he prayed.

America's deadly double tap drone attacks are 'killing 49 people for every known terrorist in Pakistan'

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The site of a missile attack in Tappi, a village 12 miles east of Miranshah, near the Afghan border after a U.S. missile attack by a pilotless drone aircraft in 2008. At least six people were killed

The site of a missile attack in Tappi, a village 12 miles east of Miranshah, near the Afghan border after a U.S. missile attack by a pilotless drone aircraft in 2008. At least six people were killed

– by Leon Watson, Daily Mail

Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today.

The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.

And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene.

The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that people often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack. Investigators also discovered that communities living in fear of the drones were suffering severe stress and related illnesses. Many parents had taken their children out of school because they were so afraid of a missile-strike.

Bombardment: More than 345 strikes have hit Pakistan’s tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan in the past eight years

Today campaigners savaged the use of drones, claiming that they were destroying a way of life.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of the charity Reprieve which helped interview people for the report, said: ‘This shows that drone strikes go much further than simply killing innocent civilians. An entire region is being terrorised by the constant threat of death from the skies.’

There have been at least 345 strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan in the past eight years.

‘These strikes are becoming much more common,’ Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who represents victims of drone strikes, told The Independent.

‘In the past it used to be a one-off, every now and then. Now almost every other attack is a double tap. There is no justification for it.’

The study is the product of nine months’ research and more than 130 interviews, it is one of the most exhaustive attempts by academics to understand – and evaluate – Washington’s drone wars.

Tribesmen gather near a damaged car outside a house after a missile struck in Dandi Darpakheil village on the outskirts of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region

Despite assurances the attacks are ‘surgical’, researchers found barely two per cent of their victims are known militants and that the idea that the strikes make the world a safer place for the U.S. is ‘ambiguous at best’.

Researchers added that traumatic effects of the strikes go far beyond fatalities, psychologically battering a population which lives under the daily threat of annihilation from the air, and ruining the local economy.

They conclude by calling on Washington completely to reassess its drone-strike programme or risk alienating the very people they hope to win over.

They also observe that the strikes set worrying precedents for extra-judicial killings at a time when many nations are building up their unmanned weapon arsenals.

The Obama administration is unlikely to heed their demands given the zeal with which America has expanded its drone programme over the past two years.

Washington says the drone program is vital to combating militants that threaten the U.S. and who use Pakistan’s tribal regions as a safe haven.

The number of attacks have fallen since a Nato strike in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Pakistan wants the drone strikes stopped – or it wants to control the drones directly – something the U.S. refuses.

Reapers and Predators are now active over the skies of Somalia and Yemen as well as Pakistan and – less covertly – Afghanistan.

But campaigners like Mr Akbar hope the Stanford/New York University research may start to make an impact on the American public.

‘It’s an important piece of work,’ he told The Independent. ‘No one in the U.S. wants to listen to a Pakistani lawyer saying these strikes are wrong. But they might listen to American academics.’

Today, Pakistani intelligence officials revealed a pair of missiles fired from an unmanned American spy aircraft slammed into a militant hideout in northwestern Pakistan last night.

The two officials said missiles from the drone aircraft hit the village of Dawar Musaki in the North Waziristan region, which borders Afghanistan to the west.

Some of the dead were believed to be foreign fighters but the officials did not know how many or where they were from.

The Monday strike was the second in three days. On Saturday a U.S. drone fired two missiles at a vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing four suspected militants.

That attack took place in the village of Mohammed Khel, also in North Waziristan.

North Waziristan is the last tribal region in which the Pakistan military has not launched an operation against militants, although the U.S. has been continually pushing for such a move.

The Pakistanis contend that their military is already overstretched fighting operations in other areas but many in the U.S. believe they are reluctant to carry out an operation because of their longstanding ties to some of the militants operating there such as the Haqqani network.

NATO airstrike in Khost leaves 4 civilians dead

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One civilian was killed during a US-led coalition forces operation in Masmo village of Ali-shing district of eastern Laghman province. (Photos: Najibulrahman Enqalabi/PAN)

One civilian was killed during a US-led coalition forces operation in Masmo village of Ali-shing district of eastern Laghman province. (Photos: Najibulrahman Enqalabi/PAN)

– by Javed Hamim Kahar & Muhammad Haroon, RAWA News

Khost: A district development council head was killed in a militant attack in southeastern Paktia province while four people — believed to be civilians — lost their lives in a NATO drone strike in southern Khost on Tuesday.

Paktia police chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Zaman told Pajhwok Afghan News the development council head for Syed Karam district Mirza Mohammad was shot dead by militants in the morning.

He said the militants were in a car and managed to flee after the attack. An Investigation into the incident is underway. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the assassination.

According to another report, four people believed to be civilians were killed in a drone strike in Ali Sher district of Khost province, the governor’s spokesman said. Mubarez Mohammad added the four people were traveling in a car when they came under attack.

The car destroyed in the airstrike, he said, adding it was unclear who the victims were.“We have ordered police to investigate the incident,” Mubarez added.

A resident of Khost City, Ismail Khan said the victims included his uncle and other relatives.“My uncle and three others traveling in the car had no links with militants and they were not equipped with weapons.”

More Washington lies on Hong Kong, ISIS, and more

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Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

– by Paul Craig Roberts

Hong Kong:

Whatever is occurring in Hong Kong, it bears no relation to what is being reported about it in the Western print and TV media. These reports spin the protests as a conflict between the demand for democracy and a tyrannical Chinese government

Ming Chun Tang in the alternative media CounterPunch says that the protests are against the neoliberal economic policies that are destroying the prospects of everyone but the one percent. In other words, the protests are akin to the American occupy movement.

Another explanation is that once again, as in Kiev, gullible westernized students have been organized by the CIA and US-financed NGOs to take to the streets in hopes that the protests will spread from Hong Kong to other Chinese cities. The Chinese, like the Russians, have been extremely careless in permitting Washington to operate within their countries and to develop fifth columns.

ISIS:

Americans are forever deceived. Remember the bullshit about “Mission Accomplished!”

The only mission that has been accomplished is the enrichment of the military/security complex and the creation of the American Police State. After eight years of the US military battering Iraq, Patrick Cockburn, one of the last front line reporters, tells us: “ISIS at the Gates of Baghdad.”

What is ISIS? There are a number of offered explanations. One from Washington and its puppet states is that it is a demonic threat to the West that cuts off people’s heads.

Another is that it is a CIA recruited and funded operation that is carrying out the neoconservatives plan to overthrow the governments in the Middle East.

My tentative explanation is that ISIS consists of Sunnis who are tired of existing in artificial states created by the British and French after World War I when the Western colonialists seized the territories of the Ottoman Empire. They are tired of being suppressed by Shia majorities or by secular dictators who use suppression to control conflict between Sunni and Shia. They are tired of being murdered, plundered, and raped by the Americans and Europeans. They are tired of being displaced and dispossessed. They are tired of the immoral Western culture imposed on them by modern technology. The Islamic State is redrawing the artificial boundaries that the Europeans created, and they are establishing an Islamic government free of the moral corruption of Western materialism and sexual promiscuity.

In short, they are tired of being dictated to and having their culture suppressed.

The huge sums of money taken from the gullible American taxpayers, people who, unlike ISIS, are willing to accept any imposition, for training the Iraqi army went entirely into the coffers of the American firms that got the training contracts. As Patrick Cockburn reports, the American trained and equipped Iraqi Army defending Mosul nominally numbered 60,000, much larger than the attacking force, but only one-third were actually present. The rest had kick-backed half their salaries to their officers in order to stay at home or to work a better paying job. When the Islamic State attacked, the Iraq army collapsed.

Afghanistan:

The new “president” of Afghanistan has agreed to Washington’s demands to which even the corrupt Karzai would not agree. The new bought-and-paid-for-puppet president has agreed for US troops to remain in Afghanistan. We will see what the Taliban have to say about this.

Ebola:

We now have the first ebola case in the US. A person in a hospital in Dallas, Texas, has brought ebola from Liberia to the US. The CDC says that the virus can be contained, like ISIS, and that no one is in danger. This remains to be seen. Because of the years of transparent lies emanating from Washington, many Americans already believe that the importation of ebola is part of the one percent’s plan to destroy the rest of us so that they have the country to themselves.

This is what comes of a government and a media that serves only the One Percent and that inflicts endless lies and disinformation on the rest of us.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths

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Amid reports of women and children killed in U.S. air offensive, official says the ‘near certainty’ policy doesn’t apply

Residents inspect damaged buildings in what activists say was a U.S. strike in Kafr Daryan, in Syria's Idlib Province, on Sept. 23, 2014. (REUTERS/Abdalghne Karoof)

Residents inspect damaged buildings in what activists say was a U.S. strike in Kafr Daryan, in Syria’s Idlib Province, on Sept. 23, 2014. (REUTERS/Abdalghne Karoof)

– by Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News

The White House has acknowledgedfor the first timethat strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria’s Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

The village has been described by Syrian rebel commanders as a reported stronghold of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front where U.S officials believed members of the so-called Khorasan group were plotting attacks against international aircraft.

But at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.

“They were carrying bodies out of the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff. “We believe this was a big mistake.”

Asked about the strike at Kafr Daryan, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said Tuesday that U.S. military “did target a Khorasan group compound near this location. However, we have seen no evidence at this time to corroborate claims of civilian casualties.” But Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told Yahoo News that Pentagon officials “take all credible allegations seriously and will investigate” the reports.

At the same time, however, Hayden said that a much-publicized White House policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone strikes unless there is a “near certainty” there will be no civilian casualties — “the highest standard we can meet,” he said at the time — does not cover the current U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

The “near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time,” Hayden said in an email. “That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now.”

Hayden added that U.S. military operations against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in Syria, “like all U.S. military operations, are being conducted consistently with the laws of armed conflict, proportionality and distinction.”

The laws of armed conflict prohibit the deliberate targeting of civilian areas and require armed forces to take precautions to prevent inadvertent civilian deaths as much as possible.

But one former Obama administration official said the new White House statement raises questions about how the U.S. intends to proceed in the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and under what legal authorities.

“They seem to be creating this grey zone” for the conflict, said Harold Koh, who served as the State Department’s top lawyer during President Obama’s first term. “If we’re not applying the strict rules [to prevent civilian casualties] to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value.”

Questions about civilian deaths from U.S. counterterrorism operations have confronted the Obama administration from the outset, after the president sharply ramped up drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, resulting in sometimes heated internal policy debates.  

Addressing the subject last year in a speech at the National Defense University, Obama acknowledged for the first time that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, adding: “For me and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live.”

Sources familiar with the new “near certainty” standard Obama announced at the time said that, as a practical matter, it meant that every drone strike had to be signed off on by the White House — first by Lisa Monaco, Obama’s chief homeland security adviser, and ultimately by the president himself. The policy, one source said, caused some Pentagon officials to chafe at the new restrictions — and led to a noticeable reduction in such strikes by the military and the CIA.

While the White House has said little about the standards it is using for strikes in Syria and Iraq, one former official who has been briefed on the matter said the looser policy gives more discretion to theater commanders at the U.S. Central Command to select targets without the same level of White House oversight.

The issue arose during last week’s briefing for two House Foreign Affairs Committee members and two staffers when rebel leaders associated with factions of the Free Syria Army, including Abu Abdo Salabman, complained about the civilian deaths — and the fact that the targets were in territory controlled by the Nusra Front, a sometimes ally of the U.S.-backed rebels in its war with the Islamic State and the Syrian regime.

But at least one of the House members present, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who supports stronger U.S. action in Syria, said he was not overly concerned. “I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details,” Kinzinger said in an interview with Yahoo News. “But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”

More than 230 killed in Syria since U.S. led attacks launch

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A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

– by Latin American Herald Tribune

Beirut: At least 233 people have died in Syria since the start of airstrikes launched by the U.S.-led international coalition against positions of the Islamic State (IS), the manager of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Rami Abderrahman, told Efe on Tuesday.

Abderrahman said during the phone conversation that at least 211 jihadists had died since September 23 when the coalition started its bombardments in Syria.

The activist added that this figure includes at least 60 members of al- Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Twenty-two civilians have also been killed by the coalition.

The attacks have targeted positions and bases of the IS in the northern Syrian provinces of Raqaa, Deir al-Zur, al-Hasakah, Aleppo, and Idleb, along with oil fields which had been seized by the radical jihadists.

According to U.S. officials, the target of the first airstrikes in Syria were members of the Khorasan group which includes veteran al-Qaeda fighters and is seen as a major threat by the United States.

The United States and its coalition allies began airstrikes last week on the IS in Syria, adding targets there to its weeks-old air campaign against the jihadists in Iraq.

Bomb Everyone

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Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East.

air-strike-syria

– by George Monbiot, The Guardian

Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at blowing up Islamic State, when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?

How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis(1). Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August(2). They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure”(3), once Islamic State has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida.”(4)

What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion” (suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qu’ran was symbolic rather than literal)(5). Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from above? Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet(6). One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.

Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft(7). It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups.”(8) In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”(9) Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis(10,11). Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?

The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week(12), if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and West Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.

Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely-Muslim countries(13), in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the earth by the destroying angels of the west.

Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”(14). But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what it wants(15).

Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to Al Qaeda, together(16). More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began(17). They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.

And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.

While the bombs fall, our states befriend and defend other networks of death. The US government still refuses – despite Obama’s promise – to release the 28 redacted pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, which document Saudi Arabian complicity in the attack on America(18). In the UK, in 2004 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating allegations of massive bribes paid by the British weapons company BAE to Saudi ministers and middlemen. Just as the crucial evidence was about to be released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation(19). The biggest alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar, mentioned above. The Serious Fraud Office was investigating a claim that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn in secret payments from BAE(20).

And still it goes on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi National Guard(21). When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to the British ministry of defence, instead of taking action it alerted his bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi jail. Smirking, lying, two-faced bastards – this scarcely begins to touch it.

There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect and sponsor and arm selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslims nations, they have made life worse for those who live there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are those which suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither coincidental nor surprising.

Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.

References:

  1. http://www.theguardian.com/guardianweekly/story/0,,1818778,00.html

  2. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/22/shia-attack-sunni-mosque-iraq

  3. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis

  4. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis

  5. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/iran-executes-man-heresy-mohsen-amir-aslani

  6. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/stand-up-for-blasphemers-like-mohammed-asghar-frankie-boyle

  7. Click to access 52302414.pdf

  8. http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073

  9. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-how-saudi-arabia-helped-isis-take-over-the-north-of-the-country-9602312.html

  10. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/

  11. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/islamic-state-us-failure-to-look-into-saudi-role-in-911-has-helped-isis-9731563.html

  12. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm140926/debtext/140926-0001.htm#1409266000001

  13. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syria-7th-country-bombed-obama/

  14. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm140926/debtext/140926-0001.htm#1409266000001

  15. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/west-isis-crusade-britain-iraq-syria

  16. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/isis-al-qaida-air-strikes-syria

  17. http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.616730

  18. http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/

  19. http://www.theguardian.com/world/bae

  20. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/05/bae-saudi-yamamah-deal-background

  21. Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield, 19th September 2014. Shady Arabia and the Desert Fix. Private Eye.

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