07-22-2005, 06:37 PM
Growing Muslim hostility to Britain linked to Iraq war
By Michael Jansen
Jordan Times, July 21, 2005
British Premier Tony Blair's attempt to shrug off all responsibility for the July 7 attacks on London transport and lay all the blame on an evil ideology a perversion of Islam has been seriously contested by a collection of authoritative reports and assessments made by intelligence experts and pundits. A former Home Office adviser, Professor Sir Bernard Crick, told the BBC that it is nonsense that the government denies that there is a political as well as a perverted religious dimension in the London bombings. He laid the blame on the failure of Israel to follow UN resolutions after the 1967 war in spite of protests from the Arab and Muslim worlds. Sir Bernard said that it is also wrong to deny that the water in which the terrorists swim is plainly political and accused British governments of simply going along with grossly mistaken American foreign policy in the Middle East and of failing to protest against it.
London's left-wing mayor Ken Livingstone agreed with Sir Bernard. I think there were several levels that led those young men to come to London to kill. One is 85 years of Western intervention in the affairs of the Middle East. In particular, he said, ..for the last 60 years we have this terrible running sore of the dispossession of the Palestinians which is the single most important wound in the Islamic psyche.
The Madrid and London train bombings showed Iraq clearly dealt another major blow to the Muslim ability to tolerate hostile Western policies. A secret study leaked to the press on Tuesday linked growing Muslim hostility to Britain to the war in Iraq.This document, drafted by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre, a task force made up of officials from intelligence agencies, the military and the police, stated: Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK. The report was transmitted to the British government and foreign agencies and businesses in mid-June. Unfortunately, the experts also mistakenly held that there was no group with the capability to carry out an attack in Britain, prompting security services to lower their assessment of risk from severe to substantial.
The leaking of this report followed the release on Monday of a study by Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) which also tied the London bombings to Britain's riding to war in Iraq as a pillion passenger on the motorcycle driven by George W. Bush.
Finally, an opinion poll taken in Britain revealed that two-thirds of the populace believe that there was a connection between the war in Iraq and the London bombings.
This perception is supported by two studies by the Saudi authorities and an Israeli researcher, which reveal that the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are not members of Al Qaeda or any other organised militant grouping but are volunteers motivated by the war in Iraq. The Saudi study is based on interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to illegally enter Iraq and case studies of nearly 50 who died in suicide bombings. According to the US-trained Saudi researcher, Nawaf Obaid, most of the Saudis who went to Iraq were responding to calls by preachers to drive the foreigners from Arab soil. In an interview published by the Boston Globe, Obaid said the majority of Saudis were youngsters inspired to take action by watching footage of what is happening in Iraq on television and by reading reports on the Internet.
In the Israeli study, which relied on data from 154 foreign fighters who took part in the Iraq battle, Reuven Paz revealed that those who were not youngsters were largely Arabs in their late 20s and early 30s who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11 and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today.”
One of the key factors contributing to Arab and Muslim anger over the situation in Iraq is the fact that the US installed pro-Iranian Islamist Shias in power in Iraq and marginalised the country's Sunni community which has ruled the country since the advent of Islam. Because Sunnis account for 90 per cent of the worldwide Muslim community, they regard as a particularly dangerous development the prospect of the core country in the eastern Arab world being either fragmented into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia zones by civil war or transformed into Shia Islamic republic tied to Iran. The election of revolutionary purist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's new president could have serious consequences if he makes good on his pledge to export Iran's “new Islamic revolution” to other Muslim countries. Iraq and countries in the Gulf suffered Shia unrest when the original Iranian Islamic revolution attempted to export its ideology soon after the ouster of the shah in 1979.
Another major contributor to Arab and Muslim anger is the rising toll of fatalities in Iraq. This week Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group published their joint estimate that 25,000 Iraqis died in the two years since the US/UK invasion. Of these four times more Iraqis were killed by US-led forces than by suicide bombers or insurgents. This figure, which covers the period ending March 25, is twice the toll of 12,000 civilians given in June by Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, which does not take into account those killed by US and Iraqi forces.
The Iraq Body Count/Oxford figure also do not include the rising death toll due to the spike in suicide bombings since the Shia Islamist-led government took office at the end of April.
Although Arab political figures and commentators and wise Western analysts attempted to warn the Bush and Blair administrations about the dangers of toppling the secular Arab nationalist regime in Iraq, Washington and London ignored these warnings. Unfortunately Iraq is reaping the whirlwind of the refusal of Blair and Bush to listen to reason. .
By Michael Jansen
Jordan Times, July 21, 2005
British Premier Tony Blair's attempt to shrug off all responsibility for the July 7 attacks on London transport and lay all the blame on an evil ideology a perversion of Islam has been seriously contested by a collection of authoritative reports and assessments made by intelligence experts and pundits. A former Home Office adviser, Professor Sir Bernard Crick, told the BBC that it is nonsense that the government denies that there is a political as well as a perverted religious dimension in the London bombings. He laid the blame on the failure of Israel to follow UN resolutions after the 1967 war in spite of protests from the Arab and Muslim worlds. Sir Bernard said that it is also wrong to deny that the water in which the terrorists swim is plainly political and accused British governments of simply going along with grossly mistaken American foreign policy in the Middle East and of failing to protest against it.
London's left-wing mayor Ken Livingstone agreed with Sir Bernard. I think there were several levels that led those young men to come to London to kill. One is 85 years of Western intervention in the affairs of the Middle East. In particular, he said, ..for the last 60 years we have this terrible running sore of the dispossession of the Palestinians which is the single most important wound in the Islamic psyche.
The Madrid and London train bombings showed Iraq clearly dealt another major blow to the Muslim ability to tolerate hostile Western policies. A secret study leaked to the press on Tuesday linked growing Muslim hostility to Britain to the war in Iraq.This document, drafted by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre, a task force made up of officials from intelligence agencies, the military and the police, stated: Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK. The report was transmitted to the British government and foreign agencies and businesses in mid-June. Unfortunately, the experts also mistakenly held that there was no group with the capability to carry out an attack in Britain, prompting security services to lower their assessment of risk from severe to substantial.
The leaking of this report followed the release on Monday of a study by Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) which also tied the London bombings to Britain's riding to war in Iraq as a pillion passenger on the motorcycle driven by George W. Bush.
Finally, an opinion poll taken in Britain revealed that two-thirds of the populace believe that there was a connection between the war in Iraq and the London bombings.
This perception is supported by two studies by the Saudi authorities and an Israeli researcher, which reveal that the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are not members of Al Qaeda or any other organised militant grouping but are volunteers motivated by the war in Iraq. The Saudi study is based on interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to illegally enter Iraq and case studies of nearly 50 who died in suicide bombings. According to the US-trained Saudi researcher, Nawaf Obaid, most of the Saudis who went to Iraq were responding to calls by preachers to drive the foreigners from Arab soil. In an interview published by the Boston Globe, Obaid said the majority of Saudis were youngsters inspired to take action by watching footage of what is happening in Iraq on television and by reading reports on the Internet.
In the Israeli study, which relied on data from 154 foreign fighters who took part in the Iraq battle, Reuven Paz revealed that those who were not youngsters were largely Arabs in their late 20s and early 30s who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11 and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today.”
One of the key factors contributing to Arab and Muslim anger over the situation in Iraq is the fact that the US installed pro-Iranian Islamist Shias in power in Iraq and marginalised the country's Sunni community which has ruled the country since the advent of Islam. Because Sunnis account for 90 per cent of the worldwide Muslim community, they regard as a particularly dangerous development the prospect of the core country in the eastern Arab world being either fragmented into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia zones by civil war or transformed into Shia Islamic republic tied to Iran. The election of revolutionary purist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's new president could have serious consequences if he makes good on his pledge to export Iran's “new Islamic revolution” to other Muslim countries. Iraq and countries in the Gulf suffered Shia unrest when the original Iranian Islamic revolution attempted to export its ideology soon after the ouster of the shah in 1979.
Another major contributor to Arab and Muslim anger is the rising toll of fatalities in Iraq. This week Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group published their joint estimate that 25,000 Iraqis died in the two years since the US/UK invasion. Of these four times more Iraqis were killed by US-led forces than by suicide bombers or insurgents. This figure, which covers the period ending March 25, is twice the toll of 12,000 civilians given in June by Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, which does not take into account those killed by US and Iraqi forces.
The Iraq Body Count/Oxford figure also do not include the rising death toll due to the spike in suicide bombings since the Shia Islamist-led government took office at the end of April.
Although Arab political figures and commentators and wise Western analysts attempted to warn the Bush and Blair administrations about the dangers of toppling the secular Arab nationalist regime in Iraq, Washington and London ignored these warnings. Unfortunately Iraq is reaping the whirlwind of the refusal of Blair and Bush to listen to reason. .