British Terrorism in Iraq

Al Zarqawi and his “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” are inventions of the occupying forces

It had been long known to the Iraqis, to the Arabs, and to all Moslems in countries bordering Iraq that the majority of the terrorist attacks in Iraq, especially car bombing, are perpetrated by covert British, American, and Israeli operatives. It is also well known to them that the terrorist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and his “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” are just inventions of the coalition forces to justify their existence.  More and more evidences are coming out of Iraq to support this fact. The arrest of two undercover British SAS operatives last week, disguised as Arabs trying to plant a car bomb in the middle of Basra during the Karbala Festival, which draws as many as 3 million pilgrims to the city, is just the latest of such revelations.

In previous article – “American Terror Strategy in Iraq”, published first week of last August) I wrote about the American covert terrorist activity in Iraq aimed at inciting civil war and alienating Iraqi resistance. The good citizens of Great Britain and US, including their troops fighting in Iraq, would not believe that their governments would do such terrible acts. After all these two countries are sacrificing the lives of their young troops to liberate Iraqis and not to murder them. The article was criticized harshly by American troops, who served in Iraq, and claimed that they were helping Iraqis re-building their lives. Yet many other Americans and Britons – troops as well as independent reporters – speak loudly about the African, Latin American, American and British mercenaries operating in Iraq and are paid thousands more than the regular troops to perpetrate the terror attacks. British and American leaders had lied their troops into the war in Iraq. Studying history one discovers a long history of these leaders deceiving their people and leading them to terrorize other countries.

The two British operatives, arrested by Basra police and later freed by a British military operation, were identified by the BBC as “members of the SAS elite special forces”
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/424614.stm ).

They were disguised by wigs and Arab dress. Iraqi sources reported that the Iraqi police were watching the two, and when they tried to approach them they shot two policemen and tried to escape the scene. The Iraqi police chased and captured them, to discover large amount of explosives planted in the car, which apparently was planned to be remotely detonated in the busy market of Basra. The SAS involvement in Iraq was discovered on the 30th of January 2005 when an RAF Hercules plane crashed near Baghdad killing then British servicemen after dropping off fifty SAS members north of Baghdad to fight Iraqi guerillas.

SAS (Special Air Service) is a secret regiment in the British Army. It was formed in 1941 to conduct raids behind the German lines in North Africa. At the present it forms part of the United Kingdom Special Forces alongside the Special Boat Service and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. The role of the SAS includes intelligence gathering, behind enemy lines target attacks, counter revolutionary warfare, guarding of senior British dignitaries, conducting military missions without official British Government involvement, training special forces of other nationalities, and counter-terrorism operations.

The SAS conducted many military missions throughout the world. From 1958 – 1959 they fought the anti-sultan rebels in Jebel Akhdar in Oman. They also fought against another insurrection in Dhofar, Oman in 1970 – 1977. They fought Indonesian-supported guerillas during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation in Borneo in 1963 – 1966. They operated in Aden in 1964 – 1967 before the withdrawal of the British troops.  During the Falklands War in 1982 SAS were involved in covert operation in San Carlos before the landing of the main British forces. In the Gulf War of 1991 they were deployed deep behind the Iraqi army lines to destroy Scud missiles launchers and to gather intelligence. It was also reported that they had set fires to the Kuwaiti oil wells.

Some of the SAS had helped Afghani fighters during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the 1980s. They also had special training camp in Scotland to train them on shooting down Russian Helicopters. 

 The SAS was deeply involved in the British conflict in Northern Ireland since its start in 1969. At the beginning they operated openly in their own uniform, and later on they planted moles in the IRA, who were involved in terror bombing. The well known August 15th, 1998 Omagh bombing attack, which killed 29 civilians was done by an SAS double agent as reported by Sunday Herald (http://www.sundayherald.com/17827 ).

The Paper also reported the confession of another SAS member, who operated as an IRA mole from 1981 to 1994 while on full British army pay. He helped to develop a new type of bomb activated by photographic flashes to overcome the problem of IRA remote-control devices being signal jammed by army radio units.
(http://www.sundayherald.com/print25646 ).

Another mole, known by his codename “Stakeknife”, was still active in December of 2002 as one of Belfast’s leading provisionals. His military commander “allowed him to carry out large numbers of terrorist murders in order to protect his cover within the IRA”.
(http://www.sundayherald.com/29997 ). 

In late 2002 the paper reported reliable evidence that the British army had used its moles in terrorist organizations to “carry out proxy assassinations”, such as the case of the human rights activist Pat Finucane, who was murdered in 1989 by the Protestant Ulster Defense Association (UDA). The mole supplied the UDA with necessary information to assassinate Finucane. (http://sundayherald.com/29997 ).

Car bombings in Iraq started few months after the occupation. The first attacks were directed against the U.N. Headquarters in Iraq prompting the U.N. to withdraw its employees. The Red Cross and the Jordanian Embassy were also initially targeted. Later on car bombing targeted several mosques and religious leaders, and lately the fragile Iraqi Police became the main target. Oddly enough the common denominator in these attacks is that they targeted exclusively Iraqis rather than the occupying forces.  It does not make any sense for Al-Qaeda and Al-Zarqawi, allegedly came to Iraq to fight Americans, to attack Iraqi civilians and Iraqi police. In doing so the occupying forces find excuses to stay longer in Iraq. As Bush and Blair continue to remark that since the Iraqi Forces are very week and could not defend the Iraqi against terrorist, it is imperative for the British/American troops to stay in Iraq in order to fight terrorists and help Iraqis defend themselves.

There is a common belief that these car bombings are orchestrated by foreign forces (Americans, British, and Israelis) in Iraq to spread chaos. Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi-exile physicist, reported of Arab drivers discovering bombs planted in their cars after being stopped and interrogated at an American checkpoint. Baghdad Burning blog reported in May 2005 of eyewitnesses to American patrols planting bombs in Ma’moun area in west Baghdad. Abdel Hadi Al-Daraji, Al-Sadr’s top official in Sadr City, accused Britain of plotting to start an ethnic war by carrying out car bombings targeting Shia civilians and then blaming the attack on Sunni Arabs. He said: “Everyone knows the occupiers’ agenda. They are in bed with the Mossad (the Israeli secret service) and their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq”. Sheik Hassan Al-Zarqani, a spokesman for Mahdi Army militia described the two British SAS operatives as terrorists. He stated that the Iraq police found weapons, explosives and remote control detonators in their car. He explained “We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets”. The quick fierce action of the British army to release the two SAS operatives before being interrogated tends to support the view that this incident has deeper implications beyond what appears on the surface.

The general attitude of many Iraqis could be summarized in a statement made by a Shiite man. He said: “I believe it is the Americans who are doing this, pretending it is Sunnis, so there will be a civil war and they can control our wealth.” International reporters, such as the American journalists Dahr Jamail and Juan Cole, started viewing car bombings through the Iraqi point of view.

When asking the important question of who benefits from these car bombings, we discover that the only beneficiaries are the occupying forces. Blaming car bombings on Iraqi resistance the Americans are trying to drive a wedge between the resistance and the sympathetic Iraqis. By bombing Shiite mosques in one day and Sunni mosques in another they are trying to incite hatred between the two religious factions. Civil war and division of Iraq is the ultimate goal of the occupation. Bush’s and Blair’s speeches are geared towards planting seeds of religious conflict. Corporate-owned media on both sides of the Atlantic seem to cultivate these seeds and repeatedly report that car bombing attacks causing casualties among Iraqi civilians are pushing Iraq towards a civil war between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. To incite more religious hatred between the groups the corporate media report of “alarming ethnic cleansing” of Shiites in the predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighborhoods. To exacerbate the situation the American army has been deploying Kurdish Peshmerga troops and Shiite militias in their attacks on Iraqi cities, lately in Tal Afar and Ramadi, killing Sunnis and destroying their houses in a manner designed to inflame ethnic hatred. 

The policy is to divide in order to conquer, and the ultimate plan is to partition Iraq into three warring three ethnic sections; Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish. Such division entails civil war and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale to weaken any merging Iraqi government, so that it could not demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces. The division of the Yugoslav Federation in the 1990s into smaller weaker states has been taken as a model to slice Iraq. This plan falls perfectly within the Israeli strategic goal, proposed in 1982, of dividing Iraq, the strongest Arab nation, into three warring ethnic states. The same policy can be seen In Israel’s attempt to incite civil war between PA on one side and the other Palestinian factions on the other side.


Articles by: Dr. Elias Akleh

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