An Open Letter to Britain’s Leading Violent Extremist: David Cameron
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/an-open-letter-to-britain-s-leading-violent-extremist-david-cameron-abb568861784
by Nafeez Ahmed
This open letter to the Prime Minister is
published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new
crowd-funded investigative journalism project.
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=170397#170397
Dear Prime Minister David Cameron,
It is with deep disappointment that I read
excerpts of your speech provided by Downing
Street to the press, purporting to set out a
five-year strategy to tackle fundamentalist
terrorism, which?—?whatever its intentions?—?is
thoroughly misguided, and destined to plunge this
country, as well as the Middle East, into further chaos and misery.
I am writing this open letter to request you, as
a matter of urgency, to abide by your obligations
as a human being, a British citizen, a Member of
Parliament, and as our Prime Minister: to
undertake proper due-diligence in the formulation
of Britain’s foreign, counter-terrorism and
security policies, based on the vast array of
evidence from scientific and academic studies of
foreign policy, terrorism and radicalisation,
rather than the influence of far-right extremist
ideology, and of narrow vested interest groups
keen to profit from war and fear.
Ideology, innit
In your speech, you say:
“It begins by understanding the threat we face
and why we face it. What we are fighting, in
Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an
extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine,
it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to
destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric
realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim….
And like so many ideologies that have existed
before?—?whether fascist or communist?—?many
people, especially young people, are being drawn to it.
We need to understand why it is proving so
attractive… The root cause of the threat we face
is the extremist ideology itself.”
But this is already incoherent. You state that
the threat is Islamist extremism, an ideology.
You then claim that we need to understand why
that ideology is so attractive, and you answer
the question by claiming that the “root cause” of
this threat is the “extremist ideology itself.”
So essentially, the threat is the extremist
ideology, and the root cause of the extremist
ideology is the extremist ideology.
This is incoherent nonsense.
There are always factors outside ideology that
push and pull people to that ideology. No one is
suggesting ideology should not be tackled?—?but a
strategy premised primarily on tackling ideology,
which is what the government has been doing
already for more than a decade, has already failed.
OSCT
Your own government and intelligence
counter-terrorism experts have been trying to
convince you and your Cabinets of this, for
years. Why do you not listen to them?
Charles Farr, Director General of the Home
Office’s Office for Security and Counter
Terrorism (OSCT), last month repudiated your
previous ill-conceived rhetoric implying that
extremism is being “quietly condoned” in parts of
local British Muslim communities.
He noted that only several hundred Britons have
joined the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS), out of 2.7
million Muslims in Britain, and that rather than
insinuating that a threat is hiding amorphously
amongst British Muslims, we must recognise that
in reality Muslim communities on the whole have
proven quite resilient to extremism:
“It’s not to say the challenges they pose are not
significant, they are. But … the more we
overstate them the more, frankly, we risk
labelling Muslim communities as somehow
intrinsically extremist, which actually despite
an unprecedented wealth of social media
propaganda, they have proved not to be. So I
think we need to be cautious with our metaphors and with our numbers.”
Farr had also repudiated your claim that the
“root cause” is “extremist ideology”:
“The background of broken families, lack of
integration into what we might call mainstream
society, some level of criminality, sometimes
family conflict, are all more than normally
apparent… People join terrorist organisations in
this country and in others because they get
something out of them beyond merely satisfaction of an ideological commitment.
Sometimes it’s about resolution of personal
problems, sometimes it’s about certainty in an
environment which has deprived them of it,
sometimes it’s about excitement and esteem, and
we should not omit the last two factors.
This is the reality in Syria and Iraq but also
many other contexts we’ve worked on over the past five or 10 years.”
In other word’s Theresa May’s top security
official in your government is saying that
ideology is not the main reason that people join
terrorist organisations. While there is no doubt
ideology plays a role in defining the nature of
the terrorist group, its self-justification and
actions, it is not the main driver of radicalisation.
Why do you not heed the words of your
government’s own top counter-terrorism official?
Grievances
You go on to say:
“Some argue it’s because of historic injustices
and recent wars, because of poverty and hardship.
This argument, the grievance justification, must be challenged…
So when people say its because of the involvement
in the Iraq War that people are attacking the
West… we should remind them: 9/11?—?the biggest
loss of life of British citizens in a terrorist
attack?—?happened before the Iraq War.”
The thing is, Prime Minister, is that what you
call “the grievance justification” was endorsed
by the British government and British intelligence services.
Just three weeks before the 7th July 2005 London
bombings, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre
(JTAC)?—?which examines intelligence from MI5,
MI6, GCHQ, Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorism Branch,
the Foreign Office, and so on, warned in no uncertain terms:
“Events in Iraq are continuing to act as
motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the UK.”
In 2006, one year after 7/7, a report prepared
for the Ministry of Defence’s internal
think-tank, the Defence Academy,
concluded?—?contrary to your dishonest or
wilfully ignorant announcements?—?that the Iraq
War had acted as a “recruit sergeant” for al-Qaeda.
The MoD paper, authored by an official linked to MI6, found:
“The war in Iraq… has acted as a recruiting
sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world…
Iraq has served to radicalise an already
disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them
the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.”
Saving Muslims
Nevertheless, you go on:
“When they say that these are wronged Muslims
getting revenge on their Western wrongdoers…
…lets remind them: from Kosovo to Somalia,
countries like Britain have stepped in to save Muslim people from massacres…”
Ah, Kosovo. It’s convenient that your
understanding of the history of British foreign
policy is so selective. You omit to mention that
the destabilisation of the former
Yugoslavia?—?which set in motion the ethnic
conflicts across the Balkans of the 1990s?—?was
planned and fostered by the US, Britain and
German governments, setting in motion the events
that led to the Srebrenica genocide.
And guess what! We used al-Qaeda fighters to finish the job.
You should really know this, given your job.
No, this is not a conspiracy theory. Although the
US originally hoped for some decades to sustain
Yugoslavia’s territorial unity and integrity,
this changed as it became clear that the impact
of escalating economic crises would likely result
in the republic’s dismemberment.
As the late Prof. Sean Gervasi, an expert in
Yugoslav affairs who was an economic advisor to
John F. Kennedy in the White House, explained at
a conference in Prague on NATO enlargement, the West:
“… carefully planned, prepared and assisted the
secessions which broke Yugoslavia apart… And they
did almost everything in their power to expand
and prolong the civil wars which began in Croatia
and then continued in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They
were involved behind the scenes at every stage of
the crisis. Foreign intervention was designed to
create precisely the conflicts which the Western
powers decried. For they also conveniently served
as an excuse for overt intervention once civil
wars were under way… It is nonetheless true that
Germany and the US were the principal agents in
dismantling Yugoslavia and sowing chaos there.”
Gervasi quotes the Jane’s Information Group
publication, Intelligence Digest, which, citing
Western intelligence sources, observed in 1995:
“The original US-German design for the former
Yugoslavia [included] an independent Muslim-Croat
dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina in alliance with an
independent Croatia and alongside a greatly weakened Serbia.”
Whether by design or default, German pressure on
the EU/EC to recognise Slovenia and Croatia
“incontrovertibly hastened the disintegration of
Yugoslavia” in a manner with distinctive “economic advantages” for Germany.
US-backed macro-economic restructuring also
played a key role in exacerbating inter-ethnic
tensions and fuelling nationalist sentiments.
Internal economic mismanagement was already
deeply problematic, but Yugoslavia’s economic
woes were compounded by the US-backed pro-market doctrines.
Through the 1980s, IMF stabilisation programmes
and debt restructurings had left Yugoslavia
unable to service an expanded external debt
exceeding $21 billion. In her seminal study
published by Cambridge University Press, Reading
Humanitarian Intervention (2003), Prof. Anne
Orford of the University Melbourne Law School
examines the literature arguing that IMF reforms
contributed to the crisis. She concludes:
“The social impact of IMF economic liberalisation
and shock therapy stabilisation programmes also
had unacknowledged political effects. These
programmes arguably fuelled the nationalist
dynamic by rapidly restructuring republican and
federal levels of government, by implementing
policies with divisive social consequences, and
by advocating the removal of mechanisms that
provided some state support to individuals who
would suffer under unrestrained economic liberalism.”
Several scholars have documented this process
including historical sociologist Prof. Robin
Blackburn of the University of Essex, Catherine
Samary of Paris-Dauphine University, and the late
Peter Gowan who was professor of international
law at London Metropolitan University.
A declassified top secret CIA assessment dated
18th July 1990 noted that Yugoslavia was “making
headway” on Western-backed market reforms, but warned that as a consequence:
“Unrest is likely to reach worrisome levels as
reforms cause voters to lose their jobs or suffer
sharp drops in purchasing power. This will prompt
asking the West for more financial support.”
Despite a “bold stabilization campaign” scoring
“significant successes,” the CIA report warned:
“These gains came at high cost, including falling
industrial output, rising unemployment, and declining real incomes.”
According to a restricted 2010 internal memo from
the private intelligence firm, Stratfor, obtained
by Wikileaks, senior Eurasian analyst Marko Papic
told Stratfor analysts: “Don’t forget, the IMF
austerity measures imposed on Yugoslavia was
[sic] in part to blame for the start of the war
there. We need to be aware of any economically
motivated social discontentment.”
As early as October 1990, the CIA’s National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE)?—?circulated to
senior White House officials —concluded that:
“Within a year the federal system will no longer
exist; within two years Yugoslavia will have dissolved as a state.”
The report also admitted that “economic reform
offers little chance of staving off political dissolution” even if successful.
As expected, the NIE offered glowing praise for
market reforms, but in an extraordinary analysis
acknowledged in detail that the IMF stabilisation
programme, combined with local mismanagement, was
contributing to dramatic inflation. The report
noted that “one third of economic activities
would have no justification for existence under market conditions.”
Essentially, the report conceded that the
preceding years of IMF reform had created an
economic point-of-no-return. Noting that
“Monetary authorities can squeeze inflation out
through restrictive monetary policies,” the
assessment found that Yugoslavia had tried this
in 1989, but failed: “The result was deep
recession. Infusions of money to ease the
recession immediately reignited old inflationary pressures.”
Most importantly, the CIA assessment reveals that
by late 1990, before the outbreak of hostilities,
US and European officials had firmly adopted a
policy of attempting to manage a “dissolution” of Yugoslavia:
“European powers will pay lipservice to the idea
of Yugoslav integrity while quietly accepting the
dissolution of the federation. West European
governments share Washington’s hope that
Yugoslavia’s transformation will be peaceable,
but they will not provide much financial support.
Austrian officials fear possible consequences
from a breakup of Yugoslavia but say,
nonetheless, that they favor democracy and
self-determination above unity. Bonn, with its
influence in the region greatly enhanced by
unification, will continue to foster individual
contacts between German state governments and the
emerging Yugoslav successor states.”
Thus, in 1990, years before the outbreak of
conflict, the US and Europe were already
jockeying to position themselves in preparation for the break-up of Yugoslavia.
The CIA assessment also predicted that the most
likely source of violence would come from Serb
efforts to “reincorporate disputed territory into
greater Serbia.” It assessed that Slovenia and
Croatia as “independent democratic
market-oriented states” would be most easily
integrated into Western Europe, but that
Serbia?—?due to “nationalism and statism”?—?would
be inhibited from such integration due to its
“failure to adopt similar political and economic
reforms,” to agree to settlements, and its human rights record.
Nevertheless, as Balkans expert Tim Judah
documented in his book, Serbs: History, Myth and
the Destruction of Yugoslavia (2008), the US
effectively gave the “green light not only for
the conquest of Srebrenica but of Krajina too”
with a view to facilitate the carve-up of Bosnia
and corresponding “simplified” population
exchanges. The Srebrenica massacre in July “could
not be ignored,” found Judah, but “it could nonetheless be used…
“Immediately after the massacres took place, the
Americans had satellite pictures showing the
location of mass graves but these were released
in the UN Security Council only on 9 August, at
such a time as to distract attention from the
exodus of Krajina’s entire population which was then taking place.”
The US was also arming Bosnian Muslims through an alliance with Islamists.
According to British intelligence historian Prof.
Richard Aldrich, summarising intelligence files
exhibited in the official Dutch government
inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre, the
Pentagon, with tacit support from MI6, literally
flew in al-Qaeda mujahideen into Bosnia from 1992
to 1995, in violation of the UN arms embargo. The
so-called ‘black flights’ carrying arms and
military trainers were undertaken largely by
Turkish and Iranian planes, and later by
unidentified black C-130 Hercules aircraft?—?all
facilitated under Pentagon control of Yugoslav airspace.
The Dutch report, by intelligence expert Prof.
Cees Wiebes, estimates the mujahideen presence in
Bosnia to have been around several thousand,
thanks to the Pentagon operation. The
intelligence files show that the US and Britain
were aware that multiple Muslim regimes were
dispatching mujahideen fighters to Bosnia.
According to investigative journalist JM Berger,
also a Brookings Institute fellow, “illegal arms
ran through the UN embargo like water through a
sieve, with the implicit or explicit blessing of
the US government, and arms and other supplies
frequently ended up in the hands of known al
Qaeda members.” Berger added that this “US
support for the arms shipments…continued even
after a high-profile member of the Bosnian
network was convicted of plotting to blow up UN headquarters in New York City.”
A declassified State Department cable obtained by
Berger shows that the black flights documented by
Wiebes routinely carried Islamist mujahideen
fighters into Bosnia. One plane from Iran (out of
hundreds) was intercepted by the Croats. Apart
from being “fully loaded with arms,” there were
also “20 to 40 mujahideen fighters on the plane…
these were probably not all (or even mostly)
Iranians. Iranian nationals in Bosnia functioned
more as trainers and intelligence agents, but
Iran helped smuggle in fighters from around the
Muslim world.” Berger also reported that:
“American military veterans were also flying into
Bosnia to serve as trainers to the Bosnian mujahideen during the same period.”
The Croats, according to Berger, contacted US
embassy staff?—?obviously not privy to the top
secret Pentagon operation?—?who, perplexed, told them to send the plane back.
Wiebes’ survey demonstrates that the mujahideen
were integrated into the Bosnian Armed Forces,
receiving significant arms and logistical
support, although they operated with considerable autonomy.
While the culpability of Serb forces in genocidal
violence against Bosnian Muslims is
well-documented, less known is the role of these
foreign Islamist militants in carrying out massacres and atrocities.
A report from the International Centre for
Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague notes
tensions between local Muslims and the mujahideen
entering Bosnia with Pentagon support. Far from
ameliorating violence, the mujahideen committed
decapitations and mutilations of both soldiers
and civilians. Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both,
in their Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime,
acknowledge that, emboldened by these forces,
Bosnian Muslims had “conquered and ethnically
cleansed a vast area”?—?though they remained
severely outmatched by the better armed Serb forces.
After Dayton, the Bosnian government issued
thousands of passports, birth certificates and
other documents to the mujahideen fighters, some
of whom became implicated in terrorist activity.
A classified US State Department report leaked in
2001 showed that officials believed Bosnia had
now become “a staging area and safe haven” for
terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden.
Even one of your own senior Tory figures?—?Sir
Alfred Sherman, top adviser to Margaret Thatcher
and co-founder of the Centre for Policy Studies?—?noted in 1997 that:
“The US encouraged and facilitated the dispatch
of arms to the Moslems via Iran and Eastern
Europe?—?a fact which was denied in Washington at
the time in face of overwhelming evidence…
The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every
sense of the word. The US administration helped
start it, kept it going, and prevented its early
end. Indeed all the indications are that it
intends to continue the war in the near future,
as soon as its Moslem proteges are fully armed and trained.”
The NATO operations in the Balkans were about
expanding US hegemony into Eastern Europe and
rolling back Russian influence, according to Sir Sherman.
A year later, then US energy secretary Bill
Richardson agreed with him in reference to US interests in Caspian oil and gas:
“This is about American’s energy security. It’s
also about preventing strategic inroads by those
who don’t share our values. We’re trying to move
these newly independent countries toward the
west. We would like to see them reliant on
western commercial and political interests rather
than going another way. We’ve made a very
substantial political investment in the Caspian
and it’s very important to us that both the
pipeline map and the politics come out right.”
In 1996, MI6 had according to American
intelligence sources begun working with Islamist
extremists Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Hamza and
Haroon Rashid Aswat to recruit British Muslims to
fight in Kosovo. Among the factions Britain and
the US supported as part of the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) were al-Qaeda units linked to Ayman
al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy at the time.
Ironically, the 1999 NATO bombing campaign which
you claim was perpetrated to support Muslims in
fact accelerated the violence and precipitated
the ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Albanians. The
OSCE inquiry noted “the pattern of the expulsions
and the vast increase in lootings, killings,
rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air
war began on March 24… The most visible change in
the events was after NATO launched its first airstrikes.”
Then NATO Commander Gen. Wesley Clark admitted at
the time that it was “entirely predictable” that
Serb atrocities would intensify due to the
bombing: “The military authorities fully
anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic
would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency
with which he would carry it out.”
So why bomb? Not to save Albanians, according to
Gen. Clark, who even pointed out that the NATO operation planned by:
“… the political leadership…was not designed as a
means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was
not designed as a means of waging war against the
Serb and MUP [internal police] forces in Kosovo.
Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.”
Saving Muslims in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing
was “not the idea” according to NATO’s commanding
General at the time?—?but you know better?
Revenge
None of this justifies “wronged Muslims” taking “revenge” against the West.
The terrorists who killed and maimed on 7/7 and
9/11 and so on, are not “wronged Muslims.” They
are despicable criminals. But the despicable
nature of their savagery does not erase the fact
that Western wrongdoing plays a role in fuelling
the grievances that permit extremist ideology to fester.
The funny thing is, Prime Minister, that it’s not
mad conspiracy theorists that disagree with you
on this: it’s British government counter-terrorism experts.
According to a joint Home Office and Foreign
Office study based on survey evidence,
information from British intelligence services,
and academic research, foreign policy grievances are critical.
The report concluded:
“It seems that a particularly strong cause of
disillusionment amongst Muslims including young
Muslims is a perceived ‘double standard’ in the
foreign policy of western governments (and often
those of Muslim governments), in particular Britain and the US…
Perceived Western bias in Israel’s favour over
the Israel/Palestinian conflict is a key long
term grievance of the international Muslim
community which probably influences British Muslims.
This perception seems to have become more acute
post 9/11. The perception is that passive
‘oppression’, as demonstrated in British foreign
policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya,
has given way to `active oppression’?—?the war on
terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seen
by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam.
This disillusionment may contribute to a sense of
helplessness with regard to the situation of
Muslims in the world, with a lack of any tangible
‘pressure valves,’ in order to vent frustrations, anger or dissent.
Hence this may lead to a desire for a simple
‘Islamic’ solution to the perceived
oppression/problems faced by the
‘Ummah’?—?Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir and Afghanistan.”
So British intelligence, along with senior civil
servants and experts in the Home Office and
Foreign Office, are all basically deluded?
But you and your Cabinet have somehow developed a
special insight missed by counter-terrorism
specialists in the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and MI6?
Murder
You say:
“…it’s groups like ISIL, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram
that are the ones murdering Muslims.”
While entirely true, it is false to claim that
these despicable groups are the only ones “murdering Muslims.”
The scale of death wrought by successive British
and American governments in Iraq and Afghanistan
alone?—?both before and after 9/11?—?is truly colossal, by any standard.
Even taking on the lowest possible numbers?—?Prof
Stephen Walt of Harvard University calculates
very conservatively 288,000 Muslims killed by US
forces, compared to 10,000 Americans
killed?—?Western violence in the Muslim world far
outweigh deaths of Westerners due to Islamist terrorism.
Prof. Walt, a founder of one of the core theories
of International Relations, structural realism, has pointed out that:
“Our real problem isn’t a fictitious Muslim
‘narrative’ about America’s role in the region;
it is mostly the actual things we have been doing in recent years.”
Over the last 30 years (thus including decades
before 9/11), he wrote, the US and UK have
“killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American
lost”?—?a ratio that “is probably much higher” in reality.
How much higher? A number of scientific estimates
suggest that the total number of people killed in
Iraq and Afghanistan by US and British covert and
overt interventions, since 1990, approximates 4 million.
Wherever the real figures are between these
higher and lower estimates, the upshot is that
what you call “the grievance justification” is
not, in fact, about “justification” at all.
It is about motivation.
And there can be no doubt that British government
and intelligence counter-terrorism experts for
the last decade largely agree that Britain’s
dismal foreign policy record in the Middle East,
North Africa and South Asia has stoked resentment
and provoked anger, thus fuelling the grievances
that terrorist groups use to attract disillusioned recruits.
Why are you ignoring them?
You condemn the narrative of a ‘war on Islam’
while ignoring how our foreign policy has contributed to that narrative.
If you want to change the narrative, Prime
Minister, you need to acknowledge the facts of history, and change your policy.
Exclusion
You continue:
“Others might say: its because terrorists are
driven to their actions by poverty.
But that ignores the fact that many of these
terrorists have had the full advantages of
prosperous families and a Western university education.”
The same Home Office and Foreign Office report
had also highlighted economic disadvantage as a
critical factor in radicalisation.
Not, however, in the simplistic straw-man sense
that you knock down, but in the more important
sense that the deprivation experienced by the
majority of British Muslims contributes to the
formation of a general sense of identity
associated with social exclusion, even for those
who are not themselves excluded:
“Muslims are more likely than other faith groups
to have no qualifications (over two fifths have
none) and to be unemployed and economically
inactive, and are over-represented in deprived
areas. However, this is largely associated with
the disadvantage of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi
communities, whereas the experience of Indian and
Arab Muslims is much less disadvantaged…
There is still low Muslim representation in
mainstream institutions of influence, especially
for women?—?eg in public appointments,
volunteering and mainstream politics (although
the Home Office Citizenship Survey 2001 suggests
that low Muslim participation rates largely
reflect non-faith factors such as education,
economic empowerment, age and gender).”
When a wider community experiences deprivation
and unemployment?—?and 70% of British Muslims of
South Asian ethnicity are in poverty?—?all the
social science literature confirms that this has
a detrimental impact on general identity
formation in those communities, and exacerbates a sense of exclusion.
No one is saying that this alone makes a
terrorist. The reality, though, is that this
sense of exclusion contributes to the grievances
that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS exploit to recruit to their cause.
Integration
You also insinuate that Muslims in particular
suffer disproportionately from a lack of
integration within Britain, which contributes to
their disloyalty to Britain, and even hostility to its citizens.
“For all our successes as multi-racial,
multi-faith democracy, we have to confront a
tragic truth that there are people born and
raised in this country who dont really identify
with Britain?—?and feel little or no attachment to other people here.
Indeed, there is a danger in some of our
communities that you can go your whole life and
have little to do with people from other faiths and backgrounds.
So when groups like ISIL seek to rally our young
people to their poisonous cause, it can offer
them a sense of belonging that they can lack here
at home leaving them more susceptible to
radicalisation and even violence against other
British people to whom they feel no real allegiance.”
Your contempt for facts, Prime Minister, is astonishing.
For despite the social exclusion that British
Muslims suffer from disproportionately, it is not
British Muslims who are failing to integrate with
people from other faiths and backgrounds?—?it’s people like you.
In February, a ComRes poll of British Muslims for
the BBC found that 93% believe they should always
obey British laws; 95% feel loyalty to the
country; 84% would not leave Britain to live in a
Muslim state; 85% feel no sympathy towards those
fighting against Western interests; 85% did not
agree that organisations publishing depictions of
the Prophet Muhammed should be attacked.
The poll also revealed that the risk of
radicalisation was very much bound up with
grievances. It showed that 30% of British Muslims
aged 18 to 34 had some sympathy with the motives
of the Charlie Hebdo attackers. So despite
overwhelming opposition to the Charlie Hebdo
attacks, a firm belief in their lack of
justification, and unswerving loyalty to Britain,
just over a quarter of young British Muslims felt
some affinity with what they thought to be the
grievances that motivated the attacks.
The latest poll corroborates previous polls. In
2009, Gallup found that 77% of Muslims say they
“identified with the UK,” compared with only 50% of the public at large.
That is despite 75% of British Muslims also
identifying with their religion. Religious
belief, then, is not a barrier for the 82% of
Muslims who say they are loyal to the UK.
The barrier is coming from outside Muslim
communities. The Gallup poll showed that only 36%
of the general public would consider Muslims
loyal to the country: in other words, a
disturbing majority of the general British
public?—?67% of Britons?—?are suspicious of Muslims in general.
Prime Minister, it seems, you are among that majority. Are you not ashamed?
Poll after poll, study after study, consistently
prove that British Muslims are more integrated
into British society than their compatriots. Many
of the latter, beguiled by the constant
association of Muslims with terror thanks to
poorly researched and ill-informed speeches such
as yours, rarely come across people of other
faiths, barely know any Muslims (or other members
of other minority communities), and therefore
find it easy to swallow stereotypical fear-mongering promoted by politicians.
The Gallup poll, also pointed out that another
major factor in inhibiting Muslims from reaching
their “full potential” in Britain was economic.
The poll found found that only 7% of British
Muslims were considered “thriving” compared with
56% of the general population, and only 38% said
they had a job, compared with 62% of the general public.
It’s worth noting here that the joint Home
Office/Foreign Office report cited above, which
drew on British intelligence, showed that the
perception of anti-Muslim hostility is another major factor in radicalisation:
“Perceived Islamophobia (particularly post-9/11)
in society and the media may cause some British
Muslims including young Muslims to feel isolated
and alienated and in a few cases to reject
democratic and multi-cultural values…
Lack of understanding of Islam?—?insensitive use
of language and perceptions of Islam and an
ill-informed assumption that Islam’s teachings
are inherently extremist. Media coverage of
extremist fringe groups increases this…
Muslims’ perception of bias in the way
counter-terrorism powers are used to stop, detain
and arrest people, both at ports and in-country.”
So, Prime Minister, you have successfully
reinforced the overwhelming perception among
British Muslims that they are a problem community
requiring special measures, thus vindicating the
bigotry of far-right neo-Nazi extremists, and
feeding the victim mentality that extremists prey on to exploit and recruit.
Sell outs
Why is your government so intent on ignoring the
consensus in the academic literature on terrorism
and radicalisation, which has proven your
ideological presumptions about both to be
fanciful theories, promoted by ignorant American neoconservatives?
Indeed, I am appalled but sadly not surprised to
hear that instead of listening to experts with
years of direct experience in the field, you are
still taking advice from the laughably inept
group of misfits who operate under the
nomenclature of “the Quilliam Foundation.”
On Sunday afternoon, Quilliam’s founding chairman Maajid Nawaz tweeted:
“PM Cameron ?@Number10gov gives major
policy-defining speech on extremism tomorrow. I
helped with it. It’s significant.”
He added:
“…. his speech will acknowledge this has
something, not everything, but something to do with Islam.”
What advice did you receive from Maajid Nawaz?
And why is it that you and your government take
the Quilliam Foundation so seriously?
I ask this because of your statements as follows:
“But you dont have to support violence to
subscribe to certain intolerant ideas which
create a climate in which extremists can flourish.
Ideas which are hostile to basic liberal values
such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality.
Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation.
Ideas?—?like those of the despicable far
right?—?which privilege one identity to the
detriment of the rights and freedoms of others…
We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of
worship, equal rights regardless of race, sex,
sexuality or faith. We believe in respecting
different faiths but also expecting those faiths
to support the British way of life.”
Does your government not vet the people it calls into No. 10 Downing Street?
Are you not aware that Maajid Nawaz and the
‘experts’ employed by his ‘thick-tank’, Quilliam
Foundation, completely lack even a shred of
meaningful academic expertise (not a single
contribution to the peer-reviewed academic
literature at all) and are largely devoid of any
meaningful, concrete experience of actual
counter-radicalisation/counter-terrorism practice?
Are you not aware that Quilliam is merely a tool
of far-right violent extremists in the US?
If not, why not? Surely the government vets the people it calls into Whitehall?
You claim that freedom of speech is a British
value, but you take advice from a man who
appointed to the board of Quilliam an American
neoconservative bigot, Chad Sweet, a former US
Homeland Security official under the Bush
administration who now sits on the board of the
FBI’s InfraGard, which facilitates spying on the
public for corporate interests. The American
Civil Liberties Union has criticised InfraGard
for eroding freedom of speech and political
dissent—both of which are integral to democracy, no?
During his tenure as an American director of
Nawaz’s Quilliam Foundation, Chad Sweet was
campaign manager for Senator Ted Cruz?—?the
far-right neocon bigot who is openly homophobic,
racist, and misogynist, as well as being a climate denier.
As a Quilliam director, Sweet happily promoted
Cruz and his Republican brand of homophobia,
racism and misogyny to his heart’s content,
without a peep of protest from the ‘liberal’
Nawaz, who is clearly happy to harbour the very
same bigotry he publicly opposes, on his very own Board of Directors.
Chad Sweet was and is part of a wider US network
of white supremacists who see anti-Muslim hatred
as their ticket to political victory.
Also on Quilliam’s US board is Courtney La Bau,
who is Vice President of a bank not only linked
to the repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak in
Egypt, but which also has a joint partnership
with Saudi Arabia’s largest private bank,
al-Rahji, described by US intelligence as a
“conduit for extremist finance”?—?al-Rahji’s
founder is a member of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Golden Chain’ of al-Qaeda financiers.
Over the last few years, Quilliam has received a
million dollars in funding from a Republican
front charity?—?Gen Next Inc.?—?which essentially
operates to raise money for Republican political
candidates, and for political causes and issues
close to the hard-right of the Republic circuit:
much of this involves promoting politicians who
promote war?—?war and regime-change in the Muslim world.
The network’s members include senior members of
the Bush administration who spearheaded the
invasion of Iraq, which alone killed nearly a
million people (according to last year’s study by
the Nobel Prize-winning doctors group, Physicians for Social Responsibility).
These violent extremists pull the strings of the
unqualified morons you are inviting into the
heart of government, to advise you on your speeches and policies.
Given your professed concern with tackling
“entryist” violent extremism, this is quite alarming.
The Home Office/Foreign Office report mentioned
above even referred to how the government’s
reliance on such crony organisations, with no
grassroots credibility or expertise, is alienating and radicalising people:
“Some young Muslims are disillusioned with
mainstream Muslim organisations that are
perceived as pedestrian, ineffective and in many cases, as `sell-outs’ to HMG.
The government must make a more concerted effort
to persuade the Muslim community that it is
trusted and respected. That requires a change of
language. Public challenges to Muslims to decide
where their loyalties lie are counterproductive.”
It’s been over 10 years since that internal
government study, and no lessons have been
learned. To the contrary, you are repeating and
reinforcing the incompetent, self-serving mistakes of your predecessors.
Your far-right promoters
Worse, Prime Minister, you are associating with
people who stand for the very illiberal
anti-British values you claim to oppose.
I am thinking, for instance, of one of your
closest confidents and ad hoc advisors, Lord
Daniel Finkelstein, who sits on the board of the
Gatestone Institute, a notorious US think-tank
that promotes far-right extremism and racism.
This is the same think-tank that hosted Geert
Wilders, who your Home Secretary previously
banned for his racist incitement. Wilders not
only promotes hatred of Muslims, he has openly
called for ethnic Moroccans to be depopulated from the Netherlands.
Yet Finkelstein has promoted Wilders’ anti-Muslim
bigotry and racist calls to depopulate Europe of
its Muslims by, along with his other Gatestone
board members, approving the publication of
screeds sanitising and defending his far-right extremist ideology.
Finkelstein, in the same capacity at Gatestone,
promotes the very same blogger who was cited 111
times by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik in
his manifesto, and who has stated:
“Islam and all those who practice it must be
total and physically removed from the Western world.”
Lord Finkelstein disavows that he personally
advocates or believes such things. But he insists
that such ideas deserve to be heard and
platformed, and himself actively ensures they are
heard and platformed. And he appears to have your ear.
Why?
Why do you cavort with a man who gleefully
promotes racism and xenophobia, a man who
publishes through the Gatestone Institute absurd
narratives of “Muslim no go zones,” which you yourself described as idiocy?
Prime Minister, please disclose in the public
interest the nature of your conversations with
faux-liberals like Finkelstein and Nawaz, and
please explain why your opposition to far-right
extremism does not extend to rooting out the
promoters and sympathisers of violent far-right
extremism whom you are harbouring in your own private advisory sessions.
Conspiracy
You go on to suggest that those who criticise
your government’s flawed and misguided
counter-terrorism policies are engaged in malevolent conspiracy theories:
“And ideas also based on conspiracy…
..that Jews exercise malevolent power…
…or that Western powers, in concert with Israel,
are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam.
In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached…
…that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to
provoke the invasion of Afghanistan…
…that British security services knew about 7/7,
but didnt do anything about it because they
wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash.”
Why is it that in 2007, when Tony Blair dismissed
the need for an independent public inquiry into
7/7 as it would “undermine support” for the
security services, you condemned his stance and
demanded a full inquiry as only that would “get to the truth.”?
Let’s cut to the chase, Prime Minister?—?this not
about “conspiracy theories.” It’s about your
utter contempt for the 7/7 families and
survivors, who after having suffered the worst
terrorist attack in Britain since WW2, had to
endure your government’s backtracking of your
promise to hold an independent public inquiry.
It was the 7/7 families and survivors who were
asking the hard questions that, before your rise
to government, you disingenously supported to win votes.
Urgent questions like?—?why did MI5 lie by
claiming it had not identified any of the 7/7 bombers prior to the attacks?
Why did the government lie by pretending that no
warnings whatsoever of the attacks had been
received by the intelligence services, when in
fact, as we now know from leaks published in the
press, dozens of warnings were received?
Why, despite urging an inquiry into the
“preventability” of the attacks while hoping for
votes, do you now effectively mock the 7/7
families and survivors, and the lawyers and
experts who supported their call for an inquiry,
as conspiracy theorists, complicit in extremism?
Prime Minister, this is disgusting behaviour, and
it does not represent British values.
Scum
You say:
“The world is not conspiring against Islam; the
security services arent behind terrorist attacks;
our new Prevent duty for schools is not about
criminalising or spying on Muslim children.”
As usual, your straw-men are irrelevant.
Your government played a key role in creating the
murdering, rapist, tyrannical scum rampaging
across Iraq-Syria under the banner of the ‘Islamic State.’
In your self-serving drive to destabilise the
regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, and to
rollback Iranian influence in the region on
behalf of your allies in the Gulf, you and the US
supported those despicable Gulf regimes in
supplying arms and aid to al-Qaeda in Iraq,
al-Qaeda in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, and
Salafi-jihadist groups: groups that you now conveniently claim to oppose.
In 2012, the intelligence community was fully
aware that the core of the rebel insurgency being
supported by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey
was overrun by al-Qaeda. We were warned that
continuing this strategy would spawn a “Salafist
Principality” in eastern Syria, which would in
turn trigger the eruption of an “Islamic State” entity across Iraq and Syria.
Yet you, in alliance with the Obama
administration, accelerated the strategy. You
accelerated it knowing full well that British and
Western Muslims were being recruited by
extremists to fight in Syria, knowing full well
that many of them would return to the West and
pose a threat to our national security?—?yet in
your noble pursuit to topple Assad the dictator,
you helped other dictators support the extremists
that would become ISIS, and you turned a blind
eye to the radicalisation of a minority of our young people here as a result.
Even now, while you pontificate obscenely from
your pulpit about “extremism,” British military
intelligence officials are on the ground in
Turkey and Jordan, working with the Gulf states
and Turkey to supply arms and aid, and to
coordinate operations, for al-Qaeda forces in
Syria?—?purportedly to counter ISIS.
But you’d rather we don’t ask questions about that, right Prime Minister?
You’d rather we scrutinise the views of Muslim
children?—?even when your own Parliament’s
inquiry into the ‘Trojan Horse’ school
allegations concluded that your Education
Minister, Michael Gove, had severely overreached:
“One incident apart, no evidence of extremism or
radicalisation was found by any of the inquiries
in any of the schools involved. Neither was there
any evidence of a sustained plot, nor of
significant problems in other parts of the country.”
You have claimed on NBC news to be committed to
working with the US “to destroy the caliphate” in
Iraq and Syria, but you are working with some of
the most extremist, corrupt and violent regimes
in the region?—?Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE,
Turkey, Israel?—?supposedly to promote democracy and human rights.
These are the very same regimes which, by the
admission of your American colleague, Vice
President Joe Biden, funded al-Qaeda in Iraq
(which became ISIS) and its rival al-Qaeda in
Syria (many of whose members went on to join ISIS).
Now you are working with them to “destroy the
caliphate,” despite failing to investigate and
shut-down the same funding networks to these
violent extremists that your government helped establish.
Your war, Prime Minister, is a farce.
You, more than any other British citizen, are
complicit in the rise of ISIS, and the
radicalisation of a minority of Britons. You have
helped create the militant groups which, you
rightly acknowledge, are murdering not just
Westerners, but Muslims in Iraq, Syria and beyond.
The only people that will benefit from all this
are giant defence contractors, many of which are
closely connected to your party, and which hold
overbearing counter-democratic influence on your foreign policy.
“Whether you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian
or Sikh, whether you were born here or born
abroad, we can all feel part of this
country?—?and we must all now come together and
stand up for our values with confidence and pride.”
I don’t need you to tell me stand up for our
values, or to feel part of my country, thank you very much.
I’m British-born and bred, and unlike you, I’ve
been standing against violent extremists of all
stripes, Muslim and Western, for much of my working life.
I’m standing up for British values right now, and
taking this opportunity to demand that you stand
up for British values by denouncing the violent
extremism that you have been perpetrating,
harbouring, and allying with through your own government.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist,
bestselling author and international security
scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the
‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and
is also a columnist for Middle East Eye.
He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored
Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’,
for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his
Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening
Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners.
Nafeez has also written for The Independent,
Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman,
Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect,
New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New
Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among
others. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the
Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University.
Nafeez is the author of A User’s Guide to the
Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It
(2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT,
among other books. His work on the root causes
and covert operations linked to international
terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11
Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.
This article was amended on 23rd July 2015 to
ensure a more accurate and detailed reflection of
the Balkans conflicts. The previous version had
stated that the Dutch inquiry into Srebrenica
showed al-Qaeda fighters were flown into Bosnia
by the Pentagon. This was amended to show that
the evidence of fighters being flown in by
various Muslim states with Pentagon approval is
supported by a range of sources, including the
Dutch inquiry. Other sources are also cited to
supplement the wider analysis of the West’s role
in aggravating these conflicts and fuelling terrorism.
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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