Tony Blair’s crimes

Since US Forces started their final evacuation from Afghanistan, Britain’s ex-PM Tony Blair has been more distraught than anyone. Calling the withdrawal “tragic, dangerous, unnecessary” and “in a manner that seems almost designed to parade our humiliation”, Blair reminded a retreating West that “Islamism… is a first-order security threat”, and this time the radical Islamist will be using ‘bio-terrorism’.

Mr Blair is being hailed by some as a possible replacement of Boris Johnson in the next elections, but Blair’s recent statements on Afghan withdrawal are surely more than just an election stunt, as they come from a man who has been instrumental in seeding wars around the Islamic world, like in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

In 2016, in the wake of the Chilcot Inquiry, which had proven that the accusation of Saddam’s possession of WMDs, was based more on Mr Blair’s ‘belief’ than on actual evidence. Blair expressed “sorrow, regret and apology”, as if these three words are enough compensation for the deaths of millions of Iraqi and complete razing down of their towns and cities, and the rise of ISIS in a country that had not heard of the name before that. If Blair had even remotely been really sorry, he would not have been raging against a withdrawal that was coming after the destruction and destabilisation of a nation for the last two decades.

In fact, Blair had simply repeated the same mistake for Syria in 2018, when he said that the UK should launch military action in Syria because “non-intervention has consequences” and that “when chemical weapons are used in this way and the international community has taken a firm position against it, then you have to enforce it”, again basing his ‘belief’ on the same kind of wishy-washy reports on use of chemical weapons in Syria. In going for an all-out attack on Syria, Blair was without having any remorse for millions of deaths and displacements and destruction of whole cities where human populations had been living in peace for centuries.

Going back to 2004, three years after the US invasion of Afghanistan and one year after the invasion of Iraq, Blair connived with Barack Obama to intervene in Libya; and suddenly after decades of suspended diplomacy between the US/UK and Libya, it was decided that Blair would visit Libya to make the infamous ‘deal in the desert’, wherein in exchange for an oil deal with BP and cooperation on the War on Terror, the UK would return Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya and moreover all Libyan dissidents from Europe would be returned to Libya. In making this deal Blair laid the seeds of replanting UK-nurtured LIFG into Libya, which would eventually become the rebel force that would topple Libyan cities on ground as Nato airpower would pound them from the skies.

This LIFG was composed of al-Qaeda members who had returned from the Afghan front after the end of the Russo-Afghan War, and had been given asylums in the UK. Meaning that Blair was the person responsible for the lodging and funding of these ‘Islamist’ ‘terrorists’ on Britain’s soil and their export into Libya!

Even earlier, in 2001, as British forces joined the US in its attack on Afghanistan, Blair made a speech saying, “there is no doubt in my mind… that these attacks were carried out by the al Qaeda network headed by Osama bin Laden… equally it is clear that they are harboured and supported by the Taliban regime inside Afghanistan” — again a self-assumed ‘belief’ with no sufficient inquiry that could be deemed enough before pounding a people with tons and tons of ammo.

So, what should we understand when a person like Blair reiterates that ‘Islamism’ is the first-order security threat for the West and that now radical Islam will be using ‘bio-terrorism’? Already when the world is taking the constant and exhausting blow of Covid-19, should we not understand that the likes of Blair must be harbouring groups like the LIFG and lacing them with bio-warfare to launch more false-flags to attack yet more human populations?

With such a background of war-crime and crimes against humanity, one can only envision a war-mongering Tony Blair grounding his teeth at the return of troops from a mission-creep that was at least constantly making the lives of millions of Afghans miserable!

And when Blair talks of defending “democracy and free expression in the face of religious tyranny and the threat of terrorism”, the victims of the wars he sowed would only understand the opposite — that he really means to keep democracy and freedom away from the people.

This withdrawal has come after 20 years of a war that was strategically a complete failure, and that was based on the lie of bringing democracy to the Afghans. In 2015, the Physician for Social Responsibility (PSR) estimated the war-related death count in Afghanistan to be “ten times higher than the number of registered civilian deaths… well exceeding 200,000”. Those who had not died, had their own stories to tell; the International Criminal Court has collected 1.17 million statements from Afghans who say they were victims of war-related crimes and abuse; in 2017, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture appealed to the US to end a pervasive policy of impunity for crimes of torture committed by US officials. But Blair has no concern with these international reports that lament over the dire conditions the Afghans have been living in, rather his concern is that “no allied soldier had lost their life in combat for 18 months into 2021” — indeed a one-sided, non-humanitarian stance.

Warmonger Blair, defending his avarice for intervention, has even said that “today we are in a mood which seems to regard the bringing of democracy as a utopian delusion and intervention virtually of any sort as a fool’s errand”. Indeed, history shows that most US-led interventions have proven to be fool’s errands and their purpose have been nothing except securing the interests of the US and its allies, not nation-building or delivering democracy.

And at the end of every failed venture, there is this blame game that nation-building failed because the people were corrupt! When the real reason for a corrupt system is placing a puppet regime on the top of the system, a puppet regime that has been mandated to secure interests of the occupiers and not those of the people!

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2021.

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