IMPERIALISM is playing a murky role across the Middle East and North Africa – aiding Al Qaeda terrorists, jihadists and foreign mercenaries preparing to overthrow the Syrian government. It did this well before the “Arab Spring” protests in March 2011, and the Syrian government actions against them cited by Western media as the “cause” of the civil war.
As far back as 2007, Seymour Hersh was writing in The New Yorker, “The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”
And not just the US. Britain, too, has been bolstering Al Qaeda to subvert Syria as it did to topple Gaddafi. Directly, or indirectly via the Gulf tyrannies, Western arms are streaming into jihadist terror gangs. Meanwhile, any secular Arab country has become a target for subversion.
It’s Afghanistan all over again – anything to defeat the “enemy”. Now Al Qaeda pops up to murder gas workers in Algeria, and bands of terrorists maraud in northern Mali. Having been a prime mover in the chaos, Cameron now warns of a decades-long battle against Al Qaeda – in North Africa alone. What a surprise! ■