September 20, 2005
Baghdad Dweller
reports two British soldiers held by "Iraqi
authorities" in Basra (also described as "Shiite militiamen" in the
corporate media), and subsequently freed after the British stormed a
police jail, were working undercover as bombers. Baghdad Dweller
includes a link to the Washington Post,
where the following appears: "Iraqi security officials on Monday
variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi
forces or trying to plant explosives. Photographs of the two men in custody showed them in civilian clothes." The Herald
notes the following: "Sources say the British soldiers, possibly
members of the new Special Reconnaissance Regiment formed earlier this
month to provide intelligence for SAS operations, were looking at
infiltration of the city’s police by the followers of the outspoken
Shi’ite cleric, Moqtada al Sadr," thus admitting the soldiers worked
undercover.
The "Special Reconnaissance Regiment," according to Regiments.org,
"formed with HQ at Hereford from volunteers of other units to support
international expeditionary operations in the fight against
international terrorism, absorbing 14th Intelligence Company (formed
for operations against Ulster terrorists), Intelligence Corps, and
releasing the SAS and SBS for the 'hard end’ of missions." Is it
possible the "hard end" of the "mission" in Iraq is to discredit the
resistance and sow chaos in the country by fronting pseudo-gang
terrorist groups (or the variant "pseudo-guerilla operations"), as the
British have ample experience with elsewhere, notably in Kenya during
the Mau Mau
uprising and in Malaya? "Pseudo operations are those in which
government forces disguised as guerrillas, normally along with
guerrilla defectors, operate as teams to infiltrate insurgent areas,"
writes Lawrence E. Cline
for the U.S. Army War College External Research Associates Program.
"This technique has been used by the security forces of several other
countries in their operations, and typically it has been very
successful." Indeed, one long running pseudo op, Gladio, was so
successful it managed to render a nominal Italian terrorist group, the
Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), into an excuse (after proper infiltration
by agents provocateurs) to increase the power of reactionary forces in
Italy and discredit socialist, communist, and even labor movements.
The
British SAS honed its "counter-insurgency" techniques in Northern
Ireland and there is no reason to believe it has refrained from doing
so in Iraq. "Formed to perform acts of sabotage and assassination
behind enemy lines during World War 2, the SAS evolved into a
counter-insurgency regiment after the war," writes Sean Mac Mathuna.
Mathuna cites a 1969 Army Training manual (British Army Land Operations
Manual, volume 3, counter-revolutionary operations) that enumerates
several "tasks," including:
the ambush and
harassment of insurgents, the infiltration of sabotage, assassination
and demolition parties into insurgent-held areas, border surveillance …
liaison with, and organization of friendly guerrilla forces operating
against the common enemy.
Examples "were found
during the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya during the mid-fifties," Mathuna
explains, "when SAS officers commanded some of the infamous 'pseudo
gangs’ that terrorized the civilian population," and
in Borneo, where they used cross-border operations to attack and destroy guerrilla bases; and in Aden in 1967, where they dressed as Arabs
and would use an Army officer to lure Arab gunmen into a trap and kill
them. To defeat the insurgents counter-terror must be deployed back at
them—described by Ken Livingstone as "subverting the subverters"….
In
order to "subvert the subverters" and discredit the IRA in Northern
Ireland, the SAS formed the Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF), a
covert pseudo-gang. "During the 1972 [IRA] ceasefire the MRF shot
civilians from unmarked cars using IRA weapons," writes Mathuna. "In
November 1972 the Army admitted that the MRF had done this one three
occasions. One of these incidents happened on 22nd June 1972—the day
the IRA announced its intention to introduce a ceasefire. The shootings
appear to have been done to discredit the IRA…"
It
is clear now, that because elements within the security forces did not
want a political deal with the IRA in the mid-seventies, and the
military solution was only possible with a change at the top of the
Labour leadership, MI5 and the SAS were prepared to use the same
methods the IRA are condemned for - civilian deaths, assassinations,
bombings and black propaganda—to bring this about.
In
fact, so effective were these "military solution" pseudo-gang terrorist
techniques the French employed them in Algeria and Vietnam. "The most
widespread use of pseudo type operations was during the 'Battle of
Algiers’ in 1957," explains Lawrence E. Cline. "The principal French
employer of covert agents in Algiers was the Fifth Bureau, the
psychological warfare branch." The Fifth Bureau "planted incriminating
forged documents, spread false rumours of treachery and fomented
distrust among the [FLN, the National Liberation Front] … As a frenzy
of throat-cutting and disemboweling broke out among confused and
suspicious FLN cadres, nationalist slaughtered nationalist from April
to September 1957 and did France’s work for her," notes Cline, quoting
Martin S. Alexander and J. F. V. Kieger ("France and the Algerian War:
Strategy, Operations, and Diplomacy," Journal of Strategic Studies,
Vol. 25, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 6-7).
Even though the
Washington Post mentions two Brits were detained, apparently caught
red-handed shooting Iraqi police and planting explosives, it does not
bother to mention the SAS or its long and sordid history of engaging in
covert pseudo-gang behavior and conclude the obvious: Britain, and the
United States—the latter having admitted formulating the Proactive
Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) in 2002, a brain child of neocons
staffing the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board, designed to "stimulate
reactions" on the part of "terrorists" (in Iraq, that would be the
resistance)—are intimately involved in sowing chaos and spreading
violence in Iraq and more than likely soon enough in Iran and Syria.
Of
course, this unfortunate and embarrassing incident in Basra will fall
off the front page of corporate newspapers and websites soon enough,
replaced with more appropriate, if fantastical, propaganda implicating
the Iraqi resistance and intel ops such as al-Zarqawi for the violence,
obviously engineered to create a civil war in Iraq and thus divide the
country and accomplish the neocon-Likudite plan to destroy Islamic
culture and society.
Addendum
It is not
surprising the corporate media in the United States and Britain would
omit crucial details on this story. In order to get the whole story, we
have to go elsewhere—for instance, China’s Xinhuanet news agency.
"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms [see the M.O. cited above] opened
fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the
attackers and captured them to discover they were two British
soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. "The two soldiers
were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said."
So,
the next time you read or hear about crazed "al-Qaeda in Iraq"
terrorists blowing up children or desperate job applicants, keep in
mind, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, the perpetrators may
very well be British SAS goons who cut their teeth killing Irish
citizens.