Britain's Secret Wars E-Book

T. J. Coles

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

In a devastating analysis, T. J. Coles reveals the true extent of Britain's covert foreign policy that supports war, conflict and oppression around the world. Unbeknownst to the broad population, the Shadow State sponsors a 'new world order' that allies Britain with America's quest for global power – what the Pentagon calls 'Full Spectrum Dominance'. Coles documents how British operatives have interfered in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran and Yemen with the aim of deposing unwanted regimes. In doing so, they have helped create extensive terrorist networks across the Middle East, reviving previously-failing Jihadist groups such as ISIL, which has now transformed into an international terror franchise. In addition to waging clandestine wars in the Middle East, the secret services have used the military to run drugs by proxy in Colombia, train death squads in Bangladesh and support instability in Ukraine, where NATO's strategic encroachment on Russia is drawing the world closer to terminal nuclear confrontation. Coles unearths Britain's involvement in the recent ethnic cleansing of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan government, the invasion of Somalia by Somali and Ethiopian warlords, and Indonesia's atrocities in Papua. He also exposes the extensive use of drones for murder and intimidation across the Middle East and elsewhere. Britain's Secret Wars is essential reading for anyone who wants to dig beneath the surface of current events.

Leseprobe

T.J. COLES studies the philosophy of neurology and cognition at the University of Plymouth, UK, with reference to the aesthetic experiences of the blind and visually impaired. He is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research (PIPR), editor and co-author of Voices for Peace and author of The New Atheism Hoax (both 2015, PIPR). His political writings have appeared in the New Statesman, Lobster, Peace Review and Z Magazine. He is also a columnist with Axis of Logic and in 2013 was shortlisted for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for journalism.

BRITAIN'S

SECRET WARS

HOW AND WHY THE UNITED KINGDOM SPONSORS CONFLICT AROUND THE WORLD

T.J. COLES

Clairview Books Ltd., Russet, Sandy Lane, West Hoathly, West Sussex RH19 4QQ

www.clairviewbooks.com

Published in Great Britain in 2016 by Clairview Books

© T.J. Coles 2016

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The right of Tim Coles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Print book ISBN 978 1 905570 78 2 Ebook ISBN 978 1 905570 69 0

Cover by Morgan Creative Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Introduction

Foreign policy - ‘To pursue clandestine, illegal operations’

PART 1: THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

1. Syria - ‘Illegal but necessary’

2. Libya - ‘Orchestrated unrest’

3. Iraq - ‘A momentary twinge of concern’

4. Iran - ‘It's all about petrol prices’

5. Yemen - ‘Put the fear of death into them’

6. Drones - ‘We’re talking about murder’

PART II: AND BEYOND

7. Ukraine - ‘We saw this one coming’

8. Sri Lanka - ‘Shining a light’

9. Colombia - ‘The best business environment’

10. Papua - ‘Starve the bastards out’

11. Somalia - ‘Now I’m a real killer’

12. Bangladesh - ‘Survival of the fittest’

Conclusion

Peaceniks - ‘terrorist sympathisers’

Notes

ACRONYMS

AI Amnesty International

BMENAI Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative

BRA Bougainville Resistance Army

CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US)

DFID Department for International Development (UK)

EIJ Egyptian Islamic Jihad

EU European Union

FARC Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation (US)

FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK)

FSA Free Syrian Army

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters

HMG Her Majesty's Government

HRW Human Rights Watch

ICG International Crisis Group

ICU Islamic Courts Union (Somalia)

IMF International Monetary Fund

IS Islamic State (aka, Daesh, ISIL, ISIS)

ISIL Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, (aka Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham)

JFC Justice for Colombia

KLA Kosovo Liberation Army

LIFG Libyan Islamic Fighting Group

LNG Liquefied Natural Gas

LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or ‘Tamil Tigers’)

MEK Mujahideen-el-Khalq

MEPI Middle East Partnership Initiative

MI5 Military Intelligence, Section Five

MI6 Military Intelligence, Section Six

MoD Ministry of Defence (UK)

MSC Mujahideen Shura Council

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

PIL Public Interest Lawyers

PNG Papua New Guinea

RAB Rapid Action Battalion

RAF Royal Air Force

RAWA Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

RIIA Royal Institute of International Affairs

SAS Special Air Service

SBS Special Boat Service

SNC Syrian National Council

TAPOL Indonesian human rights group

TFG Transitional Federal Government (Somalia)

USAID United States Agency for International Development

UN United Nations

UNGA United Nations General Assembly

UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees

UNSC United Nations Security Council

UNSCR United Nations Security Council Resolution

WFP World Food Programme

WHO World Health Organization

WND World Net Daily

Introduction

Foreign policy - ‘To pursue clandestine, illegal operations’

A few years ago, Britain's Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, said: ‘If you want to keep a secret in the United Kingdom nowadays, the best place to speak it is in the House of Commons, as it is the least likely place to be reported’. Taking Fox at his word, this book consults government records in order to bring Britain's secret wars to public attention. The evidence presented here suggests that Britain has a greater role in world affairs than many realize. Secret wars are waged for the financial benefit of sectional interests (as internal records reiterate) and result in widespread crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing, torture and assassination.1

Domestic populations are generally pacifistic and responsive to humanitarian concerns. For that reason there is a concerted effort by governments to keep most wars secret. They do so by threatening libel, issuing directives to editors (D notices), and occasionally raiding offices to seize leaked files. A Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) book from 1997 explains: ‘Much of our foreign policy is conducted on the sly for fear that it would raise hackles at home if people knew what we were pushing for’.2

The aims of this book are to raise awareness about what is happening by filling a gap in journalism and scholarship, and to encourage journalists, scholars, activists, and the tax-paying public to think more carefully about what Britain is doing in the world, rather than focusing exclusively on the crimes of other countries. An evidence-based framework is laid out in this Introduction in an effort to explain the motives behind the secret wars, drawing on government documents and policy briefings. Having contextualized contemporary British foreign policy here (the ‘why’), Parts I and II address a number of secret wars taking place around the world (the ‘where’ and ‘how’).

The British Empire's notion of ‘free trade’ was of such benefit to a small number of monarchs, peers, merchants and traders that it became the ideal post-WWII model for global economic control. However, WWII wrought such damage to the global economy that an international system of regulated capital (Bretton Woods) was needed. In the 1970s, with Europe reconstructed along lines favourable to US businesses, the system was deregulated and ‘free trade’ promoted. This Introduction defines ‘free trade’ and illustrates how the Ministry of Defence uses violent methods to impose and maintain it where necessary.

‘The New Trade Agenda’...

In building its Empire (circa 1583-1914), Britain invaded ‘something like 171 out of 193 UN member states in the world today’, writes historian Stuart Laycock, who omits, among others, the Falklands/Malvinas and Gibraltar, subjectively sticking to ‘the more interesting’ and ‘unusual’ invasions. It is also worth noting that Britain created many borders (directly and indirectly), such as the Durand Line (never recognized by the indigenous population), which separates Pashtuns in Afghanistan from their kinsfolk in Pakistan. Providing no evidence, Laycock asserts ‘some truth’ in the ‘view’ that to the majority of Britons, Empire was ‘a force for good’. Other historians, notably Mike Davis and John Newsinger, provide ample documentary evidence to explode the myth of imperial beneficence. ‘[A]pologists’, writes Newsinger, deny that ‘imperial rule rests on coercion, on the policeman torturing a suspect and on the soldier blowing up houses’. Mike Davis documents the horrors of ‘free trade’ in India, which led to the deaths of 29 million people by famine.3

By the 1920s, the British Empire was all but over and the American Empire (which denies that it is an Empire) was rising. For British policymakers, like the Milner Group, the logical conclusion was to integrate with the US. In 1920, Britain's main planners of the League of Nations stated their intention to use international force when desired: ‘We wish to assist and develop the simple mechanism of international dealing ... without mortgaging our freedom of action and judgement under an international Covenant’. Lord Milner's publication, The Round Table, expressed the Group's desire to use ‘the League to provide us with the machinery for United British action in foreign affairs ... A settlement based on ideal principles and poetic justice can be permanently applied and maintained only by a world government to which all nations will subordinate their private interests’.4

As the Milner groups were established, American money began pouring in to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a think-tank (with ties to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) whose American equivalent is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Celebrating the 75th anniversary of Chatham House, director Sir Laurence Martin said: ‘Seventy-five years ago the founders ... believed that a new world order was coming into being’. Noting the bourgeoning post-WWI relationship between the US and Britain, Martin explained that ‘[t]he core aim of the new Institute, and [the CFR] was ... to bring into this partnership politicians, businessmen and the more serious representatives of the media in ... confidential discussion and collaborative study’.5

At international bodies like the Word Trade Organization, the US, Canada, Japan, and the EU ‘have set the agenda and ... been able to advance trade liberalization at a pace they are comfortable with’, wrote future Business Secretary, Vince Cable, in a 1996 paper for Chatham House. Cable outlined ‘the new agenda for trade’ across the world. Cable identified several factors that ‘did immense damage to the nineteenth-century liberal economic order between 1914 and 1945’. They include the two World Wars, ‘the intellectual respectability of state control’ over economies, and ‘economic autarky’ (i.e. independence). State-intervention in the economy is fine for the powerful, but not for others. Britain's nineteenth century model of ‘free trade’ required a strong state to finance corporations and impose beneficial regulations, as well as ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to weaken state-controls in foreign markets.6

After WWII, the US and Britain shaped the international economic order with the Bretton Woods system of regulated international capital. This was essential for post-war reconstruction. Even in ‘the relatively open’ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies, i.e., the rich countries, ‘it took almost 30 post-war years of rebuilding the global economy to reach the level of integration through trade which existed in 1913’. Once the pattern had been laid, the Bretton Woods system was dismantled and the ‘free trade’ agenda of de- and un-regulated capital was back on the agenda.7

... Is the Old Trade Agenda

So what is ‘free trade’?

The Cambridge History of the British Empire notes: ‘The position of Britain in world affairs ... governed her attitude to imperial economic policy ... [and] made it difficult for her to contemplate any substantial change’, hence the pursuit of status quo policies. ‘Her sense of her own needs and interests had not changed. Free trade still seemed to her essential if she were to keep her position’.8

Historian Barrie M. Ratcliffe writes that, as Britain was the major power of the day, its policymakers could afford to adopt ‘free trade’, whereas other European countries, notably France, regarded Britain's ‘free trade’ mechanisms as ‘a siren beckoning a less developed Europe to destruction’. French Prime Minister, Adolphe Thiers, ‘described free trade as a weapon the British hoped to use to increase their domination of world markets’, particularly in India, which Prime Minister Disraeli described as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of Empire.9

Prior to conquest, Indian and Chinese trade accounted for 60% of global GDP. In 1600, ‘a number of [English] merchants formed themselves into a society for their mutual benefit and protection’, securing a charter ‘for the security of their Eastern traffic’. British industrialists, traders, and politicians took control of quality Indian goods, including means of production, and reduced and eliminated domestic production. ‘For the possession of these commodities, the manufacturers of Europe had been discouraged’, a pro-’free trade’ study continues, referring to the imposition of several manufacturing laws. This led to a decline in British and Indian living standards, killing 29 million Indians by famine in the last quarter of the nineteenth century alone, as documented by Mike Davis.10

In the 1950s, when ‘decolonization’ was inevitable, Gallagher and Robinson wrote that one of ‘the most common political technique[s] of British expansion was the treaty of free trade and friendship made with or imposed upon a weaker state’. The authors cite treaties with Persia (1836 and 1857), Turkey (1838 and 1861), and Japan (1858), and ‘the favours extracted from Zanzibar, Siam and Morocco, the hundreds of anti-slavery treaties signed with crosses by African chiefs’, which enabled the British ‘to carry forward trade with these regions’, as in the case of the Dutch West Indies, whose former slave-owning sugar producers were undercut by slave-owning producers in Cuba and Brazil.11

‘[B]y 1840 Britain could no longer produce enough food to sustain its population’, writes historian Lawrence James. In the Dutch West Indies, for instance, sugar producers, who no longer benefited from slave labour, competed in deregulated markets, like British Guyana, which was ‘parcelled into small-holdings for former slaves, who became subsistence farmers’. Historian Peter Harnetty notes ‘the victory of free trade in 1846’, advocated by economists of the Manchester School and pushed for by the British Board of Trade. ‘In the age of so-called anti-imperialism, existing colonies were retained, new ones obtained, and new spheres of influence set up’, writes Harnetty. ‘It necessitated linking underdeveloped areas with British foreign trade ... [T]he general strategy of this development was to convert these areas into complementary satellite economies providing raw materials and food for Great Britain, and also provide widening markets for its manufacturers’.12

Defining ‘Free Trade’

If we are to understand America's global objectives, and thus modern Britain's place in the ‘new world order’, it is necessary to understand ‘free trade’.

In the latter part of its ‘second empire’ (post-1840), Britain ‘artificially, and arguably unfairly,’ allowed its producers to sell goods in foreign countries at prices lower than domestic producers. Known as ‘dumping’, the aim is to drive down profits to the point where competitors are destroyed. In industry, where in certain cases mass-production is more cost-efficient than specialization, and where overproduction is a problem at home, surplus products can be ‘dumped’ abroad, ‘without affecting the monopolistic prices received at home’, write economic historians Thompson and Magee. ‘This is precisely the situation that the combination of British free trade and foreign protectionism provided for the foreign producer’.13

Harnetty writes that in India, ‘free trade’ advocates argued that ‘duties must be abolished, thereby both enhancing the supply of cotton for British industry and enlarging the market in India for British manufactured goods’. In India, experimental cotton cultivation and railway construction were ‘state interference’. The Governor-General Council ‘appealed for the elimination of differential duties, whereby foreign goods entered India at a higher rate than British goods’. Ratcliffe concludes that the importance of ‘free trade’ was championed by publications like the Economist. ‘[T]ariff reductions coincided with the greater confidence generated by the re-establishment of stable regimes’. ‘Stable regimes’ was and is a code-word for governments who do what they are told by Britain and America.14

In short, ‘free trade’ relies on the labour of foreign and domestic working poor, especially foreign. It entails large taxpayer subsidies of otherwise failing industries and social engineering projects, like the railways of India, which were designed to maximize import/export efficiency for British producers. ‘Free trade’ is inherently non-competitive for state-protected businesses and highly competitive for foreign businesses and workers, often driving down wages. Since the financialization of the Euro-American economies in the 1970s, international organizations, notably the World Trade Organization (WTO), have been the vehicles through which ‘free trade’ is codified. Bi- and multi-lateral arrangements, including the Euro-American Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the US-Asia Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership, and the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative are taking the place of the WTO as ‘emerging’ powers like China and India gain too much influence.

In whose ‘National Interest’?

By 1997, the United States military felt powerful enough to commit America to a doctrine of global militarism known as ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’. This involves America's orbiting of space weapons (like the X-37B), covering the skies of the world with drones (Predators and others), maintaining and constructing hundreds of large and small military bases (like Camp Anaconda in Iraq), expanding a global surveillance dragnet (Total Information Awareness, as they call it), and, perhaps most dangerously, threatening Russia with a missile system based in Europe.15

The aim is to ‘to protect US interests and investment’. The Space Command's Vision for 2020 document announcing these plans goes on to say that ‘the globalization of the world economy’ will create a two-tiered class structure of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Full Spectrum Dominance aims to ensure Russian and Chinese compliance to ‘free market’ principles, hence America's ‘Asia Pivot’, a strategy designed to encircle China, and its construction of the missile system in Eastern Europe, pointed at Russia.16

When American policymakers refer to such actions as defending their ‘national interests’, they are referring to defending the interests of a narrow sector of the population, commonly referred to by activists as the ‘one percent’. A report by the Carnegie Endowment says: ‘U.S. wages have stagnated for the past three decades, while the workforce has also faced an erosion of job security, health care, and pension plans’ for the poor, in contrast to the rich, who are richer now than at any time since the 1920s. ‘This increasing economic insecurity has coincided with rapid globalization’, as the Space Command documented predicted.17

The role of former powers, notably Britain and France, in this ‘new world order’ is to maximize their ‘national interests’ (meaning the interests of their wealthy sectors) without straying too far from America's overall strategy. Minus a brief spat in which President Jacques Chirac refused to commit troops to the invasion of Iraq, ‘Relations between the United States and France are active and friendly. The two countries share common values and have parallel policies on most political, economic, and security issues’, says the US State Department. Following 9/11, says the US Council on Foreign Relations, ‘leaders on both sides of the Atlantic extol their common values and pledge solidarity between France and the United States’.18

Despite talk of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America coming to an end, the same sources say that ‘[t]he United States has no closer ally than the United Kingdom, and British foreign policy emphasizes close coordination with the United States’ (State Department). Britain and America often work together on secret wars. Both train and arm the Rapid Action Battalion death-squad in Bangladesh, for instance, and both worked to overthrow the government of Somalia in late-2006. However, Britain's elite can and do pursue their interests independently, such as arming and training the Sri Lankan Army and invading the Falklands in 1982 - a move which found no significant support from the US.19

As in the case of training and organizing a proxy rebel militia to overthrow President Assad of Syria, the British and French also cooperate over shared interests, to the detriment of their populations. Par exemple:

Four years after the Anglo-French Treaty (2010), the French company Dassault and the Anglo-American BAE Systems announced that they had been awarded £120 million by the French and British governments to build a new drone to ‘surveill[e], mark targets, gather intelligence, deter adversaries and carry out strikes in hostile territories’. Public opinion polls suggest that many members of the French and British publics alike agree that military spending should be reduced in favour of social spending.20

Foreign Policy as ‘Necessary Exploitation’

In 1997, Chatham House published British Foreign Policy: Challenges and Choices for the 21st Century. The book was sponsored by numerous big businesses, including British banks and oil companies. Although it is available to the public, few copies were published. It was, rather, intended for policymakers and businesspeople. Its existence and concurrent obscurity implies much about how important books and documents are suppressed by the mainstream media.

The authors explain that ‘a successful foreign policy requires a degree of secrecy and duplicity, a willingness to employ spies, engage in bribery, threaten, even use force, compromise principles, pursue clandestine, sometimes illegal, operations, and support dubious regimes’. The book appeared at a time when American ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), and the US-British refusal to intervene in Rwanda (1994), was evoked to justify military interventions (i.e., invasions). ‘Governments ... are expected to downplay the interests of humanity as a whole (except when those interests overlap with the national interest)’, the authors explain.21

Ergo, Britain illegally bombed northern Iraq in the 1990s, supposedly to protect Iraqi Kurds, whilst simultaneously arming and training the Turkish military to ethnically cleanse Turkish Kurds across the border. With few exceptions, the media portrayed the bombing of Iraq as humanitarian intervention and suppressed Turkey's ethnic cleansing of Kurds.22

‘[T]he issue is not “what does justice and the law require?”, but “how much can we get away with?’”, ask the Chatham House authors. ‘[P]ublic emotion’ aroused by reports of poverty, inequality, starvation, etc., ‘is not always a sensible guide to foreign policymaking’. The general public are ‘inchoate, fickle, unreasonable, inconsistent’, and express ‘arbitrary’ concerns. Noting the reality of child labour and the alliance with murderous regimes, such as those of Saudi Arabia, China, Nigeria, and Indonesia, the authors conclude that ‘[e]xploitation may be a necessary stage in the evolution of capitalism’ (emphasis in original): ‘capitalism’ being an inaccurate description of ‘free trade’, which they refer to as ‘the birth pangs of industrialization’.23

The Chatham House book informed the Blair government's Strategic Defence Review (1998). The latter explains that ‘[w]e depend on foreign countries for supplies of raw materials, above all oil’, and that ‘[d]efence serves the aims of foreign and security policy’, making Britain ‘resolute in standing up for our own interests ... [T]here are opportunities to be exploited’. According to the Strategic Defence Review, the Royal Air Force, like the Navy, exists as ‘a coercive instrument to support political aims’. By adopting ‘humanitarian intervention’ as an ideological justification for aggression, ‘We now have a real opportunity to devise a security posture which will support and underpin all Britain's interests overseas, in a world where democracy and liberal economic systems continue to spread’ - ‘democracy’ in the sense that Britain's allies, the Saudi monarchy, is democratic.24

Comparing the content of these documents to the ideas proposed in the nineteenth century demonstrates the similarity of today's policies with those of the past.

The Defence White Paper (2003) states that ‘military force exists to serve political or strategic ends’, which are not contingent on international law: we need to be realistic about the limitations of the UN and the difficulties of translating broad consensus on goals into specific actions, particularly where proactive military intervention is concerned’. These Blair-era policies continued to the Tory-Liberal ‘coalition’ government era and beyond.25

A 2010 UK Ministry of Defence White Paper says: ‘we cannot simply take a narrow, territorial-based view of our security. Our economy is exceptionally open to trade with many parts of the world and relies on the free passage of goods, services and information’. It notes that ‘[a] stable international order is essential if those interests are to prosper’. As noted above, ‘stability’ is code for regimes doing as they are told. The Egyptian regime, for instance, is highly unstable because it oppresses its population to the point of revolution. However, the regime grants Europe and America unhindered access to the important Suez Canal, hence it is a ‘stable’ regime.26

The MoD's Future of Character of Conflict (2010) paper says: ‘The access to resources (energy, food or water) will drive states’ security interests; control over these resources and their methods of distribution through the global commons will be a critical feature of conflict in the international system. It may dictate why we fight, where we fight and thus how we fight’. It goes on to note that by 2029, ‘The UK will be critically dependent upon energy imports and securing them will be non-discretionary’, hence wars in resource-rich and strategically important regions. The document defines ‘globalization’ as ‘the spread of capital, trade, intellectual property, economic activity, wealth and resources’, adding: ‘It also encompasses the guaranteed access to and exploitation of these resources in developing states’ - and for obvious reasons: a ‘developed’ state, like the UK, is not going to attack a peer, like France. Aggression (e.g., Iraq, Libya) and proxy wars (e.g., Syria, Sri Lanka) are limited to use against weak countries and groups within them.27

Preparing the National Security Strategy 2015, a high-level committee notes that ‘[t]he freedom that Britain has enjoyed to engage [in war has] ... been contingent on the fact that state-based threats to UK vital interests have been weak or non-existent’. The report refers to the situation as ‘a nice problem to have: international politics has rarely been so benign at the major power level’. This is a rather different picture than the one presented by the media: that Britons are under constant threat of annihilation from terrorists.

The report concludes that ‘economic globalization and interdependence ... produces relative power shifts’, at which point it ‘can actually be an underlying cause of war’, hence the importance of bi- and multi-lateral ‘defence’ agreements, like Anglo-French Defence and Security Co-Operation Treaty (2010), signed around the time that both parties were training and arming the anti-Assad rebels in Syria and a year before both parties joined NATO's bombing of Libya. Britain supplied logistical help for France's unlawful bombing of Mali in 2012.28

How wars are sold

There are two types of war: open and secret. Sometimes they overlap, as in the case of Libya, where British special forces secretly trained rebels to overthrow President Gaddafi. When the rebels proved too weak, NATO provided them with air support under the pretext of humanitarian intervention. With open wars, there are two types of justification: self-defence and humanitarian intervention. In the post-9/11 era, Britain engaged in four open wars: Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Congo (2003), and Libya (2011). Two were launched under the banner of self-defence (Afghanistan and Iraq) and two as humanitarian interventions. With the exception of Congo,* these were big wars which required so much military power that they could not be concealed.

A Ministry of Defence projection out to 2040 (sponsored by oil companies and banks) says that the public must have ‘perceptions of moral legitimacy’ when it comes to war. Chatham House conferences held in 2010 by policymakers, scholars and business leaders from weapons companies, banks and the oil industry, culminated with a series of reports, concluding that voters ‘will not actively call for a more effective foreign policy’, therefore: ‘The government should define its international mission as managing global risks on behalf of British citizens’, hence the invocation of the alleged threats from ‘al-Qaeda’, the Islamic State, and so forth, by the media and policymakers. It is even better for the latter when wars can be waged in secret and by proxy.29

In the case of secret wars, the media remains silent. A few scattered articles about the SAS operating in Colombia have been published in The Guardian. The Daily Mail reported that Britain had trained a proxy force to overthrow the government of Somalia in late-2006. The BBC and others briefly covered revelations that Britain was training a death-squad in Bangladesh in 2011. There has been a culture of total silence about the fact that Britain armed and trained the Sri Lankan Army during its 2009 ethnic cleansing of 40,000 Tamils.

‘Fickle’ & ‘Inchoate’?

Like most populations around the world, the British tend to oppose war unless they are exposed to media(ted) atrocities, like those of the so-called Islamic State, or panicked into self-defence, against for instance Saddam Hussein with his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. YouGov finds that ‘polling since [summer 2014] has shown a steady increase in British support for airstrikes against ISIS, rising from 37% approve versus 36% disapprove in early August, to 58% approve versus 25% disapprove by early October [2014]’. Support for bombing occurred after 1) media horror stories of beheadings and 2) the use of drones, which a) protect British service personnel from harm and b) do not show the dreadful consequences of civilian casualties, thanks to a media-managed campaign. But fear-mongering doesn’t always work: even at the second height of the cold war (in the 1980s), majorities thought that Britain should ‘be more like Sweden and Switzerland’ and pursue neutrality when it comes to international affairs.30

Support for the occupation of Afghanistan plunged to 22% in the final years of the war. Support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 never peaked above 38% (to cite the most pro-war estimates), despite the fact that in the run-up to the invasion and in the following months, the majority of BBC coverage was pro-war, as it had been during the Gulf War of 1991. In 1999, the UK Ministry of Defence said that its propaganda campaign in Serbia (‘information operations’) would serve as a model for future wars, as it did in 2011, when the British were inundated with unsubstantiated claims about Muammar Gaddafi primed to commit ‘ethnic cleansing’. Under half the British public supported the UK's role in the NATO bombing of Libya.31

The turning point came with Syria, when constituent pressure forced a no vote on the issue of bombing in 2013, even though the government had produced an atrocity video claiming that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons (the validity of which is disputed by security experts). What the overwhelming majority of Britons don’t know is that Britain has been at war with Syria since 2010, when it planned, and a year later instigated, a proxy army invasion. In Britain, the Armed Forces as an institution is respected, as are its servicepeople. Public attitudes toward the British Armed Forces is generally high, exceeding 80% in most polls. The primary reasons are a) respect for those who risk (and who are thought to risk) their lives for political decisions and b) the belief that the Armed Forces exist to keep the country safe. The internal documents analysed here paint a very different picture.32

Part I of this book is about the Middle East and North Africa. Chapter 1 exposes the thousands of terrorists organized by the US, Britain, and France in Syria with the aim of overthrowing President Assad. Chapter 2 documents how MI6 and the SAS hijacked Libya's Arab Spring for the purpose of overthrowing President Gaddafi. Chapter 3 documents the evolution of the so-called Islamic State. Chapter 4 exposes the US-British-Israeli sponsoring of terrorists in Iran and argues that professed concerns over Iran's civil nuclear programme are a cover for opposing Iranian energy independence. Chapter 5 provides a brief history of the war in Yemen, revealing the British military's war against socialists in that country. Chapter 6 provides evidence that Britain is engaged in a secret drone war, of which counterterrorism is a low priority.

Part II is about the world beyond the Middle East. Chapter 7 argues that the situation in Ukraine, in which Britain is significantly involved, poses a grave danger to the world. Chapter 8 exposes Britain's culpability in the deaths of 40,000 Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka. Chapter 9 reveals the shocking levels of human rights abuses in Colombia, in which the UK is intimately involved, including chemical warfare. Chapter 10 uncovers British support for Indonesia's illegal annexation of West Papua. Chapter 11 explores the secret war against Somalia, in which the SAS trained Ethiopian rebels to oust a progressive government. Chapter 12 documents the use of death-squads in Bangladesh - trained by the UK - for social control.

* The war in Congo is the worst in Africa, but Britain's role is comparatively small; it is not involved as much as it was/is in Iraq, for instance.

Part I

THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

Chapter 1

Syria - ‘Illegal but necessary’

This chapter is about how the British, French and American intelligence services conspired to wreck Syria. Their aim was (and continues to be) ‘reform’ in the country, meaning opening Syria's state-run economy to Euro-American investors. The Euro-American intelligence services employed disaffected young men (primarily) to do their dirty work. This demonstrates that, as the MoD document quoted below suggests, the deep state has no qualms about using terrorists when it suits them.

In August 2013, the British government was narrowly defeated in a Commons vote on a motion to bomb Syria. The human rights group Reprieve discovered that, beginning September 2014, British pilots ‘embedded’ with US forces bombed Islamic State targets in the north of the country, near the Turkish border, killing and injuring untold numbers of civilians. At least this time, the Cameron government waited until MPs said ‘no’ to war before bombing - in the case of Libya, the Cameron government voted on going to war two days after British bombs fell on Tripoli.1