News & events
How Do We End Terror? Stop Taking Part
I VISITED Iraq in 1999. At the time, there were no so-called “jihadists” espousing the principles of “jihadism,” whatever the interpretation may be. On the outskirts of Baghdad was a military training camp, not for al-Qaida, but for Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian militant exile group that worked, with foreign funding and arms, to overthrow the Iranian Republic. - RAMZY BAROUD, Morning Star, 26 July 2016
At the time, the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein used the exiled organisation to settle scores with his rivals in Tehran, just as they, too, supported anti-Iraqi government militias to achieve exactly the same purpose.
Iraq was hardly peaceful then. But most of the bombs that exploded in that country were US bombs. In fact, when Iraqis spoke of “terrorism,” they only referred to “al-Irhab al-Amriki” — American terrorism.
Suicide bombings were hardly a daily occurrence; in fact, never an occurrence at all, anywhere in Iraq. As soon as the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 followed by Iraq in 2003, all hell broke loose. Read the full article here.