Last September Des Browne, Labour’s part time Defence Secretary (doesn’t that say it all when we are fighting not just one but TWO major conflicts!) told the Labour Party conference that Britain must negotiate with Taliban. Now Labour are at it again – Jonathan Powell (Blair’s former chief of staff at Downing Street) says the British government should negotiate with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Hamas!
One is reminded of the Yes Minister line where Sir Humphrey gives one of a number of standard responses to criticism: ‘We now know certain things now that we didn’t know at the time - we used that one after the Munich agreement’ – adding ‘we didn’t know Hitler wanted to rule the world!’.
So, let’s be absolutely clear about radical Islamist ideology:
- It aims at achieving a global Islamic state – where the whole world is ruled by an Islamic government with Islamic law imposed on Muslim and non Muslim alike. Basically the Islamic Hadith describe this happening at the end of time – and Islamism is about actively bringing that eschatological vision closer by political and if necessary military means.
- al-Qaeda sought to create a base in Sudan which would be a model Islamist state – from where military action could be launched to bring about a global Islamic state. When they were forced out of East Africa in 1996, they moved to Afghanistan at the invitation of the Taliban and sought to do the same there. The 9/11 attacks that they masterminded from there were just one part of a wider strategy to create this global Islamic state. That’s why we HAVE to keep fighting in Afghanistan – to stop the Taliban and al-Qaeda gaining control of a beachhead state from which to launch further attacks in a battle for global Islamist control.
I have two advantages over Jonathan Powell and Des Browne: firstly, I have seen first hand what an Islamist state looks like – I lived in Afghanistan under the Taliban. I watched ordinary Muslims being beaten up and forced to pray, I no longer dared visit any of my afghan friends – because they would automatically receive a very nasty visit from the dreaded religious police and most likely end up in prison for fraternising with foreigners and that was only the stuff I actually saw with my own eyes – much worse things went on elsewhere under Taliban rule; My second advantage over the likes of Des Browne and Jonathan Powell is that as an aid worker I actually had to negotiate with senior members of radical Islamist groups including the Taliban. Believe me – they give absolutely no care for condemnation from the rest of the world or give any credence whatsoever to western arguments about human rights or anything else. In fact, it was only when I told a senior Taliban leader that he would have to face the judgement of God if he prevented humanitarian work among an ethnic minority group he was racially prejudiced against – that he even began to shift. That is quite literally the only sort of language they respond to in negotiations with any degree of sincerity.
How
long will it be before the likes of Des Browne and Jonathan Powell end
up rattling off the Sir Humphrey line ‘We now know certain things now
that we didn’t know at the time - we didn’t know they wanted to rule
the world!’…?
