Basra, Iraq: we have seen the enemy and it is us

British "Pseudo-Gang" Terrorists Exposed in Basra
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire



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.

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British "Pond Life" Intel Ops Unmentioned in the Corporate Media
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire



September 22, 2005

Jarlath Kearney, writing for the Daily Ireland, draws a crucial comparison that will of course be completely ignored by the larger corporate media. The incident in Basra, where two SAS undercover operatives were captured, dressed as Arabs and driving a car loaded with weapons and explosives, is similar to an earlier incident in Northern Ireland, where the SAS operated for years. "The incident drew parallels with the March 1988 attack on the funeral of IRA volunteer Caoimhghin Mac Bradaigh," writes Kearney. "During that incident, two armed and undercover army intelligence operatives drove directly at the cortege in west Belfast. After firing a shot, both soldiers were subsequently captured, beaten and shot dead by the IRA." Lucky for the British intelligence operatives in Basra, they were not murdered, although apparently beaten.

Kearney also mentions that Brigadier (in the Intelligence Corps) Gordon Kerr, who "played a key role in the activities of covert British activities in the North [of Ireland]," is "now stationed with British forces in Iraq." Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor of the Sunday Herald, characterizes Kerr as "the archetypal spy; a spook's spook and a master of dirty tricks and dirty wars," on the same level "as pond life" (according to "regular squaddies and military brass"), "[h]ighly effective, immensely powerful and very dangerous pond life, but pond life nevertheless." Kerr and his Force Research Unit (FRU) not only "handed packages of photographs and military reports detailing the movements and addresses of potential targets, which in turn were passed to loyalist murder gangs" in Northern Ireland (essentially organizing targeted assassinations), but also "carried out more 'flag tours'—secret intelligence missions [in Berlin, circa 1983-85]—than the French and US military intelligence put together" and were thus described by an "officer who served with Kerr in Berlin" as "pointlessly aggressive and confrontational." An intelligence officer who knew Kerr portrayed him as "the perfect advocate of the ends justifying the means."

In Britain, as in America, criminals and terrorists are rewarded for their murderous behavior. In February, 2003, Kerr was "sent to the Gulf to head up British spying activities in the Middle East as part of preparations for action in Iraq," Mackay reported for the Sunday Herald. "The move has been described as a 'get out of jail free card' for Kerr." Prior to this assignment, Kerr was rewarded with a military attache position in Beijing. "The fact that Kerr seems to be playing a key role in the coming war suggests that all the activities that he was involved in were sanctioned at the highest level," remarked Jane Winter, the director of British Irish Rights Watch.

A FRU source told Mackay in 2000 that what "was happening [in Northern Ireland] may have been occurring outside the law but the establishment [at the time, Secretary of State for Defense, George Younger, Ulster Secretary, Tom King, PM Margaret Thatcher, and General Sir John Waters, the general officer commanding in Northern Ireland] knew what was happening." Likewise the "establishment" knows what is happening in Iraq—no doubt the sort of "dirty war" launched by the likes of Gordon Kerr and FRU is confirmed British policy (a collaborative effort with American intelligence and Rumsfeld's Pentagon), well "outside the law."

Naturally, all of this is simply irrelevant because the corporate media will not report it—instead, in the wake of the embarrassing revelations of SAS undercover agents posing as Arabs, the media has turned its attention toward Iran, accused (as usual) of organizing and funding the murder of British and American occupation soldiers in Iraq. In the period of a day or so, all reference to the SAS and its "dirty tricks and dirty wars," more alluded to than actually investigated, have disappeared down the memory hole, replaced by archetypal terrorists of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi sort.


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