@@ Big trouble for British occupation of Southern Iraq @@
Arash
September 23, 2005
Big Trouble for British Occupation of Southern Iraq
By Kurt Nimmo
As expected, the British and the corporate press are blaming Moqtada Sadr and his
Mahdi army for the recent troubles in Basra, obscuring the fact two SAS undercover
troublemakers were caught red-handed readying a terrorist attack against Iraqi Shias.
Adrian Blomfield, writing for the UK Telegraph, characterizes the arrest of the
British terrorists as “two SAS soldiers held hostage in Basra” and the allegations
that the two were plotting murder and mayhem a “smear campaign” that translates into
“another blow to the British Army’s hopes of restoring its affection among locals”,
as if Iraqis are fond of the idea of occupation and foreign troops stationed in their
country.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/23/wirq23.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/23/ixnewstop.html
Basra’s governor, Mohammed al-Wa’eli, accused Britain of “imperial arrogance”, a shoe
that fits and the Brits (and Americans) should wear it. The average UK Telegraph
reader may not know it—as many Americans do not know their own checkered history—but
“imperialism” is precisely what the Brits imposed on Iraq for decades, beginning
after the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1914.
Britain, in standard arrogant and back-stabbing fashion, promised the Arabs of what
they would later call Iraq independence, only to betray them. Instead of
independence, Iraq became a “mandate” territory under the League of Nations and
British “supervision”. Outraged Iraqis revolted in 1920 and the British put down the
rebellion with aerial bombardment using chemical weapons.
It was Winston Churchill, as colonial secretary, who remarked, “I do not understand
this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poison gas
against uncivilized tribes”, for instance the Kurds in north and the Shias in the
south. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html
Winston Churchill was also responsible in part for drawing the current borders of
Iraq, carved out three Ottoman districts—the northern mostly Kurdish district
administered from Mosul, the middle predominately Sunni Arab district, including
Baghdad; and the southern largely Shia district, whose major city is Basra. It was
indeed the “imperial arrogance” of the British that angered the Arabs (and Kurds) of
what is now Iraq and motivated them to revolt.
“The governing council has decided to stop all co-operation with the British until
they meet three demands”, declared Mohammed al-Wa’eli. “To apologize for what
happened, to guarantee that it does not happen again, and third, to provide some
compensation for all the damage they did during the operation”, demands that prompted
a British embassy spokesman in Basra to remark that the conditions put forward
“shouldn’t be a problem”, even as the “Foreign Office described the demand for an
apology as a local issue and not a reflection of the feelings of the Iraqi prime
minister, who met the UK defense secretary on Wednesday in London”, according to the
Financial Times. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/028e518e-2b97-11da-995a-00000e2511c8.html
In short, nobody should get too concerned about a few riled up Shias. “Prime Minister
Ibrahim Ja'afari said the incident would not harm his government’s relations with
Britain, while John Reid (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1388.asp), UK
Defense Minister said the subsequent street unrest in Basra would not deter the 8500
British troops stationed in southern Iraq from continuing their mission”.
In other words, the Brits believe it is business as usual with the same degree of
“imperial arrogance”, and no doubt a green light for future undercover operations
designed to keep the Shia and Sunni at each others throats and eventually splinter
Iraq into three religious and ethnic pieces, as long envisioned and proposed by the
Israelis and, more recently, their neocon fellow travelers in America.
Iraqis, characterized as “uncivilized tribes” by revered British politicians,
understand this plot well. “Everyone knows the occupiers’ agenda”, declared Abdel
Hadi al-Daraji, one of Sadr’s officials in Basra. “They are in bed with Mossad and
their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their
interests in Iraq…. We have to take the moral high ground and resist this provocation
by the British. This is a very dangerous, very sensitive time in Iraq but we must
calm our supporters or we will fall into the British trap”.
In other words, a Shia uprising against the Brits (and Americans) will not occur
until the time is right. Since many Shias consider the SAS plot and the subsequent
“rescue” (flattening buildings and killing Shias in the process) a “second Abu
Ghraib”, a newfound resistance against occupation may not be far off.
Last year Rumsfeld said the fighting in Iraq was simply the work of “thugs, gangs and
terrorists” and General Myers added that there was “not a Shia uprising” in southern
Iraq and “Mr. Sadr has a very small following”, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported
at the time. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/08/1081326870083.html
However, as Ghassan al-Attiyah, executive director of the Iraq Foundation for
Development and Democracy in Baghdad, explained, there was “a general mood of
anti-Americanism among the people in the streets” that went far beyond Sadr’s
followers.
In the wake of the SAS blunder and the British response, no doubt this antipathy has
grown, not only against the Americans but the Brits as well. The British, as
characterized by the comments of John Reid, may believe Basra is “returning
progressively to a level of normality” (that is to say, occupation as usual), but it
appears the Shia have other ideas.
As a primary example of how just out of touch the corporate media in Britain is,
consider the comment in the Telegraph that the “locals” have “affection” for British
administered occupation, demonstrating that the legacy of “imperial arrogance” has
not subsided—not in Tony Bliar’s government or in the ranks his good friends at the
right-wing Telegraph, a newspaper “group” (conglomerate) once owned by the “The Right
Honorable” Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/black/black.php), a scurrilous neocon who once
“appropriated” (i.e., he stole) over $62 million from a workers’ pension fund.
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=35
Photo of Brigadier Gordon Kerr of (British Intelligence Corps) Force Research Unit
(FRU)
http://www.sundayherald.com/fru.shtml
British false-flag operations unmentioned in the corporate media
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/6cb77cc539bf8323?hl=en
Basra "black op" echoes British SAS actions in the Northern Ireland
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/146afc7425e1a310?hl=en
British terrorists exposed in Basra
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/241558c76e9b134e?hl=en
An Explosive Story
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/bb221d7f63cc9aa2?hl=en
British false-flag operation blown wide open
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/05ea09de724fda43?hl=en
JEW media shifts attention from British SAS screw-up to Iran
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/b354d27e92f4f073?hl=en
"Green Slime" Brigadier Gordon Kerr (British Intelligence Corps)
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/db9d09170484f68d?hl=en