The Iraq war was always about oil. The ISIS extremists who are trying to seize control of the country’s largest refinery know that. Everyone was braced for the battle for Baghdad. But first they went after the oil. Just like the Americans. In 2003, when Baghdad was a chaos of looting, the one thing the Americans secured was the Oil Ministry. Because oil is power. If all you’ve got is a cave on a mountain side somewhere in Afghanistan, you have to do something really big to … [Read more...]
There Are Worse Things Than Dictators
June 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Everything they told you about Syria was wrong. The story where the noble, brave resistance were fighting to liberate their country. The story where Assad was the one the world had to worry about. Well, those resistance fighters have shown their faces now. And they are the butchers of ISIS, beheading their way through Iraq towards Baghdad. Syria and Iraq are the same war. They have been for a long time. ISIS is fighting in both countries, it wants to establish a single Taliban-style state … [Read more...]
First We Took Afghanistan. Then We Gave Them Iraq
June 16, 2014 by 3 Comments
First we took away Al-Qaeda’s base in Afghanistan. Then we gave them a new one in Iraq. Strip away the treachery and deceit, murder and mayhem of the last twelve and a half years, and that’s all that remains. In 2001, we went to war to chase Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan. I was there. I watched the bombs fall, and I saw the bodies. Al-Qaeda were holed up in the poorest country on earth. They practically had to run their global jihad out of a cave. They were out on the fringes, cut off … [Read more...]
The Syrian Civil War – Made in Britain and the USA
April 14, 2014 by 1 Comment
We started this. That's what I can't help thinking every time I hear about the latest death and suffering in Syria. When the US and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, we set off a chain of events that led inexorably to the killing fields of Damascus and Aleppo. I watched it begin when I was working as a reporter in Iraq. I remember going to an interview at a hospital south of Baghdad: the moment I stepped into his office, the doctor told me "You have to get out of here. They're … [Read more...]
The Return of Al-Qaeda: why we should be worried about jailbreaks in Pakistan and Iraq
July 30, 2013 by 1 Comment
So, just over a week since the Al-Qaeda Jailbreak in Iraq, now we have the Taliban Jailbreak in Pakistan. It doesn't take much to tell that this was no coincidence. No, what it means is that, far from being a spent and broken force, the Al-Qaeda movement founded by Osama bin Laden is alive and dangerous. Eight days after spectacular raids by militants on two prisons in Iraq freed 500 inmates, among them some of the most dangerous Sunni extremists from the civil war, comes a remarkably … [Read more...]
