This African-EU Summit in Lisbon was possibly Portugal’s most important international meeting in its history. The intention of the summit was to discuss peace and security, human rights, international trade and climatic change. 40 presidents — five from Europe and 35 from Africa, and 27 prime ministers — 15 from Europe and 12 from Africa — took part in a summit which summed up the state of African-European relations today.

To give some background to the events in Lisbon, it is worth taking a short look at the history of these summits. The first African-EU Summit took place in Cairo in 2000 at the initiative of Egypt’s President Mubarak and the then President of the African Union Algeria’s President Bouteflika. Ever since then Britain has been unable to get over itself on the issue of Zimbabwe. From the first summit Blair refused to attend in protest at Mugabe’s presence. Already back in 2000 Britain’s puerile games on the issue of Mugabe was given a firm rebuttal by Africans when they insisted that Britain had no right to dictate who should or should not attend the summit. There should have been a second summit in 2003 but failed to materialize and was postponed indefinitely after the imposition of illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe by the EU and due to Britain’s continued objection to the attendance of President Mugabe. So the Labour Government’s attitude towards Zimbabwe and the rejection of it has been an on-going issue in European-African relations ever since.

The British mainstream press likes to present the problems at the summit as the fault of the Africans, rather than the reality which is it is the behavior of former imperialists who, engaged in fruitless antics, results in them looking the fool on the international stage. Countries such as Britain and Germany seem to put more importance on dictating to Africa on how it should deal with its internal affairs than grappling with the critical issues of African development and progress. Britain has turned what is essentially a bilateral political rift between itself and Zimbabwe into an international issue in the face of opposition by Africa. Even the head of the Commonwealth, Mr Don McKinnon while being a critic of the Zimbabwean Government agreed that President Mugabe must be allowed to attend. José Manuel Barroso head of the EU commission expressed the Portuguese position, which has consistently argued that the prospective rewards of closer ties between Africa and the EU are more important than the problems between Britain and Zimbabwe. Barroso made the headlines when he scolded the British apropos their pre-conditions: “If you are an international leader then you are going to have to be prepared to meet some people your mother would not like you to meet. That is what we have to do from time to time.”

Portugal’s position has been appreciated by Africa. This past weekend’s summit was in itself in question if it weren’t for Portugal’s insistence that it should go ahead. The Africans at the summit, the African Union, the Southern African Development Countries, and South Africa’s President Mbeki have held firm to the view that Zimbabwe must be represented by Mugabe despite the EU travel ban on him. Without Mugabe in attendance the whole of Africa would boycott the summit.

This stand of African unity in the face of what Mugabe rightly calls European ‘arrogance’ is a sign that Africa cannot be pushed around like it had been for centuries by countries from which they have gained their independence in the last five decades. As an indication of the strength of feeling on the issue, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni told Brown last month “Mugabe is a revolutionary who fought to emancipate his people. When you are dealing with a revolutionary, you listen to his points, rather than give him orders.” Indeed Mugabe has a valid point when he reportedly said at the summit that it was Africans that taught the British about democracy when they won their fight for democracy against British-backed Apartheid colonial-settler states.

Whatever one’s view of Mugabe and the internal situation in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s stance and the defence of him by African leaders resulting in a row of British red faces, could not but be an inspiration to those who believe in the Pan-African strength of the continent in its struggle for independence and development. Western pressure on Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF government is unlikely to gain any popularity with African governments as the controversy centers around the emotive issue of land distribution to the indigenous peoples, land that was forcibly taken by European colonial settlers. There maybe problems in the details of the land distribution process in Zimbabwe, but the main problems are at root ones that can be traced back to the failure of the British to honor their commitments. This being the case, Africans are not going to back down from defending a fellow African state that is the main target for annihilation by the West. When the same interests who are supporting regime-change in Zimbabwe are behind all kinds of intrigue to grab more wealth from the land and people Africa, such as the plans for a coup against Equatorial-Guinea led by Mark Thatcher in 2004, it somewhat exposes the real meaning behind Western clamors about ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’. And Thatcher’s coup plans are merely the very tip of the iceberg. It is in this context that closing of ranks by Africans at the summit can be understood.

When Africans show an effective united front against neo-colonialist behavior, there will always be a few Africans who, conveniently for the British, pop up to assure Western white society that these African upstarts are just being wholly irrational. While the British media occasionally and reluctantly admitted that all the Africans are behind Mugabe, the Archbishop of York John Sentamu attempted what must have been seen as a pathetic attempt to cover up the big issues at the summit by removing and cutting up his dog collar in protest at Mugabe on Andrew Marr’s politics program on BBC1.

There was one final humiliation for Britain at the summit after the British government decided to send Lord Amos as an ‘advocate’ of its interests. Former Labour Development Minister Clare Short stated on BBC Radio 4 that the only reason that this “pseudo-minister” was being sent was that she was black. Foreign Minister Milliband retorted on the same program that this was not fair; rather Lady Amos was being sent because “she has a lot of knowledge about Africa”. This highly amusing exchange must be highly embarrassing for Lady Amos and the British government, with Lady Amos perhaps thinking ‘is it because I is black?’

The debates around economic relations between the two continents also did little to create the impression that Europe is moving on from its colonial past. Europe wants to replace old trade agreements with EU-proposed Economic Partnership Agreements that have been widely criticized by African states and anti-poverty groups. Certain trade privileges exist between European countries and their former colonies but have been declared illegal by the WTO which is demanding that they be scrapped. These new EPAs would open up African markets to European competition, which will have the effect of further devastating African economies. African Union commission president, Alpha Oumar Konaré denounced the EPAs and stated: “No one will make us believe we don’t have the right to protect our economic fabric . . . It is time to bury definitively the colonial past. We can no longer be merely exporters of raw materials. We can no longer accept being solely an import market for finished products”, and if anyone was in any doubt about African attitudes to the EPAs Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told reporters: “It’s clear that Africa rejects the EPAs.” There was no agreement on this issue, however this did not stop Barroso from saying that the EU would go ahead with the imposition of tariffs on all but the poorest countries if they do not meet the deadline for accepting the EPAs. So much for Europe exorcising it’s colonial past.

Europe’s ulterior motive behind the summit was candidly admitted by the Financial Times, which stated on Sunday 9th December that it was “meant to showcase a new partnership to counter China’s growing influence in Europe’s former colonies.” The BBC News website too has conceded that it is China which is one of the primary reasons for Africa’s new found confidence, which is ‘cause for worry in Europe’. The twin causes for worry in Europe being both an influential China and an increasingly assertive Africa.

Since China became independent and socialist in 1949, it has enjoyed especially close relations with Africa. Many newly liberated African states joined Chinese Premier Chou En Lai at the historic Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in 1955, which initiated the Non-Aligned Movement, and where Africans demanded that China be a member of the UN Security Council. This relationship of solidarity saw China directly assisting African states in their liberation struggles and also lending all manner of support in helping the development of the newly liberated African nations, as Chinese Premier Hu Jintao stated at the historic Forum on China-Africa Co-operation in Beijing November 2006: “China did what she needed to do to help ensure that Africa freed herself from the yoke of colonialism and apartheid.”

Ever since 1949 Chinese strategies of development and foreign policy have been controversial across the political spectrum in the West. China’s post-Mao era has been no exception, with many liberals, leftists and right-wingers all united in their opposition and criticisms of China’s development and meteoric economic rise. Notwithstanding the inevitable problems that a massive underdeveloped country like China faces in progressing by means of a mixed economy, it has achieved rates and levels of poverty reduction hitherto unseen in the history of mankind. Apart from winning UN awards for poverty alleviation in lifting over 200 million people out of abject poverty in the last two decades, China’s economic rise has also enabled Third World countries to develop political and economic strategies that many would not have perceived possible during the years of the Washington Consensus of the 1990s. There is another rather important advantage of favoring relations with China in comparison to the West: China will not criminalize you, starve your country with sanctions and possibly blitz and occupy your country, whereas the West might. China’s strict policy of non-interference and what it terms ‘win-win’ relations with other countries is winning it ever more friends.

The internal and external effect of China’s development is possibly the most important political question in the world today. It is a crucial issue for those who are confronting the challenges posed by aggressive Western unilateralism and hegemony and those of developing a multi-polar and peaceful world. As in Latin America, Africa’s relation with China is enabling it to develop a newfound confidence in lifting itself up in the world, and as China rises ever further it allows Africa to free itself from the negative relationship with its former colonial masters. In comparison to the West, China has an incomparably better deal to offer Africa leading President Wade to comment at the summit that “it is very clear that Europe is close to losing the battle of competition in Africa.” Therefore Africa is able to put into affect the non-aligned method of getting the best deal it can between bigger powers, although there is no indication that Europe is about to back-off from its unpopular policies towards Africa, although some observers like the BBC’s Mark Doyle know that Europe has to address its problematic relationship with Africa, especially in the face of China’s growing prestige: “African trade with China is forcing Europe to take Africa more seriously and not just as a collection of former colonial possessions.”

It is argued from left to right-wing circles in the West that China is merely a new neo-colonial power replacing the old ones in Africa. This is an issue that has been rigorously raised in the Western mainstream press. This media offensive is unsurprisingly having some success in affecting the attitudes of the political classes in the West, but the West is sadly mistaken if this is argument is going to turn Africans against China in appealing to their anti-imperialist sentiments. Chinese involvement in Africa is warmly and broadly welcomed. Nevertheless, the Chinese are keen to argue their case in response to what they see as hypocritical slurs. It was on this subject that Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai spoke at a news conference last year about China’s share of total oil exports in China the previous year of 9% compared to 36% for Europe and 33% for the US. The minister asked: “If an 8.7 percent share could be suspected as an act of plundering resources, then what about 36 percent and 33 percent?” In the chorus of attacks on China as a neo-colonial power, there are very few African voices to be heard, it is the West that is so vocal about losing its opportunities in Africa.

The African states at the summit showed great strength in standing up to Europe, with the latter so far unable to move away from its intransigent positions which are pushing the Africans away from the West in an eastwardly direction towards China. The way Britain and Germany treated Mugabe, and the unanimous defense of Mugabe by the Africans shows that Africans are in no mood to shift one inch from their positions of unity and respecting their sovereignty in African affairs. The consensus amongst Africa is that if there are any problems in any African state, it requires an African solution. The Mugabe issue should be seen in connection with the disagreements over the EPAs, as both these issues represent African demands for non-interference in their affairs so they can find their own ways of resolving and progressing from the problems that have been sown by colonialism in Africa. Maybe not in this writer’s lifetime, but perhaps a time will come when European countries can disengage from its colonial past and find new ways in developing a mutually respectful relationship with the Third World. In the meantime, while the US is tied up in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, Third World countries from Latin America to Africa are taking the opportunity to steam ahead with development and ‘South-South’ co-operation, of which China is arguably the most important component part. While Africa may not be seeing the type of social movements and struggles taking place in Latin America, the current rising confidence of Africa is surely a necessary precursor to further developments in the struggle for social and national liberation.

The Oslo peace process failed to secure any lasting and just peace for the long-suffering and long-struggling Palestinians, thus creating the conditions in which Hamas came to the forefront of the Palestinian national struggle. Since the start of the Oslo process in the early 1990s Palestinians could see elements in the Fatah leadership living relatively opulent lives, involved in all kinds of moral and financial corruption and arresting and torturing Islamist. In stark contrast Hamas were proving increasingly popular due to their record of dedication to serving the people through their civil institutions, lack of financial corruption and frugal living of their leadership and being morally upright, all in accordance to their Islamic principles. The devastating suicide attacks inside Israel conducted by Hamas’ armed wing – the Al-Qassem Brigades – at a time when the negotiations were proving to be fruitless in deterring Israeli aggression also raised Hamas’ prestige as the defenders of the Palestinian people. This dedication to the people and struggle translated into electoral support. Hamas gained half of all votes in municipal elections by the time of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

Hamas withheld from participating in the presidential and national elections due to their opposition to Oslo, as they saw these elections as being an integral part of a process which they perceived as a sell-out to the Palestinian national revolution. Eventually in a historic decision they decided to stand in the 2006 elections, and even more momentous was the fact that they achieved a resounding victory at the polls.

Those interested in a more detailed analysis of Hamas’ election campaign should read Khaled Hroub’s study ‘A New Hamas through its New Documents’. Hroub states that documents issued at the time of the 2006 election campaign revealed that Hamas showed a greater commitment to unity of all Palestinian movements, a desire for a national government and a de-emphasis on Islamic rhetoric. In no way should this be interpreted meaning that Hamas abandoned its objectives of an Islamic state as the best solution for Palestinian society and liberation, but a recognition by Hamas that they must operate in a spirit of democratic tolerance and respect for other secular factions and the Palestinian electorate. Hroub also argues that these developments and documents of have been largely ignored in the West. This study is particularly pertinent at this time of national discord between Hamas and Fatah, with many portraying Hamas as ‘coupists’, Hroub’s study shows on the contrary that Hamas have for some time been calling for strategic unity amongst patriotic Palestinian ranks.

Hamas have their own Islamic strategic objectives, but they promote these by democratic and civil means. They have always maintained that the Palestinian people are the ones who have the final say on these issues by means of democratic elections. Dr Salah Bardawil leader of Hamas in southern Gaza said on this issue in the Arabic language Ashasrq al-Awsat on 30th January 2006: “ . . . Hamas has absolutely never and is absolutely not thinking of the enactment of any laws that impose Islamic teachings and force it upon society.” He said religious teachings are followed when they are accepted by the people “not when they are imposed by terrorizing and frightening”. He explained that the Palestinian people know of the lenient approach of Hamas which has resulted in the movement winning more Christian votes than some of the other secular movements and considered the accusations that Hamas were planning religious coercion to be “a wide propaganda campaign that national, international and Israeli sides are engaged in, in order to disfigure the movements image.”

Hamas’ commitment to democracy is nothing new. Ever since its inception Hamas has expressed its commitment to the democratic will of the people no matter what their decision. The paraplegic leader of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin who was killed by an Israeli air strike in March 2004 stated back in 1989 in the Arabic language daily Al-Nahar: ”I want a multiparty democratic state, and I want whomever wins those elections to assume power.” When asked by the interviewer if this would still be the case if the Communist Party were to win the elections Sheikh Yassin replied “I would respect the wishes of the Palestinian people even if the Communist Party won.”

Tensions did exist between Hamas and other factions, and one should not cover-up or forget the political and cultural nature of the internal tensions that have always existed within the Palestinian national camp. There have been many cases of violent clashes between Hamas, Fatah and other factions such as the Popular Front and Democratic Front. These tensions are not always a simple case of over-zealous Islamist youth attacking those whose only crime is that they are secularists as the following anecdote illustrates.

A Palestinian political leader of a Marxist faction was often seen drunk in the streets in Gaza during the first Intifada. He was brutally attacked by Hamas youth in the first Intifada which left him hospitalized in a critical condition for weeks. He stated however that he held no grudges against Hamas and even sympathized with their actions as he felt that his behavior was unacceptable at a time when the whole community was making immense sacrifices. This is reminiscent of the scene in the film Battle of Algiers when a group of around twenty children of the Casbah attack the local drunk and expel him from the community. In a time of mass struggle, especially in a society which frowns upon such behavior at the best of times, liberation movements often take harsh although popular measures to ensure social cohesion and unity within the community.

Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, which the West and Israel hoped would do their job of repression against the Palestinian revolutionaries for them, Hamas were being detained, tortured and at times killed by the PA, but they never resorted to revenge attacks. The leadership always held back from the rank and file’s occasional demands of retribution against the PA and Fatah. Hamas has shown a remarkable amount of patience throughout its years of existence, especially as they have been treated as a veritable enemy within by the Palestinian Authority dominated by Fatah. Hamas activists and fighters, along with those of other factions, were routinely jailed and tortured by the PA, although such was their strength and support amongst the masses, Arafat always referred to Hamas as brothers in the struggle and held back from a complete crackdown. A similar situation of repression and arbitrary arrests by Fatah against Hamas activists is taking place today in the West Bank. While Fatah and other opposition forces are generally allowed to demonstrate hold rallies and meetings in Hamas-ruled Gaza, in the Fatah controlled West Bank Fatah has arrested scores of Hamas activists, with Hamas accusing Fatah of torturing many of these detainees.

Back in 2006 after winning the elections Hamas requested Fatah and other factions to join them in a unity government. Hamas leader Mesh’al was quoted on the Palestinian Information Centre website when he addressed Fatah; “Be with us, and don’t abandon political partnership. Our hearts are open for you; our hands are extended to you. Let us turn a new page, and work together for the best of our people based on mutual respect and cooperation. We are one people, united in the resistance, and must unite in the political arena as well.”

The English-language Al-Jazeera website reported that newly elected Palestinian Prime Minister and Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah emphasized Hamas’ desire for unity in the Palestinian patriotic camp, again highlighting Hamas’ aspirations of unity with the other largest Palestinian movement; “Hamas ran in the race on the basis of political multiplicity. We don’t deal with the political issues based on one party coming into power and another leaving. We want to come and work with each other because the challenges in front of Palestinians are so big and the war with the occupation still going on.”

Even now after Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, Hamas continue to call on Fatah in joining them to build a joint Palestinian government and political leadership. Far from reciprocating, Abbas and the group around him have decided to ally closer to Israel and the West in an attempt to strangle and starve the Palestinian people away from Hamas. There is no indication that this ploy is bearing any fruits. While Abbas is widely seen as participating in inappropriately convivial meetings with Olmert while Gaza is labeled a ‘enemy entity’ by Israel, many commentators are remarking that far from gaining support from Palestinians, Abbas will be seen as a Judas to the national cause. One can only guess as to what Abbas thinks he has to gain in pursuing this strategy.

Some who thought Hamas were going to enact an intolerant and stereotypical religious fundamentalist society have been disappointed by events in Gaza. They haven’t enforced a Taliban style regime; on the contrary, their leadership often state that this is not in their line of thinking. Possibly confounding another prejudice against the movement, some may be surprised to know that Hamas women have been developing their political leadership in championing women’s rights in the struggle for liberation and in the context of their Islamic principles.

During the time of the Palestinian elections in January 2006 the Hamas aligned PIC website stated, “The Palestinian woman must assume her real role. It is high time that society appreciated the extent of her sacrifices and jihad.” The article went on to explain that Hamas will give women their role in the Legislative Council be side by side with men in the struggle against the occupation. The article continued: “Hamas will seek to pass legislation to protect women and their rights. Hamas will resist any attempts to marginalize the role of women.”

After Hamas’ election victory The Guardian in 2006 ran two articles, one written by Hamas MP Jameela al-Shanti writing from Beit Hanoun in Gaza, and another written by Chris McGreal in Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. In the article entitled ‘Women MPs vow to change face of Hamas’ Al-Shanti argued passionately of how unarmed women, including herself, faced an Israeli assault on their community which saw the killing of many Palestinian men women and children, including her own sister-in-law, a mother of eight. She said defiantly that her peoples struggle for freedom will not be surrendered for a handful of rice. McGreal wrote about the struggle of Palestinian women in Hamas that sought to change the face of Hamas, reporting that the movement comprised of new women Palestinian leaders who are confident, intelligent and resilient and are challenging sexual discrimination in Palestinian society, discrimination which is not a product of Islam, they contended, but of outmoded traditions.

The writer has met one female Gaza resident who graduated from the Islamic University and whose lecturers included Hamas leaders Abdel Aziz Rantisi (assassinated by hellfire missiles launched from an Israeli Apache helicopter on April 17 2004) and Mahmoud al-Zahar. She was a proficient student and confident student organizer. Hamas students tried to get her to join the Hamas affiliated student organisation, but she refused as she did not share all of Hamas’ views. Recognizing her abilities they nevertheless helped her to set-up a new independent student body with her initiative. This is an anecdotal example of how Hamas is able to act in a democratic manner in developing peoples’ contribution to Palestinian struggle and society.

These positions of Hamas on the role of women in society and struggle also distinguishes the movement from the radical Islamist movements who are affiliated or openly sympathetic to Al-Qaeda who do not expound any social role for women in society and in the struggle for independence, but rather encourage women to withdraw from society. This perhaps can be understood in some instances as being more a result of the influence of tribal culture such as in Afghanistan, and in the context of brutal wars such as in Iraq where women often bear the brunt of the ensuing social calamities which occupation brings. The Palestinians in contrast are an example of a people enduring a decades-long military occupation and protracted civil and armed struggle, in which the women in the Islamic Resistance movements of Hamas, as well as in Islamic Jihad, have a social role in the community, society and in the struggle encouraged by these Islamist political parties.

Hamas’ political ideology and practice is one that shares many principles with Western democratic and progressive ideas. Instead of being inspired by the secular democratic, bourgeois and socialist traditions of the Western context, Hamas is inspired by similar principles in the cultural context and traditions of Arab and Islamic history. One should bear in mind that the political ideologies which are leading the struggle for independence and progress in the Middle East are doing so in the context of more than a century of brutal colonial and neo-colonial oppression, whereas the democratic and left-wing ideas in the West have developed out of a privileged intellectual atmosphere on the basis of a society which has stolen all of the America’s gold, exterminated indigenous populations on two continents, and ‘turned Africa into a warren for the hunting of black skins’.

We in the West must accept that secularism is not going to become a leading political force in the Middle East any time soon, due not least in part as it was brought to the region by colonialists. Arab and Muslim people, and by many more across the world who desire independence from US hegemony, see in the West many social and moral conditions that they don’t want to emulate but which Westerners often see as examples of the superiority of their societies. People around the world are developing their own political identities from their own cultural and political roots. Morales, Chavez, Lebanese Hizbullah and Hamas are a few such examples. In the process of developing these indigenous movements, there is a move away from the uniform cultural and political forms of Western secular and Marxist models. However it must be stressed that there remain universal principles that these liberation ideologies and Western democratic and progressive ideas share, and there exists the possibility of developing mutual respect, solidarity and unity between the two. This dialogue and solidarity is jeopardized by the twin problems and challenges of Eurocentric prejudice and Western oppression of Third World peoples.

While one can trace back the influences on modern Islamism from the region’s own history, making it an integral part of the political identity of the people and their struggles, in contrast it was the cultural and political influences from outside of the region, in Europe, that influenced modern secular Arab nationalism. The founding father of modern secular Arab nationalism was Syrian Sati al-Husri, who was inspired by French republicanism and nineteenth century German nationalism. Arab nationalism became the ascendant political force in the post Second World War period.

Like the rest of the ‘Third World’, the post Second World War period saw the increasing strength of secular and left-wing nationalist currents in the region, inspired by the example of the independence and social development of the Socialist Bloc in the face of neocolonial hostility. The direct or indirect support from the USSR, East European socialist countries and China, to radical Third World movements also played a major role in their growth.

It was the preeminent secular Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt whose nationalization of the Suez Canal signalled the pinnacle of the modern Arab renaissance. This in turn brought about an unprecedented atmosphere of Arab confidence that invigorated various trends of Arab nationalism, a period in which branches of the Arab nationalist and socialist Ba’ath Party came to power in Syria and Iraq. The Arab National Movement, mainly based in Beirut, developed into various left-wing forces such as the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who put the largely unknown tragedy that befell the Palestinian people onto the world agenda by being the first Arab armed group to hijack passenger airplanes. And of course Yasser Arafat’s secular and left nationalist Fatah led the Palestinian national revolution by the late 1960s.

In this same period, Islamist forces had also been gaining momentum and were often in the ranks of the independence movements. Those inside and outside of the region with vested interests in opposing the anti-imperialist leftist and nationalist surge supported sections of political Islam that were in opposition to the secularists. In the light of the complex interaction between the two political movements, this relationship is all too often over-simplified. In Algeria the FLN was an Islamist nationalist movement as much as one inspired by the ideas of Fanon, Mao and Che Guevara, although the Islamist current was purged shortly after independence. Many of the original Fatah leadership (including Arafat by his own claims) belonged to the movement to which Hamas is the ‘Palestinian branch’: the Muslim Brotherhood or ‘Ikhwan Muslimeen’, a major force of mass radical anti-imperialism after World War Two with branches throughout the Arab world. The Ikhwan was strongest in Egypt, the home of its founder Hassan al-Banna. Another Egyptian leader of the Ikhwan after Hassan al-Banna’s death, Sayyid Qutb, was possibly modern political Islam’s greatest strategist and thinker. He was executed by Nasser’s regime in 1966 after being accused of plotting to overthrow the state. Initially Nasser’s Free Officers and the Ikhwan were allies in the struggle against the British, before Nasser’s regime conducted a massive repression against the movement, jailing and cruelly torturing many of their activists. A fact little known outside of the region is that the Palestinian Ikhwan also played a major role in the resistance against the establishment of Israel in Palestine in the late 1940s.

The 1967 defeat of Nasser and the Arab armies by Israel can now clearly be seen as the beginning of the decline in leadership of the secular forces. As soon as the left nationalists in the Middle East gained power, their leadership in the struggle against Zionism and neocolonialism began to wane. While much of the 1970s saw struggles being conducted and led by left nationalist forces, this decade also witnessed a qualitative shift in favour of radical Islamism. The Arab people were incensed when the Arab Republic of Egypt under President Sadat sued for peace with Israel, giving the Ikhwan and other more radical Islamists a greater hearing from the masses. The event which contributed to the growth of the Islamists more than any other was the overthrow by Islamists of the West’s strongest ally in the region after Israel — Iran under the Shah — which was up to then ‘an island of stability’ according to former US president, Jimmy Carter.

The two most important manifestations of the growth of radical Islamist movements in the 1980s were the Lebanese Hezbollah which was directly assisted in military training and infrastructure by the Pasdaran, an Iranian military force, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Both movements saw Iran as their chief inspiration.

PIJ were the first openly Islamist movement to conduct armed struggle against the Israeli occupation in the early 1980s, and the first movement in the Sunni community to use the controversial tactic of kamikaze attacks. At the same time the Palestinian Ikhwan were involved in building up a network of charitable and religious organizations that were invaluable social institutions to the lives of many Palestinians, especially in Gaza. The Ikhwan established the Islamic University in Gaza in the late 1970s, the construction of such a centre of learning, debate and activity constituted a big step forward for them and forged a new generation of Islamist educated youth. Nevertheless, PIJ was a challenge to the Palestinian Ikhwan as it was the only Islamist armed resistance to Israel at the time. This meant that many young Ikhwan members either joined PIJ or put pressure on their leadership to develop and implement a militant strategy for the Palestinian revolution. The fact that one of the most charismatic and astute ideologues of the Palestinian Ikhwan, Fathi Shiqaqi, had split and formed PIJ, must have added to the Palestinian Ikhwan’s image at the time as a movement unable and unwilling to address the challenges of the Palestinian liberation struggle. This possibly speeded up preparations of Sheikh Yassin and other leaders of the Palestinian Ikhwan for armed struggle which came to fruition with the establishment of the Harakat Moqawama al-Islamiyya — the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ or Hamas — on the second day of the Palestinian Intifada in 1987. The initial document that Hamas issued in 1988, ‘The Charter’, is problematic as it gives credence to the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It has to be borne in mind that this anti-Semitic document has wide currency across much of the political spectrum in the region due to the West’s support for Israeli settler-colonialism, and the feeling of powerlessness amongst the masses in the face of Israeli aggression. Hamas issued various subsequent communiqués which give a more accurate exposition as to their ideology, strategy and tactics.

The PLO claim that the 1987 Intifada was led by them, and that they were the ‘sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people’. Nevertheless, it has been argued by Dr Azzam Tamimi in his new book on Hamas, Unwritten Chapters, that the PLO’s jealous guarding of their claim to leadership may have been partly due to Hamas playing a major role in the Intifada and challenging the PLO’s claim to leadership.

In an ironic twist of history it was the Western and Chinese-supported Afghan mujahideen who fought against the Soviet army and pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan that gave further impetus to the development of modern militant Islamism which was soon to become a powerful force against neocolonialism in the region. The Afghan jihad allowed militants to overcome the rivalry between different groups that existed along national and ethnic lines. Overcoming these divisions and forging pan-Arab and pan-Islamist unity were some of the main strategies of Bin Laden and Zawahiri in the construction of their organization that was to become the violent ‘World Islamic Front for Jihad against Crusaders and Jews,’ commonly known as Al-Qaeda, meaning ‘The Base’, formed in 1998. Initially for Bin Laden, Zawahiri and others, Afghanistan was the base for international jihad, today it is mainly Iraq.

By the late 1980s, the popularity of Islamism and the Islamist movement was such that the hitherto secular Arab nationalist Saddam Hussein, like Muammar Qaddafi before him, started to formally synthesise Islamism with Iraqi and Arab nationalist ideas into the social and political fabric of Iraq. The most outwardly visible example of this was adding ‘Allah u Ahkbar’ — Allah is the greatest — to the Iraqi flag during the war against Iraq in 1990. Saddam Hussein initiated a massive mosque building program, and attempted to co-opt the Islamic revival that was taking place into the Ba’athist strategy of positioning Iraq as the vanguard Arab nation resisting
neocolonialism. Saddam Hussein may have chiefly been responsible in contributing to today’s synthesis of radical Arabism and Islamism, a view advanced by Jerry Long in his book, Saddam’s War of Words. The 1990 war against Iraq saw for the first time a unity between left-wing, nationalist and Islamist forces in the region and beyond against Western aggression.

The United States’ establishment of large military bases in Saudi Arabia during the campaign against Iraq fundamentally shifted the position of many Islamists who hitherto had been allied with the US against nationalists in the region. These Islamists, Osama Bin Laden being the most well-known amongst them, could not sit idly by and see the Islamic lands of Iraq and Saudi Arabia occupied by the US. This was compounded by a realisation amongst some Islamists that the US and Britain were not going to allow them to use their own oil wealth for the benefit of their own countries. Western oil exploitation was going to mean that the only natural wealth of the Gulf — oil — was going to run out in the next four decades or so, and that they had to fight to wrest control of their own oil from the West before they were left with nothing. These political shifts culminated in the establishment of Al-Qaeda and many other organizations that share their military vanguardist outlook, and many more yet that share their political aims of an Arab world free from Western domination.

Today, one sees the shift from secular nationalism to Islamism nearing the final stages of completion. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad writing for The Guardian on June 12, 2007, from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon vividly described this transition, contrasting the “ailing, ill-equipped and ill-fed fighters of the old secular factions” and “muscular, bearded and well-equipped jihadis” funded through the network of Islamist organisations that spans the Middle East, and describing the migration of Palestinian radicals, both young and middle-aged, from the former Marxist camp to the Islamist. As one Marxist in his 50s told Abdul-Ahad, “I have never lost my political compass. Wherever the Americans and the Israelis are, I am on the other side. So if Hezbollah and the Iranians and the Islamists are against the Americans now, so I am an Islamist.” Highlighting the continuities between armed secular groups of times gone by with that of armed Islamist groups of today, a PFLP leader explains to Abdul-Ahad that “most of those jihadis were once fighters with us and other Palestinian factions … if you come to me and give me $100,000, I will split from the PFLP and form the PFLP: Believers’ Army. It’s so easy.” Another secular leader explains of the hopelessness and anger at their position which drives these wretched youth of the Arab world to militancy: “we have young men who have nothing, no hope of a nation, no hope for the right of refugees to return, nothing but the two streets of the camp. With this situation I wouldn’t be surprised if half the camp becomes jihadis.”

Islamists have always been at the forefront of the struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism in the Middle East since the times of the Crusades. Most academics, policymakers and those who support the independence and development of the Arab world have some knowledge of the post Second World War period when Islamist movements were
supported by those who saw them as a counterweight to the secular anti-imperialist movements of various Arab nationalists and Marxist trends. Further study and reflection on the contemporary history of the Arab world may on the other hand lead to a more nuanced understanding of this relationship, rather than labeling one side ‘reactionaries’ and the other ‘progressives’. Perhaps it is time to move away from this outdated and problematic terminology. Islamists see themselves at least as equals to the radical secularists if not the rightful owners to the leadership of the national and social liberation struggle. The end of the strife between the Islamists and what remains of the secularists in the anti-imperialist struggle, is not just attributable to the weakness of the secularists but is a sign of the strength of the independence movements in the Arab world. Furthermore, the Islamists’ leadership in this struggle — such as that of the Iraqi resistance — lacking support that the secularists enjoyed from the Socialist Bloc, is indicative of the strength of their ideology’s roots in the history, culture and identity of the masses in the region.

Additionally, the US and UK’s agenda for the region was aborted due to the continuing defiance of the Palestinian people, who to much of the world’s surprise elected Hamas, seen by most in the West until very recently as the archetypal reactionary Islamist terror group. Hamas won the election and engaged the West in a successful media and diplomatic campaign to show that they are a legitimate and reasonable mass movement for national liberation. Playing one last desperate card before his time was up, Blair gave full backing to the bloody Israeli assault on Lebanon last summer, which ended in the historic defeat of Israel, or at the very least gave a hard and fast lesson to Israel that it could not invade a neighbouring Arab country with impunity.

These failed campaigns have led to the alienation of considerable sections of the British electorate towards the Labour administration, be it from the Muslim community or the liberal political classes. The opposition Tories and Liberal parties took their advantage of Labour woes and Labour lost many council and parliamentary seats up and down the country, while losing all of Scotland to the Nationalists. Hence the panic in Labour circles and the operation to extract what Labour saw as the primary and on-going cause of the problem — Tony Blair. The ever-so-smooth handover of power from Blair to Brown was a barely disguised attempt to manage and contain any further fall-out from the political disasters that had plagued Labour.

Labour has now moved away from Blairite out-right and open aggressiveness of the last decade and reverted back to its political style of the late 1990s, choosing its targets for foreign meddling a little more carefully and aiming at countries which the political classes in Britain would find much more agreeable, such as Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan, all causes for a veritable ‘white mans burden’. As a result Brown’s speech at annual Labour conference this week was noticeable, apart from its vacuousness, for barely mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan or his former boss’s name.

On the second day Foreign Secretary Miliband then tried to present Labour, not as a government trying to dominate the Muslims, which is what some ‘very educated’ Pakistanis told him, but a champion of their rights. With the intention of coming across as a liberator of Muslims, he spoke in favour of including Turkey in the EU, resolving the Kosovo issue and also helping the people of Darfur in Sudan. The message was reinforced by the politically correct photo opportunity of a Muslim woman complete with headscarf from Darfur who delivered a speech preceding Miliband’s. He gave assurances that there were mistakes made vis-à-vis Iraq; what they were we were not told but we assured us that it was ‘time to learn and move on’. It is expedient for Labour to ‘move on’ from their former debacles in Iraq, but what lessons have they learnt? If the public are ignorant as to knowing what all this really means, if it means anything at all, is it right that we should forget the fact that it was these very same people who were leading ministers in the Labour government under Blair and as such politically leading the charge into Iraq. Surely the Iraqi and Afghani people deserve a lot more than a momentary reassurance that some mysterious lessons have been learnt.

It was left to Defence Secretary Des Browne to expand on what lessons Labour might possibly have learnt from the past ten years in office. Echoing Karzai and the UK ambassador to Afghanistan, he talked of engaging the Taliban in a peace process as like Hamas, the Taliban are not going away. He also argued that Afghanistan is unlikely to be able to sustain a western style democracy and that its legal and political system will have to be rooted in Islamic law. At first sight this seems to be encouraging as undeniably peace cannot be reached in Palestine or in Afghanistan without nationalist forces which reject the occupation being engaged in a process towards independence. Unfortunately Browne’s subsequent comments made clear that there is no real desire on part of the British to leave Afghanistan in peace; he argued that Britain will have to remain there for ‘at least decades if not generations’, and that the campaign was one of the ‘noblest causes of the 21st Century.’

In fact Browne’s comments about engaging the Taliban are not dissimilar to what the occupation forces are attempting to do in Iraq; a counter-insurgency tactic to divide the resistance off from one another so as to weaken and strategically defeat it. During the Vietnamese war this was known as the ‘Nixon doctrine,’ or put more simply ‘getting Asians to fight Asians’. It has often been the case in armed conflicts that when an occupying army is unable to win by outright brute force other political means are used to attempt to weaken the insurgents, this is what is partly taking place in Iraq today and what is being attempted in Afghanistan. History has shown that in a context of an occupation by a big nation of a small one, the forces of national resurgence are often stronger than that of those who succumb to the enticements of the occupying forces. This was recently and infamously exemplified by the assassination of Iraqi Sunni tribal leader turned US ally, Abu Risha. As for the NATO cause in Afghanistan being one of the noblest of this century, Labour seems unable to learn the lessons from experiences of over one hundred and fifty years, let alone the last ten. The nineteenth century in Afghanistan is replete with examples of the British failing to subdue a people who in response harassed and chased them away time and time again. Many Afghanis are adamant that this too will be the fate of the NATO occupation of their country.

The Labour Government seems to be coordinating its tactical approach with the US, as witnessed by Bush’s address at the UN General Assembly where he hardly mentioned Iraq or the Middle East and focused instead on Myanmar, a thinly veiled attempt by the West at pushing the Chinese around in the lead up to the Olympics. This avoidance of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is due to the insurgents in these countries having made these military campaigns by the West an embarrassment, something to be avoided at all costs in the media and at diplomatic conferences, rather than any noble cause to be paraded in public which they hoped it would be. Labour has returned to its humanitarian populist rhetoric of the late 1990s, but remains deeply involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its honeymoon period in government in the late 1990s was followed by a period in which it dropped more bombs than all previous British governments combined since the Second World War. Today US and UK standing in the world is a great deal more shaky than it was in the 1990s as a result of the moral and military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and only a person betraying a profound sense of naivety can say that they will not resort to aggression once more to shore up their precarious position in the world.

Most recognize Amriki as being the main person behind the al-Sahab media organisation, and it is thought that he runs its editing suite from the back of a van somewhere in and around the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Bin Laden and Zawahiri are also thought to be in hiding. Amriki has previously made video statements in English and is thought to be the third most important spokesperson for Al-Qaeda. Although nominally involved in al-Sahab he has been the only person apart from Bin Laden in Al-Qaeda who has directed his messages specifically to a US audience. It seems likely that Amriki is relied upon by Bin Laden and Zawahiri, and also possibly more widely in Al-Qaeda, as someone who is most sensitive to and knowledgeable as to the most effective ways targeting the US in its propaganda war.

Although Bin Laden and Zawahiri have directed many comments and statements at the people and government of the US, recent statements have shown that Al-Qaeda is attempting to improve this particular media strategy. One of Zawahiri’s latest statements stated that Al-Qaeda is fighting on the behalf of “all the weak and oppressed in North America and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world”, being possibly the first time that Al-Qaeda leadership has stated that their struggle is also aimed at assisting the world’s oppressed. Zawahiri’s statement also contained many references to Malcolm X / Malik el-Hajj Shabazz, a figure that still holds an emotive and profoundly political place in the hearts and minds of radicals, Muslims and especially Black people in the US. Zawahiri cited the famous militant Black leader to call on Black soldiers in the US army to recognise their historical and continuing oppression by the US and to refuse to fight in a war that is not in their interests; “And I tell the soldier of color in the American army that the racist Crusader regime kidnapped your ancestors to exploit them in developing their resources, and today it is using you for the same purpose, after they altered the look of the shackles and changed the type of chains and try to make you believe that you are fighting for democracy and the American dream … And after you achieve for them what they want, they will throw you out into the street like an old shoe”.

In Bin Laden’s latest statement he takes up a similar theme of racial divisions and tensions in US society by citing a short Guardian Film which was syndicated by ABC about a US Black soldier in Iraq; “Among them is the eloquent message of Joshua which he sent by way of the media, in which he wipes the tears from his eyes and describes American politicians in harsh terms and invites them to join him there for a few days. Perhaps his message will find in you an attentive ear so you can rescue him and more than 150,000 of your sons …”

It has been speculated that Amriki is the person who is essentially script-writing sections or even large parts of Zawahiri and Bin Laden’s speeches, this seems especially so in the case of Bin Laden’s latest video statement perhaps drafting the entire speech. The question has to be posed: is this an effective strategy on the part of al-Sahab? If put into the historical context of conflicts in times gone by, the current media strategy by al-Sahab has the potential of being successful to some extent, and there is even evidence that this is working on young people across the West.

The period of Black, Hispanic and white leftist and anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s and ‘70s in the US saw these organisations ally themselves to struggles which the US government considered a part of what was at the time then the parallel of Al-Qaeda in terms of the way the communists and the ‘Evil Empire’ were demonized and seen by the US government to epitomize the very opposite of its principles of American democratic and free-market values. Significant sections, but by no means a majority of Black political movements of Black radical movements in the US have throughout the last century sympathized and even sided with those the US are at war with. This has included Saddam Hussein in the 1991 war, at which time influential rapper Rakim in his pioneering Hip-Hop outfit with DJ Eric B expressed support for Saddam Hussein with a mixture of Third Worldist, Islamist and anti-capitalist lyrics on the track ‘Causalities of War’:

… let’s see who reigns supreme

Something like Monopoly: a government scheme

Go to the Army, be all you can be

Another dead soldier? Hell no, not me

So I start letting off ammunition in every direction

Allah is my only protection

But wait a minute, Saddam Hussein prays the same

and this is Asia, from where I came

I’m on the wrong side, so change the target

Shooting at the general; and where’s the sergeant?

One of the pet hate figures of the US establishment has been the leader of possibly one of the biggest Black political organisations: Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, whose international allies include Cuba’s Castro and Libya’s Ghadaffi. One of the earlier leaders of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, was well-known for supporting practically any militant opposition to US power in the world from guerilla movements Vietnam to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the equivalent of the 911 attacks of its time.

Following the Zawahiri statement in which he quotes Malcolm X, one of the best documentaries on Malcolm X’s life and political beliefs overseen by his wife Betty Shabazz, was edited into a pro-Al-Qaeda version of the original film, renaming it ‘Prince of Islam’. This was also accompanied by the release of a pro-Malcolm X rap song and video entitled ‘By Any Means Necessary’ by the clandestine rap group ‘Soul Salah Crew’ with which the aforementioned ‘Prince of Islam’ film opens. The music video and the ‘re-mixed’ film are popular on video-sharing websites, showing that Zawahiri’s statement has been successful in fusing Al-Qaeda’s jihadist ideology with the radical message of Malcolm X.

Further back in history we can find examples of white US soldiers defecting to North Korea during the war against it by the US in the early 1950s, who broadcasted radio statements encouraging US soldiers to defect, and who also played acting roles in North Korean propaganda films portraying the ignorant and racially chauvinist American. Then there is the case of Robert F Williams from Monroe, North Carolina, maybe the person most responsible for the rise of the Black Power movement in the early 1960s who conducted radio broadcasts encouraging Black US soldiers in Vietnam to defect and also got Mao Tse Tung to issue a statement in support of the Black civil-rights movement at a time that Mao and Red China were seen as irreproachable anti-imperialist radicals by the US government. Today there is no sign of any radical Black movement in open support of Al-Qaeda, but judging from the fact that throughout history sizeable sections of Black people who have no trust whatsoever in the US system, one can be sure that Al-Qaeda are receiving some sympathetic nods when they raise the parallels between the history of US oppression of Black people and the way in which they are treated today.

The South Asia Analysis Group states that the Bin Laden statement reads more like the text of a disgruntled American than that of an ‘Arab Sheikh’ and that ‘there are more allusions to contemporary American history than to ancient Islam’. Most of Al-Qaeda’s statements are highly political, derided by some trends within Islam as being concerned too much with politics. In their statements Al-Qaeda raise events in Islamic history to prove a very contemporary political proposition. Nevertheless, it is true to say that this latest statement has very few references to Islamic history apart from the last section whereby Bin Laden explains that rather than being guilty of massive anti-Semitic practices, Islamic history, especially that of the 700 years of Islamic rule in Spain, proved that it was under an Islamic government that Jews and Muslims lived together in peace and security at a time when they were both persecuted. Bin Laden points the finger at the West as the architects and executers of the genocide against the Jewish people; “They [Jews and Christians] are alive with us and we have not incinerated them”.

This section of the statement has been derided by many commentators and analysts which is rather heavy on Islamist rhetoric calling on people in the US to convert to Islam, something which Al-Qaeda has done in many statements. It should be remembered that many Muslims, including rather reformist Islamic trends which Western governments tend to encourage, see the obligation of dawa – a religious call – to the West to convert to Islam as one of the greatest challenges facing the Ummah – the international community or nation of Muslims – in establishing peace and justice which they see as only being possible under Islamic law. So it should not come as any surprise that Bin Laden also calls upon people in the West to do so, albeit with the obvious difference being that refusing to do so might result in terrorist guerilla attacks. However Al-Qaeda like many Muslims believe Islam to be the only viable alternative to what they see as the morally decadent nature of the West. If yesterday it was Marxism or communism that was seen by many as, on the one hand the greatest enemy of the West, and on the other hand, as the best possible alternative to Western democracy and capitalism, it shouldn’t be so shocking in a context where Islam is seen as having replaced communism as the great threat, that it is seen by many Muslims as the great alternative to Western capitalist democracy. Bin Laden sees that only Islam can save the people of the US, and that of those Islamic countries with which it is fighting, from war and exploitation as he does not see any effective movement in the US that fights the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, let alone a cohesive political movement that is able to fundamentally challenge the system. Bin Laden argues: “you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.”

Bizarrely, Bin Laden has become one of the most well-known personalities in the world that is championing anti-capitalist, anti-racist and environmentalist demands, and all the while favorably quoting one of the greatest radical minds of our times: Noam Chomksy. It is rare, even on anti-war demonstrations in the West, to find such radical pronouncements as those from Bin Laden when he calls on people who have ‘previously liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism’, to liberate themselves from ‘the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system’, a system he continues to argue that ‘seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of “globalization” in order to protect democracy.’

This Islamist leftist rhetoric has inspired annoyance in some left-wing and radical circles in the West. While they might share Bin Laden’s radical comments they perhaps don’t appreciate Bin Laden picking holes in their political strategies and movements so publicly. One has to wait and see whether Chomksy shares this sentiment or like William Blum, another leftist intellectual that Bin Laden has previously praised, will be ‘glad’ about Bin Laden’s name dropping. If Bin Laden quoting Chomsky as a great writer wasn’t surreal enough, he goes on to praise the author of the book Imperial Hubris, Michael Scheuer, currently one of the main writers on the conflict-analyst organisation Jamestown and former head of the CIA Bin Laden unit. Scheuer has said in the past that “the Islamic media’s correspondents and editors work harder, dig deeper, and think more than most of their Western counterparts.”

This latest Al-Qaeda statement indeed shows that Bin Laden has done his research, or perhaps Amriki has done the legwork for him, in crafting a statement well-suited politically to a US context. The calls for people in the West to convert to Islam are not as outrageous and important as they might seem; in this statement, like so many others by Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s main emphasis remains the demand for a security pact with the people of the West conditional on the cessation of hostilities against Islamic nations, especially in the Arab world and in Afghanistan. In this latest statement it is probable that Amriki has helped Bin Laden gear this statement for a US audience. No matter how much analysts, journalists and commentators rubbish Al-Qaeda’s attempts at developing a discourse that aims to bridge the political and cultural chasm created by Western mainstream media in the present conflicts, Al-Qaeda are, as shown in the example of the Prince of Islam and Soul Salah Crew song, achieving some successes in this strategy. As for Amriki, one can imagine that Amriki is rather flattered by the amount of attention and responsibility that he has been attributed in Al-Qaeda’s media campaign against the West, in addition to being the first person since 1952 to be charged with treason, something which undoubtedly boosts his jihadi kudos, and may well be satisfied with his efforts. Possibly Amriki’s aim at the very least is to have got people in the world to take notice as to this the latest development of al-Sahab’s media campaign, something which he has achieved, and in so doing, has contributed to one of the most extraordinary cultural accomplishments of our times – Al Qaeda with American characteristics.

The British army reassured the world that its experience in Northern Ireland had equipped it with the necessary lessons to be able to deal with southern Iraq. However, if one talks to most people in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland they might say that on this basis the Iraqis could only look forward to the British army becoming the main cause of their escalating problems. What the British learnt from Ireland is the simple lessons of counter-insurgency whereby the national rights of the people occupied are taken away by brute force. To this day many Irish are demanding that the British government own up to the many cases, beyond which those which have been proven, where they have been involved in extra-judicial killings or colluded in murders by death-squads. If the British experience in Northern Ireland was a bloody one, then one could have easily predicted that their experience with the Iraqis would not be much better, especially if one considers that the Iraqis had already seen a British occupation in the early part of the twentieth century, frequent bombings during the years of UN sanctions, and that there was a cultural chasm between the British army and a Arab and largely Muslim people.

It was the events of September 19th 2005 which firmly put to rest any notion that the British were playing fair with the Iraqi people. Two SAS men in Arab clothes and head dress were arrested by Iraqi police at a checkpoint after refusing to stop and opening fire from their civilian car which was packed with explosives. They were arrested by Iraqi police and detained. This led to British tanks smashing down the prison wall where the SAS men were being held and releasing them, but not before incensed Iraqis attacked the British army with petrol bombs and stones. A British soldier was captured on film fleeing from his tank in flames from a petrol bomb and being pelted by rocks from the crowd, an image which symbolises maybe more than any other the British experience in Basra. The world could see that the British had failed in Iraq. Anthony Cordesman, a specialist on the Middle East and military affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote recently that “the British decisively lost the south — which produces over 90 per cent of government revenues and 70 per cent of Iraq’s proven oil reserves — more than two years ago.”

September 2005 should have been the moment when the British realised that their attempt to train the Iraqi police force and win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people was an unmitigated failure. Unfortunately for the countless Iraqis and the British soldiers, 168 killed so far, many more lives will be lost before Britain finally leaves Iraq.

In the fog of war, the events on September 19th gave an insight into some of the types of covert operations being carried out by the occupying forces. But as suddenly as the dramatic events of SAS intrigue in Basra came to light, the burning questions asked by honest journalists come to nought and have passed away without further details. Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani, Moqtada al-Sadr’s spokesperson at the time was adamant that the SAS were planning on a black operation against Iraqi civilians during a religious event to stoke-up sectarian strife. In light of the incessant civilian attacks in Iraq which go unclaimed by any resistance group, this is an area which urgently needs investigation but remains an issue on which hardly any journalists have looked into.

The notorious prisoner abuse by occupation forces in Iraq was not uniquely American, as three British soldiers were found guilty of prisoner abuse in May 2003 at Camp Breadbasket near Basra. There was also the case of hotel worker Baha Mousa who was beaten to death by British army personnel in September 2003. This culture of brutality and cover-ups in the army has been dramatised in the well-made British film The Mark of Cain. British Captain Ken Masters, who was commander of the Royal Military Police’s Special Investigations Branch, charged with investigating allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers was found hanged in his military accommodation in Basra on October 15th 2005. Masters had examined almost every single serious allegation of abuse of Iraqi civilians by British troops including the cases of the fusiliers convicted of abusing prisoners at Camp Breadbasket and a paratrooper who had been charged in connection with the death of Baha Mousa. Masters was also thought to have been involved in the investigation into the events of September 19. The British army stated that he was suffering from stress and could have been suicidal, although colleagues stated that this suicide of a married father of two who was due to return home within two weeks came as a ‘shocking surprise’.

The British army in Basra was holed up in small area in the palace in Iraq’s second city, making them easy targets for urban guerrilla warfare. No amount of experience in Northern Ireland could stop the guerrilla ambushes and up to sixty mortar attacks being fired into the palace daily. Prospects for the British army at the airport appears to be no better. Although they are not in a tough urban environment as before, they remain sitting ducks for the mortars which have been fired there for some time.

British TV news has had to report deaths of its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan on a near daily basis for the last year; 43 soldiers have been killed so far in 2007, nearly double the amount of all those killed in 2006. Meanwhile, it is no secret that the British have long considered the Iraqi police in Basra to be awash with militias who are now, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, “seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before.”

A Mahdi Army commander detained by the British was released shortly before the retreat to the airport, seen by many as a deal brokered by the British with the Mahdi Army to allow them a peaceful retreat. While Sadr and the Mahdi Army have called the British retreat a victory mainly due to their force of arms, there are conflicting reports from the movement as to their military strategy towards to the British at the airport. Some fighters from the ‘Free Fighters of al-Sadr’ state that they will continue with their armed struggle until their detained comrades are freed. The British were no doubt relieved at Sadr’s call for cessation of armed actions for a period up to six months to put his house in order. One of his spokespersons Ahmad al-Shabayni in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV was more ambiguous, denying that the Mahdi Army is halting all operations against the occupation forces and stating that the occupation has no cause to be happy or relieved. Despite the different signals from Sadr’s movement the British army retreated to the airport without harassment. One can be sure that the conflict between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, whom the Mahdi Army accused the British of working with in their fight with the Mahdi Army, will intensify now the British are no longer involved on the ground as they have hitherto have been.

The British have known from the outset that the Iraqi police were saturated by militias hostile to their presence but decided to stay on in Basra due to their alliance and agreement with US political and military strategy. Some have speculated that Gordon Brown has decided to abandon Basra so as to put a distance between himself and Bush. Most commentators agree that the US is alarmed by this British move, which leaves them with an ‘un-tamed’ southern Iraq right at the time when Bush is desperately trying to show that the occupation is achieving some success. However many see that it is the occupation that is on the run, and not the resistance. As for Brown’s alleged distancing from Bush, this maybe an indirect bonus for Brown arising from the British move in Basra, but in words of a recent Financial Times article title, Brown is jumping from the frying pan that is Basra into the fire that is Afghanistan, where British and other NATO forces are faring no better against a resurgent Taliban. Perhaps Britain’s most senior and respected military commander, General Sir Richard Dannatt has put things most honestly in arguing that Britain should be preparing for a wider “generational conflict” in facing “a strident Islamic shadow over the world and a global conflict of values and ideas”. Britain seems intent on continuing its course of military confrontation with the Islamic world; is it any surprise therefore that there are people from Basra to Helmand who feel that it is only the language of armed resistance that can enable them to knock any sense into the British?