Source: Tim Anderson FB
Thank you to the organisers and thank you Hashd al Shaabi (Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces). I want to extend my recognition of the Martyrs who fell in defence of this country when it was invaded by the US-led force, when it was destabilised by western powers, and when western powers got behind terrorist groups to further destabilise this country.

It is very important to talk about the sponsorship of terrorism, I believe, because as the war is being won against DAESH in Syria and Iraq, the terrorism persists and may still persist after the war is won, and the sponsorship of terrorism is the key to that: Can the war against terrorism be won after the country is liberated? Now, I know that some people are going to focus on the social background, context of terrorism, the ideology …but if they forget those who are providing finance and weapons to these groups, they are going to miss something very important. That is why I am going to focus on the role of the United States of America in Iraq, and in this region, as the principal sponsor of terrorism in the entire region.

I wrote an article two years ago saying that all of the terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq have been directly or indirectly sponsored by the United States of America. Of course evidence and reason are one important way of discussion, but that is not what determines political debate. Political debate is conditioned by consistent repetition of particular lines and particular myths. And of course, there is intimidation of voices that tend to counter those myths.

So I think it is important for us, particularly those of us who aren’t diplomats, to speak more directly about these issues because if not the same mistakes will be made.

I want to look at the role of the United States in supporting terrorism in this region as though it were a criminal prosecution. That is to say, where evidence is led about the two principal elements of the crime: one is the intention or the mental element and the other is the act, the actual act of involvement in terrorism. And of course we also have to take the regional look at this problem because for the last decade and a half we had wars and terrorism in six countries in this region, so given that context Iraq can’t be considered alone.

If we look at the mental element, the guilty mind, the ‘mens rea’ of the British legal system, we see that there has been a plan to dominate this country and its neighbours that goes back many, many years. The thought or the idea of a new Middle East – that was articulated more clearly after this country had been subjugated and invaded – in 2005 and 2006 is on public record. There were also plans to use sectarian violence in this country, to prevent a close relationship between Baghdad and Teheran, between neighbours, to try to block that constructive relationship; and that has a long history too. There is widespread evidence of control and integration of all of the regional terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, for example, by use of US intelligence through its allies in the region, in particular, the al-Saud regime, Qatar and the government of Turkey.

There are admissions by senior US officials of strategic support for DAESH in Syria. You know for example, in late, no, in mid 2012 that the US DIA said that the construction of an Islamic state in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq was exactly, quote “exactly” what the US and its allies wanted in order to weaken the ‘regime’ in Damascus. We know that there are repeated, demonstrable lies over the pretext for the US re-entering this country, on the invitation of the Iraqi government, nevertheless a pretext (was) to be fighting DAESH.
And that follows on the earlier false pretext of the invasion. After the invasion this idea of a New Middle East and ‘constructive chaos’ was announced in Tel Aviv just prior to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which of course was defeated. We know that in Libya the situation was different. The Libyan State was destroyed by a NATO invasion, and the Salafist terrorists in that country, linked to DAESH, were directly linked to senior US officials. And they haven’t been ashamed by showing themselves photographed giving awards to the leaders of DAESH in Libya.

We know Seymour Hersh wrote about the ‘redirection’ in 2006 of the Bush Administration. We know that Al Qaeda in Iraq which became ISI, which became ISIS, became heavily internationalised in the year 2006. The main component of that internationalised force worked from Saudi Arabia, followed by North Africa and other countries. We know that DAESH fought with the Free Syrian Army, together, for a period of time in Northern Syria. We know the head of the US armed forces admitted, at the time of the US, let’s say reoccupation of this country, militarily, on the pretext of fighting DAESH, that the then head of the US army Mark Dempsey admitted that their “key Arab allies” were financing DAESH. We know that the (US) Vice President said that their key allies in the region were financing DAESH and all of the other groups to try and overthrow the government in Damascus.

The guilty acts, the guilty acts involved the overt weapons supply to the principal direct sponsors of DAESH. We know that the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration have sold increasing amounts of weapons, to the al Saud regime and Qatar in an increasing spiral, that is to say Obama sold more than Bush and Trump has been selling more than Obama. We know that the ideology and weapons have come from, from those countries. We know that the US even accuses Qatar of being a sponsor of terrorism.

The indirect supply of weapons, I was in Deir Ezzor two weeks ago, I saw a large cache of NATO weapons there, there were weapons from all over, some of those have come from this country DAESH brought them into Syria, including a NATO howitser with a 40km range, a whole range of technology that the Syrian Army captured.

We know that there have been reports of direct US assistance to DAESH commanders in this country and in Syria. The reports began in late 2014 and carry to 2015 where a number of senior Iraqi officials are complaining about the US using helicopters, for example, to remove DAESH commanders from one part to another. I spoke to a Syrian General in Deir Ezzor two weeks ago, he told me the same thing had happened down in the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor. They had three coordinates with US pick ups of DAESH commanders being evacuated as DAESH was being defeated by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies.

We know the omissions that took place that there was, while the US and the government of my country (Australia) pretended they were in this country and they were operating in Syria to fight DAESH, when in fact they mounted a brutal attack on Syrian soldiers just over a year ago, on a low mountain range south of Deir Ezzor, killing 123 soldiers, claiming it was a mistake. The same day DAESH took over that mountain range with the aim of trying to take the airport in Deir Ezzor.
I spoke with a survivor, a commanding officer of the Syrian Army two weeks ago and he told in detail how that the attack of five planes, including a line of sight machine gunning of Syrian soldiers on that mountain range, took place. At the same time United States forces bombed bridges going north to Raqqa and going East, sorry, going West to Tadmor. The US forces there to fight DAESH did nothing to prevent DAESH taking over the city of Tadmor, or Palmyra. In fact they actively assisted DAESH in Deir Ezzor, we have very clear evidence of that.

So when we look at that evidence, and we have to I suggest as reasonable people look at that evidence, there is an overwhelming case for the US role in masterminding these terrorist groups for its broader political strategy in this region.

Why is this important? It’s important because if we are going to have conversations about the post war situation and the reconstruction of Iraq, and we have broad general ideas of the international community being involved in that, we have to think: why would rational people invite those who have destroyed this country, destabilised it, thrown it into terrorism, to play a leading role in the reconstruction of this country. It deserves serious thought, I suggest.

Now I am not going to tell Iraqi people what to do because there are too many westerners who have been doing that for too long. But I just suggest that those who invited the wolf into their house have to find ways to get the wolf out. Many of us have diplomatic roles, but I suggest that the rest of us can and should talk more directly and honestly about who is behind terrorism in Iraq, and in this entire region. Thank you.

Tim Anderson’s presentation at the Baghdad Conference ‘Conference for International Dialogue on Terrorism’, 28 October 2017. Hosted by Hashd al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces), under the Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq.

By Sharmine Narwani
Source: The American Conservative
In July, the White House and Pentagon requested authority from Congress to build further “temporary intermediate staging facilities” inside Syria in order to combat ISIS more effectively. This request, it must be noted, comes in the wake of devastating ISIS defeats in Syria, mostly by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied forces.

Shortly afterward, the Turkish state-owned Anadolu news agency revealed previously unknown details and locations of ten U.S. bases and outposts in northern Syria, several of them with airfields. These are in addition to at least two further U.S. outposts already identified in southern Syria, on the Iraqi border.

When asked about these military bases, a CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) spokesman told me: “We don’t have bases in Syria. We have soldiers throughout Syria providing training and assist to the SDF (the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the north of the country).” How many soldiers? “Roughly 1,200 troops,” says CENTCOM.

Yet when questioned about the international law grounds for this U.S. military presence inside Syria, CENTCOM didn’t have a response on hand. They referred me to the Office of the Secretary of Defense whose spokesman obstinately cited U.S. domestic law—an issue quite irrelevant to Syrians. He, in turn, referred me to the White House and State Department on the international-law angle. The State Department sent me back to the Department of Defense, the White House pointed me in the direction of the National Security Council (NSC), and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel blankly ignored my repeated requests.

It isn’t hard to conclude that official Washington simply doesn’t want to answer the “international law” question on Syria. To be fair, in December 2016, the Obama administration offered up an assessment on the legalities of the use of force in Syria, but perhaps subsequent ground developments—the SAA and its allies defeating ISIS and Al Qaeda left, right, and center—have tightened some lips in the nation’s capital.

The map of U.S. bases in Syria is confusing. For starters, it reveals that many of the US outposts—or “staging facilities”—are nowhere near ISIS-controlled areas. This has generated some legitimate suspicion about U.S. motives in Syria, especially since American forces have begun to attack Syrian military targets with more frequency. This summer saw U.S. strikes against Syrian allied forces, drones, and a fighter jet all in the space of a few weeks. And most memorably, in September 2016, Coalition fighters killed over 100 SAA troops fighting ISIS in Deir Ezzor, paving the way for a brief ISIS takeover of strategic points in the oil-rich province.

It appears that U.S. intentions may go beyond the stated objective of fighting terrorism in Syria—and that Washington’s goals are also territorial and political and seek to retain post-conflict zones of influence within the country: in the south, north, and along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Former Obama White House and NSC senior legal official Brian Egan believes the coming challenge for U.S. policymakers—in terms of international law—will be to justify clashes with Syrian forces and their allies.

“I think the harder international law question to defend is with respect to use of force against the [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime,” warns Egan. “For example, the U.S. strike in response to the [alleged] chemical weapons attack. There’s no self-defense justification, there’s no UN Security Council resolution. It’s an open question what the U.S. depends on in terms of international law.”

“Theories that might be applicable against terrorist groups like ISIS don’t appear to apply for U.S. military ops against Syrian forces. The more that U.S. forces are in-theater in Syria, the greater the chance of conflict between the U.S. and Syrian forces, which makes it essential that [this administration] explains its justification for potential operations in Syria,” emphasizes Egan.

But it’s not only Syrian forces and military targets that have come under American fire. In a stream of letters to the UN Security Council this year, the Syrian government asserts U.S. air strikes have also “systematically” destroyed vital infrastructure and economic assets throughout the country for months, and complains that the attacks are “being carried out outside the framework of international legality.” The Syrians claim that these infrastructure targets include the Ghalban oil collection branch station, Umar oilfield, wells and facilities, electrical transformer stations, Tanak oil field and facilities, Izbah oil field and installations—all in Deir Ezzor governorate—a gas plant and bridges and structures of the Balikh Canal in Raqqa, buildings and facilities belonging to the General Establishment of Geology and Mineral Resources in Homs, Furat and Baath Dam facilities, the Euphrates Dam, the Tishrin Dam and their reservoirs, irrigation and power generation facilities, and many other vital sites across the country.

With U.S. legal arguments supporting military presence in Syria unravelling, the Pentagon’s untenable position has become noticeable, even within its own ranks.

“Here’s the conundrum,” explained U.S. Special Operations Command Chief Army General Raymond Thomas to an Aspen gathering last week, in response to a question about whether U.S. forces will stay in Syria, post-ISIS: “We are operating in the sovereign country of Syria. The Russians, their stalwarts, their back-stoppers, have already uninvited the Turks from Syria. We’re a bad day away from the Russians saying, ‘Why are you still in Syria, U.S.?’”

The Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and other allied Syrian forces are in Syria legally, at the invitation of the UN-recognized state authority. The United States and its coalition partners are not.

At the moment, the latter are trying hard to ignore that elephant in the room. But as ISIS collapses, the question “why are you still here?” is going to rise in volume.

When the U.S.-led coalition first launched overt military operations inside Syria in September 2014, various western governments cited both the recently-passed UNSC Resolution 2249 and Article 51 (Iraq’s invitation for “collective self-defense”) as their legal justification for doing so.

Neither of these justifications provided legal grounds for use of force in Syria, however. There are basically only three clear-cut international law justifications for use of force: a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution providing Chapter 7 authority, self-defense against an act of aggression by a territorial state, and an invitation by the legitimate authority of a sovereign state for foreign troops to act within its borders—“consent of a territorial state.”

While UNSC Res. 2249 called upon member states to “take all necessary measures” against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, it explicitly stated that any such measures must be “in compliance with international law, in particular with the UN Charter”—which requires consent of a territorial state, in this case, the Syrian government.

And while Iraq did invite the Coalition to militarily engage ISIS within its territory, its “collective self-defense” argument does not justify the use of force inside Syrian territory—because Syria did not attack Iraq.

To make up for the gaping holes in its international-law arguments, the U.S.-led Coalition performed some legal acrobatics. The “unwilling and unable” theory posits that the Coalition could engage militarily in Syria because the legitimate government of Syria was either unable or unwilling (or both) to fight ISIS.

An onslaught of media articles and carefully-framed narratives were employed to set the scene for this theory. Recall, if you will, the slew of articles claiming that ISIS controlled around 50 percent of Syria—areas which were outside of Syrian state control—all meant to guide us to the conclusion that Syria was “unable” to fight ISIS. Or the narratives that insisted, until ground evidence proved otherwise, that the Syrian government aided ISIS, that it never fought the terror group, that it only targeted “moderate rebels”—all intended to persuade us that Syria was “unwilling” to target ISIS.

In fact, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have fought ISIS throughout this conflict, but were often distracted by more urgent battles against U.S., Turkish, British, French, Saudi, UAE and Qatari-backed Islamist militants in the western corridor of the country, where Syria’s main population and infrastructure hubs are located. ISIS-controlled territories, it should be noted, were mostly in the largely barren, sparsely populated and desert regions in the north-east and east of Syria.

The NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council strategy appears to ping-pong Syrian troops from east to west, north to south, wearing them down, cleverly diverting them from any battle in which they were making gains. And it was working, until the Russians stepped into the fray in September 2015 and sunk the Coalition’s “unwilling and unable” theory.

As Major Patrick Walsh, associate professor in the International and Operational Law Department at the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Virginia, wrote that October:

“The United States and others who are acting in collective defense of Iraq and Turkey are in a precarious position. The international community is calling on Russia to stop attacking rebel groups and start attacking ISIS. But if Russia does, and if the Assad government commits to preventing ISIS from attacking Syria’s neighbors and delivers on that commitment, then the unwilling or unable theory for intervention in Syria would no longer apply. Nations would be unable to legally intervene inside Syria against ISIS without the Assad government’s consent.”

The UK’s leading security and defense analyst firm IHT Markit observed in an April 2017 report that during the time period in which ISIS suffered its most crippling defeats, Syrian allied forces fought the terror group two and a half times as often as U.S.-backed ones. With the Russian air force providing Syrian allied troops with game-changing air cover, the battle against ISIS and other terror groups began to turn decisively in Syria’s favor. And, with that, out went even the “theoretical” justification for U.S. military intervention in Syria.

As ISIS and Al Qaeda are beaten back in Syria, the American conversation about what comes next is missing a most critical point. In terms of international law, Washington has gone rogue in Syria. Will the world take notice?

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut.

R.Milhem/Ghossoun
Source: SANA
Deir Ezzor – Air Force of the Syrian Army directed strikes on gatherings and positions of ISIS terrorists in the vicinity of Panorama area, al-Iman oil station, al-Tharda, al-Tharda roundabout, Alloush Hill, al-Erfi neighborhood and al-Jneina village.

SANA reporter said that many terrorists were killed or injured and their vehicles were destroyed during the army’s strikes.

The reporter pointed out that army units clashed with terrorist groups of ISIS organization that attacked military posts in [the] vicinity of Panorama area where many terrorists were killed and others fled away.

**************************

Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Arrives at Iraqi Borders Northeast of al-Tanf

By Arabi Souri 11 June 2017
Source: Syria News

The Syrian Arab Army and its allies managed to outmaneuver the US forces illegally positioned at al-Tanf border crossing and reached the Syrian – Iraqi borders northeast of Al-Tamayz to the surprise and dismay of the real axis of evil. 

Despite the continuous attacking by the US forces and sustaining direct losses, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies pushed forward and reached the borders with Iraq outsmarting the US and its terrorist backed groups it calls ‘moderate rebels’ and tightens the noose on ISIS, Nusra Front and other branches of the FSA Free (from) Syrians Army, the umbrella the US and its followers used to recruit tens of thousands of terrorists from all sides of the planet and sent them to Syria.

The move, completed on June 10, 2017, is just the first phase of the Syrian Desert Operations as the General Command of the Syrian Arab Army and Armed Forces mentioned in its statement.

Syrians had other thoughts, enduring what no other nation can alone and by themselves for the first 3 years until their allies started to assist, they managed to regather their strength and turn the table on the evil powers, restoring and cleaning large areas and strategic cities and districts from the filth of ISIS and its likes.

The regime of Donald Trump, following the steps of his predecessor the Nobel Peace Laureate and war criminal Barack Obama, was trying its best to isolate the Syrian forces and pushing them away from the borders with Iraq inside Syrian territories and against all international laws and in blunt violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic. The attempts of the USAians and their servants using ISIS and other terrorist groups was mainly to divide Syria into a number of religious and ethnic based entities fighting each other like what they’ve accomplished in Libya.

Once connected with their Iraqi brothers on the other side of the borders, whom also have achieved major gains against US sponsored ISIS, the plot to divide this region will be in history books forever. The separatist Kurds, however, must watch and understand the new balance in power and must not depend on the promises of their US and Israeli buddies of support in their quest to steal large lands in the north and northwest of Syria and connect it to the land they stole in Iraq and now want to carry out a referendum on ‘independence’ from the central state there. Kurds throughout their history have always taken wrong decisions and aligned themselves with the wrong powers, we hope this time they’ll realize their mistakes before it’s too late.

By John Pilger
Source: CounterPunch

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of “erroneous assumptions” and that the attack “had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa”. The Commons committee quoted what it called Barack Obama’s “pithy” description of Cameron’s role in Libya as a “shit show”.

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the “shit show”, urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew… that if we waited one more day,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. The Commons committee reported, “The proposition that Mu’ammarGaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence”.

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties”, of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children’s organisation, reported a high proportion of the children killed “were under the age of ten”.

More than “giving rise” to Islamic State — ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 — these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a “liberator”, or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the “Manchester boys”.

To the Americans and British, Gadaffi’s true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships”.

The fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as “a rebel”.

Having plundered Libya’s $30 billion arsenal, the “rebels” advanced south, terrorising towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country’s fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony “to fight al-Qaida”, or the menace they had helped create.

On 14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”

Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth of British arms which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.

The Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. “Iraq!” he said. “We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it.”

At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered “Iraq” and “Blair” as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.

Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that “the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq … The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly”.

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush’s blood-soaked “shit show”, so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.

The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed”. As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

RT
Nearly two months into the siege of western Mosul, many houses there stand lifeless and looted, while some streets lie in ruins as civilian residents flee the area. RT’s Murad Gazdiev has witnessed the grim aftermath of war in Iraq’s second largest city.

RT’s Murad Gazdiev and his crew have filmed parts of western Mosul roughly one kilometer from the frontline between the US-backed coalition and Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL). Though the area is now considered to be liberated from IS, it looks like no man’s land, scorched and carpet-bombed.

US-backed Iraqi government forces launched a major offensive in February to recapture the western part of Mosul, where IS still controls sizeable pockets of territory. Supported by airstrikes, they are making their way through Islamic State’s major urban stronghold in Iraq, but at a horrible civilian cost.

Despite the coalition’s repeated assurances that it is taking every precaution when carrying out its airstrikes, the fighting has badly damaged many homes, shops, and other buildings, which now bear scars inflicted by heavy weapon fire.

The physical appearance of civilians being driven out of their neighborhoods by Iraqi soldiers in armored vehicles and trucks provides telling evidence of what they have been through during the anti-IS operation. “Dirty clothes, dust-covered faces – the obvious signs of people who had been through too much,” Murad noted.

Notably, evacuating civilians from the liberated areas of western Mosul is no easy task, as some important crossroads have been intentionally bombed to prevent Islamic State commanders from moving reinforcements and supplies, leaving them unpassable. Consequently, vehicles are not able to deliver medical aid or food along many of the roads.

Walking through west Mosul, the RT crew noticed that almost every door had been kicked in and almost every shop broken into.

Goods and possessions were seen lying in the streets, suggesting that nearby houses had been looted. “But, there’s no one left to complain,” Murad added, as his crew filmed people moving slowly down the street, apparently leaving the city. However, some residents have chosen to stay to protect their property or are simply unwilling to flee.

The grim picture of devastation and suffering witnessed by RT’s crew matches the predictions of aid agencies.

On Sunday, an RT crew also visited a medical center set up by the DARY humanitarian organization in Mosul, to film an eight-year-old girl named Duua who was lucky to survive an airstrike in the city’s Jadeda neighborhood. Both of her parents and other family members are believed to have been killed in the strike, and the camp’s founder said the girl was found on a street, lying there with heavy injuries.
“In the last 12 days, there has been constant rocket fire,” a local resident also told RT. “Yesterday it lasted from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. Thirty or 40 houses have been damaged, and there are hundreds of casualties.”

According to the latest estimates from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, up to 300,000 people may flee western Mosul in a fresh wave that could overwhelm the organization’s capacity to accommodate those displaced.

In early March, the UNHCR said about 192,000 residents had fled Mosul since October of last year, while about 750,000 still remained. Other UN figures suggest 5,000 people on average have been fleeing the city every day since the siege intensified in February.

Source: Fars News
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani condemned the Thursday’s terrorist attack in Hilla region of Iraq.

“Tehran will continue cooperation with Baghdad in fight against terrorism and extremism,” Larijani said on Friday.

A truck bomb went off in the Shoumeli village, 120 kilometers Southeast of Baghdad, targeting vehicles loaded with passengers most of them Iranians who were returning home from the holy shrines in Iraq after Arbaeen rituals.

The Iranian parliament speaker called on Iran’s foreign ministry and national relief aid agencies to help deliver medical services to the injured people.

Reports so far put the number of the dead at more than 71, including 24 Iranians with a lot more injured.

The ISIL has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack.