I cannot bring myself to reproduce the first part of Sir Malcolm Rifkind 's article, but he concludes:
There is, however, an equally
crucial issue that needs to be dealt with quickly, and not just by Britain.
This is the ambivalence of some of our Arab allies in their policy towards
Islamic State and other terrorist organisations.
At one level they are being very
robust, and that is to be welcomed.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab
Emirates are participating in the air strikes led by the United States. [Are they? How, exactly? And that female Emirati fighter pilot's family has disowned her, expressing instead its solidarity with IS.]
Qatar,
while not sending its aircraft, is giving political support.
However, one of the most
significant reasons why Islamic State and other jihadi terrorist groups in the
Middle East are so strong has been the financial support and arms supplies they
have received, in part from people in Saudi Arabia and UAE, but particularly
from Qatar.
Some of this help has been from
the governments of these countries.
Conservative and authoritarian themselves,
they wish to see political change in Arab states lead to Islamist, rather than
democratic, governments.
But a lot of the financial
support has also been from rich individuals in the Gulf states, who have
channelled support to Islamic State through bogus charities.
The Telegraph has documented the
various ways in which Qatar has been helping extreme Islamist organisations,
both in Syria and in Libya.
Sometimes this is direct help to these groups.
Often it is by providing cash to Turkish middlemen who buy armaments from arms
dealers and pass them on to the Islamist terrorists.
It is now necessary for Britain
and other European states to follow the US lead and impose sanctions on these
Qataris and other individual Arabs who are financing terrorism.
Much greater
pressure on their governments is also essential, with Qatar inevitably the main
target until it demonstrates it has taken the necessary action.
If it declines
to do so the United Kingdom may need to reassess its whole relationship with
Qatar.
That country has a close, economic
and investment relationship with Britain. It owns Harrods and has a major stake
in the Shard and many other London properties.
We have welcomed this
relationship, and would still like to do so.
But it will become impossible if
Qatar is, simultaneously, funding terrorists, or allowing its citizens to
provide weapons to Islamist organisations that murder British citizens and try
to undermine our society.
The Qataris are, primarily,
concerned with their own security.
This has led them to an ambiguous strategy
of developing close relationships with the Americans, the British and other
Western governments while providing sanctuary to organisations like Hamas and,
for example, providing help to the Islamist extremists who recently seized
control of Libya’s parliament in Tripoli.
These conflicting policies have
already antagonised their Gulf Arab neighbours, some of whom withdrew their
ambassadors from Qatar.
The Qatari government must be
told, unequivocally, that it can, no longer, run with the hares and hunt with
the hounds.
They must choose their friends or live with the consequences.
Insane to think that as Noam Chomsky says, we British created this civil war by designing the borders of Iraq solely around British oil interests while ignoring the peoples who actually lived there.
ReplyDeleteWhat possible set of national values can the Shia, Kurds and Sunni Muslims unite around?
They can't- the whole idea of a homogenous Iraq is preposterous, the worst British invention since concentration camps.
We should apologise to the people, withdraw the warplanes and just give weapons to the Kurds.
We promised to guarantee Kurdish sovereignty after World War One.
Isn't it about time we actually kept our promise for once?
We are now fighting specifically at the request of the Iraqi Government. If the Peshmerga played up, then we'd just turn on them. We, and the Americans.
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