Iraq

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 August 2014

Home Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that Britons who went to Syria or Iraq to fight could be stripped of their citizenship, if they had dual nationality or were naturalised. Her words came during a search for the identity of the British man in a video of the beheading of the American journalist James Foley. David Cameron had returned to London from his holiday in Cornwall to confer with security officials, but decided against recalling Parliament. In revenge the Daily Mail carried photographs of him in a wetsuit, which gave him a phocine look. Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, suggested Britain should deal with President

Jane Kelly

The nun who took down an Isis flag – and stands up for east London’s Muslims

Not so long ago disaffected youngsters would take to a life of crime and hard drugs, a trajectory which would often kill them. These days, some young men from our Muslim community sign up instead to the so-called Islamic State, and the dream of a distant Caliphate. Why? Well, forget theology or even the prestige which comes from being a warrior — if Sister Christine Frost is right, it all comes down to housing. Sister Christine has worked on the Will Crooks Estate in Poplar, east London, for over 40 years. She accidentally got into the news in early August when she removed the black flag of radical Islam which

Michael Lind

The wars that really are about the oil

Is international conflict really just a fight over oil? It sometimes seems that way. In Syria and Iraq, the militants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ sell captured oil while battling to establish a puritanical Sunni theo-cracy. From Central Asia to Ukraine, Russia is contesting attempts (backed by the US) to minimise Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ allows the US to threaten the choke points through which most of China’s oil imports must pass. Conspiracy-mongering petrodeterminists who try to reduce world politics to nothing but a clash for oil are too crude (pun intended). No shadowy cabal of oil company executives pulls the

Monday

Alex Massie

Boris Johnson is not fit to be leader of the Tory party, never mind Prime Minister

Awkward, especially here, I know, but there you have it. But, look, if any other high-profile politician were suggesting the burden of proof in criminal trials should be switched from the accuser to the accused we’d be properly – in both senses – appalled. So we should be appalled that Boris suggests in his Telegraph column today that anyone travelling to Iraq or Syria should be presumed a jihadist unless and until they can prove otherwise. The state will not have to make a case you convict you but you must make a case to avoid conviction. And, lo, centuries of criminal law are undone. Worse still, I think, Boris considers this

Friday

Isabel Hardman

No partnership with Assad (and no scrutiny till summer’s up)

Philip Hammond this afternoon ruled out Britain working with President Assad in the fight against Isis, arguing that simply being aligned against a common enemy ‘doesn’t make us friends with someone’. It is nearly a year since the Commons rejected intervention in Syria against the Assad regime, and now figures such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Lord Dannatt are arguing that there may need to be some kind of alliance against the Syrian leader in order to defeat Isis. But the Foreign Secretary said: ‘We may very well find that we are aligned against a common enemy, but that doesn’t make us friends with someone It doesn’t make us able

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 August 2014

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, writing of the Islamic State in northern Iraq, said: ‘If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.’ Anyone waving an Islamic State flag in Britain would be arrested, he said. He invoked Britain’s ‘military prowess’ but later said: ‘We are not going to be putting boots on the ground.’ British C-130 transport planes were used to drop aid; Tornados were used for surveillance in addition to a Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft; and Chinook helicopters remained on standby. A raider who attacked a jeweller’s in Oxford

Dot Wordsworth

What’s humanitarian about a humanitarian crisis?

‘Our first priority,’ David Cameron said this week, ‘has of course been to deal with the acute humanitarian crisis in Iraq.’ One knows what he means, but isn’t humanitarian an odd way of putting it? If it had been a vegetarian crisis or a disestablishmentarian crisis, it would be one either caused or suffered by people who professed either of those schools of thought. Humanitarians used to be people who followed the teachings of Pierre Leroux (1797–1871), who believed in the spontaneous perfectibility of the human race. He’d soaked up the ideas of Saint-Simon and squeezed them out over Auguste Comte and George Sand. The dogma-free religion of humanity was

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

It’s time we contemplated the possibility of a post-conflict Kurdistan

There’s a  curious aspect to the debate – or what passes for it – about Britain getting involved in military action against the Islamic State. Isabel Hardman put her finger on it in her piece in this week’s magazine, identifying the defeat of the PM’s bid to take action in Syria for his reluctance to take military action now in Iraq. As she says: ‘This post-Syria timidity frustrates many of Cameron’s own MPs. Even under the new leadership of Michael Gove, the Tory whips made no efforts to sound out backbenchers on where they stand on a British response to the so-called Islamic State’s brutal campaign in Iraq. If they

The Spectator

Podcast: Britain’s jihad, the Pope vs the Vatican, and the existence of ‘The One’

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Britain’s jihad, the Pope vs the Vatican, and the existence of ‘The One'” fullwidth=”yes”] The View from 22 podcast [/audioplayer]The murder of James Foley by an Isis fighter ‘with a London accent’ has been treated with understandable revulsion. But we shouldn’t be surprised, says Douglas Murray in his cover piece this week. On this week’s podcast, he outlines how Britain came to be the West’s leading producer of ‘foreign fighters’. Shiraz Maher, one of Britain’s leading authorities on radicalisation, joins him, and explains why the British jihadis are regarded as some of the most vicious and extreme fighters. Just what is really going on in Pope Francis’s pontificate?

Douglas Murray

Our boys in the Islamic state: Britain’s export jihad

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Shiraz Maher discuss Britain’s jihadis”] Listen [/audioplayer]It is the now familiar nightmare image. A kneeling prisoner, and behind him a black-hooded man speaking to camera. The standing man denounces the West and claims that his form of Islam is under attack. He then saws off the head of the hostage. Why did Wednesday morning’s video stand out? Because this time the captive was an American journalist — James Foley — and his murderer is speaking in an unmistakable London accent. The revulsion with which this latest Islamist atrocity has been greeted is of course understandable. But it is also surprising. This is no one-off, certainly no anomaly.

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

Jihadi John – a very British export

It is the now familiar nightmare image. A kneeling prisoner, and behind him a black-hooded man speaking to camera. The standing man denounces the West and claims that his form of Islam is under attack. He then saws off the head of the hostage. listen to ‘Terror’s London accent’ on Audioboo

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Breaking: David Cameron returns to Downing Street after journalist beheaded

Downing Street has announced that David Cameron is returning to Westminster from his holiday. A Number 10 spokesperson said: ‘If true, the brutal murder of James Foley is shocking and depraved. ‘The Prime Minister is returning to Downing St this morning. He will meet with the Foreign Secretary and senior officials from the Home Office, Foreign Office and the agencies to discuss the situation in Iraq and Syria and the threat posed by ISIL terrorists.’ That the apparent murderer of James Foley spoke with a British accent was not, according to Philip Hammond this morning, a surprise to those tracking radicalised Britons joining the conflict. But this development still has big implications,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

My enemy’s enemy: Philip Hammond on Isis and Assad

Philip Hammond made quite clear on the Today programme that this government is ‘utterly opposed’ to everything that Isis stands for: it’s difficult to say anything else when militants who clearly luxuriate in evil have beheaded a journalist who was covering their monstrous deeds. The Foreign Secretary was asked whether this country was prepared to ‘wage war’ on Isis. He dodged saying that the West was waging war, but explained that as Isis was doing this, we have to deal with them on that basis. Here’s his full quote: ‘Oh look, it’s far too late for that debate: we are very clear that we are utterly opposed to the evil

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Britain abandons foreign policy. And abandons debates about foreign policy too.

Cynics have long suspected that Britain’s foreign policy is as independent as its nuclear deterrent. Cynics have a point. Perhaps, as some suggest, it’s time to concede the game’s a bogey and cease even pretending to pretend this remains a country of at least some modest importance and influence. Except, if we choose to, we do retain some influence, even some importance. Nevertheless, we certainly do not have an Iraq policy at present. Nor do we really have an ISIS policy. The Foreign Secretary is long on what we’re not doing and very short on what we are. Of course this reflects past misadventures. Not just those pertaining to Iraq but

Monday

The Spectator

Video: Does Cameron have an Iraq policy? Or is he just making it up?

The Prime Minister has returned from his holidays, and yesterday wrote an intriguing piece in the Sunday Telegraph about the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Syria. ‘True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world’ he wrote, and this morning Defence Secretary Michael Fallon sounded distinctly hawkish about British involvement in Iraq. But what does any of this actually mean? Fraser Nelson tries to get to the bottom of things in our look at the week ahead, while Isabel Hardman wonders whether anyone – including Cameron – knows what our policy is anymore. Meanwhile Douglas Murray argues that an

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Philip Hammond: No plans to engage in airstrikes

So Britain’s long-term fight against Isis isn’t, at the moment, going to involve this country doing any fighting. The Prime Minister this morning insisted that there would be no ‘boots on the ground’ and Philip Hammond has just told journalists that there are ‘no plans at the moment to engage in air strikes’. That latter assertion does of course mean that air strikes aren’t being ruled out, while boots on the ground are ruled out daily. Hammond said: ‘The priority is the humanitarian situation, there are huge numbers of displaced persons, there are persistent stories of atrocities being committed against people who are fleeing from the violence going on, so

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: Britain is not going to get involved in another war in Iraq

That there are just two weeks now until MPs return from summer recess to discuss Britain’s response to the events in Iraq, Palestine and Syria will give Downing Street some hope that a recall of Parliament is now unnecessary. That as may be, but the new British stance outlined by David Cameron and Michael Fallon yesterday would be the subject of an urgent statement and lengthy debate were the Commons sitting. Events and British involvement are changing fast and the legislature is getting no more opportunity to probe what the executive is up to than the rest of us. This morning on BBC Breakfast, David Cameron tried to clarify what

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

What are David Cameron’s plans for the fight against Isis?

David Cameron warns today that Britain must act against Isis in order to prevent terrorist attacks on this country. But what does he actually intend to do? In his article in the Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister argues that a ‘broader political, diplomatic and security response’ is needed, but also says that ‘we should avoid sending armies to fight or occupy’. He writes: ‘Britain – our economy, our security, our future – must come first. After a deep and damaging recession, and our involvement in long and difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising that so many people say to me when seeing the tragedies unfolding on

Molly Guinness

When should Britain go to war?

There’s been a lot written this week about whether or not to fight the Islamic State in Iraq. This time the consensus among Spectator writers is that Britain should. There’s a clear moral case, but is it in our interests to go to war? The first time this question came up was in 1839 when China started confiscating opium from British traders. It may have been a good move to protect British trade, but the magazine was less convinced about the morality of it. The perfect right of the Chinese authorities…to prohibit opium, will not bear disputing about; while the wisdom of their conduct in this matter—even supposing the object

Friday

Lara Prendergast

Vice News and Isis have formed a bizarre symbiotic relationship

If you haven’t watched Vice News’s five-part documentary about Isis yet, I’d highly recommend it. They’ve gone where no other media company has managed: into the heart of the Islamic State. As a result, Isis and Vice have formed a bizarre symbiotic relationship. Both are youth-focused, both have global ambitions and both have a pioneering spirit. Even their black-and-white branding is similar. The documentary veers between the terrifying and the absurd, and wouldn’t pass any of the BBC’s impartiality tests. But Vice scooped their deep-pocketed rivals by bedding in with these mad jihadis. They may be the new kids on the block, but they deserve to be taken seriously. I’ve reviewed their documentary in this week’s Spectator,