Syrian Intervention, Yemeni Airstrikes and David
Cameron's Contempt for Democracy
The UK government gives diplomatic and military support to tyrants
worldwide and places imperial agendas above democratic decisions.
By Elliot Murphy
July 20, 2015
"Information
Clearing House"
-
"Stop
The War" -
DESPITE the 2013 parliamentary vote
against military intervention in Syria, it was revealed on Friday
after a freedom of information request by the campaign group
Reprieve that around 20 British military personnel have been
embedded within coalition forces in the country combating Isis.
A number of these have also been carrying out
airstrikes, something which David Cameron’s spokeswoman has
confirmed he was aware of. The prime minister told an American
audience on Sunday that Britain should ‘step up and do more’ in
Syria, the most explicit statement he has made to undermine
democratic parliamentary objections to such a move.
At a Stop the War Coalition meeting on Saturday at
the Bloomsbury Baptist Church, Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North
and Stoke Newington, claimed that Syria has consequently ‘turned out
to be David Cameron’s secret war’.
Stop the War officer Chris Nineham reiterated
these concerns, and condemned ‘the historical instinct to dominate
the Middle East’ which Cameron, Michael Fallon and others plainly
demonstrate.
Nineham added that a common excuse being peddled
by the establishment is that UK forces have become so embedded
within foreign forces that their role in Syria is therefore
legitimate. But this claim does not stand up to any serious legal
scrutiny – any UK forces will end up becoming ‘embedded’
one way or another within other allied organisations.
Britain, along with the US, also scuppered the
Geneva negotiations in 2012 and 2014, making it clear that their
priority is regime change, the removal of Assad.
A common myth, regurgitated in much of the
mainstream media, is that Britain supposedly became isolationist
after the 2013 vote on Syrian
intervention. Yet it still participated in diplomatic and
military support of tyrants worldwide, and as Friday’s revelations
indicate, it places imperial agendas above democratic decisions.
The myths of neo-colonialism are also given
impetus by much academic work. Alex J. Bellamy’s recent
Responsibility to Protect: A Defense, published by Oxford
University Press, argues that the R2P principle should more
forcefully be applied to Syria, ‘moving this principle from words
into deeds’ as the jacket cover poetically phrases it – ideas
formulated more concretely in another of Oxford’s ongoing series of
treatises, Nigel Biggar’s 2014 In Defence of War, which
dismisses those foolish enough to ‘hold that war is unnecessary’.
Kim Sharif from Human Rights for Yemen also
addressed the Baptist Church audience, noting how Britain (along
with the US and the United Arab Emirates) is additionally supporting
Saudi Arabia’s ongoing illegal and savage attacks on Yemen in an
effort to re-instate the government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who
initially came to power in February 2012 in a one-man ‘election’.
Sharif added that there is no UN mandate for the
Saudi airstrikes, no approval from the Arab League. By supporting
such actions, Britain is explicitly undermining the legitimacy of
these organisations, and of international law, diplomacy and peace
efforts more generally. It is no small thing to endorse the illegal
bombing of a devastated nation by the hands of an autocracy.
The bombing has been ongoing for 115 days and has
so far led to over 3500 deaths, including the total
destruction of heritage sites.
Ticking a few other major boxes for standard
British-backed terrorism, this period has also seen the
indiscriminate targeting of civilian structures such as electricity
grids and, in June, Oxfam sites, along with an illegal blockage,
despite Yemen’s reliance on exports for 90% of its consumables. UN
resolution 2216 does not authorise either airstrikes or a blockade.
The three core features contributing to the
massacres – the arming of Saudi Arabia, the blockage, and the
airstrikes – are all supported and encouraged by the British
government. The Ministry of Defence has already admitted that is has
been selling guided weapons to the Saudis during the ongoing Yemeni
war.
Part of the solution to the chaos, long called for
by Stop the War Coalition, is to
stop arming and supporting dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. The
anti-war movement can also contribute to combating Islamophobia,
while a successful Labour leadership
campaign for Jeremy Corbyn will be extremely effective in giving
impetus and support to such causes.
Stop the War plans to organise a major protest
before the predicted parliamentary vote on Syrian intervention in
the autumn.
In the meantime, the usual strategies of
education, organisation and peaceful civil disobedience must be our
priorities if the carnage welcomed by significant forces in the
establishment is to have any chance of resolution.
Source: Stop the War Coalition