The so-called war on terror is nearly 13 years old, but which rational human being will be cheering its success? We’ve had crackdowns on civil liberties across the world, tabloid-fanned generalisations about Muslims and, of course, military interventions whose consequences have ranged from the disastrous to the catastrophic. And where have we ended up? Wars that Britons believe have made them less safe; jihadists too extreme even for al-Qaida’s tastes running amok in Iraq and Syria; and nations like Libya succumbing to Islamist militias. There are failures, and then there are calamities. But as the British government ramps up the terror alert to “severe” and yet more anti-terror legislation is proposed, some reflection after 13 years of disaster is surely needed. One element has been missing, and that is the west’s relationship with Middle Eastern dictatorships that have played a pernicious role in the rise of Islamist fundamentalist terrorism.
Tag: Qatar
Salafis are the most violent, crazed fundamentalist Muslims. For example, both ISIS and Al Qaeda are Salafis. ISIS and other salafi terrorists represent a very small percentage of Muslims. PBS estimates Salafi jihadists constitute less than 0.5…
Geopolitical maneuvering by foreign nations up to the Geneva II conference leads to intensified clashes between rival mercenary brigades. Reports indicate that the Palestinian Hamas is attempting to draw Palestinians into the Syrian war. The…
Qatar and U.S. : Collusion or Conflict of Interest? In his inaugural address on January 21, U.S. President Barack Obama made the historic announcement that “a decade of war is ending” and declared…
As President Obama confirmed in an interview with the Atlantic [3] on March 2, 2012, one of the strategic goals of U.S. policy in Syria has been to weaken and isolate Iran by removing or helping to remove its strongest Arab ally. Asked what the U.S. could do to accelerate the removal of President Assad, Obama replied, laughing, “Well, nothing that I can tell you, because your classified clearance isn’t good enough.” In practice, as President Obama implied, the U.S. government has played a “disguised, quiet, media-free” [4] but nonetheless significant role in the escalation of violence in Syria. As early as last December, even as a Qatari-funded YouGov opinion poll found that 55% of Syrians still supported President Assad [5], former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported [6] that unmarked NATO planes were delivering weapons and militiamen from Libya to Turkish air-bases near the Free Syrian Army (FSA) headquarters in Iskanderum.
Early Tuesday morning the Prince of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa and his wife Mouza Bin Nasser arrived in Gaza, visiting Hamas´s Prime Minister Ismael Hanniya. The visit is the first visit of a senior Arab…
Make no mistake; the Emir of Qatar is on a roll. What an entrance at the UN General Assembly in New York; Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani called for an Arab coalition of the willing-style…
Establishment media careful to hide direct aid to terrorist-aligned FSA In an article about France urging Syrian rebels to form a provisional government, the New York Times scrubbed a passage which revealed that the CIA…
Admits hosting foreign fighters seeking to enter Syria, trucks in weapons to rearm terrorist groups. The Washington Post has just published an article with the very misleading titled, “Turkey a hub for Syria revolution as…
While regional organizations are going to be the mainstay in international politics in the post-cold war world, one of the old regional organizations Arab League (formed in 1945) has shown all weakness of a broken house with members failing to take coordinated position on any of the raging international issues. A simple juxtaposition of the Arab League summit with the BRICS summit, held on the same date 29 March 2012, brings stark contrast how coordination in one part of the world is failing acutely, while on the other part the rise of BRICS in global arena is a foregone conclusion. While the Arab League, as the recent summit at Baghdad revealed, has become known for all differences, whether on Syria or Iran or on issues of conflict resolution, the BRICS countries developed commonalities on many issues including that of Syria and Iran. That the summit schedule was shifted twice before this one at Baghdad, and that only 9 member countries out of total twenty two countries participated in the summit itself reveals a poor story of the League. Even the nine countries participating in the summit did not send their top leaders; rather the member countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar sent junior officials instead of head of states to participate in the summit.