british army

Moussa Koussa, an odd man out

MK, as I shall call him, born in 1947, was one of the most powerful figures in Gadafy’s regime. Educated in the USA, he was head of the Libyan Intelligence Agency from 1994 to 2009. He then became foreign minister. He defected in March 2011 as the Arab Spring engulfed Libya. Arriving into  Farnborough by private jet , he was guarded by British Intelligence until he was permitted by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to leave for Qatar.

There has been much press speculation that he was a MI6 agent.Papers released by the CIA in relation to the Senate Inquiry into Mrs Clinton point to him  being  their asset.

Despite calls for him to be questioned about the killing of WPC Fletcher and the supply of Semtex to Sinn Fein/IRA he was spoken to only by the Scottish police, presumably in relation to the Lockerbie massacre.

The then Foreign Secretary , William Hague,  told the House of Commons that officials would encourage MK to cooperate fully with all requests for interviews with investigating authorities. This was said with a straight face.

Both the USA and the EC lifted both monetary and travel sanctions against him.

Well done thy good and faithful servant!

So, there it is then. MK saw the light, defected, recanted and now lives in comfortable retirement.

Enter Andrew MacKinlay at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.He said in evidence that MK was a known terrorist , named to him by Leyden , the British Ambassador as having been “up to his neck in Lockerbie”. MacKinley went on ” There were far too many people and agencies who would have been embarrassed in either a British or an International court… it is a reasonable assumption that his fingerprints would have been all over the supply of Semtex and other weaponry to the IRA.”  He went on to say that MK probably authorised supply to the IRA.

The really embarrassing thing for the “Peace Process” would be that MK knows precisely what Sinn Fein/IRA got. Comparing it to what was “decommissioned” would not be in the interests of the Peaceniks.

You might wonder Dear Reader , when the Director of Public Prosecutions is so exercised about the alleged murders by British forces  in Belfast and Derry , that he might be a little concerned about Andrew MacKinlay’s allegations. Unless I have missed something , he has been utterly silent.

So too, the silence of Chief Constable George, the man who invariably follows where the evidential trail leads.

The answer may lie in what MacKinlay says. Neither Barra nor George fancies facing up to the opening of Pandora’s Box. Or they have been told to do nothing by their political masters.

Happy Christmas Moussa!

Doug Beattie and leg humping

Soldier , author of “An ordinary Soldier” and “Task Force Helmand”, holder of the MC, UUP councillor and sometime talking head, said:

“they won’t go away, they can’t be reasoned with it’ll only get worse. IS must be defeated militarily and politically.” This in response to an article in the Independent which attempted to set out the nuances of the situation.

I responded to him “calm down dear, let’s treat them like PIRA, all will be well then.”

Unable to see the subtlety of the remark [and the reference to Cameron] he suggested that I was being patronising.

I explained that my remark was made as a result of my experience of HMG and PIRA.

He responded “You’re kinda foolish aren’t you-you’d best jog on and hump someone else’s leg”.

I suppose this must be NCO speak for something.

The point is that on Sunday, lots of talking heads, more able than our second favourite local squaddie, offered pat solutions to IS and lots of jingoism.

Nothing is ever as it seems, who knows how many IS fighters received assistance from the CIA or MI6? How often has IS been used by the West against other foes?How many agents does the West have in IS and how many participate in attacks? What negotiations are going on with IS as we speak? Remember that the British Government talked tough about the IRA for thirty years , all the while negotiating with it. Remember how Major’s stomach would be turned by such a prospect?

As Lord Castlereagh said of diplomacy ” a lie is not a lie where the truth is not expected”.

IS is embedded in many countries and reflects discontent with those particular regimes, a certain view of Islam and no doubt hatred of the West.

Not one commentator I heard on Sunday wanted to open up the wider picture. Apart from the embedded hatred of the West, accrued after the  perfidious treatment meted out by Britain and France after the Great War and subsequent US foreign policy in the Middle East, nobody wanted to mention the thousands of Muslim women and children, killed by the West since 9/11 .

That might provide an explanation [though not an excuse] for both massacres in the last year in Tunisia.

The lets ‘go napalm their village” approach has failed over and over. The British Army’s performance in Iraq and Afghanistan was pitiful. There are no bad privates only bad generals and the British press, disgracefully, have failed to hold successive generals to account.

I’m sure Doug was a good  and brave company commander and I’m sure his views are about just as worthy as Richard Dannatt. Both are wrong in their simplistic thinking .