MALALA IS A NON ISSUE.docx

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MALALA IS A NON ISSUE-REAL ISSUE IS THAT THE WEST FATHERED

ISLAMIC MAD DOG EXTREMISTS FROM 1979

Islamic Extremisms midwife was US , UK ,Saudi Arabia and Pakistani Military-

Malalai Attackers were created thanks to US Policy

Agha H Amin

This short write up is not about Malala.

Malala is the wests problem because Malal attackers and all who represent Malala

haters were created thanks to US , UK and Saudi policy as executed by the Pakistani

military who acted as both pawn and procuress in the whole affair.

Islamic radicalism in its present form was created by US policy as executed by

President Reagan.

At least Afghanistan and Pakistan were radicalised thanks to US policy.

President Reagan of the US was naieve enough to compare the mad nut Afghan

Mujahideen with USAs founding fathers.

University of Nebraska churned out pamphlets in Pashto and Dari in billions

glorifying explosives and Jihad !

Pakistani elite benefitted from US and Saudi aid in Afghan war and developed the

dollar eating habit to use manipulated Islamist threats to get US aid !

Pakistans Musharraf perfected the art of getting US aid and also secretly helping the

Taliban !

What we see today in Af Pak is radicalism multiplying ?

Muslim women are as eager or as ready to get laid by their lover as any woman in this

world, and she finds a way of getting laid even if she is forced to be confined in ashuttle cock burqa or chadri ! In Kabul it is 100 times more likely that a woman in a

chadri is a prostitute than an uncovered woman ?

Pakistani bakers ( nan bread makers) and taxi drivers have a rollicking time laying

saudi women ? The issue is not emancipation ? The issue are the negative attitudes

against women released when the US Saudi and their Pakistani chattels adopted Islam

as a disposable tool to execute an anti Soviet foreign policy ?


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The issue is not womens emancipation ? Women were getting laid by their lovers

even when in a Chadri or a veil or a Burqa ! Women were getting educated in the past

also ?

The women of Swat , the area from where Malala hails were historically known to beeasy lays and Swat produced large number of dancing girls for Pashtun parties and

weddings ?

It was Afghan war , the US Saudi Pakistani show that brought militancy to Swat and

that too slowly but with force ?

The west bears a great deal of blame for the mess for which it is now glorifying

Malala ?

The issue that US-UK-Saudi policy fostered an extremist mindset which has now

become an avalanche ? Since Islam was used in Afghanistan , Iraq,Libya and Syria as

a tool , Islam is used by psychopaths and mad nuts here in Af Pak as a tool for

personal political agendas ? The midwives who brought this monster into birth sit in

DC,London,Riyadh ! Even the Afghan Mujahideen were using Islam to marry young

girls of their choice in Afghan war ! I know of countless such incidents ! There were

cases where Swat Taliban beheaded a man to marry his pretty wife ? But the mindset

was fathered in Soviet Afghan war ! And now hilariously today the NATO and the G

8 are supporting the same mad nut Islamists who they claim to fight in Afghanistan in

Libya and Syria ?

The issue is that when mad nut Islamists are supported by state policy as in Afghan

War , in Libya and Syria today the result is collective madness which is growing by

leaps and bounds in Islamic world.

There is no cause to be happy in the US for destroying a secular Saddam regime or a

secular Libyan regime or a secular Syrian regime which thanks to Russian support and

possibly Gods support if one may agree has survived the US NATO Saudi sponsored

mad dog Islamist onslaught.

The US has made fatal strategic mistakes in using Islam as a tool right from Afghan

war to Iraq war and in Libya and Syria.

It was indeed a Quixotic US policy which helped Iran in destroying Baath Iraq and

creating a strong Shia extremist bloc from Iran till Lebanon ?


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It was indeed a foolish US policy that did the capacity building of Sunni Islamists

from 1979 till 1990 , the direct result of which was birth of Al Qaeda and 9/11 ?

US leaders are trying to fool US public with rhetoric about drones as a strategic

weapon ? Drones are puny pin pricks and cannot destroy the Islamist Hydra that the

US , UK and Saudi Occupied Arabia created

Malala has little standing in Pakistan except in the tiny so called liberals ? The issue

here in Af Pak is poverty and Malala is a side issue ?

http://henrymakow.com/2013/07/malala-is-another-illuminati-p.html

Malala is another Illuminati Psy

Op

July 12, 2013

("Educating girls will change theworld," Malala,16, told the UN Friday. "Change" is satanist codefor social & cultural degradation.)

Malala has the hallmarks of anIlluminati psyop: the mass media

rush as one to sanctify her; Illuminatiwhores, politicians and celebritiesalike, endorse her. The article belowby Zahar Bangash makes the
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Illuminati connection very clear.

Malala is a champion of educationfor girls. "Education" today comeswith a heavy dose of gender-killingfeminism. The Illuminati use this

toxin to destroy traditional societiesand reduce population by alienating

women from marriage andmotherhood.

Who says learning only takes place ina classroom, and not in a homewhere the Illuminati can't control the

message? Liberal (i.e. Masonic)education has degraded Westernsociety and created manygenerations of lost souls.

As usual, the Illuminati "do well by

doing good." Mulala's fatherowns achain of private schools and hugeUK/US education corporations arevying for a share of the "Malala
http://www.henrymakow.com/000561.htmlhttp://www.henrymakow.com/000561.htmlhttp://abcnews.go.com/International/malala-fund-supporting-girls-education-globe/story?id=18399402#.UeDepVNL83Ehttp://abcnews.go.com/International/malala-fund-supporting-girls-education-globe/story?id=18399402#.UeDepVNL83Ehttp://www.henrymakow.com/000561.htmlhttp://www.henrymakow.com/000561.html


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Fund" cash grab.

Anyone who watched the hagiography

that passed for TV news Friday canconfirm thatWesternsociety is run byhypocritical, sanctimonious, shameless

liars.

"One cannot help but wonder whether her father's

motive was in promoting girls' education or he fearedhis income dwindling if the girls' schools he wasrunning were shut down [by Taliban]."

by Zafar Bangash (The Crescent, Nov2012)(Edited/abridged byhenrymakow.com)

The attack on Malala Yousafzai [in Oct. 2012]

evoked worldwide condemnation. From US PresidentBarack Obama to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,all condemned the attack. The question is: why isMalala given so much prominence when other

attacks on girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan go

virtually unnoticed?

The attempt on the life of Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl from Mingora inPakistan's Swat Valley on October 9 has aroused
http://abcnews.go.com/International/malala-fund-supporting-girls-education-globe/story?id=18399402#.UeDepVNL83Ehttp://www.crescent-online.net/2012/11/was-malala-yousafzai-used-for-a-larger-us-plan-zafar-bangash-3412-articles.htmlhttp://www.crescent-online.net/2012/11/was-malala-yousafzai-used-for-a-larger-us-plan-zafar-bangash-3412-articles.htmlhttp://henrymakow.com/http://henrymakow.com/http://henrymakow.com/http://www.crescent-online.net/2012/11/was-malala-yousafzai-used-for-a-larger-us-plan-zafar-bangash-3412-articles.htmlhttp://www.crescent-online.net/2012/11/was-malala-yousafzai-used-for-a-larger-us-plan-zafar-bangash-3412-articles.htmlhttp://abcnews.go.com/International/malala-fund-supporting-girls-education-globe/story?id=18399402#.UeDepVNL83E


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worldwide outrage. Two other girls were also injuredin the attack as Malala was returning home in a schoolbus. There were rallies in her support not only in

Pakistan but some very high-powered globalplayers also weighed in on her case. In what mustbe a first, US President Barack Obama, Secretaryof State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary GeneralBan Ki-moon and former British Prime Minister

Gordon Brown all condemned the attack on Malala

as did most politicians in Pakistan. Hollywoodactress Angelina Jolie suggested Malala should be

nominated for the Nobel Peace Prizewhile Madonna put Malala's name on her bare back!

Let us get the basic facts straight before we proceed.

She was attacked and badly injured when a gunmanboarded the school bus she was riding home from

school. The gunman demanded to know who Malala

was. When another girl student pointed to her, thegunman opened fire, hitting Malala in the head andneck. The gunman also shot and wounded two other

girls before escaping. The badly wounded girl wasrushed to Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwaprovince.

After initial treatment at a


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hospital in Peshawar, Malala was airlifted to theCombined Military Hospital (CMH) in Rawalpindi wherePakistan's top neurosurgeons treated her. Once her

condition stabilized, she was flown to Britain whereshe is now receiving rehabilitative care at the QueenElizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Doctors have givena good prognosis of her recovery and say she will beable to resume normal life after some reconstructive

surgery to her skull.

It is impossible not to sympathize with Malala, a

young girl with large beautiful hazel eyes peeringfrom her innocent face, and her naturally distraughtparents. It is shocking that a young girl would betargeted for simply wanting to go to school to acquire

education, which is her birthright as it is of millions ofother young girls in Pakistan as indeed elsewhere in

the world. What kind of beasts would want to harm a

young girl doing no more than acquiring education?But who exactly is Malala Yousufzai to attract somuch international attention? What about the

two other girls that were injured in the sameattack? Even their names are not widely known,much less information about their parents.Apart from the fact that they are out of danger,there is little that we know about their plight.

Are they not worthy of attention and sympathy?

Within days of the assault on Malala, Americantroops killed three Afghan children on October14 in an aerial attack in the Nawa district ofHelmand Province in Afghanistan. It may not be


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adjoining Swat Valley but is not very far eitherfrom where Malala was attacked and injured.

(Father with exploited daughter)

DAUGHTER OF A PRIVATE SCHOOL MOGUL

Malala was born on July 12, 1997. Her father,Ziauddin Yousufzai, owns a number of for-profitschools. While almost everything else in Pakistan is

going down the drain, for-profit schools and the

closely related non-governmental organizations(NGOs) that are generously financed from abroad arethriving businesses. [Guess where the money fromthe Mulala Fundis going. ]

It was a BBC reporter [Abdul Hai Kakkar who

discovered Malala in early 2009. His assignment wasto find a courageous schoolgirl willing to share her

experiences of the threats by Tehrik-e Taliban

Pakistan (TTP) against girls getting education. TheTTP led by Mullah Fazlullah was shutting down schoolsin Swat Valley as it flexed its muscles. Kakkar

approached Ziauddin Yusufzai for help and he willinglyoffered his own daughter's experiences.
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The plan gelled into Malala, then 11 years old, writingher diary that the BBC World Service would put on its

website under the title, "The Diary of a PakistaniSchool Girl."In order to protect her identity, Malalawas given the pseudonym "Gul Makai" (corn flower).The diary detailed Malala's life under Taliban rule,their attempts to take control of the valley, and her

views on promoting education for girls. One cannot

help but wonder whether her father's motive was inpromoting girls' education or he feared his income

dwindling if the girls' schools he was running wereshut down.

ENTER THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Malala's cover, however, was blown that summer

when Adam B. Ellick of the New York Times featured

her in two videos describing her family's life as well asshowed her at school. This was the time the Pakistanimilitary was about to launch an attack on Swat Valley.

What was the reason for the Times to go public withthis information and who is Adam Ellick?


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Scott Creighton, a war veteranwho writes for the blog theAmerican Everyman, had

this to say about Ellick, left, on October 17. "Meet

Adam Ellick, the Council on ForeignRelations member and apparent CIA mockingbirdstationed at the New York Times. He's the guy whohelped create the Malala Psyop in the first place, theplan to bring for-profit school systems to all of

Pakistan."

The Times' videos led to Malala gaining instantinternational fame. For the Pakistani media -- printand electronic -- this was a great opportunity toproject their loyalty to America. That is where the

dollar pipeline comes from. In the WikiLeaks cablesreleased in 2010, the US embassy messages to theUS State Department say Pakistani journalists are

easily bought and can be made to do anything for a

mere invitation to the US embassy. Despite suchinsulting revelations about their low character, theUS-doting Pakistani journalists are not deterred.

Malala's Times videos brought the Pakistani media


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flocking to her door. She began giving interviews inthe print and electronic media. We need to keep inmind that she was barely 11 or 12 years old at the

time. At the same time, she was appointedchairperson of the District Child Assembly Swat.Further accolades followed when the Nobel PeacePrize winner, Bishop Desmond Tutu of SouthAfrica, nominated her in October 2011 for the

International Children's Peace Prize. But there was

something else that was even more striking. RichardHolbrooke, the US special envoy for Pakistan and

Afghanistan who died on December 13, 2010, hadalso discovered Malala, or her enterprising father.Their picture together has gone viral on theinternet. Why would Holbrooke, a no-nonsense

diplomat, be interested in Ziauddin Yousafzaiunless there was a larger plan at work? Two

months after Bishop Tutu's nomination of Malala, the

Pakistani government came up with its own award:the "National Youth Prize Award," a first for Pakistan,that was given to Malala.

(April 2013- One of TIME's 100 MostInfluence Illuminati Pawns in the World)


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Even when reminded of the risks she was courting,

Malala said her father, who worked for women'seducation, supported her fully. Her mother wasequally supportive, she said but the irony is thatMalala's mother is kept inside the house while theyoung girl is projected internationally. As Adam Ellicktells us, Ziauddin Yousafzai "was a bit traditional, and

as a result, I was unable to interact with her

[Malala's] mother. I used to chide Ziauddin aboutthese restrictions, especially in front of Malala. Her

father would laugh dismissively and joke that Malalashould not be listening. Malala beamed as I pressedher father to treat his wife as an equal." (emphasis

added).

HIDDEN AGENDAS

For decades, the Pakistani establishment has beenobsessed with the Indian intelligence agency RAW. In

the last decade, Pakistan has become a battlegroundfor the CIA, British MI6, Germany's BND and theIsraeli Mossad, to name only a few, whose agentsroam every nook and cranny of the country, mostlydisguised as journalists, aid workers or businessmen.So it is not surprising to learn that poor Malala was

used as a pawn by these monsters that will stop atnothing to advance their nefarious agenda. It doesnot require a genius to figure out what the US-British-Zionist and their allies' agenda in Pakistan is: toentangle Pakistan in a never-ending conflict with its


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own people from the tribal area to provide the pretextfor grabbing Pakistan's nuclear weapons. For proof ofthis, one only has to read the October 21 piece

published in the British daily, the Guardian, by BruceRiedel, a former CIA analyst. He warned, on the eveof the third and final presidential debate thatPakistan's nuclear weapons posed the "greatestsecurity threat" to the US and urged both Obama and

his Republican rival Mitt Romney to pay close

attention to this.

(Pedophile Gordon Brown, "UNSpecial Envoy for Education" with Malala)

There is one other dimension worthy of attention andthat is what the former British Prime Minister GordonBrown has done. He has launched a United Nationspetition using the slogan "I am Malala" demandingthat all children in the world should be in school by

2015. He plans to present the petition to PakistaniPresident Asif Ali Zardari later this month. Brown'sactivities on behalf of Malala and indeed otherchildren would sound more noble were it not forthe fact he heads the "global campaign for

charter, for-profit school systems." There is tons

of money to be made in this enterprise.
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Brown's campaign is supposed to work intandem with the UN's scheme run under thealluring title, "Education First." This is a global

public/private partnership scheme whereby not-for-profit institutions would be privatized. The"not-for-profit" institutions are run under thelabel, "Global Business Coalition for Education,"and set up by such Western -- mainly American -

- corporations as Accenture, Hess, Chevron,

Pearson International and others. Their targetedcountries are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh,

Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Nigeria. One isconstrained to ask, what interest do thesemultinationals have in promoting education inthe third world, especially Muslim countries?

Let us be clear: the West and its corporations are not

in the business of doling out cash to third world

countries or care much about the children thereunless there is a hidden agenda behind the faade oftheir good work. One is clearly to re-route the billions

of dollars to their own pockets. The other equallysinister plan is to promote Western culture,thoughts and values by using the label ofeducation. The third and equally sinister plan is toforce targeted societies -- in this case Pakistan -- to

launch military operations against its own people in

North Waziristan to achieve America's geo-politicalobjectives.

Whether Malala knows it or not, if her father has any


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sense he would realize that his family is being used asdupes for America's criminal enterprise. Malala is atiny piece in this jigsaw puzzle.

----

More details - Malala - Neo Liberal Martyr by ScottCreighton (We don't agree that the attack on her wasstaged.)

"Charities"Gearing Up for Big Malala Haul

Huffington Illuminati Mouthpiece: 10 Things

about Malala Speech that gave us Goosebumps

THE BOOK TONY BLAIR DOESN'T WANT YOU TOREAD--

:1942

THE BOOK TONY BLAIR DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ

Saturday, October 23, 2010ByMat WardPhoto: Flickr/Fabbio.

Secret Aff airs: Britain's Collus ion w ith Radical Islam

By Mark Curtis

352 pages (pb), Serpent's Tail, 2010.

In Tony Blair's new memoir,A Journey, the former British prime minister

says one of his biggest regrets is introducing the Freedom of Information

Act, because journalists have used it "as a weapon".
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/the-staged-malala-yousafzai-story-the-making-of-malala-the-cfr-mockingbird-reporter-and-the-charter-school-owner-father/http://www.planusa.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/3051017/tp/VE1HUj0xLHRpZD0zMDYxNDQ1LA%3D%3Dhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/malala-day-at-un_n_3586266.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canadahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/malala-day-at-un_n_3586266.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canadahttp://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/952http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/952http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/952http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/952http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/malala-day-at-un_n_3586266.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canadahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/malala-day-at-un_n_3586266.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canadahttp://www.planusa.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/3051017/tp/VE1HUj0xLHRpZD0zMDYxNDQ1LA%3D%3Dhttp://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/the-staged-malala-yousafzai-story-the-making-of-malala-the-cfr-mockingbird-reporter-and-the-charter-school-owner-father/


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Foremost in his mind would be people like Mark Curtis, who uses

declassified British government documents to reveal the true recent history

of the country. Curtis' previous book, Unpeople, showed that, by invading

Iraq, Blair was continuing a great British tradition of plundering othernations' resources a dirty habit that has killed more than 10 million

people, and counting.

Curtis' latest book shows that, far from fighting Islamic

terrorism,Britain has nurtured it whenever it has thought it useful to do so.

Occasionally, the consequences for Australia have been horrific.

For the past 100 years, Britain's real enemy in the Middle East has beennot Islam, but secular nationalism. As British colonial power began to ebb

in the 20th century, it tried to prop up its interests in the resource-rich

region by any means possible. Radical Islamists usually fitted the bill.

Britain has long employed Machiavellian divide-and-rule tactics.

Lawrence of Arabia, the "great liberator" of the Arab world in the sanitisedBritish version of history, would be better named Lawrence of Disunited

Arabia, since he wanted it sliced up and undermined.

Curtis notes an intelligence memo Lawrence sent in 1916, which said the

burgeoning Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire was "beneficial to us

because it marches with our immediate aims, the break-up of the Islamic

'bloc'.

"The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. If properly handled they

would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous

principalities incapable of cohesion."


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Following the Arab revolt, the British didn't back the revolt's leader, Sherif

Hussein, who had visions of a united Muslim world. Instead, they favoured

Ibn Saud, a hardline conservative Islamist whose ambitions were limited

to Arabia. In an orgy of murder that cost the lives of up to 400,000 people,Saud established "Saudi" Arabia.

Britain's then-colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, noted that Saud's

"austere, intolerant, well-armed and bloodthirsty" forces "kill all who do not

share their opinions" and "make slaves of their wives and children". But he

later wrote that "my admiration for him [Saud] was deep, because of his

unfailing loyalty to us".

As a British ambassador to Saudi Arabia put it later in the 20th century,

the House of Saud could be built up as "the great gookety gook of the

Muslim world" to counter the rising popular Arab nationalism led by Egypt's

Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In 1917, the British were intent on seizing Palestine, since it opened up a

clear overland route to the huge oil reserves of British-

controlledIraq. Britain declared it was creating a home for the persecuted

Jews, but "without prejudice" to the Arab inhabitants.

Historian Barbara Tuckman says the declaration "allowed Britain to

acquire the Holy Land with a good conscience they had to have a good

moral cause". Curtis says: "Britain also saw the Jewish national home as

creating a reliable client population in a strategically important region." It

also fitted the bill for a disunited Arabia.

After Britain was left weak and near-bankrupt by the World War II, it was

forced to end its rule over India. In doing so, it divided the country along the

sectarian lines it had always exploited, pitching Hindus against Muslims.

The strategically important Muslim state ofPakistan was formed. Its


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creation, says Curtis, "would contribute profoundly to the development of

radical Islam throughout the world".

In 1959, the Cabinet Office stated that Britain's "special interest" was

"continued control of sources of oil with consequential profits toUnited

Kingdom".

As the head of the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office put it: "Our

interest lies in keeping Kuwait independent and separate, if we possibly

can, in line with the idea of maintaining the four principal oil-producing

areas [Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Iraq] under separate political control."

In the same period, united Indonesia under anti-imperialist president

Ahmed Sukarno was also seen as a threat. Sir Robert Scott, Britain's

commissioner-general in Singapore, saw an opportunity to unsettle

Sukarno by nurturing the radical Islamic elements in Indonesia's outlying

provinces.

He told the Foreign Office: "I think the time has come to plan secretly with

the Australians and Americans how best to give these elements the aidthey need."

The result was a strengthening ofDarul Islam (House of Islam), which

went on to produce the violent splinter group Jemaah Islamiyah, the

perpetrator of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings in which 202 people,

including 88 Australians, died.

In the oil crisis of 1973, Western industrial nations went from tradingsurpluses of $10 billion to deficits of $48 billion, while the oil producers

accrued surpluses of $69 billion. Britain courted Saudi Arabia to invest its

new wealth in indebted Britain, forging a partnership that continues today.


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In return for oil, Britain supplies the Saudis with arms and military

training. Britain turns a blind eye to the fact Saudi Arabia is the biggest

funder of radical Islam worldwide, estimated at $50 billion so far.

Similarly, Pakistan has become more violent and extreme through

Western funding, arms and training. Britain, with an eye on Central Asia's

huge oil and gas reserves, encouraged Pakistan to begin expanding

northwards into Afghanistan and beyond.

The Taliban was formed from the 400,000 pupils in Pakistani madrassas

(Islamic schools). Other violent Islamists had been championed as

"freedom fighters" by Margaret Thatcher in their battlefor Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf (who later became president)

trained Osama Bin Laden. The result, says, Curtis, was 9/11.

Britain has always sought to hedge its bets by funding both sides in war

or politics and did just that with Islamic terrorist groups who began using

London as a base for their activities worldwide. Britaingave them free reign,so long as they supplied MI5 with information.

The most notorious result was the 7/7 bombings on London public

transport in 2005. A lesser-known result was the death of an Australian in

1998, who was killed after being kidnapped in Yemen by a group of

jihadists trained by British ex-soldiers, funded by FinsburyPark cleric Abu

Hamza, an MI5 informant.

Today, says Curtis, Britain finds itself in an absurd situation. It continues

to insist the real enemy is Iran and that Saudi Arabia andPakistan are

moderates, when they are anything but. Almost half of all foreign jihadists


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in Iraq are Saudis and the US military says they carry out more suicide

attacks there than any other nationality.

Curtis says 70% of terrorist activity in Britain has links to Pakistan,

yet Britain continues to funnel arms and aid to the country,

whichPakistan then passes on to jihadists who are fighting against NATO

forces in Afghanistan.

Perhaps as a result of Curtis' source material, his book is a dense, dry

tome less like Tony Blair and more like his doomed successor, Gordon

Brown. It would have perhaps benefited from some Blair-like levity.

However, if you want to find out the real dirty details of British politics, this

book will tell you far more than Blair's self-serving memoir and it's

guaranteed that Blair will hate it.

From GLW issue 858

BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2010 | JOHN PILGERPublished 19 November 2010In another year distinguished by the silence of fiction writers about

rapacious wars and a society at home assaulted by extremists in power in

Westminster - a silence exemplified by the Man Booker Prize short-list and

its compromise winner - three books are a blessed relief.

The first is Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam by the

historian Mark Curtis (Serpent's Tail). Excavating long forgotten official

files, Curtis illuminates the darkest corners of Britain's critical role in the rise

of islamicism as a means of blocking Arab nationalism and guarding


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western "interests". He explains much about the current colonial

adventures. In Newspeak in the 21st Centuryby David Edwards and David

Cromwell, the editors of the website Medialens.org (Pluto), brilliantly

decode the propaganda that so often passes for news and give us with an

A to Z of how corporate journalism demonises "our" enemies,from Venezuela to Iran. My other choice for finding out how power works is

Noam Chomsky's latest bonfire of the illusions and falsehoods that

masquerade as public policy. This is Hope and Prospects (Haymarket

Books). All three books provide a moral and intellectual survival kit in these

extraordinary times.

Secret Affairs: a book by Mark Curtis

By Paul Cochrane on March 10, 2011

Britain's collusion with radical Islam

Britain has played a nefarious role in the Middle East's history. We all

know that London re-drew the region's borders after World War I as part

of a "divide and rule" strategy, but few are aware of Britain's divisive and

often contradictory efforts in the region that have remained a core part

of its foreign policy. Instead, the United States and Israel tend to get all

the "credit" when it comes to the dark arts of Machiavellian political

subterfuge.

In 'Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam,' author Mark

Curtis uses declassified official documents and leaked reports to lay bare

Britain's policies of destabilization and the political-economic ties Britain

developed to ensure energy security and financial co-dependence. What

Curtis exposes is as damning toBritain as the WikiLeaks US embassy cables


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have been toWashington, revealing the decisions made away from public

scrutiny and what really makes up official policy.

"It is clear that Britain has an interest in divide and rule in theMiddle

East. If it sounds conspiratorial, it is there, spelled out in the planningfiles," Curtis told Executive.

Shady goings-on

'Secret Affairs' is an eye opening read that charts the beginnings of

British collaboration with radical Islamic forces, a relationship that began

during the occupation of India over 150 years ago, was used extensively

post-1945 and continues to this day. Britainworked with Islamist groups,

particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, and friendly authoritarian Islamicregimes in Egypt, Syria, Saudi

Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Afghanistan to ensure

that communism, nationalism, pan-Arabism and anti-Western policies

didn't take hold.

Britain would cultivate relationships on both sides of the political fence,

showing a willingness to work with essentially anyone, whether the

Mahaz-i-Milli Islam (National Islamic Front of Afghanistan), the LibyanIslamic Fighting Group or the ayatollahs in Iran, to achieve short-term

goals, irrespective of the longer-term implications, in order to maintain a

balance of power.

"In [my] analysis of British foreign policy, it is not all down to

economics," said Curtis. "The collaboration with Islamist groups in

the Middle East has been about power status, to not be relegated to a bit

player on the fringes. It has seen those groups as essential allies in aregion where Britain has often lacked dependable allies. In a lot of the

episodes where Britain collaborated with Islamic groups, it was

essentially to do the dirty work that the US couldn't do due to

Congressional oversight and the fear of being found out."


23/46

The dirty deeds include assassination attempts for example onEgypt's

Gamal Abdel Nasser, Libya's Muammar al-Qadhafi, andLebanon's late

Ayatollah Mohammad Fadlallah military assistance and the

dissemination of propaganda tools, such as Korans and Islamic literature.British operatives also orchestrated "false flag" operations, such as the

one in Iran in 1953 when mosques and public figures were attacked by

agents and paid supporters appearing to be members of the communist

Tudeh Party. British intelligence also worked in collaboration with

Ayatollah Kashani, the mentor of Ayatollah Khomeini, to stir up sentiment

against nationalist Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadiq.

Alongside maintaining its power status and ensuring energysecurity, Britain also worked to make sure oil-producing countries

invested their petro-dollars in London to shore up the city's global

financial position. To do so, Britain needed to maintain its status as a

power broker and to curry favor with regimes, regardless of the means.

One example of this is the "fabricated invasion" of Kuwait by Iraq in 1958,

during which Britain intervened to protect its newly-independent former

colony against a threat that they had themselves concocted, as Britishfiles explicitly show. "Britainwanted to exaggerate the threat

to Kuwait so [Britain] would continue its protection and Kuwait would

keep investing revenues in the British banking system," said Curtis.

Blow back

Such covert operations all documented in 'Secret Affairs' have been

just one part of Britain's foreign policy that has gone against London's

purported democratic ideals. The backing of Islamist forces, and itshidden alliance with two chief state sponsors of radical Islam, Saudi

Arabia which has spent more than $50 billion to spread the Wahhabi

brand of Islam around the world and is a major sponsor of Islamist groups

and Pakistan, have also had major negative repercussions.


24/46

By preventing independent and secular governments from coming to

power in much of the Islamic world, Britain's policies have nurtured the

current socio-political malaise and resulted in what the late Chalmers

Johnson famously termed "blow back," when the very forces the Westaided and abetted came back to bite the hand that once fed them. Curtis

shows how Britain in the 1990s allowed Islamist groups to operate out of

London, which they believed could be used to destabilize governments in,

among other places, Syria, Iraq and Libya. This was possible through a

'covenant of security' between radical Islamists and the security services.

A former Cabinet Office intelligence analyst explained: "The long-

standing British habit of providing refuge and welfare to Islamistextremists is on the unspoken assumption that if we give them a safe

haven here they will not attack us on these shores."

This pact meant Britain could keep tabs on such groups' memberships

and finances, and enabled British intelligence access to groups linked to

militancy from Afghanistan to Yemen. Even Al Qaeda had an office, the

Advice and Reformation Committee, inLondon until 1998.

Alongside the US and Saudi Arabia, Britain equipped and bankrolledIslamist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bosnia that were later

involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States, terrorist

attacks in Saudi Arabia, and the July 7, 2005 bombings in London. Indeed,

as Curtis's research shows, the history of the ongoing "war on terror" is

rooted in covert support for the Afghani Mujahedin in its fight against the

Soviets and for the terrorism infrastructure co-established with Pakistan's

notorious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which trained fighters foroperations in Central Asia, India, Bosnia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

It also goes further back in time, to the British-backed partition

of India in 1947, which led to the creation of the Islamic Republic of

Pakistan and the current imbroglio in Kashmir. Curtis quotes former


25/46

Indian Ambassador Narendra Sarila as saying, "Many of the roots of Islamic

terrorism sweeping the world today lie buried in the partition of India."

More than 60 years later, Britain is still using divide and rule as a

strategy and is contending with the repercussions of what in many waysits foreign policy has created. "There is still this resort to rely on

particular Islamist forces to achieve objectives, whether in Southern Iraq

[post-2003], where Britain worked with Islamist forces and now [has] a

de-facto working arrangement with the Taliban, in the sense that Britain

is reliant on them for an honorable exit from Afghanistan," said Curtis. In

a previous book, Curtis called Britain's foreign policy a "web of deceit." In

his latest, he has further shown how that web was spun and, crucially,how British foreign policy has nurtured global terrorism and instability.

SECRET AFFAIRS: BRITAIN'S COLLUSION WITH RADICAL ISLAMISSUE 435

By Mark Curtis

British troops are in Afghanistan, we are told, to forestall terrorist attacks

on UK soil. This post hoc justification is one of the many myths about the 'War on

Terror' debunked by Mark Curtis's fascinating and timely examination of the

British state's collusion with radical Islamic groups.

Curtis argues that the roots of more recent deals and accommodations with

extremist groups lie in the Imperial era, when Britain and Russia manoeuvered for

power and influence inCentral Asia, particularly Afghanistan; a grim strategy

referred to as 'The Great Game'. He shows how the installation of puppet rulers and

the removal by force of democratically elected ones has shaped the region, and

how post-War foreign policy has been consistently bent to the maintenance of

control and the expropriation of wealth, most notably oil.
http://www.newint.org/issues/2010/09/01/http://www.newint.org/issues/2010/09/01/http://www.newint.org/issues/2010/09/01/


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In an impressively detailed sweep through the history of the region, Curtis

exposes, time and again, British government support of militant groups.

In Iran and Iraq, Libya and Syria, Egypt andIndonesia, Britain has provided funds

and logistical support for organizations whose aims would seem inimical to theostensible Western objectives of security and stability. He also sheds light on the

murky US-British links with those two major sponsors of

fundamentalist Islam, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Secret Affairs deals with a weighty subject in a meticulous manner, but Mark

Curtis writes engagingly and it is surely beyond argument that his contention that

post-War British foreign policy in the Central Asian region has made the world a

more dangerous and more lawless place

is a topic worthy of debate.

www.serpentstail.com

BRITAIN AND ISLAMIC EXTREMISM
http://www.serpentstail.com/http://www.serpentstail.com/http://www.serpentstail.com/


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SERPENT'S TAIL, 12.99, 460PP. 11.69 FROM THE

INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOP: 08430 600 030

SECRET AFFAIRS, BY MARK CURTISReviewed by Kim Sengupta

Friday, 30 July 2010

Shot in the back by UK policy? Gurkha Rifles in Helmand

For years, violent Islamist groups were allowed to settle

inBritain, using the country as a base to carry out attacks abroad.

This was tolerated in the belief that they would not bomb the

country where they lived and that, as long as they are here, the

security service would be able to infiltrate them. At the same time

mosque after mosque was taken over through intimidation by the

fundamentalists. Police and others in authority refused pleas from

moderate Muslims with the excuse that they did not want to

interfere.

There was even a name for this amoral accommodation: the

"covenant of security". We now know that jihadists will indeed

blow up their home country and that the security agencies

signally failed to infiltrate the terrorist cells while they had the

chance.

The part played by officials in the growth of terrorism inBritain isa relatively small-scale affair compared to what went on abroad.

Successive UK governments had nurtured and promoted

extremists for reasons of realpolitik often at a terrible cost to the

population of those countries. Mark Curtis, in his book on


30/46

"Britain's collusion with radical Islam", charts this liaison. He

points out how reactionary and violent Muslim groups were used

against secular nationalists at the time of empire and continued

afterwards to back UK and Western interests.

The price for this is now being paid at home and abroad. I am

writing this review in Helmand, where a few days ago I went on

an operation with British and Afghan troops against insurgents

whose paymasters, across the border inPakistan, have been the

beneficiaries of US and British largesse.

Curtis points out that two of the most active Islamist

commanders carrying out attacks in Afghanistan, Gulbuddin

Hekmatyar and Jalalludin Haqqani, had particularly close contacts

with the UK in the past. Hekmatyar met Margaret Thatcher

in Downing Street when he was a favourite of MI6 and the CIA in

the war against the Russians. Haqqani, while not the "Taliban's

overall military commander fighting the British" as Curtis says (he

runs his own network parallel to the Taliban), was viewed as a

highly useful tool in that conflict.

The Western use of the Mujaheddin as proxy fighters is well

documented. It resulted in the spawning of al-Qa'ida, the spread

of international terrorism, and the empowering of ISI, the

Pakistani secret police, who became their sponsors. Curtis

examines the lesser known by-products of this jihad: the dispatch

of Afghan Islamist veterans, with the connivance of Britain andthe US, to the wars in the Balkans and the former Soviet

republics in central Asia, and ethnic Muslim areas of China. Vast

sums of money from the West's great ally, Saudi Arabia, helped

fund the Reagan administration's clandestine war in support of


31/46

repressive military juntas in Latin America while, at the same

time, buttressing the aggressive Wahabi faith embraced by many

terrorist groups.

The use of hardline Islam by the West was particularly prevalent

at the time of the Cold War. In many instances, however, the

targets for destabilisation were not Communist regimes but

leaders who had adopted left-wing policies deemed to pose a

threat to Western influence and interests.

The UK attempted to combat "virus of Arab nationalism", after

Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt and nationalised

the Suez Canal, by forging links with the Muslim Brotherhood, an

organisation involved in terrorism. The nationalisation of the

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company by the democratically elected Iranian

government of Mohammed Mossadeq led to a British-American

organised coup which was facilitated by Ayatollah Seyyed

Kashani, one of whose followers was the young Ruhollah

Khomeini. In Indonesia, the removal of Ahmed Sukarno in

another military coup by the UK-US was carried out with the help

of Darul Islam. Its followers went on to massacre socialists and

trade unionists.

In each of these cases the clandestine backing of Britainand

the US strengthened Islamist groups at the expense of secular

bodies and moderate Muslims. These groups then went to form

terrorist groups whom the West would later have to confront inthe "War on Terror".

Here in Afghanistan, its most ferocious and violent front, moves

are once again under way to negotiate with Islamists as the West

seeks an exit strategy from a conflict increasingly costly in lives


32/46

and money. The UK, more than the US, has been pressing

President Hamid Karzai to come to an agreement with the

insurgents. This goes beyond reintegrating the foot soldiers - a

sensible policy - to a settlement with the leadership of Haqqani,Hekmatyar and Mullah Omar. The Pakistani ISI is eager to help

broker such a deal and Karzai, who no longer believes Western

politicians have the stomach for a long-term military

commitment, is veering towards this as the option which will keep

him in power.

The Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, minority communities who had

fought the Pashtun Taliban in the past, warn this will re-ignite the

civil war. Human rights groups fear hard-won civil liberties,

especially for women, will be sacrificed in order to cut a deal with

the Islamists. For Britain and the West the result is likely to follow

the past pattern of the history of involvement with extremists:

short-term gain followed by long-term loss as the international

jihad continues to grow and gain ground.

Kim Sengupta is Defence Correspondent of 'The Independent'

This densely packed history of Islamic terrorism will confirm many

people's worst suspicions about the origins of al-Qaeda.

Islamic radicalism was actively encouraged as part of the British Empire's

strategy of divide and rule, specifically against Arab nationalists who sought

to break with the West economically.


33/46

Here, Mark Curtis shows how variations of this thinking are still driving

strategic choices he recounts how the British government has backed

fundamentalist Muslims in coup plots in Iran, Syria and Egypt, supported

the rise of the house of Saud, armed an Islamic insurgency in Indonesiaand looked the other way when Islamist terrorist groups set up their

headquarters in London because the security services thought it would

safeguard Britain from attacks.

This exclusive focus on Britain's involvement pushes the US's larger role

to one side and Curtis has a pub bore's habit of lamenting too often the

media's failure to report any of this.

Still, Secret Affairs deserves to become a key reference point in thedebate over terrorism and Middle East policy.

Read more:http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/books/835645-secret-affairs-

should-be-required-reading-for-politicians#ixzz1J0F5L4ed

The AuthorMark Curtis

: 2491

:100

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SECRET AFFAIRS: BRITAIN'S COLLUSION WITH RADICAL ISLAM


38/46

by Mark Curtis (Profile Books, 12.99)

Tuesday 21 September 2010

In a detailed historical journey, Mark Curtis charts Britain's

intimate involvement in the promotion of Muslim individuals and

Islamic states as tools for its own imperial ambitions.

It used Islam in a blatant divide-and-rule tactic from the time of

the Raj onwards and Curtis amply demonstrates a continuous and

intimate marriage of convenience betweenBritain and various

Islamic forces over three centuries.

After Britain's long-time support of the Ottoman Empire as a

bulwark against Tsarist Russia and to protect its East Indian trade

routes it soonsought alternative allies once the Turks had

unexpectedly entered the first world war on the side

of Germany. Britain then proceeded to find a suitable and

subservient proxy from among the tribal groups of central Arabia.

In the1920s it discovered Ibn Saud as an ideal candidate for

leadership and gave him sole control over Saudi Arabia.

He proceeded to assert this in one of the most bloody repressions the

region had experienced, killing over 40,000 Arab tribesmen and

women and amputating the limbs of 350,000 more.

This led to the complete domination of the Saud family in the

region to this day and assured Britain of a steady flow of oil and

the family's complete support from Britain in the maintenance of

its brutal and obscurantist regime.


39/46

It also led to the spread of the divisive and backward-looking faction

of Islam called Wahabism - the founding ideology of modern jihad.

Throughout the region Britain has always propped up elements

of the ruling classes against the democratic and nationalist

aspirations of the people.

Curtis provides a long list of such tactics

from Egypt,Afghanistan and Persia to Turkmenistan.

This history is little known and rarely discussed in academic

circles and it will come as a surprise to many to see

how Britain has meddled in Islamic affairs over such a long andcontinuous period.

And, although it would be foolish to blame Britain solely for the

present resurgence of Islamic extremism or terrorism, it is

certainly not the innocent bystander it paints itself.

Britain has continuously provided covert support to Muslim

guerrilla forces to counteract the spread of Soviet influence

in Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan, as well as in Kosovo.

Curtis concludes with the present day chaos

in Iraq andAfghanistan, showing how Britain and the US are very

much to blame for what unravelled there even before they chose

to invade.

He names the "heroic" Afghan guerilla leaders who fought

Soviet forces and who were backed and armed by Britainandthe US only to then set up the Taliban regime and become "the

enemy."

Pakistan was also given massive military and financial support

over many years as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the


40/46

region and to counteract India, seen as pro-Soviet and unreliable.

This policy and Pakistan's involvement in Afghanistan has also

contributed to the present political instability and violence there.

This is a fascinating, well written and researched book.

And it is a must-read for anyone who wishes to better

understand the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Britain's key

role in its ascent.

John Green

Perfidious Albion and the dirty little secrets of

our foreign affairs

Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam by Mark Curtis

Serpent's Tail, 12.99

by Ian Sinclair

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

According to the respected American dissident Noam Chomsky: "The

responsibility of a writer is to try to bring the truth about matters of human

significance to an audience that can do something about them."

Historian Mark Curtis has been doing just that since he wrote The

Ambiguities of Power in 1995. Bypassing the establishment-friendly

analysis of mainstream media and academia, Curtis argues "the basic factis that Britain is a major, systematic contributor to much of the world's

suffering and horrors" carrying out brutal military interventions, large-scale

human rights abuses and opposing economic developments that would

benefit the poor.


41/46

Previously the director of the World Development Movement and a

research fellow at Chatham House, Curtis has continued his evidence-

based critique of British foreign policy with Web of Deceit in 2003 and,

more recently Unpeople, in which he maintains Britain"bears significantresponsibility" for around 10 million deaths since 1945.

Now in Secret Affairs he turns his attention to Britain's relationship with

the politics of radical Islam. Both Labour and Conservative governments

have, he argues, "colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces,

including terrorist organisations. They have connived with them, worked

alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them." Why? To help

promote Britain's two main foreign policy objectives "influence and control

over key energy resources" and "maintaining Britain's place within a pro-

Western global financial order." Whether it is working with major state

sponsors of Islamist terrorism such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, or non-

state players such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Britain has consistently

attempted to undermine secular, nationalist forces in the Arab world.

As with Curtis' previous work, the first part of this historical overviewmakes extensive use of declassified government documents. For example,

in 1957 the British ambassador to Jordan makes British policy plain in a

letter to the Foreign Secretary: "I suggest that our interest is better suited

by an authoritarian regime which maintains stability and the Western

connection than by an untrammelled democracy which rushes downhill

towards communism and chaos."

Presumably because of the 30-year rule the more recent chapters

on Britain's involvement with radical Islam during the wars in the Balkans

rely more on newspapers and Hansard. The picture is therefore far from

complete, and Curtis seems less sure of the terrain. However, there is no

doubt that the claim of "humanitarian intervention" in Kosovo in 1999 is


42/46

seriously undermined by the fact that Britain trained the Kosovo Liberation

Army, an outfit who worked closely with al-Qaeda and who were openly

described as a terrorist organisation by British ministers at the time.

Turning to the present conflict in Afghanistan, Curtis notes thatBritain is

now fighting the Islamist forces it had previously supported in the 1980s

against the Soviet Union in what he calls "Whitehall's most extensive covert

operation since the Second World War." The media have followed the

government's lead, forgetting inconvenient facts like the visit of the brutal

insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to London in 1988. Or, as a former

literary editor of Tribune famously wrote: "Officially the change of partners

had never happened.Oceania was at war with Eurasia:

therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the

moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or

future agreement with him was impossible."

As for Pakistan's continuing support for the Taliban, highlighted by the

recently leaked Afghan war logs, published on WikiLeaks, he simply says

"the situation is absurd: in order to defeat the forces of the

Taliban, Britain is dependent on their main ally." Bang up to date,

comprehensive and clearly written, Secret Affairs is a work of great

importance and sobering conclusions. Curtis remains essential reading for

anyone who wishes to understand Britain's real role in the world.

About The Author

Ian Sinclair reviews books for Tribune.


43/46

SECRETAFFAIRSBook Review by Charlotte Bence, September 2010

Mark Curtis, Serpent's Tail, 12.99

Until I read Secret Affairs I thought I was relatively well informed about the

hypocrisy of the British government and the way in which the ruling class of

any country will side with whoever promotes their interests, irrespective of

any other considerations. I knew about the shocking use of divide and rule

in India, for example, where the colonialist strategy of pitting Hindus and

Muslims against each other resulted in communalism - separate

electorates, jobs and education for Muslims. I knew about the role the

British government played in the formation of Israel, where post-war

British planners were deeply implicated in the ethnic cleansing of parts

of Palestine.

These shameful acts of the British government's past will not be news to

readers of this magazine, and I would guess that the events reported in this

book which came as a surprise to me would already be familiar to some of

you. However, I can pretty much guarantee that there will be information in

here that even the most knowledgeable will not be aware of, and that alone

would make this worth a read.

Secret Affairs is so striking because of the detail that Mark Curtis goes into,

leaving no questions unanswered in his analysis of the role the British state


44/46

has played in propping up or working with Islamic regimes across the world

to secure the furtherance of its own interests. The information on Saudi

Arabia, for example, could make a book in its own right, as could the

section on the role of the British state in Bosnia.To a lesser extent, Curtis also turns his eye to the manoeuvrings

ofWashington, which is crucial for understanding the influence that the so-

called "special relationship" has had on the actions ofWhitehall and how

various imperialist rivalries have shaped the global political landscape.

As impressive as these sections are, by far the most remarkable but also

enraging elements of Secret Affairs are the parts that deal with the state's

relationship with so-called Islamic fundamentalist groups and individualsacross the world, but especially in what Curtis refers to as "Londonistan".

In Londonistan the state provides "welfare to Islamic extremists on the

unspoken assumption that if we give them a safe haven here they will not

attack us on these shores" - clearly since 7/7 that attitude is changing, but

not as rapidly as you might think.

Curtis exposes the lies, dirty tricks and subterfuge the state will indulge in

to protect its interests and attempt to keep us divided. I would argue that

although there are things to disagree with here, this book is required

reading for those of us who stand shoulder to shoulder with the vilified

Muslim community in Britain and across the world.

October 13, 2010 - 17:21

Karen Passmore reviews Secret Affairs by Mark Curtis.

British historical interest in influencing Middle Eastern politics is well

recognised, largely through the actions and subsequent attention paid to

protagonists such as T.E. Lawrence and Sir Mark Sykes. Far less frequently

discussed is the subsequentand ongoinginvolvement of the British
http://www.historytoday.com/printmail/66081


45/46

government with the internal affairs of an arc of nations stretching

from Egypt to Kazakhstan. In Secret Affairs, Mark Curtis focuses on the

cooperation and often collusion between the British and a variety of Islamist

groups in this region, showing how these relationships are not merely historical butaffect the social and political landscapes of the world today.

From an initial somewhat strong position in the Middle Eastto the profoundly

weaker one of today, Curtis reveals how British policies of 'divide and rule' in the

region have remained unchanged. Drawing on many now declassified Foreign

Office documents, he considers how the British sought to implement such policies

both in countries where they held direct power (India, for example) and those

where they did not (such as Iran and Egypt).

During the Cold War, the overwhelming concern of the Foreign Office to

maintain the balance of power produced many secret alliances with Islamist groups

as Britain sought to prevent or destabilise nationalist movements in a variety of

countries. Curtis shows how this often came at the expense of many allegedly core

British values, including democracy, justice, women's rights and freedom, which

were denied to the local population in the name of British short-sighted regional

interests.

Most eye-opening for the generalist reader like myself is the direct relationship

between Britain and British foreign policy and modern-day terrorism. Curtis draws

on an impressive range of sources to reveal the close links, both historical and

contemporary, between many of today's high-profile Islamist groups that are

involved in terrorist operations and the British government, military, or

intelligence services.

Secret Affairs follows a rough chronological timeline, from the British Empire to

the present day. It is entirely possible to read the various chapters out of order;

however, one of the major strengths of the book is in how Curtis shows the


46/46

patterns in British policies develop and repeat over time and over national borders

this is best appreciated if read in order of inclusion.

The book as a whole is accessible to a general readership and Curtis ensures that

the text is not overridden with confusing acronyms and names of organisations (of

which there are many). The index is particularly useful, and the extensive notes

both develop ideas further and provide excellent source material should the reader

wish to investigate certain aspects in greater detail.

Secret Affairs is essential reading for anyone wishing to fully understand the

political and social situation in the world today, in particular Britain's role in

the Middle East andCentral Asia. It constitutes a historical reference, as well as aninvestigation into current affairs, that is both enlightening and somewhat

depressing. In the words of the author, the hallmark of British foreign policy in the

region has been 'expediency: the willingness to do whatever, with whomever, at

the time to achieve short-term objectives irrespective of the long-term costs and

any moral calculation.' This has had a profound effect on Britain's status and

security in the world today.

Secret Aff airs, Mark Curtis (Profile Books)

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